Farmers' budget wishlist

The Land
Thursday 24/4/2008 Page: 3

THE State's largest farming organisation has gone to the NSW Government with a wishlist costing more than $1 billion. The NSW Farmers' Association wishlist was topped by a railway connecting NSW to Queensland and Victoria. Other items included a $2 million incinerator to get rid of sheep, cattle and pig carcasses; a climate change liaison officer with an annual salary of $180,000; and free rent for farmers in the Western Division. The State budget, due out next month, will reveal if the association's submission was successful.

Climate change was the biggest issue covered in the association's submission to the NSW Treasury. It asked for $5 million to fund partnerships between the waste and renewable energy sectors, such as small scale biofuel plants and solar energy projects. "Given the difficulties and transmission losses associated with providing bulk power to regional and remote communities, government ought to treat regional renewable power as a high strategic priority," the submission said.

The submission's main criticism targeted the Federal Government's Emissions Trading Scheme, which it said would have "disproportionately high impacts" on regional Australia and the cost of farming through supplies such as fertiliser and fuel. The association was looking to put carbon from the city into the soil, maybe even as a part of hybrid fertiliser. "We need rules under the new Kyoto and the AETS (Australian Emissions Trading Scheme) that allow farmers to create carbon credits in soil, grass and crops as part of productive farming systems," it said.

"Agriculture could achieve a significant reduction in the risk of climate change by taking CO2 back out of the atmosphere and storing it in the soil." This follows research that states about half of all soil carbon in farmed land has been lost because of cultivation. A $2 million incinerator to dispose of livestock at Charles Sturt University's veterinary laboratory in Wagga would reduce the risk of diseases spreading through the State, the submission stated.