For years farmers have been promised the financial benefits of participating in carbon trading schemes.
But unless they were among the few prepared to sacrifice valuable land to timber-based carbon sinks, there was not a method put forward which maintained the productive capacity of existing rural land uses.
But all of that has changed now thanks to the efforts and expense of Terry McCosker and RCS, which has launched CarbonLink to trade soil carbon on the as new Financial and Energy Exchange (FEX) opened in Sydney yesterday by former US Vice President Al Gore.
Where the Federal Government has previously dismissed the urgings of farmers for soil carbon to be part of a national trading scheme, Mr McCosker has done the hard work and borne the expense to prove that it has a role.
The CarbonLink program could deliver earnings of approximately $50/ha/year to graziers, over and above their current production and earnings. And importantly it fits with scientifically recognised and widely adopted land management practices, such as cell grazing.
It is a great credit to free enterprise and entreprenuerial will that Mr McCosker has been able to go where governments - both State and Federal - have feared to tread.
While the Federal Government has displayed great diplomatic skill and influence in convincing the developing nations of APEC to commit to reducing their emissions, that step can only ever represent part of the solution.
According to the accepted wisdom on greenhouse science, such a step is important but is not enough to counter global warming unless the existing and on-going carbon dioxide emissions can be removed from the atmosphere.
The wheels of government have been too slow in finding a way for agriculture, which manages 60pc of Australia's land mass, to participate in such a solution.
Federal Agriculture Minister Peter McGauran earlier this year argued more research was needed before soil carbon could be considered a serious and viable option in the greenhouse debate.
It was yet another delay, in what has become a series of political insults to rural landholders, who have been used as pawns in the Federal and State Government's response to climate change.
The Beattie Government's ban on land clearing was justified in terms of delivering 25 million tonnes of carbon offsets, a figure the Federal Government has happily accepted in order to meet its abatement targets under Kyoto.
But for that, and the future carbon offsets delivered by vegetation thickening, the two levels of Government have not paid a cent to the owners of those lands and timbers.
That fight should not be forgotten by farm leaders, but at least for now farmers themselves can start earning money for their role in combatting greenhouse gas emissions - for all involved hopefully CarbonLink will deliver on its promise, where others have failed.
What do you think?
Email a friend
Favourites
Del.icio.us
Facebook
Digg
StumbleUpon
MySpace
Reddit
Newsvine
LinkedIn
Kwoff