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

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.

Climate-Neutral Agriculture?

“…Firstly, a search was made using the terms agriculture, farming, crop production, livestock production and climate neutral(ity). This generated a set of publications [4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. The practices presented for achieving climate neutrality in these publications are all discussed in this paper, with the practice of farm efficiency [7] restricted to energy efficiency (Section 4.1.5) and fertilizer-use efficiency (Sections 4.1.8 and 4.1.9), without considering rebound effects.…”

“…The practices presented for achieving climate neutrality in these publications are all discussed in this paper, with the practice of farm efficiency [7] restricted to energy efficiency (Section 4.1.5) and fertilizer-use efficiency (Sections 4.1.8 and 4.1.9), without considering rebound effects. With the exception of afforestation (Section 4.2), all practices in these studies [4][5][6][7][8][9][10] were within the cradle-to-farmgate system boundaries (Section 4.1). Secondly, the databases were searched with the terms agriculture, climate-change mitigation and review.…”

“…The climate neutrality of agriculture has emerged as a subject in the scientific literature [4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. The scope of the studies [4][5][6][7][8][9][10] is limited as to geographical coverage and types of agricultural production, Climate neutrality has also emerged in the certification of agricultural products [11].…”

“…The climate neutrality of agriculture has emerged as a subject in the scientific literature [4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. The scope of the studies [4][5][6][7][8][9][10] is limited as to geographical coverage and types of agricultural production, Climate neutrality has also emerged in the certification of agricultural products [11]. Additionally, there are publications pointing out that specific practices can be important contributors to climate-change mitigation regarding agriculture [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25].…”

“…The current worldwide yearly emissions of the GHGs linked to the cradle-to-farmgate lifecycle of agricultural outputs has been estimated at about 25% of the yearly worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases (as GWP 100 CO 2 equivalents) [17], which corresponds with the emission of about 10 petagrams (Pg) of GWP 100 CO 2 equivalents [14]. In this review, practices that have been proposed as important contributions to mitigating the contribution of agriculture to climate change in scientific literature [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] will be discussed to establish the contributions to agricultural climate neutrality that they can deliver. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time that this has been done.…”