The Generator is founded on the simple premise that we should leave the world in better condition than we found it. The news items in this category outline the attempts people have made to do this. They are mainly concerned with our food supply and settlement patterns. The impact that the human race has on the planet.
Western Australia’s grain handling giant CBH has predicted the State’s harvest this year could fall one million tonnes short of the 8.5mt haul in 2007 if the nagging dry spell continues.
CBH operations manager, Colin Tutt, says the weather conditions have taken their toll on seeding operations across the Wheatbelt, with many growers forced to stop or dramatically reduce their programs.
Implementing a voluntary low-cost soil carbon credits scheme that doesn’t need much auditing has got United States farmers focused on producing soil carbon, and could work similarly here, an American expert says.
David Miller of the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation, who will be a guest at the Australian Grains Industry Conference (AGIC) in Melbourne in late July, believes that Australian agriculture could make a start on soil carbon using the loose averaging model developed by the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), and work out more specific accounting methods as it goes along.
Thousands of farmers are joining a voluntary soil carbon movement adopting specialised cropping and pasture practices to improve yields and income, while measuring loads of carbon storage on their farms.
But the inquiry, looking into the impacts of climate change on agriculture, also heard the results have been largely shunned by the science fraternity because the carbon storage data does not fit into existing carbon models.
Dr Christine Jones, a scientist from Armidale in NSW, launched the Australian Soil Carbon Accreditation Scheme as an incentive for farmers to make land management changes for the sake of their own farm businesses and to help reduce greenhouse carbon levels.
Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% – far more than previously estimated – according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.
The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.
The figure emphatically contradicts the US government’s claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.
Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush.
Biofuels can be a sustainable part of the world’s energy future, especially if bioenergy agriculture is developed on currently abandoned or degraded agricultural lands, report scientists from the Carnegie Institution and Stanford University. Using these lands for energy crops, instead of converting existing croplands or clearing new land, avoids competition with food production and preserves carbon-storing forests needed to mitigate climate change. Sustainable bioenergy is likely to satisfy no more than 10% of the demand in the energy-intensive economies of North America, Europe and Asia. But for some developing countries, notably in Sub-Saharan Africa, the potential exists to supply many times their current energy needs without compromising food supply or destroying forests.
From The Stock Rournal A new government report released this week proves it is only thanks to bans on land clearing that Australia will meet its greenhouse gas emissions targets under the Kyoto Protocol while the energy, transport and industrial sectors have recorded mammoth increases in their emissions since 1990. Minister for Climate Change, Penny Continue Reading →