Soil carbon reserves deserves credit
Marlborough farmer Doug Avery has a revealing story about commercial greed and the perception that farmers are made of money. Don’t pay what you don’t owe. In his case, it is the way the Government will run the emissions trading scheme reports Stuff. In its efforts to keep administration costs down, the Government is proposing to take farmers’ share of the scheme from the companies that process a farmer’s produce.
In the case of Mr Avery, and all other sheep and beef farmers, it will be based on the weight of meat from their slaughtered animals. He thinks that is unfair. It makes no allowance for the way he, and many others like him, farm, which he maintains emits less greenhouse gases than others and stores more carbon. There is another reason why it is unfair. It punishes innovation. Mr Avery has worked out an innovative way to keep farming on drought-prone land.
He suffered six years of drought before hitting on the idea – and credit must also be given here to Lincoln plant scientist Derrick Moot – of grazing his sheep on lucerne. The result has been a surge in lamb growth, so much so that the lambs take eight to 11 weeks less time to reach market weights and therefore are belching and farting less methane into the atmosphere.Compared with 1990 – and he has to go back that far to find a drought- free period – when he had 3300 ewes and 900 hoggets, he now has 2200 ewes and 650 hoggets.
But by selectively breeding sheep better able to handle the conditions and by mating hoggets and growing them on lucerne, he produces more lamb meat than in 1990. Lambs finish in 12 to 14 weeks, rather than the 20 to 25 weeks of 1990. The lucerne – and he has a massive 350 hectares of it – has another benefit. It sends roots deep down into the soil – as much as 10 metres – increasing the soil carbon and its moisture content.
He estimates he has about 5 million plants on a hectare. “Think of how much biomass we have put under the ground in the last 20 years,” he says.”That’s one heap of carbon. Any recognition? None.”
Tags: Doug Avery, Emissions Trading Scheme, Livestock emissions, Soil carbon
