AGRICULTURE PART OF CLIMATE CHANGE SOLUTION – NFU MESSAGE TO COPENHAGEN
Agriculture can and will be part of the solution to climate change; this is the message that the NFU is taking to the Copenhagen Climate Change summit this week.
NFU combinable crops board chairman Ian Backhouse and Dr Jonathan Scurlock, the NFU’s chief adviser on renewable energy and climate change, will be attending the international climate talks to help raise the profile of the agricultural sector. Mr Backhouse will be speaking at a special Agriculture and Rural Development Day on Saturday December 12.
“In Britain, our Government Chief Scientist Prof John Beddington has warned of a ‘perfect storm’ of increasing demand for food, water and energy in the face of a changing climate”, said Mr. Backhouse. “We believe that agriculture has an important role to play in meeting all these needs – but we will need the co-operation of our governments, the private sector, NGOs, the public and media.”
“Increasing productivity is critical, to improve the adaptive capacity of both rich and poor farmers against climate change, to enhance food security and to reduce pressure on our natural environment.”
According to Dr Scurlock, the NFU and its national and international partners have identified four main themes for mitigation action, whereby agriculture in the UK and worldwide could actively tackle climate change. These are
• increased greenhouse gas efficiency of resource use, such as changes to nutrient management and livestock life cycles
• enhanced carbon storage in vegetation and soils
• a wide range of bioenergy technologies to displace fossil fuel use, such as biofuels and biogas and
• the deployment of other renewable energy technologies like wind energy and solar power.
Dr Scurlock added that the joint agricultural industry Climate Change Task Force, set up in response to the challenges posed by climate change, had recently delivered an Outline Greenhouse Gas Action Plan to Defra.
1. Agricultural production is currently responsible for about seven per cent of total UK greenhouse gas emissions. The food chain as a whole is sometimes blamed for as much as 18 to 20 per cent of UK greenhouse gas emissions, but much of this total arises ‘beyond the farm gate’ in food processing, consumption or waste disposal, or indirectly through changes in land use attributed to agriculture elsewhere in the world.
2. Methane emissions from UK production have fallen by 17 per cent since 1990, practical measures to further reduce emissions through improving efficiency are being considered.
3. The NFU, in partnership with the Country Land and Business Association (CLA) and the Agricultural Industries Confederation (AIC), launched the Climate Change Task Force (CCTF) in 2007 to present a united stance against the serious threat that climate change poses to agricultural production and the rural sector.
4. The Greenhouse Gas Action Plan is the response of the CCTF to the policy proposals in the government’s Low Carbon Transition Plan released in July 2009.
5. The Agriculture and Rural Development Day is a key side event during the Copenhagen climate talks, hosted by the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (of which NFU is a founder member) and a coalition of other international agricultural organisations. It will lay the groundwork for strategies and actions on agriculture worldwide following a comprehensive Copenhagen agreement.
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