A Carbon Neutral World: Farming & Agriculture

For the vast majority of people, there is very little understanding of farming. Most of us live in towns and cities, far removed (in all senses) from the realities of this essential part of the economy. We have little grasp of what it means to be a farmer.

We moan about the use of pesticides, the 'overuse' of fertilisers, the destruction of hedgerows,  the cutting down of forests, battery farming, the creation of 'dust bowls', livestock being given too many anti-biotics and so on.

But, ultimately this is all our fault. There are over 7 billion people in this world and our demands, especially for meat and palm oil products, are driving the farming and agriculture industry to look for ways to meet that ever-increasing demand.

After all, they are just business people wanting to make a profit. If they didn't, they'd get out of this unpredictable industry (as we're discovering in Britain at the moment, with increasing numbers of farmers selling up despite subsidies).

So, when we talk about de-carbonising the farming industry, we have to keep in mind the above, and the fact that many farms are just one or two bad seasons away from giving up.

The range of agricultural activities across the world is wide, to say the least. From subsistence farming in developing countries to factory farming of animals on an unbelievable scale in the U.S. So there is no one-size-fits-all solution to decarbonising farming.

However, the UK can be used as an example of what sort of things need to be considered:

Agriculture creates about 10% of Britain's carbon emissions through carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.

CO2 is generated by farm machinery and when lime is added to acidic soil to improve it.

Methane is produced by ruminant animals like cattle from both ends, and is by far the biggest contributor to farming's carbon footprint (56%).

Nitrous oxide is produced when synthetic fertilisers are broken down in the soil, and also by the breakdown of manure.

The best way to reducing emissions is to prevent animals from producing so much methane. This could be achieved by keeping them indoors, where you can control what they eat, and deal more efficiently with what they 'output'. This sort of "intensive farming" already exists in form of battery or factory farming, although the purpose so far is more about efficiency and profit than methane control. But it could be adapted.

However, it's becoming increasingly unpopular with the public, who prefer animals to have access to fields.

You might also increase the amount of meat per unit of emission by using things like growth hormones. But this is banned.

It would be more acceptable if cattle could be breed to be less 'gassy' or come up with a food supplement that means they produce less methane. The former is unlikely to happen quickly but the latter shows promise. There are already tests to find out if various supplements such as seaweed will work. Early signs are promising.

Ultimately though, eating less meat, particularly beef and lamb, will cut the methane emissions dramatically, simply by cutting the number of farm animals.

Nitrous oxide can be reduced by farmers having a better understanding of the amount of fertiliser their soil actually needs through technology. For example, they can use sensors on drones to see the fertility of their land in fine detail. The data can then be feed into the vehicles they use to spread fertiliser, so that they apply the amount  that's needed.

There is also interest in so-called no-till agriculture, where the ground isn't ploughed when planting seed. It appears that this actually increases the fertility of the soil because you're not compacting it. This locks in carbon and lets nature improve the soil naturally.

Food waste, from every step in the chain, from field to table, is also a sizeable contributor, as rotting food gives off methane. With better planning and better use of what would otherwise go to landfill, this could be cut substantially.

British farmers face considerable pressure from the weather, supermarkets, ever changing legislation, and consumer demands, but there also appears to be good news. There are promises of payments to look after the environment, there are financial incentives to generate energy by using manure for bio-gas, and there is increasing demand for sustainable forestry to supply wood-fired power stations.

On a worldwide basis, eating less red meat, stopping forests being cut down for farmland, reforesting, dramatically reducing food waste, using fertilisers effectively, and more efficient farming practices (getting more crop from the same area of land) will all prove essential in reaching net zero.

Far too much land is used simply to produce feed for livestock.

Next: What can you and I do?

UK Citizen's Assembly

If, like me, you're frustrated at the lack of progress on tackling climate change, you're probably wondering why the politicians aren't getting on with it.

There could be any number of reasons for their inaction including: lack of understanding of the urgency of the problem; they're in league with the fossil fuel industry; they're too busy running the country to give it enough time; and they're afraid of the political consequences of actually treating it seriously.

My belief is that it's a mix of the above, with their relative importance varying from country to country. Ultimately though, I'm convinced that when governments actually get down to working out what policies would be needed to achieve their stated goals (e.g. Net zero by 2050), they fear how their voting public will react. And the more the politicians procrastinate, the more 'extreme' will be the measures they will have to take and, in theory, the more extreme the push-back the voters could give them.

This dilemma is further increased by the fact that there are any number of ways of achieving net-zero but some policies may be less likely to annoy the voters than others.

But which ones? Politicians have shown themselves to be remarkably out of touch with the people they supposedly represent. They are also very risk averse.

So it's very interesting that the UK now has a 'Citizen's Assembly' to sort out what Britain should be doing to reach it's carbon emission targets.

The Citizen's Assembly has been commissioned by no less than six parliamentary committees (Committees set up by the government to study and give advice on particular areas of interest). In this case, they have borrowed an idea suggested by Extinction Rebellion.

The Citizen's Assembly consists of 110 ordinary citizens carefully selected (using questionnaires) to be representative of the mix of views on climate change held by the UK's population (From "There is no crisis" to "There definitely is a crisis"). The idea is that, over a number of weekends, the Assembly will see a number of guest speakers, have the science explained to them by experts, be presented with the full range of potential ways of reaching Net Zero by 2050 (The UK's current target that's been written into law), and vote on which ways they would like to be put in place by the government.

The idea is that, given the assembly is representative of the population as a whole, any decision arrived at by them can be confidently taken up by government as a roadmap, with a greatly reduced risk of political fall-out.

If the assembly is truly representative (i.e. Not statistically biased in some way), and if they receive the best possible advice, and if the recommendations look workable, and if the government takes the recommendations, then we could be looking at history here.

The Citizen's Assembly has only met once at the time of writing, so there are a few weekends to go, but I look forward the final recommendations.

More here.