However, NSW Farmers’ Association president, Charles Armstrong, is still wary that problems may yet lie in the detail of the legislation.

"The NSW Farmers’ Association has lobbied on this front tirelessly, and the Opposition’s support for our plan and now the Government’s acceptance means a lot to our members and the agricultural community," Mr Armstrong said.

"However, what the model for agriculture will now look like is still somewhat unclear, as Minister Penny Wong has stopped short of explaining how farmers can generate Kyoto complaint offsets which they could sell as credits."

Mr Armstrong says without a commitment on the mechanism to allow famers to create and claim credits for carbon sequestered by soil, pasture and crops, more work needs to be done on the technology for measuring the offsets in agriculture.

"No CPRS will be acceptable to agriculture unless the current Kyoto accounting rules are changed to enable the inclusion of all farm carbon sequestration as full value CPRS offsets," he said.

"Under current Kyoto carbon accounting rules we are unable to claim offsets from agriculture, however this opportunity is a model widely acknowledged as the best given our huge potential in storing carbon.

"Respected climate change spokespeople including Professor Tim Flannery and the Climate Institute’s Corey Watts have recently called for a model that pays farmers to sequester carbon in pastures and soil, and this model has been adopted by our competitors in other countries.

"There must be a commitment from Government to negotiate for a sensible accounting protocol, and we look forward to discussing this further."