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THE FARMER LIVES in a world of competing demands. With eight billion mouths to feed yet a need to reduce the environmental impacts, it can make for quite the conflict.
Droughts, floods, crop failure and animal disease are all what farmers are facing more due to the effects of climate change.
In addition to being one of the most vulnerable sectors to climate change, agriculture is also the most at risk from poorly designed climate policies. This is the first time agriculture has been a primary topic of discussion at COP28. This focus on agricultural emissions is hardly likely to be a coincidence given the efforts by the host Dubai to take the focus away from the burning of fossil fuels, in particular their main export: oil.
There is no doubt agriculture will need to adapt to climate change while reducing greenhouse gases (GHGs) rapidly, on the front line of that will be farmers, large and small. Fears are raging among farmers though that we will only become the scapegoats for multi-billion euro fossil fuel interests.
The question is perpetual on how best to cut emissions from agriculture. Unlike other sectors where the move from fossil fuels to other sources is challenging but relatively straightforward, agriculture does not have ‘electric car’ solution. Nor do we have the luxury of simply cutting output. We are farmers who need to make a living.
Populations are predicted to rise to 9.7 billion by 2050 at the same time as more land is needed to either be returned to nature or protected from agricultural conversion if species decline is to be slowed or stopped. Instead, a range of measures are needed to address methane mostly from livestock and rice, nitrous oxide from fertiliser and soils and carbon dioxide losses from soil erosion and drainage of peat soils.
However, funding these measures is perhaps the most difficult part of the question. Despite the Common Agricultural Policy being the main source of subsidies to farmers and in theory, the best way to stimulate the transition, it has not even kept pace with inflation. Instead, payments to farmers have stagnated at 2002 levels, all the while the demands of EU citizens have grown.
Not displacing food production has led some to conclude the private market and ‘carbon farming’ may be a suitable alternative funding source.
This raises fears that rather than a genuine cut, fossil fuel interests again will simply try to conceal their emissions through ‘offsets’ rather than make the difficult but necessary cuts needed to keep within safe boundaries. The importance of COP28 to Irish farmers is shown by the fact two farm leaders made the journey to Dubai; Macra President Elaine Houlihan and IFA President Tim Cullinane.
On Sunday COP hosted its first full day on ‘Food, agriculture and water’ with Ireland front and centre including the Agricultural Minister Charlie McConalogue co-hosting an event on innovation for climate action. This drew criticism from some sections as Ireland has such a large cattle herd, which some argue is incompatible with ‘sustainability’ or climate ambition.
Amongst the farming community, other criticisms were levied, notably whether the government funding is enough to secure the transition to reduce greenhouse gases and meeting the sector’s 25% cut by 2030.
Ireland is certainly an outlier among developed countries for the percentage of emissions from agriculture (38.4% in 2022), with only New Zealand exceeding the percentage with agriculture representing 50% of their domestic emissions. Both countries have large national herds, however, the reality has far more to do with our shared lack of heavy industry taking up higher percentages of national greenhouse gases (GHGs).
Indeed, at the global level, agriculture represents a far lower percentage of emissions despite half the world’s population being involved directly or indirectly in food production. Depending on the analysis, agricultural GHGs including land use change represent approximately 18% of pre-Covid emissions presenting 9.3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent whereas energy use, including transport, represents 73% of global emissions.
Ireland’s outlier status also makes it an ideal place for climate-friendly food transitions. With a highly educated farming community, Ireland ranks in joint first with France for the level of young farmer educational attainment, alongside an advisory system with good integration with research and education in the form of the semi-state authority Teagasc.
Efficiency gains will not be sufficient though to make emissions reduction targets, not least because a grass-based system makes us already one of the lowest in GHG per kg of product. Instead, Ireland is hoping to improve the climate impact of farming through a mix of genetic improvements, anaerobic digestion for a renewable replacement for fossil fuel gas and cutting inputs of synthetic nitrogen. Additional efforts to reach the 25% target set by government includes developing methane suppressants suitable for grazing, existing ones work only while cattle are housed, and increasing the sequestration of carbon.
Climate misinformation is hardly unusual for any sector these days. The internet is filled with myths about electric cars, wind turbines and forestry, but again farmers are a little unique in having misinformation targeted at them and about them.
On the one side, many farmers are targeted by online misinformation spreaders and as of late across Europe politicians hoping to play on an anti-green feeling.
Myths often repeated in online farming groups include exaggeration of carbon sequestration in soils, underestimation or exclusion of GHG related to farming and the persistent misrepresentation of methane, an admittedly complex topic, as making it irrelevant to climate change.
More traditional forms of misinformation are present but rarer, such as myths that temperatures and weather patterns haven’t changed, a more difficult thing to spread given farmers note changes in climatic cycles especially the increase in drought.
While farmers are often targeted for misinformation they are also victims of it. Most notably when it comes to inaccurate assessments of livestock emissions. Frequently, media outlets will compare livestock products to coal for emissions intensity, but this both overplays the significance of livestock and underplays the destructive nature of coal. From sub-Saharan subsistence farmers to modern Irish dairy farmers, livestock emissions total 6.2 billion tonnes CO2eq, which includes both meat and dairy, eggs and draught animals. In contrast, coal combustion contributes 15 billion tonnes a year.
Despite this, pop culture often equates the challenge of reducing meat consumption to weaning off fossil fuels. One of the most popular and influential examples is the notorious ‘Cowspiracy’ found on Netflix.
This program falsely presented the figure of livestock being responsible for 51% of all emissions alongside more accurate assessments of 14.5%. The figure of 51%, unlike the 14.5% used by IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), was created by a US think-tank and never published in peer review.
The issue then becomes for farmers not only who to trust but whether they will get the credit if they do improve and make the cuts. My own farm has cut emissions by approximately 25% over the last three years, with aims to cut further without impacting yield. Unfortunately, right now none of those improvements have earned me an extra cent, with substantial costs in some areas.
Thomas Duffy farms in partnership with his parents and sister in Co. Cavan. He is the former President of Macra na Feirme and former Vice President of CEJA, the Council of European Young Farmers.
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This young farmer/food producer is completely right to suggest that his sector is being made a scapegoat for the sins of the combustion industry.
As combustion induced global heating gathers pace at a frightening speed, maybe Irish farmers should take a leaf out of the oil cartel’s handbook, and cut production in order to increase prices abroad for top quality food.
We need to use our own land to produce our own energy, and finally break free from the stranglehold of fossil fuel addiction.
To simply live, we need to live simply.
@Ciaran Sherry: and if every country takes a similar approach to food production then what happens? Reduced food supply doesn’t just result in higher per unit prices, it also results in mass starvation. How many people should we be looking to sacrifice in our pursuit of this simple life?
@Ciaran Sherry: I suspect that if Irish farmers cut production, farmers elsewhere would just be thankful for being gifted markets.
@Ciaran Sherry: They would be swallowed by the global marketplace. The fact is food production and human consumption are not sustainable. Diets need to be supplemented and the process needs to part move into a lab, yes yes, the jobs the people, I’m not talking about tomorrow but it’s coming and is unavoidable.
@Ciaran Sherry: a lot of people think that things will be the same buy what u want eat what you want farmers followe the policy of government in 2007 this included the greens cheap food high production they all screamed knowing this was not good for biodiversity now the very same people are saying the opposite so farmers will now cut production eu climate policy has no payments planned what so ever for this despite grace suleiman and other greens saying we will be compensated farmers should tell them to go where the sun doesn’t shine
Whoops – hospitals over the last 25 years.
But apparently we’re meant to believe we can change the planet’s climate
The climate doomsters conveniently forget the climate of Earth has changed regularly & mankind has always managed to adapt.
AND we now have technology our ancestors could only have dreamed of.
We should encourage our hard working farmers to create as much food as possible
Simples
@Gerry Kelly: ‘mankind has always managed to adapt’: What price would you be willing to pay for ‘adaptation’? As more and more parts of the world turn to uninhabitable desert, would you be happy to see the population of Ireland increase to, say, 30 million through migration that people are forced to undertake in order to survive?
Oddly, it seems to me that the climate crisis denialists and those most opposed to (inward) migration are always the same people.
@Gerry Kelly: 1) Mankind has already changed the planet’s climate. Hence the mess we have created.
2) Mankind has only existed on this planet for a couple of hundred thousand years. A blink of the eye with regards to the species that have come and gone since life arose here. Through most of that time we have barely hung on. But the last 6 thousand years or so have been a climate sweet spot for humans, allowing us to expand across almost the entire planet, and increase our population to 8 billion.
During the last 200 years or so we have polluted our atmosphere with greenhouse gases that have and will increase global temperatures.
We are now approaching the the upper limit of that climate sweet spot.
@Gerry Kelly: Nope, people who know about anthropogenic climate change also know about natural climate change, it’s only those who are minimally informed who think otherwise. Mankind have not gad to adapt through a mass extinction event yet which is what we’re staring down the barrel at at the moment.
World population 1950 – 2bn
2050 – projected to hit 10 BN
Our island nation has a population of 5 million & we haven’t been able to build enough houses schools or hosp
@Gerry Kelly: World population 2000 years ago was probably in the region of 150 million.
Hence the attack on farmers to devalue land for the landgrab which will “offset” emissions.
Don’t fall for this, guys.
Lovely steak
The issue is that farming lobbyists and representative organisations appear to use exactly the same tactics as the fossil fuel industry: block, deny and try to preserve the status quo.
If farming representative organisations come with proposals to reduce subsidies for fossil fuels and fossil fuel companies, to reinvest these in promoting sustainable farming (i.e. switching from livestock farming to tillage and land regeneration), I reckon there may be quite a few who’d go along with this. The only ones I see coming up with these type of solutions are those that farmers hate: environmentally-minded policy makers.
The planet’s climate is changing
It has in changed in Ireland 7 times since the last Ice Age melted away
Unless I’ve got something wrong – we appear to have survived those changes & my hunch is we’ll survive this one also
@Gerry Kelly: Your hunch outweighs science. You win.
It might very well be true. If it is you were put there, not by the Greens but by Mr. Badman and his cronies in the Department. If farmers free themselves of these malign influences they might find that people appreciate them and the work they do
We have been told that Ireland has high per capita Greenhouse gas emissions.
This article claims that a reason why Ireland’s farming related CO2 emissions are such a high proportion of our total is that we do not have the heavy industry of other countries.
Something is awry.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere:
Per various CO2 emissions per Capita lists for 2021/2022:
Ireland averages around 7 t
Palau in Oceania around 178 t
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: yes but when you add up our total emissions it is nothing will have no effect on the climate biodiversity here is another question though
@Athena: According to worldinfometers, in 2022 Ireland’s per capita CO2 emissions was 8.29 tonne, with Palau at 2.34 tonne.
But that is not the point I was raising.
We are told our per capita emissions are high, compared to the average, or even the just among our peers.
Yet this article states that we do not have the heavy industry of other countries, that heavy industry to makes up so much of their emissions. The article claims that because the absence of emissions from heavy industry, our emissions from agriculture is relatively high, i.e. appears high only because of this absence.
Something does not add up.
If that claim is correct, then how on Earth are our per capita emissions so high?
Or is that claim misleading?
Why are so many of the articles “comment closed”.
@T M Byrne: in case SF/IRA would bring publisher to court
One third of all food produced worldwide is wasted, and that waste contributes the same GHG emissions per year to the global total as the total emissions of the European Union. Now by my reckoning if that food waste was tackled and eliminated, it would reduce the global GHG emissions by the same amount as I mentioned earlier.
That would be a major step in the right direction and it would effectively reduce global agricultural emissions by one third. Because less waste means less need for production.
Seems unfair to farmers who happily produce other than dairy/livestock, this article doesn’t give them a mention?
… any adults in the room?
Daft to start killing Irish cows which feed 44 million people, to reduce emissions
… while we have NO TAX (World Wide) on jet fuel or tanker fuel ….
… to fly us off on City Breaks and Tourist trails
and ship all those unnecessary goods around the world.
No VAT, No Excise Duty, No National Oil Reserve Levy” … nothing.
…. “Far from Right!”
… any adults in the room?
@Neuville-Kepler62F: technical point – I don’t know about you but my cows are dead when I eat them. Bit hysterical?
Just to make it clear – I am absolutely NOT a climate change denier. It is abundantly clear the p
Who in earth would ever listen to a farmer lol
@Murray peter: Everyone with a bit of intelligence would.
Tell us about your knowledge of farming?
How many days a week do you work?
Farmers work a seven day week, year in year out.
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