Agmate’s Glenn & Natalie Williams [pictured] are Cattle producers and from North Queensland. Natalie writes:
I have to wonder if ordinary Australians get away from the computer long enough to get outside and actually make a difference to the world … and sequester some carbon.
Farmers and graziers are sequestering more carbon in a week than other Australian would in a lifetime.
How do I know? Because I am walking the talk. We have documented and satellite evidence that our pastures have changed from D class to A class in just over 5 years (look up the DNR&M website for clarification of pasture assessment if you don’t already know).
We have done this over our entire property of 17000 acres. My husband and I are not anything unusual. Farmers and graziers are doing this everyday of the week in Australia and this goes on unrecognized and deliberately avoided.
In our situation, we have spent $1.5 million on getting our property to the point at which it is sustainable and in the best environmental state that has been achieved in our country type.
Cattle Watering on a dam at our property "Granville" in the Central West North QLD
I wonder how much of urban Australians’ wages have been put into directly sequestering carbon? Zero or at best not much would be my guess.
Would you believe that this cash input is from my husband’s entire underground coal mining wages over the years?
Yes. The dreaded coal mines provide their workers with cash to do such things as improve the environment!!! The percentage of miners who own acreage and farms is high, therefore, miners also are contributing more to carbon sequestration than your general run of the mill urbanites.
While policy makers sit in ivory towers and maybe plant a tree on the weekend, their net contribution to carbon sequestration would be a negative now and probably will be for the rest of their natural life.
The ETS would be far better served charging urbanites and do-gooders who are negative carbon sequesters, and leave the real fixers of the environment to do what they do best.
I wonder how much of Peter Garrett’s wages have gone into direct carbon sequestration? I reckon, about the same the majority of Australians … bugger all. As stated earlier, there is a difference between walking the talk and talking the talk.
We, on the other hand, can hold our heads up high and know that we have sequestered more carbon in our lifetime than our family could ever use.
But I guess that urban Australia’s views and morals are that of policy makers and environment gurus in their climate controlled worlds – that it’s everybody else’s fault.
But if you think about it, they are part of the problem and not really part of the solution.
Cheers and keep breathing that clean Aussie air!!! Natalie Williams
15 Comments
Hi Steve, and welcome Natalie — Thanks for sharing your thoughts and congrats on all the work you and Glenn have done improving your pasture and sequestering carbon.
The lack of action on sequestering carbon by urbanites (like me) is an interesting point. It’s a problem we all need to act on, but like many fellow city-dwellers, I don’t have even one acre, let 17,000 acres on which to lock up carbon. And if you tallied my wages over my working life so far, it would be a fraction of the $1.5 million you two have spent on your own land, let alone what I might have spent on carbon sequestration — that’d be a fraction of a fraction.
I’d like to ask, what else do you get for that investment? Surely you haven’t spent $1.5 million on your land solely for the purposes of saving the planet? (If you have of course, that’s mighty impressive.)
Thanks for this excellent and inspiring story, Steve.
The question I have for you, however, is – how widespread is this kind of practice, in your estimation?
My fear is that around about the same proportion of all farmers and coal miners are actually making this kind of inspiring shift as the proportion of all city folks who are making their own low-emissions choices like riding to work, buying goods from farmers markets, switching to Greenpower, etc. In other words – vanishingly few…
The really big question is – how do we convince everybody to make these positive choices? We have a range of responses for metro residents, and a few solutions (as you’ve noted such as Farming Renewable Energy) for rural people. How do we encourage all farmers to get into more carbon-sequestering practices in conjunction with ongoing agricultural uses?
G’day Tim,
What the article and your response demonstrates, is that the myth that is perpetrated in the metropolitan media particularly by WWF that farmers are ‘redneck environmental vandal’s’ is just that …… a myth.
Natalie & Glenn practice Holistic management on their property. They are part of a group of farmers who are consulted to by a company called RCS. RCS is just one of a number of Holistic management consultancy companies who specialize in farming and grazing operations. It is run by Husband and Wife partners Terry & Pam McCosker.
I have just spoken to Pam McCosker at their office in Yeppoon QLD, Terry was away in the bush consulting and she told me that they have over 5,000 farmer clients just like Glenn & Natalie on their books.
Another company is Holistic Management International (HMI) . The principal Bruce Ward operates in NSW as a private consultancy firm. Again I was unable to speak to Bruce as he was up in the Hunter region consulting with farmer clients
Indeed the NSW farmers of the year are Nigel and kate Kerin who are clients of Bruce Wards:
“Nigel & Kate, own and manage a cell grazing operation holistically managing the enterprise’s sheep, wool, cattle trading and pasture cropping operations and their
co-owned Gullengamble Merino stud”
There are 12 private consultancy firms that I’m aware of in Australia that teach / consult on farm Holistic management.
In addition 1,000’s of farmers have had some education in environmental management through programs Like Meat and Livestock Australia’s ‘The Edge program’, in addition each state farming organizations have similar programs.
It would be fair to say that the majority of Australia’s farmers have attended some form of environmental management education over the last 5 years.
Australian farmers understand and have done for years – That healthy land leads to a sustainable future in farming.
The number 1 thing that the Greens can do is help keep this education going is to lobby for the reintroduction of the Farmbiz program that Labor has knocked on the head.
It was Farmbiz that made it possible for farmers en-mass to undertake this expensive off farm training. Its completely gone now and that is a backward step.
Steve, I really don’t think my response demonstrates a myth or farmers as environmental vandals. If anything, I think the article itself (and much of what you are posting) is demonstrating a myth of city people as mad farmer-haters. Certainly there’s a vital role for spruiking what farmers are doing, but don’t be too hypersensitive and defensive about it, eh?
I know that there are heaps of people doing good stuff on farms, just as there are heaps of people in cities doing great stuff! Let’s all try to be positive and find solutions together instead of sniping and carping at each other about who is ‘a better environmentalist’.
Take your point about Farmbiz. We’ll look at it.
G’day Tim,
Sorry about the sensitivity. Its just that farmers have been under constant attack in the metro media from WWF in particular. It has been a disgrace the campaign they have conducted against our farmers and rural communities over the past 4 or 5 years. So I make no apologies for putting that on the record.
It was not directed at the Greens who I believe have demonstrated a fair empathy with the plight of Rural & Regional Australia.
I was not trying to prove that farmers are better environmentalist. The whole point of the article was to show Rooted readers that farmers are also doing a huge amount of work in this area. The work they do has an enormous impact because of the land areas involved (ie 17,000 acres in Glen and Natalie’s case)
Please do take a look at Farmbiz. The education that farmers have been able to access in the area of environmental stewardship has all been made possible because of the Farmbiz subsidy. Basically a farmer could attend a course run by an accredited traing organization and the Farmbiz program would subsidize 40% of the costs of the training.
Most of these courses are run many hours from the farmers property and for lots of them involve leaving the farm for 2 days with overnight accommodation costs (which were not part of the subsidy).
However one of the first things that Ag minister Tony Burke did when when he took office was to abolish the Farmbiz program.
“Forgive him father, for he knows not what he does”
The Greens looking at the program again would be enormously appreciated by our farmers and in the short term keep the ‘green revolution’ alive and moving in Australia’s Agricultural industry.
Hi Thomas,
To answer your question…..“what else do you get for that investment?”
We, of course aren’t raging greenies…..you can’t be when you have to make a business run well. We are first and foremost business people, there is no sense in adopting environmental practices that will send you broke.
The difference between farmers and green groups fixing the environment, is that farmers pay for it out of their own pockets, green groups are generally loaded up with government money.
The money we have invested has been spent on fencing infrastructure, water spreading, riparian fencing, aerial seeding, consultants, training and education. (water spreading means running poly pipe and providing more stock watering points. We have laid 120kms of 63mm of high pressure poly pipe here).
The concurrent benefits of improving the enviroment are that it has increased the stock carrying capacity of our block, we can run more cattle, therefore, the income derived from Granville has also improved 10 fold.
Another benefit is that management of Granville is now about 0.6 of a full time employee equivalent. Our stocking rate varies, depending on seasonal conditions and is generally between 1600 to 2000 head of cattle. (hard to believe that the improvements can be made with that many mouths eating the grass hey!!!!) Cattle are like lawn mowers. they keep the grass trimmed, causing the crown of the grass to spread, send more roots down and stabilize soil etc etc etc
Improvement to the water cycle has been mind blowing. You cannot have the same rate of improvement by locking up country and doing nothing with it……its the same as “not” mowing your lawn….it eventually goes long and rank and will kill itself out due to competition for light, lessening humus levels in the soil etc etc….simple stuff really.
The other non-tangible benefits of what we have done is to see our dams full all year round, the waterholes in our creeks with water in them for 7 months of the year now instead of 2 months….ducks and Brolga’s breeding, 40 something species of birds at my last count, fat calves, high re-conception rates in our cows, and of course the satisfaction of achieving the “perceived” impossible.
By the way, we have applied for National Heritage Trust and Envirofund grants every year for the last 10 years and have received one grant for my bird sanctuary area….the amount of $2500, not sure what the percentage of 1.5Million that is!!!
Hi Tim,
Your question of: “how widespread is this kind of practice, in your estimation?”
The answer is more than you would imagine. Our main on-property consultant is a private company who has a very large clientèle base in Australia, South Africa and Canada. We have attended their workshops/courses for the past 10 years….in that time I would estimate that there have been thousands of farmers/graziers who are educating themselves.
We also attend courses provided by MLA (meat and livestock australia), DNR&M, Agforce, Local catchment groups. These service providers are generally patronized depending on relevance of topics, time of year, and how “green” they are. The “greener” they are are, is inversely proportional to the attendance numbers.
If you contact the above mentioned groups, they would be able to give you accurate statistics At the face though, I can tell you accurately that when we held a 2 day workshop/field day here a while back, we had 126 different business’ attend, some travelling 500 odd kilometres to attend, this would represent 30% of the graziers in our area.
The difference with farmers/graziers, is that they go to a BBQ and talk about what they have learned, and “word of mouth” initiated change is definitely alive and well in the bush.
Tim, your question of: “how do we convince everybody to “make” these positive choices?”
Is the type of urban culture that inhibits even dialogue with people from rural Australia. You can’t “make” people do anything. Another term I have heard spruiked lately is “voluntary compliance”……despite this being an oxymoron and bad English, its this type of urban top-down culture that causes absolute barriers and mutiny of all environmental issues.
Imagine farmers/graziers rolling into Sydney and demanding all the freeways and roof guttering, kerbing and channeling be ripped up, as it is impeding on natural water flows. Imagine dozing out all the botanical gardens to re-install them to their natural states. Making people remove the yard fences so that native wildlife have full and free access to all areas. Demolishing all the river,harbour front and beach front houses that are inside the 100 metre riparian zones and restoring the land to its natural state. And by the way….all at your own expense.
The outcome would be exactly the same as what policy makers and green groups are trying to impose on farmers/graziers. There would be pandemonium. There is no way farmers would “make” urbanites do that, is there?
The difference is, politicians would lose votes allowing that to happen. Rural Australia is a good target…few votes, but great airplay.
Farmers/graziers are inherently low carbon emitters and fantastic sequesters. We live frugally in terms of impact on the environment….our environment determines that….all water is recycled, we have no choice but to have water wise gardens, we do have big wide verandas for shade and climate control, we all pile in one car when going to town…none of this one person, one car culture.
We grow our own veges, compost, and feed our chooks the scraps. We don’t have the sewer to sea option for waste disposal. If you believe that rural carbon emissions are 16% of Australia’s emissions, then I don’t see the problem…..imagine if city people were running the agricultural show….most urbanites will never sequester carbon in their life and would never be able to achieve figures that low.
The change and uptake of new technology and agricultural science is astounding. If I compare the changes that have occurred in 10 the last ten years in Agriculture, the only other industry that has changed as rapidly would be information technology. Following close behind are the changes we have seen in the mining industry.
I am also a registered nurse….I can not see that rate of change in medicine or nursing. I also have been day trading shares/futures for the past 8 years, not much has changed in the share market/finance industry in the last 8 to 10 years. Of course there has been changes, but not gigantic changes in philosophy and systems as their has been in agriculture.
All this happens under the radar, its not really news worthy stuff, its just people getting on with it.
The long winded point is that you can’t point the finger at people from the bush and make them change anything they don’t want to. You can’t speak from the perspective of someone who has never sequestered carbon, nor likely to, and expect farmers to take you seriously.
You can’t make rural families spend their hard earned money on what they perceive as a waste of time. You also can’t expect rural Australia to pay a heap in carbon taxes for inputs and not be able to pass them onto at the other end, business fundamentals explain that very simply…. We will all go broke.
I recently had the humorous experience of sitting in on a meeting organized by Land and Water Australia, to work our how to “make” farmers/graziers practice good land management…….would you believe that of the 15 or so gurus in the room, I was 1 of only 2 landholders???
My suggestions of course were laughed at I’m sure, what would I know about manifesting change in rural Australia? Not one of my suggestions was even extrapolated on!!! This was no surprise to me, as this is pretty much the normal procedure in a room full of government agency employees.
I had worked out in the first 15 minutes that it was going to be a waste of time….but hey, I might as well have a free lunch, get something back for all the taxes that I contribute to! and get to know thine enemy a bit better!!!!
I have not even received any correspondence from the meeting….nothing new there. I think the outcome was that Land and Water Australia was going to put $100 000 into researching a data base that government agency staff could access…..not one cent will be spent actually achieving anything on-ground. So 13 of the people flew in from all over Australia, paid wages and full expenses to get that outcome!! By the way, us 2 graziers didn’t get paid at all! I drove 350 kilometres to attend the meeting and 350kms home again!!!!
Do you wonder why bushies haven’t got the time of day for bureaucrats?
Anyway, thanks for the opportunity and have a good week,
Natalie Williams
PS…no air-conditioning was used in the making of this blog comment!!!!
Good on you Glenn and Natalie for both what you are doing and also speaking up.
Whatever the attitude of individual ‘urbanites’ they continue to support decision makers that treat Farmers as environmental vandals when most are not. That treatment is not a myth ! For too long we have been the victims of “environment protection on the cheap”
In addition a lot of the myriad of rules and regulations we are subject to will actually result in bad environmental outcomes. Steve….keep up the good work.
Natalie,
seriously, if you expect the respect from others that you doubtless deserve, you have to give them a bit of respect, too. The ill-informed vitriol that you pour upon “raging greenies” is as deeply incorrect and unfair as you feel the treatment you get from them. If you want and expect positive change, you need to recognise when people are trying to work with you and welcome that instead of attacking.
A few specifics:
- Your comment that “green groups are generally loaded up with government money” is utterly wrong. It is directly comparable with the myth that farmers get heaps of government hand-outs. The vast bulk of green groups get not a red cent from governments – most actually don’t ask for any because of the direct conflict of interest it would cause. Most environmentalists work for a pittance for small organisations, or take huge pay cuts coming out of the private or government sectors to work for an average wage in one of the bigger organisations. WWF is pretty much the only group to take a lot of government money, which leads to…
- WWF does NOT represent the broad environment movement in Australia. In fact, they are at least as unpopular amongst most greenies as they are amongst farmers. If you don’t believe me, check out Bad Panda! Please never confuse WWF with the rest of us.
- PLEASE NOTE – as your direct quote shows, I never said we should “make” people do anything. Your attack on me on that basis for my “urban culture that inhibits even dialogue with people from rural Australia” is completely unfair and incorrect. If you read what you quoted, I clearly said: “how do we convince everybody to “make” these positive choices?” I am asking a sensible, friendly and open question about what governments and individuals can do to help more of your colleagues follow your fine example and you respond like a cut snake accusing me of trying to force change in some bizarre way equivalent to farmers demanding the bulldozing of the Botanic Gardens. Yeesh. There’s a lesson in that…
- To close with a positive, many many greens have been saying for years what you have discovered first hand: that farming in a more environmentally sound manner actually increases productivity and profitability. It is incredibly important that people like you and people like us, who understand that, stop perpetuating the myth of this dichotomy between being “green” and being profitable.
It is up to all of us to work together and create mass sustainability. Surely that’s the goal. So let’s stop fighting, yeah?
G’day Tim,
Mate you seem a little ‘taken aback’ by Natalie’s straight forward response. Perhaps in the world of ‘diplomatic speak’ Australia that you orbit in, this kind of ’straight talk’ is considered ‘aggressive’. Believe me it’s not – ‘aggressive’ – its just giving the facts without the sugar coating – so please don’t take it to heart.
I have learnt a lot from the article and the exchange that has followed:
1. “WWF does NOT represent the broad environment movement in Australia. In fact, they are at least as unpopular amongst most greenies as they are amongst farmers.”
The Green’s have just gone way up in my estimation. WWF has done more damage to the environment than any farmer has ever done. Secondly they have done untold damage to the image of the Greens and conservation groups in Rural & Regional Australia. (Note Natalie’s angst toward Green groups. This comes from WWF’s appalling behavior in QLD towards farmers and landholders and the fact that they are loaded with tax payer funding)
So it’s great to find out that we have a ‘common enemy’, because in rural QLD & NSW – WWF is public enemy No1 –
2. I clearly said: “how do we convince everybody to “make” these positive choices?” I am asking a sensible, friendly and open question about what governments and individuals can do to help more of your colleagues follow your fine example and you respond like a cut snake accusing me of trying to force change in some bizarre way equivalent to farmers demanding the bulldozing of the Botanic Gardens.
Tim – You need to understand the culture that exists in Rural QLD to understand where Natalie is coming from with those comments.
WWF in QLD have had an incredibly powerful influence over the Beattie / Bligh State governments. WWF’s attitude is best described as ‘arrogant and dictatorial’ and hence rural QLD’ers feel extremely alienated from and hostile towards the whole environment / conservation movement as WWF are seen as the driving force behind all enviro legislation in this state.
As I said WWF have really tainted rural & regional QLDers view of Green groups.
Perhaps Ronan Lee’s defection to the Greens is this first step in ‘unwinding’ the influence that WWF have over state legislators. I know I’d welcome an article on Agmates from Ronan on what he see’s as the issues he will be championing for Rural and Regional QLD as the states 1st Green MP.
3. And the 3rd thing I’ve learnt is that – You are surprised to learn the level to which our farmers are taking up ‘green farming’ on a broad scale across the country.
Your question: “how do we convince everybody to “make” these positive choices?”
There is an easy answer to this and it is encapsulated in the Emissions Trading Scheme.
As it stands – under the ETS farmers are hugely disadvantaged. The will be forced to pay the carbon tax on all inputs, i.e. fuel, electricity, fertilizer etc etc without being able to pass those costs on. So they are a cost to the enterprise. As ABARE and other Ag Economists have stated it will cut profitability by 100%.
That will be bad for the environment, because farmers like Glenn & Natalie have to be profitable to plow money into land conservation. (In their case its because Glenn works underground in the coal mines to create the extra cash to plow into “Granville’. However he and others won’t do that unless there is an expectation that the farm will be profitable after the improvements).
Yet all the while farmers like Glenn & Natalie know that they are sequestering far more carbon than they are emitting. Farmers are the only industry (including Forest plantations) that can be a net sequester of carbon. The government has / will put a value on carbon – say $20 a tonne.
Yet the science is so inferior that sequestration from soils and pasture cannot as yet be accurately measured.
If the government were to pour in $100m a year ( like they have into the coal carbon capture institute) into getting that science up to speed, and farmers could actually trade those credits it then becomes a whole new ball game.
For example a farmer looks at his operation and says – I can make $100 a hectare by running cattle, $150 a hectare by cropping the same country but I can make $200 a hectare by focusing on environmental management of my land (through carbon sequestration and trading those ‘credits’), in conjunction with other food production.
When that happens you won’t have to ‘make’ or ‘convince’ a single farmer in the country to do what Glenn & Natalie and 1,000’s of other farmers have already done. The change will happen within an elected term of government. That quickly.
So yes there are lots of things we can work together on. Lets get cracking.
Cheers – Steve
Hey, you don’t have to convince us about investing in carbon accounting, Steve! Good to see we’re on the same page on that one.
I will put your invitation to Ronan – thanks for the offer.
If this blog does nothing other than help some rural folk and some greenies realise that we are not enemies, it has already been a huge success. We all know that there are issues we will disagree on – and I have no doubt some of them will arise here on Rooted at some point. But it’ll be excellent if we can debate them in a forum of mutual respect!
Tim
G’day Tim,
I agree, I think that Rooted is already proving to be a unique forum where farmers and greenies can interact and if not be in full agreement at least at the end of the day have a better understanding of each others positions and rationale on the environmental issues of the day.
I must thank Crikey and in particular Thomas Hunter for inviting Agmates onto Rooted to express the opinions and views of the 9 million Australians that live outside of our State Capital cities. The Agmates community really values the opportunity.
It is great to know that we are both on the same page when it comes to carbon accounting and I look forward to working with yourself or any group green or otherwise to help foster / lobby the policy makers to see it become a reality – sooner rather than later.
Look forward to hearing from Ronan, if he is interested, in particular his take on the Traveston Crossing Dam.
I also agree with you that our debates on the issue should be conducted in a “climate of mutual respect” and thank you for doing exactly that to date.
Your Agmate – Steve
Hi everyone
I thought you might be interested to know that the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs Committee has in fact been looking into this issue as part of the Climate Change and Agriculture inquiry referred by Senators Siewert and Milne.
There was a good paper presented to the Inquiry by Tim Wiley from DAFF (sub 41) and also a paper on carbon accounting for soil carbon (sub 42) by a group called ACSAS
They both presented together on 30th June – here’s the link to the transcript
Cheers
Chris Twomey
PS I now work as a policy advisor for the Greens on water, agriculture and NRM (as well as social policy) … but I used to work for the CRC for Plant-based Management of Dryland Salinity. We were also looking at inter-cropping as a profitable system that delivered salinity benefits by making better use of rainfall and hence keeping saline water tables from rising
Hi and sorry for my late question, not sure if anyone is reading this anymore,
I just wanted to ask if there is a full cycle analysis of emissions from Natalie’s production system, Has that been published?, and where it could be found?
thanks