Climate Change and Organic Agriculture

Hosted by AOL Technical Officer Josefine Pettersson, this webinar will introduce the 2022 AOL Climate Change Series. As the peak industry body for organics in Australia, AOL has developed a series of webinars focusing on climate change in organic agriculture. These webinars will help organic operators to stay ahead of the sustainability curve and minimise the negative effects of climate change on their business to better prepare them for the future.

Climate change represents numerous future difficulties for the agricultural sector with extreme weather events already costing Australian farms on average $30,000 annually and rising (ABARES). Organic agriculture presents a growing opportunity to mitigate climate change by reducing direct and indirect sources of greenhouse gas emissions through carbon sequestration. Increasing carbon in soil is just one of the many ways farmers can mitigate the effects of climate change. Join us as we introduce the current Australian climate change situation, forecast and climate tools to equip producers with the means for efficient risk management.

AOL is excited to announce the first guest speaker, Professor Mark Howden, who will provide an introduction to the current climate situation and future predictions should there be no action on climate change. Professor Howden is a climate change expert and pioneer of greenhouse gas emission inventories.

This will be followed by Lynette Bettio, Senior Climatologist in Climate Services at the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) who will discuss the current tools available for short term and long-term weather predictions for Australian producers.

This will be the first of AOL’s Climate Change webinar series for 2022. Following this introductory webinar, AOL will provide a sector-by-sector breakdown of the potential changes organic businesses can make to be prepared for and potentially benefit from this changing climate and the carbon market. This will include webinars focusing on sectors such as Wine, Livestock, Horticulture, Cropping, Consumers and more.

Topics will include:

• Introduction to the AOL Climate Changes series and progression
• Long term Australian and International climatic predications
• Forecasting predictions and climate tools to help farmers

Register at the link below to download webinar resources.