<
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/feb/19/saturation-point-australias-best-known-carbon-neutral-farm-can-no-longer-offset-its-emissions>
"Mark Wootton and his wife, Eve Kantor, were the carbon-neutral pioneers of
Australia’s red meat industry.
Years before the Paris agreement to keep global heating below 1.5C, and a
decade before the Australian government committed to reaching net zero
emissions, their family farm in south-western Victoria was declared
carbon-neutral.
“In the early 2010s we were pretty cocky that we had conquered this thing,”
Wootton says. “We thought we’d cracked the formula.”
Jigsaw Farms, a mosaic of lush pastures, eucalypt plantations, wildlife
corridors and wetlands about 250km west of Melbourne, near the town of
Hamilton, was the envy of the industry. It was lionised by the media, a
favoured photo opportunity by politicians and held up by the red meat sector as
a vision of the future.
The farm’s carbon-rich soils, 20% of which were forested, sequestered enough
CO₂ to offset its annual emissions from wool, lamb and beef production.
Or at least it did. The latest report tracking Jigsaw’s emissions, which is now
undergoing peer review, confirmed that since about 2017 – the same year the
industry body Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) announced a target of net zero
emissions by 2030 – Jigsaw Farms has been emitting more greenhouse gases than
it could sequester.
“Cows and sheep are still there producing the same amount of methane [every
year], but the trees grow up and carbon sequestration slows down,” says the
report author, Prof Richard Eckard."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
