INCLUDING the agriculture sector in a carbon trading scheme is an impossible dream because emissions can't be measured with the necessary certainty, a new paper from the Australia Institute says.
But authors Dr Hugh Saddler and Helen King say agriculture shouldn't be let off the hook and should be encouraged to adopt best practice methods of emissions abatement now.
"The ability to measure emissions accurately and affordably is a pre-requisite for including any source of emissions in a robust ETS (emissions trading scheme)," they said.
"While it is relatively easy to measure energy combustion emissions, this is not the case for agriculture."
The practical difficulties stemmed from the inherent variability of agricultural emissions.
Agriculture produces three main greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide, methane from the digestive systems of livestock and nitrous oxide from chemical processes and microbe activity in agricultural soils.
But actual emissions depend to a large extent on natural phenomena totally outside human control.
"As a result, the quest for reasonably accurate and affordable measurement of agricultural emissions at the scale needed to inform on-farm management decisions has become an impossible dream," the authors said.
The government, in a green paper published in July, outlined plans for a carbon pollution reduction scheme from 2010, covering 75 per cent of national greenhouse gas emissions.
A decision to include agriculture would be delayed until 2013 and any introduction would not take affect until 2015.
"It is neither possible, nor efficient, to accurately measure the emissions of a herd of cows or a paddock of wheat," Dr Saddler said in a statement.
The diet of individual animals, soil composition and weather of individual regions and even the way fertiliser was applied could all have a significant impact on the level of emissions by individual farms.
"Greenhouse gas emissions associated with burning a tonne of coal or a litre of petrol, on the other hand, can be measured both accurately and cheaply," he said.
AAP
