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You wouldnât know it to look at them, but Alasdair MacLeodâs cows have a superpower. Theyâre helping to save the planet.
MacLeod, the husband of Rich Lister Prudence MacLeod and the son-in-law of Rupert Murdoch, is the owner of Wilmot Cattle Company, which operates two farms in the New England district of northern NSW.
Over the past decade, the investor, entrepreneur and former News Corporation director has become a passionate advocate for regenerative farming, a practice that promotes the careful management of pastures â in his case guided by state-of-the-art technology â to improve efficiency and reduce environmental damage.
Under pressure to adopt an essentially meaningless policy, a promise to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, Scott Morrison’s federal government may adopt a meaningless solution in the next budget – land use and forestry schemes for absorbing carbon.
In a variation on a dodge used by Australia to meet previous climate targets, the Morrison government could allocate a few billion dollars in the next federal budget to schemes of varying worth to turn soils and forests into carbon sinks. The government can then claim Australia is soaking up as much carbon as it is emitting and that is a form of net zero emissions – achieved without any of the immense economic pain a serious policy would create.
Excluding agriculture won’t get us to net zero emissions. But a few policy tweaks could transform Australia’s 400 million hectares of farmland into net consumers of carbon sequestered into the soil.