What works best, the carrot or the stick and do producers respond best to incentives or regulation?
The whole story about greenhouse gas and carbon credits is a confusing one, and red meat producers have a significant exposure to the market, with livestock identified as major emitters of methane, a gas seen as 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.
It needs someone with a track record in relating to producers to take the lead and guide them through the next steps.
Enter MLX market analyst Simon Quilty, a regular Gippsland Red Meat Conference presenter.
Mr Quilty has just returned from a Churchill Fellowship tour studying greenhouse gas emission reduction schemes in the US, Canada, Netherlands, Ireland, New Zealand, and the UK.
What he found was much of Europe's attempts at lowering methane output were about using "the stick", for instance forcing farmers to comply through regulation.
Yet, he believes, "the carrot" will get the best results, where farmers are rewarded for lowering methane emissions.
Some key messages from his study included:
- Accurate methane output measurement is crucial. New technology now makes this affordable and achievable on an animal-by-animal basis.
- With accurate measurement, a reward system can be established and various methods of methane reduction can be measured cheaply, accurately, and quickly.
- Accurate measurement will cause increased innovation and research, assisting adoption.
- Incentives will drive adoption
Mr Quilty said he looked forward to discussing the potential "carrots" that could make Australia's adoption of methane reduction methods improve dramatically in Gippsland on August 29.
But for Australian Lambassador Sam Kekovich, the carrot and the stick approach to which Mr Quilty refers smacks of "soap-avoiding pot-smoking hippy vegetarians from Nimbin", and he will be having none of it in his after-dinner speech at the conference.
He points out it was that great friend of all Australians, Theodore Roosevelt, who once said, 'speak softly and carry a big stick'.
There was no reference to carrots in that quote at all, and Mr Kekovich disregards the advice about speaking softly, too.
"That's un-Australian," he said.
Mr Quilty will be a keynote speaker at the Gippsland Red Meat Conference on Tuesday, August 29 at the Sale Baptist Church, and Sam Kekovich will be the after-dinner speaker at the Cobb & Co Stables.
The Gippsland Red Meat Conference is brought to you by the Gippsland Agricultural Group, with assistance from Agriculture Victoria.
Tickets for the conference and program details are available at trybooking.com/CIZVC or follow the link on the Gippsland Red Meat Conference Facebook page.
