Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee, , 8:05:52 to 8:11:02
Analysis of the estimated $2.8 billion reduction in agricultural revenue and the potential second-round effects on rural employment when farms transition to carbon forestry.
Topics: Agricultural productivity, Employment
Speakers: Speaker 5, Speaker 14, Speaker 21
>> just to be clear? Yeah. It's 40% of the areas that are doing carbon farming.
>> Yeah. And so so in terms of percentages just to give you a feel. So it's 4% of agriculture. So that 18 million hectares is 4% of agricultural land. >> But does that include the pastural land? >> So that yeah that's agricultural land as
we >> 4% still a lot in my in my view. Um but uh yeah so it's not I suppose on notice do you have have you calculated for this interior zone or for you've really got three zones do you have high rainfall sheep wheat? >> That's our standard reporting >> and then in land effectively or we call >> pastoral pastoral. Thank you. So could you give us that equivalent figure for those three zones? Which one the >> so how much land is doing carbon farming or how much land is converted from agriculture production to carbon farming carbon share of those >> of the share of those areas because you know by my look at the map it is much less than 4% in the pastural zone >> because there's large parts of it just there's no sequestration at all obviously in the more arid areas of our country >> and so therefore it' probably be more than 4% in the particularly in the wheat sheep zone that seems to really get in the neck um the inlands zone. So just heading and you were hinting at there the impact you say that agricultural revenue is estimated to be $2.8 billion lower than otherwise. Uh now yes it's still growing overall. This is a it's a 2% reduction in in revenue. Is that right? >> Yeah. >> I mean my 2.8 8 billion over the well we've got 90 100,000 farms um in the country that are that are apparently ABS has a measure that more than $40,000 of income they're not just hobby farms they're proper income producing farms of some nature that's $30,000 per farm on average am I missing something is that right
>> so that's in terms of full agricultural activity for some of those farms would still be earning carbon revenue so that would be in excess. So the farms that are earning carbon revenue are obviously going to be making that choice because the carbon revenue exceeds that foregone. So for some of those farms that would lose, they'll actually be in a better financial position. And that's that's one of the the
>> farm income that's lost to a community that's lost to >> well cuz I suppose the question here is have you estimated the the knock on the second round effects here of of losses of employment in the farm sector? Because at least my assumption would be that employment levels rurally in particular will be much lower if someone's growing trees which usually just lets to go to scrub than than if they were mustering cattle.
>> Yeah. So, so as you say those second round effects depends on very much on a this how much is coexisting and so forth in which case you know there might be very limited kind of impacts on employment if you're adding an activity particularly if it's a hedge and and it's helping you support your viability of business to the extent that you know you're replacing an activity at a larger scale and there's less purchases of inputs and so forth in agricultural markets. we haven't gone to those second round round impacts um given the primarily the the question we were looking at and that's why we've used that >> a share as a kind of indicative which we think it would be about indicative of course there'll be some employment that's created >> in the context of delivering this sequestration um and that employment impact in rural areas and and that creation which will be another agricultural activity because it be supported through a you know which we
accounts, the nurs production, is it? >> I'm just absolutely horrified listening to this. So, you're talking about I appreciate that it's not in rangeands areas. It's in more productive areas where the percentage is high because it's higher rainfall because there's not the opportunity for sequestration in the lower rainfall areas. There's not because we've been down this road. So it's the places where you have the most activity which is food production. And so what we're going to do is >> and least diversified economies too ex >> and we're going to pay people and I don't know is this going to be offshore income the the new carbon money or is it going to be taxpayers dollars paying farmers not to grow food not to process the food in the cities and certainly not
to eat it. >> Yeah. So I can't answer the you know the purpose of the study was kind of like what we talked about in previous estimates which is taking that question of well if we were to sequester 119 million tons of carbon landscape what would it look like the mechanisms that will drive the demand side you know are are a separate kind of question and then some of that comes through the safeguard and all those others and the demand for acuse as a carbon as a you know country looks to decarbonize so we put that question aside because we haven't looked at that aspect of the Um I think that the one of the key kind of um positives out of this is that food production is not really at risk. There's yes we do have an impact but the impact is quite modest >> and so we still have