CLIMATE Change Minister Penny Wong has played down the possibility of rewarding farmers for carbon stored in soil until international rules are changed to recognise biosequestration.
The National Farmers' Federation wants the government to exclude farmers permanently from emissions trading and to offer incentives for emissions reductions, as delays are creating uncertainty and putting farmers at a disadvantage.
Senator Wong, however, has refused to rule out the eventual inclusion of farming, saying only that agriculture was excluded until at least 2015 and was not in the scheme outlined in legislation that will be debated in the Senate next week, The Australian Financial Review reports on Friday.
She said the government was pushing to change international carbon accounting rules to allow recognition of emissions stored in soil, but until this happened, Australia could not afford to offer such farm credits.
Senator Wong's spokeswoman said that otherwise, the inclusion of biosequestration in the carbon pollution reduction scheme would bring "potentially very significant costs to taxpayers".
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