Government policies and initiatives for climate change

South Australia’s Net Zero Strategy 2024–2030 will guide the state’s transition to a net zero emissions future.

It focuses on actions to achieve 2030 targets and to lay the foundations for longer term action to 2050. These include research and development, capability building, and supportive policy and regulation.

The strategy outlines the government's objectives, policy priorities, and actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across the economy. It will:

• create new jobs
• develop new industries
• support wellbeing
• enable decarbonisation beyond our borders.

The strategy is comprised of 6 sectoral plans, and PIRSA is engaged in delivering actions under the agriculture and land sector priorities:

1. Support primary producers to innovate, reduce on-farm and value chain emissions, and benefit from decarbonisation opportunities.
2. Scale up carbon farming and natural sequestration options in land and marine environments.

To set an example in climate innovation, the state’s Climate Ready Government (circular PC007) outlines how the public sector will establish and maintain processes that:

• assess and manage climate risks and opportunities
• reduce operational greenhouse gas emissions.

The South Australian Government is delivering a range of actions supporting efforts across all levels of government, businesses, and the community. These will help us better prepare for and manage the impacts of climate change.

The Climate Change Resilience and Adaptation Actions have 5 focus areas.

Focus area 2 – Agriculture, landscapes and habitats – presents objectives and actions for PIRSA to build a more resilient primary industry sector and landscape. Our key focus is to:

1. Identify and develop climate smart aquaculture opportunities.
2. Support primary producers in adaptation planning and identifying climate resilient economic opportunities.

PIRSA is delivering livestock emissions reduction projects as part of the Australian Government’s MERiL Program. This supports development of technologies that provide methane-reducing additives to grazing livestock, and other solutions to reduce their emissions.

Sheep grazing

PIRSA is part of the National Sheep Methane Program (NSMP) alongside partners University of New England, University of Western Australia, NSW Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, Australian Wool Innovation, Feedworks, Rumin8, and DSM.

In line with this and the MERiL program, we are investigating the effects of multiple methane reducing additives for water (MERiL stage 2) and loose licks (MERiL stages 2 and 3.2). These will be delivered to grazing sheep over both short and longer time periods. The work aims to:

1. Quantify methane reduction in sheep grazing in South Australian production systems.
2. Evaluate any animal health and production impacts.

In-paddock feeding

PIRSA is also delivering a project in conjunction with partners University of New England, University of Western Australia, NSW Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, Australian Wool Innovation, Feedworks, and DSM.

This aims to evaluate the efficacy of an automated in-paddock feeding system to deliver methane reducing feed additives to grazing sheep (MERiL stage 3.1). The project work will establish commercially available options for SA producers to reduce on-farm livestock emissions.

In vitro plant analysis

A multi-disciplinary team of SARDI researchers across livestock, aquatics, and crop sciences are conducting an AgriFutures funded project. This investigates the ability of different plant species to mitigate methane emissions in an in vitro system.

SARDI are screening established pasture plants and native freshwater plants to identify cost effective and efficient species that could be fed to sheep to reduce methane emissions. Future work will build on the species identified as potential methane mitigating feedstuffs.

The ZNE-Ag CRC aims to catalyse industry, community, and government action to:

1. Reduce the emissions intensity from agriculture.
2. Help steer the sector to below zero net emissions by 2050.

PIRSA and SARDI are tier 2 partners in the ZNE-Ag CRC and will undertake research projects aimed at reducing on-farm emissions from livestock and cropping.

Alongside other state ZNE-Ag CRC partners, we will co-design and co-deliver producer demonstration sites in South Australia. These will feature emerging on-farm practices to reduce agricultural emissions and provide a learning and engagement hub for producers. The first SA site is expected to be established in 2025.

Through project partners FarmLab and University of Queensland, we are working on projects funded by the Australian Government’s National Soil Carbon Innovation Challenge. This encourages industry and researchers to develop lower-cost, accurate technological solutions for soil organic carbon measurement.

FarmLab's Kicking the $3/Ha Goal Project aims to determine the minimum number of physical soil samples needed to accurately determine soil carbon. This involves fusing soil organic carbon sampling with remote sensing. The project will provide landholder participants with a farm or paddock scale soil carbon map.

Funded by the Department for Environment and Water and working in collaboration with their Sustainable Soils team, we assessed the effect of soil type, rainfall, and farming system on soil organic carbon. This resulted in:

• benchmarks of soil organic carbon concentration for South Australian agricultural districts
• soil organic carbon guidelines by rainfall developed for zone and soil texture.

These resources help farmers and advisors assess if their topsoil has capacity to store additional soil carbon.

Through funding from many landscape boards and groups, PIRSA has established over 100 soil carbon monitoring sites across South Australia’s agricultural area. With future funding, these sites will be resampled to assess soil carbon change.