Chief executive officer Jan Davis said that while Australian growers had the capacity to meet all Australia's own food needs and provide food for many other countries, Australia's food security was becoming more precarious than ever before.

"Ross Garnaut acknowledged in his Draft Report on Climate Change released last week, that agriculture faces huge costs and challenges from an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) which the government proposes will be in place by 2010," Ms Davis said.

"There must be better policy instruments to contribute to reducing emissions in food production rather than including horticulture in an ETS which will impact on crop production.

"However, if not included in such a scheme, horticulture will still face higher costs as farm inputs go up in price under a carbon tax.

"It is a no-win situation for our industry."

Ms Davis said fruit and vegetable growers, like most farmers, are "price takers" and would have difficulty passing on the higher costs of production to consumers.

Ms Davis said that one alternative to including horticulture in an ETS would be to encourage the production of lower emissions-intensive food by accrediting low emission best farming practices.

This approach would reduce emissions by providing financial incentives to encourage growers to undertake accredited emission reduction practices.

Promoting the uptake of low emission farm practices would have the advantage of reducing emissions while ensuring that increased costs associated with an ETS do not force growers to reduce food production.

"However, what these practices are would need to be based on a significantly expanded research and development effort which recognises the need to maintain or improve yields," she said.