Making Agriculture Carbon Neutral Amid a Changing Climate: The Case of South-Western Australia

Ross Kingwell

doi:10.3390/land10111259

Abstract

Making Australian agriculture carbon neutral by 2050 is a goal espoused by several agricultural organisations in Australia. How costly might it be to attain that goal, especially when adverse climate change projections apply to agriculture in southern Australia? This study uses scenario analysis to examine agricultural emissions and their abatement via reforestation in south-western Australia under projected climate change. Most scenarios include the likelihood of agricultural emissions being reduced in the coming decades. However, the impact of projected adverse climate change on tree growth and tree survival means that the cost of achieving agricultural carbon neutrality via reforestation is forecast to increase in south-western Australia. Agricultural R&D and innovation that enable agricultural emissions to diminish in the coming decades will be crucial to lessen the cost of achieving carbon neutrality. On balance, the more likely scenarios reveal the real cost of achieving carbon neutrality will not greatly increase. The cost of achieving carbon neutrality under the various scenarios is raised by an additional AUD22 million to AUD100 million per annum in constant 2020 dollar terms. This magnitude of cost increase is very small relative to the region’s gross value of agricultural production that is regularly greater than AUD10 billion.

Highlights

Reducing greenhouse emissions is a popular sentiment, often voiced by industry organisations and governments
If agricultural emissions reduce by 20% in 2050 relative to levels in 2020, yet climate change lessens tree biomass production by 10%, the cost of achieving regional carbon neutrality only increases by AUD21.5 million which is a tiny amount given that the region’s gross value of agricultural production is usually over AUD10 billion
Noting that methane emissions are the main source of emissions in the region [29], methane-reducing innovations as described in [57,58,62,63] could make an important contribution to lowering the cost of achieving carbon neutrality in the presence or absence of climate change

Summary

Introduction

Reducing greenhouse emissions is a popular sentiment, often voiced by industry organisations and governments. In Australia, key agricultural organisations have announced plans and commitments to achieve carbon neutrality [1,2,3,4]. The announced plans, actions, and aspirations for Australian agriculture to be carbon neutral means Australian agriculture faces two structural challenges: lessening its net emissions whilst responding to an adverse trend in its climate. Various climate models project that these changes will continue and worsen [11,12,13]. It is against this backdrop of a challenging, potentially more adverse environment for agricultural production that Australian farmers currently are being encouraged to become carbon neutral

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Conclusion