National Farmers Federation urges protection for food production as government reviews safeguard mechanism

# Why the NFF wants food production protected

Federation (NFF) has made a submission to the federal review of Australia's Safeguard Mechanism, arguing the review must explicitly protect productive agricultural land and food-production supply chains as carbon markets evolve.

# Concrete example: Rushy Lagoon

Lagoon, one of Tasmania's largest farms, as an example. The purchase was partly financed by the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and includes plans to convert the property into a pine plantation. The NFF argues this shows how policy-driven demand for offsets can encourage conversion of productive farmland, reducing regional economic activity tied to agriculture.

# Why conversion matters

When land is committed to a carbon project, productive use is often constrained or prohibited. While individual landholders participating in carbon projects may receive income diversification, those benefits are typically concentrated among participants rather than spread evenly through regional economies. The NFF says jurisdictions should map and use information about land important to production when assessing the impacts of conversion to carbon sequestration.

# Concerns about expanding the Safeguard Mechanism

The review is considering whether to lower emissions thresholds for coverage. The NFF opposes bringing agricultural companies directly into the mechanism, citing the sector's already complex emissions-accounting demands and the continuing development of methodologies and measurement tools for biological emissions.

Even if agriculture itself is excluded, the NFF warns that lowering the threshold could indirectly capture parts of the agricultural supply chain. Potentially affected facility types include grain storage and handling, processing facilities, fertiliser production and distribution, and port operations. The NFF says the government's discussion paper lacks sufficient detail to identify which facilities would be captured under alternative threshold options.

# What the NFF recommends

The NFF's submission makes two practical requests:

• The Commonwealth should publish detailed analysis showing, for each threshold option, the facility types and sectors that would be captured and the likely compliance and economic implications. This analysis is needed so affected stakeholders can assess costs, benefits and unintended consequences.

• The federal government should support more carbon-farming methodologies that integrate with production. The NFF highlights existing methodologies such as soil carbon and animal effluent management that align with agricultural production, and says there is untapped scope to reduce agriculture's own emissions in commercially sensible ways that also supply high-integrity ACCUs.

# Bottom line

The NFF wants the safeguard review to account for regional economic impacts, to stop productive agricultural land being shifted to sequestration without clear analysis, and to ensure any changes to thresholds are transparent about which facilities would be captured and what that would cost the supply chain.