In a time of war, flood and commodity volatility, it's a completely unrelated issue that is getting farmers talking to their bank.
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Rabobank market analysis Angus Gidley-Baird and Cheryl Kalisch Gordon have spent recent weeks travelling the state to offer advice to customers of the primary producers' bank.
One topic consistently dominates the conversation: carbon emissions reduction.
"Most of the conversation is environmental, around carbon," Mr Gidley-Baird said.
"It's quite a broad topic but generally when you're talking to them most of it is around climate, carbon, environmental sustainability."
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It's the first major trip in a long time for Mr Gidley-Baird, the bank's Senior Animal Protein Analyst and Ms Kalisch Gordon, it's Senior Commodities Analyst. They landed in Tamworth on Friday.
The duo said there has been a huge shift in market conditions in recent years, with the agriculture sector now talking green.
Ms Kalisch Gordon said there are three main drivers of the carbon crunch: the financial opportunities presented by carbon farming; the escalating value of carbon priced under those systems.
"And thirdly, and the one that we're probably most needing to talk about with farmers, is expectations of them to be able to manage their emissions into the future and what the supply chain expects of them into the future," she said.
Supermarkets like Woolworths and Coles, major agricultural firms like JBS and Teys and even banks have committed to get to carbon neutrality. Often the best way to do that is to require their suppliers to cut down carbon production, or offset it.
There may come a day when they force every supplier to prove their green credentials.
That leaves farmers today in a tricky position - do you earn a dollar today, or do you wait to save tomorrow?
"There's opportunity cost associated with doing this," Ms Kalisch Gordon said.
"You might get $55 a [carbon] tonne and locked in to that. But if you go into the future and your buyer of grain says I want you to be carbon neutral, can you be? And you've sold all your credits from as much of your land as you've got trees going, then you're going to have to go into the market and buy some. What will the price be then - it could be $100!"
Though the industry remains in its infancy, Mr Gidley-Baird said it was a growing dilemma.
"Three, five years ago, sustainability was a much harder topic to talk about," he said.
"But now people - I feel, anyway, in the livestock industry - there's definitely an awareness and in a number of cases an interest to know more."
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