Brett Anthony Bryan writes in The Conversation (30.3.16) about the potential use of agricultural land to capture and store carbon to assist the nation in meeting its future emissions reduction goals.
‘Australia’s agricultural lands help to feed about 60 million people worldwide, and also support tens of thousands of farmers as well as rural communities and industries.
‘But a growing global population with a growing appetite is placing increasing demands on our agricultural land. At the same time, the climate is warming and in many places getting drier too.
‘Agriculture, and particularly livestock, is currently a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. But new markets and incentives could make storing carbon or producing energy from land more profitable than farming, and turn our agricultural land into a carbon sink.’
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