HECS for farmers? Nature repair loans could help biodiversity recover – and boost farm productivity
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Tuesday, May 9, 2023
Livestock, Starling, HECS, Education, Drinking water, Farmer, Tree, Lawyer, Carbon, FECS, Government, Biodiversity, Biodiversity loss, Flood, Traction, Animal, Nature, Compliance, Risk, Income, Murray–Darling basin, Federation, Erosion, Bird, Invertebrate, Windbreak, Rain, Farm, Agriculture, Aquaculture, Insurance, Hunting, Forestry, Credit
That’s one reason why the Australian government is looking to alternatives such as a nature repair market.
Key Points:
- That’s one reason why the Australian government is looking to alternatives such as a nature repair market.
- This, the government hopes, would boost biodiversity – especially on private land such as farms.
- To make this market work, the government might consider creating a new version of Australia’s well-known HECS higher education loans.
- This work will boost farm productivity and biodiversity with farmers repaying the loan when their revenues permit.
Why is this needed?
- To prevent further extinctions, the government announced it would introduce a new nature repair market.
- This market could, if done well, tackle some of the drivers of biodiversity loss and land degradation – particularly on our farmland.
- Protecting habitat and waterways, preventing erosion and improving drought resilience would all be eligible.
- Read more:
We must look past short-term drought solutions and improve the land itselfBut farmers can make this money back.
How would this work with the nature repair scheme?
- The federal government has pitched its planned nature repair market as an offset scheme: farmers and landholders do repair work and get biodiversity certificates which can be bought by, say, another farmer wanting to clear land.
- All farms experience large swings in annual revenues from forces outside a farmer’s control, such as rain, drought, floods and commodity price shocks.
- The best financial tool to help farmers undertake nature repair is the type which smooths their income.
- If these loans were added to our nature market, it could get much more traction than a grant scheme.
What about the transparency problem?
- To avoid this, projects tied to a FECS loan would have ensure plantings, shelterbelts and dam renovations are effective and meet standards.
- We could borrow from decades of monitoring hundreds of sustainable farms in endangered temperate woodlands to create robust standards.
- As we wrestle with the best way forward for Australia’s first nature repair market, we should seriously consider rolling out revenue-dependent loans for farmers.
- He is a member of Birds Australia that seeks to boost bird conservation outcomes on farms