Mr Carbon Farming

Summary

Michael and Louisa Kiely founded Australia’s Carbon Coalition Against Global Warming in February 2006. It is now often abbreviated to the Carbon Coalition. The intention is to lobby for the right of Australian landholders to trade on the emissions offset market the credits that they can earn by sequestering carbon in their soils. Is soil carbon the new cash crop? asks Kiely. He speaks with the zeal of an evangelist and calls himself a ‘carbon farmer’. “Carbon farming is not a new practice. It is a new way to describe a collection of techniques which can increase soil organic carbon in agricultural land ... It’s about changing the way we farm ...” says Kiely. Carbon farming is managing the land to sequester carbon and farming techniques that can meet this end include organic farming, biodynamic farming and natural sequence farming.