Queensland Conservation has aligned with Biological Farmers of Australia, to re-instate claims organic farm methods can contribute to lowering Australia’s greenhouse emissions by locking up more carbon in soil.
They also say organic production will become more competitive as oil and fertiliser prices climb.
As part of its climate change campaign, Queensland Conservation has referred to an extensive thirty year scientific trial by the Rodale Institute in the USA which found that organic practices can remove around 7,845 kilograms of carbon from the air for each hectare farmed annually by sequestering it in the soil.
The study found that if all 175 million hectares of cropland in America were converted to organic practices, it would be the equivalent of taking 217 million cars off the road – or, more than a third of the world’s automobiles.
Queensland Conservation board member, Jerry Coleby-Williams, says the research (first published in 2003) has relevance in Australia.
"Applying similar carbon sequestration results to those found in the Rodale study, an Australian farm with an average cropping area of 710 hectares, could sequester 5,500 tonnes of carbon each year," Mr Coleby-Williams said.
"There is a total of approx. 50 M ha of periodically cultivated soils in Australia, representing the potential for at least 390 million tonnes of captured carbon per year."
He said in the face of rising oil prices organic production combines ‘eco-friendly’ with ‘cost-effective’.
SOURCE: QCC