Australian Farm Institute Podcast

Australian Farm Institute 2019 Roundtable

Session: History and future of ecosystem services

Facilitator: AFI Executive Director Richard Heath

Guest speaker: Mick Keogh, Deputy Chair of Australian Competition and Consumer Commission

Presentation summary:

Mick Keogh told the AFI Roundtable that Government attempts to establish markets that pay farmers to protect the environment fall short of what’s needed to achieve good outcomes. He said increasing market-based incentives and minimising regulation have the potential to generate significant environmental benefits and help drought-proof farm income but making this happen will be a major policy challenge for the farm sector.

A landholder’s guide to participate in soil carbon farming in Australia

In this episode we interview the authors of our latest occasional paper which looks at the benefits and costs to landholders of participating in soil carbon farming.

AFI Executive Director, Richard Heath chats with guests Professors Robert White, Brian Davidson and Richard Eckard.

In this podcast, AFI’s Richard Heath is joined by the authors of a discussion paper the AFI has published on the rising opportunity cost of water for a chat on how this issue impacts the southern Murray-Darling Basin.

Host:

Richard Heath, Executive Director, AFI

Guests:

Dr Leigh Vial - Primary producer, Director of SunRice, Adjunct Fellow at the University of Queensland, and a former Head of the International Rice Research Institute's Experiment Station (Philippines).

Andrew Bomm - Independent consultant, Progressive Agriculture

Australian Farm Institute 2019 Roundtable

Session: After Hours Forum

Facilitator: Gabrielle Chan, The Guardian Newspaper

Guest speaker: Dr. Annette Cowie, Principal research scientist, Climate, NSW DPI and co-author IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land

Presentation summary:

Dr Cowie is co-leader of the International Energy Agency Bioenergy research network ‘Climate and sustainability effects of bioenergy within the broader bioeconomy’, and a member of the Science Policy Interface of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. Her current research focuses on sustainability indicators and climate impact assessment in agriculture and forestry, including life cycle assessment of bioenergy and biochar systems. Dr Cowie’s keynote presentation at the AFI Roundtable After Hours Forum focused on the role of biochar in environmental restoration, especially in agricultural systems, as well as the role of agriculture in sustainable land management to address climate change impacts.

Australian Farm Institute 2019 Roundtable

Session: Opportunities to build natural capital

Facilitator: AFI General Manager, Katie McRobert

Guest speaker: Dr. Francisco Ascui, Soil CRC and Adjunct Professor at University of Tasmania

Presentation summary:

Dr Ascui is an internationally recognised expert in environmental accounting and finance who has pioneered a new approach to evaluating natural capital credit risk in agricultural lending, and he is currently contributing to the work of the Soil CRC in this area. His AFI Roundtable presentation focused on the benefits of natural capital credit risk assessment for lenders, primary producers and the environment.

Australian Farm Institute 2019 Roundtable

Session: Opportunities to build natural capital

Facilitator: AFI General Manager, Katie McRobert

Guest speaker: Dr. Stuart Whitten, Economist at CSIRO Land & Water

Presentation summary:

Dr Whitten discussed natural capital market design at the AFI Roundtable, noting that reasons we are interested in markets are:

· Placing positive incentives on desired outcomes

· Flexibility in individual responses

· Encouraging cheapest effective change

In combination these can drive innovation and the “gains from trade” that create new and better ways to secure the future for farmers, Dr Whitten said. He said trust is the lubricant that facilitates the information exchange which underpins markets and is critical for farmer participation in natural capital markets.

Australian Farm Institute 2019 Roundtable

Session: Opportunities to build natural capital

Facilitator: AFI General Manager, Katie McRobert

Guest speaker: Tim Beshara, Federal Policy Director of The Wilderness Society

Presentation summary:

Tim’s role with The Wilderness Society is to engage with parliament and industry around biodiversity law reform. Tim has a background in environmental restoration and invasive species management and has extensive experience of how environmental policy is made including the role of ministers, political parties, ENGO groups, parliament and the press gallery. At the AFI Roundtable, Tim outlined ways the ag sector could ‘Australian-ify’ an ecosystem services model that works for our landscape, geographic and political.

Australian Farm Institute 2019 Roundtable

Session: Opportunities to build natural capital

Facilitator: AFI General Manager, Katie McRobert

Guest speaker: Dr. Manu Saunders, Ecologist at University of New England

Presentation summary:

Ecosystem services already play an invisible role in Australian agriculture, Dr Saunders told the AFI Roundtable. Production on many farms benefits from wild pollinators, natural enemies, healthy soil and native vegetation. The challenge, she said, is to find better ways to manage landscapes to sustain and value those ecosystems services, not deplete their supply, by focusing on the role of biodiversity in agroecosystems.

Australian Farm Institute 2019 Roundtable

Session: What support is needed to progress implementation of ecosystem services?

Facilitator: AFI Chair, Andrew Spencer

Guest speaker: Jock Whittle, Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets (MIRA) & CEO Paraway Pastoral Company

Presentation summary:

Ag has a role to play in a low carbon future, Jock Whittle told the AFI Roundtable, and must find ways to halve emissions by 2050 yet increase food calorie production by 60% in the same period. Measurement is a challenge the industry needs to address, and MIRA are working with CSIRO to develop an emissions efficiency calculation tool called FarmPrint to benchmark farm emissions and environmental profiles such as water usage and soil health.

Australian Farm Institute 2019 Roundtable

Session: What support is needed to progress implementation of ecosystem services?

Facilitator: AFI Chair, Andrew Spencer

Guest speaker: Prof. Richard Eckard, Director of Primary Industries Climate Challenges Centre

Presentation summary:

Prof. Eckard noted that funding and pricing ecosystem services is not a new discussion, and the supply chain needs good indicators of sustainability. He also noted that of the 100 largest global economies, 31 are countries and 69 are companies – perhaps market forces are now more influential than government policy. In addition, the R&D required to deliver ecosystem services – e.g. carbon neutral; agriculture – are hamstrung by 1-3 year funding / contract cycles.

Read Prof. Eckard’s Farm Policy Journal article “Are grazing systems inherently carbon neutral?”

Australian Farm Institute 2019 Roundtable

Session: What support is needed to progress implementation of ecosystem services?

Facilitator: AFI Chair, Andrew Spencer

Guest speaker: John Woods, Chair of Grains Research Development Corporation

Presentation summary:

John Woods discussed the ongoing work of ensuring future sustainability for the Australian grains industry, with a focus on nitrogen use, market access, natural capital and farm business health.

Australian Farm Institute 2019 Roundtable

Session: History and future of ecosystem services

Facilitator: AFI Executive Director Richard Heath

Guest speaker: Dr. John Hewson, Chair of Business Council for Sustainable Development Australia

Presentation summary:

Former Liberal leader John Hewson delivered a scathing rebuke of the Government's climate change policy at the Roundtable, saying "we don't have a sense of urgency to achieve these emission reduction targets". Dr Hewson argued that regenerative agriculture can offset future emissions and supported plans for a HECS-style scheme that would see farmers receive a baseline carbon reading to help remove barriers for those looking to explore carbon farming initiatives as the market developed.

Australian Farm Institute 2019 Roundtable

Session: History and future of ecosystem services

Facilitator: AFI Executive Director Richard Heath

Guest speaker: Lorraine Gordon, Founder of Regenerative Agriculture Alliance

Presentation summary:

The Regenerative Agriculture Alliance is a collaboration of Australia’s leading researchers and practitioners in regenerative agriculture with the aim to improve the holistic health and wellbeing of Australian landscapes, farmers and communities through research, education and practice. Lorraine Gordon told the AFI Roundtable that regen practice can rebuild agriculture’s natural capital and provide ecosystem services to society.