All of Australia's annual carbon dioxide emissions more than 600 million tonnes can be ''easily and permanently'' stored in the soil by switching to a radical new way of farming, a Senate climate change inquiry has been told.
''We are talking about a complete revolution in the way we farm ... the old game is over,'' West Australian pasture agronomist Tim Wiley told a Senate hearing in Canberra.
Tests show microbe-rich soils produced by the new methods can store between five to 10 tonnes a hectare of carbon a year, compared with less than 1.5 using traditional farming systems.
''We are talking about a quantum difference,'' Mr Wiley said.
Under the new system, currently being tested in WA and north-west NSW, farmers increase soil carbon by planting sub-tropical grasses with cereal crops or rows of the fodder shrub, tagasaste.
Mr Wiley claims farm carbon-storage is more cost-effective than wind farms in reducing greenhouse emissions, with a start-up capital cost of only $200 a hectare, compared with $4 million to build one wind tower.
In a written submission, Mr Wiley and WA cattle farmer Robert Wilson told the inquiry there are ''almost no funds'' to support soil carbon research, despite its benefits.
The Rudd Government also excluded soil carbon from its draft emissions trading scheme, but offers incentives to establish ''tree crops'' as carbon credits.
Mr Wilson said planting tree crops for carbon credits would lock up farmland for decades and not provide equity for farmers to adapt their properties to climate change.
He began experimenting with perennial grasses and fodder shrubs more than 20 years ago, planting tagasaste across 50 per cent of his farm at Lancelin, north of Perth. Tests now show his sandy soils have a carbon sequestration rate of about 7000 tonnes a year.
Soils ecologist Dr Christine Jones told the inquiry the new farming systems could ''mop up'' most of Australia's greenhouse emissions.
Dr Jones said, ''A 0.5 per per increase in soil carbon, which would be readily achieved under perennial agriculture on only two per cent of our agricultural land, would sequester 685 million tonnes of carbon dioxide''.
Dr Jones said soil carbon could be ''doubled or tripled'' and crops grown without herbicides reducing farm costs by $70 a hectare because thicker perennial grasses prevented weeds coming through.
''We have seen places where soil carbon, if you are talking about tonnes, has gone from something like 150 to 500. It is far more than you could ever sequester in trees.''
Farmers were keen to switch to the new methods but government funding, and interest remained minimal and even hostile, Dr Jones said.
''We have 2000 farmers involved in this.
''It is a huge grassroots revolution that the scientific establishment for some reason seems to be completely unaware of, or if they are aware of it, have totally discounted it as irrelevant ...''