Author Archives: Gordon Rogers

Vegetable carbon calculator

How the tool works

The tool allows growers to develop their own carbon footprint and requires that data be entered under the following categories:

Energy
Waste
Fertiliser
Refrigerants used
Land use

Once this data is entered into the tool, it calculates a carbon footprint, which can then be exported from the calculator.

Assumptions, methodology and estimation of direct on-farm emissions

The methodology employed by the tool and assumptions and emissions factors are given in a protocol document, which is available for downloading on the Vegetable Carbon Calculator.

There is very little data available on direct greenhouse gas emissions for vegetable crops in Australia. The research has not yet been completed to determine the actual emissions of nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide from Australian soils under local conditions and for various crop management practices. The carbon vegetable tool developers have therefore used best-available estimates of these emissions from overseas research and data from other crops.

The Vegetable Carbon Calculator website has two components:

The vegetable carbon calculator.
Vegetable industry carbon education materials.

The education materials were funded by Woolworths and HAL. The calculator was based on the Houston’s Farms Footprinting Tool, which was made available to the project development team.

How to use the tool

In order to estimate your on-farm carbon footprint, you will need to have the following information available for the year for which you want to calculate the carbon footprint of your farm:

Electricity bills/meter records for the reporting year.
Fuel bills/receipts for the reporting year (i.e. natural gas, petrol, diesel, LPG, wood).
Records of waste processed on-farm for the reporting year.
Records of fertiliser usage for the reporting year.
Service documents for on-site cold rooms or industrial freezers for the reporting year.

Output from the tool

The tool can provide four specific outputs:

Farm footprint for your farm for the years for which data was entered
Compare various crops by years
Calculate emissions by the different crops grown
Compare the emissions per crop with other users of the tool for the year in question.

Climate dogs

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The Victorian DPI, NSW DPI and the Bureau of Meteorology have developed a series of videos that explain how global climate processes vary their behaviour, potentially resulting in wetter or dryer seasons.

Climate dogs video series show, in an entertaining way, how climate drivers work by herding rain towards or away from NSW and Victoria. The five ‘climate dogs’, representing the climate processes, are Enso, Indy, Ridgy, Sam and Eastie.

These five sheepdogs love rounding up our rainfall. From a farmer’s perspective, when they are well behaved they bring moisture from the oceans and allow it to fall over Victoria and NSW as rain, hopefully delivering the right amount at the right time. But they don’t always work the way we’d like them to and can sometimes scatter the mob, effectively chasing rainfall away. Over recent decades some of these dogs have changed their behaviour, contributing to our extended dry spell and the changing weather patterns that many farmers have noticed.

ENSO
El Niño–Southern Oscillation or El Niño/La Niña–Southern Oscillation. Changes in Enso’s behaviour have a significant influence on rainfall probabilities in inland NSW during the winter and spring period.

INDY
Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD). Like Enso, changes in Indy’s behaviour also have a significant influence on rainfall probabilities in inland NSW during winter and spring.

RIDGY
Sub-tropical Ridge (STR). Ridgy’s position and intensity have a significant influence on weather in NSW. Recent changes in Ridgy’s behaviour appear to be driving some significant changes to southern NSW rainfall patterns.

SAM

Southern Annular Mode. Recent changes in Sam’s behaviour increase probabilities of rainfall in spring and summer in some parts of NSW.

EASTIE
East Coast Low. Eastie, better known as the East Coast Low, represents the deep low-pressure systems that are an important climate feature along the southeast coast of Australia.