NFF urges safeguard mechanism review to protect food production from carbon land conversion

The National Farmers Federation has told the Australian Government's safeguard mechanism review that carbon market policy must not push productive farmland out of food production. In a submission, the NFF pointed to the sale of Rushy Lagoon in Tasmania, a farm partly funded by the Clean Energy Finance Corporation that is planned to become a pine plantation, as an example of distortionary impacts. It wants the review to consider regional economic effects before agricultural land is converted to sequestration projects. The NFF also opposes extending safeguard obligations to agriculture and wants the government to publish detailed analysis of which facilities would be caught under lower emissions thresholds. It argues that grain storage, handling, processing, fertiliser production and port operations could be swept in. At the same time, the group is asking for more carbon farming methodologies that allow emissions reductions on working land, such as soil carbon and manure management, rather than locking land out of production.