As bizarre as it may seem, vegetation regrowth and woody weeds in Australia - and particularly Queensland - are as valuable to the planet as pristine tropical rainforests in Sumatra and the Amazon.
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That's the way global consumers, financial institutions and those behind fast emerging international rules on forest protection compliance see Australia's deforestation "problem".
Meat processors now receive consumer requests to guarantee their beef is not sourced from Queensland.
By next year global burger giant, McDonald's, will be satellite monitoring farmland which grows the meat it buys to identify land use changes.
"We can foresee a future where there is no social licence for some forms of regrowth control," said farm sector environmental specialist, Dr Stephen Wiedemann.
Customers and the finance world will drive a higher standard and expectations of supply chains
- Dr Stephen Wiedemann, IntegrityAg
Bulldozers and chaining regrowth were obvious red flags, given satellite technology could now identify not just areas of land being cleared, but the make of bulldozer and maybe even the operator's name tag, if he were wearing one.
"Customers and the finance world will drive a higher standard and expectations of supply chains," Dr Wiedemann said.
"In turn they'll need producers to prove their vegetation management integrity."
European legislation had set a new standard for vegetation protection.
Like it or not, deforestation (or rather, proof it was not happening) was now a compliance requirement for the beef industry, he told a Beef Australia forum.
The problem of tree regrowth control and land clearing issues had also become inextricably tied to Canberra's commitment to a 43 per cent cut in national greenhouse gas emissions between 2005 and 2030, and then net zero emissions by 2050.
"The government wants to dramatically increase the amount of country regenerated to bush," said Toowoomba-based Dr Wiedemann, managing director of research and consultancy group, IntegrityAg.
Up to 15pc of global emissions were attributed to deforestation - notably in tropical jungles in places like the Amazon and Indonesia.
European deforestation regulation prohibits the EU's use of seven key agricultural commodities if they are produced on deforested land, including beef, cocoa, soybeans and coffee.
The EU definition of a forest is an area of tree cover spanning more than half a hectare, while deforestation includes forests cleared or degraded for agricultural production since 2020.
While vegetation, biodiversity and carbon authorities readily acknowledged Queensland's pastoral regrowth had nowhere near the same vegetation significance as Amazonian rainforest, the global understanding of terms like land clearing and deforestation had put the Australian beef industry in the same spotlight as Brazil.
Dr Wiedemann said regardless of what the government land clearing rules were, Australian beef processors were at risk of becoming quasi regulators.
Satellite technology would enable powerful global conservatory groups and retailers to track the supply chain sources.
"At the end of the day others overseas are already rating us and that means as soon as something is considered forest any clearing will be considered deforestation, and that includes regrowth control."
Officially, a forest in Australia is an area of trees of more than two hectares with heights above two metres and minimum canopy cover of 20pc.
Meanwhile, although only a few areas of primary forest in Tasmania and Northern Territory still qualified for government clearing permits, they would be considered illegal clearing in the eyes of the EU and other influential forces.
Losses of vegetation which exceeded the forest threshold also hurt the national carbon account, including clearing which happened up to 20 years ago.
"Under current rules it's harder to put carbon sequestration gains into our carbon account than to have losses recorded against you," he said.
However, regrowth saplings were poor sequesters of carbon - 62 five centimetre diameter saplings were needed to absorb the same amount of carbon as a 30cm tree.
Areas with significant forest thickening and regrowth were also acknowledged to have less biodiversity and were more prone to land degradation.
Dr Wiedemann observed unlike much of rural Australia, Queensland's more controversial regrowth issues were largely due to it being developed for agriculture much later than southern areas.
This meant residue seed and root systems had not been cultivated or grazed out.
As an aside, however, he said noted increases in tree growth areas in northern Australia had been attributed by some experts to more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
"You'll never get a topic more emotive and polarised as this," he said.
"If the world is serious about coexisting with nature and managing carbon, we need flexibility about tree retention areas and vegetation density.
Given Australia was one of only five countries in the world big enough to provide food and fibre for the rest of the planet a lot of savvy education and communications work needed to be promoted to consumers and the business community.
"We need to get passed the antagonism before we can start working collaboratively to achieve biodiversity and carbon objectives and allow farming productivity to be maintained," he said
"We also have to challenge ourselves about what we think is normal land management, and carefully consider how it looks through the eyes of others."
Andrew Marshall
Andrew Marshall is the group agribusiness writer for ACM's state agricultural weeklies and websites. He is a former editor at The Land and has worked in various Rural Press group roles in Canberra, North Richmond (NSW) and Toowoomba (Qld).
Andrew Marshall is the group agribusiness writer for ACM's state agricultural weeklies and websites. He is a former editor at The Land and has worked in various Rural Press group roles in Canberra, North Richmond (NSW) and Toowoomba (Qld).
