Feeding the world while reducing GHG emissions – the circle to be squared
The biggest dilemma for humanity – other than global peace, health and education – is to reduce the world’s carbon emissions to minimise global warming to a maximum of 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. This will involve a lot of decisions around land management (ceasing mining, building renewable energy infrastructure, deforestation, reafforesting, rewetting drained land, changes to direct and indirect land use to grow food, fibre, energy, etc.). The drastic changes required run the risk of damaging the ability of the world to feed itself.
The Paris Agreement, agreed at the IPCC COP 21 in Paris in 2015, recognised explicitly the necessity of reducing GHG while maintaining the production capacity to feed a population expected to reach 9 billion by 2050. In Article 2, the Agreement declares its aims to include “Increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development, in a manner that does not threaten food production”.
At this point, it is legitimate to ask whether global food systems policies, as promoted by the UN FAO, and which have translated into the EU’s Green Deal’s Farm to Fork and Biodiversity strategies, and closer to home into Food Vision 2030, have actually done enough to fulfil this objective.
Unintended consequences
The EU Green Deal, first published in December 2019, came at a time when the US had opted out (temporarily it turned out) of the Paris Agreement, and the EU rightly decided to take a leading role in driving global climate action. The Green Deal challenges all sectors of the economy and society to respond to the climate crisis and address their impact on the planet, and the various sectoral strategies provide pathways and directions for action to be implemented at national level. For farming and food, the EU Commission has developed a Farm to Fork and Biodiversity strategies, which are to inform the 2023-27 Common Agriculture Policy implementation.
Farmers in Ireland and in Europe have legitimately called for the EU to properly assess the socio-economic impact of the EU Green Deal. They fear the policy, while trying to do the right thing by the environment and climate, will damage production capacity, competitiveness and farmers’ livelihoods.
A number of studies have been carried out by external bodies, which, with one exception, are independent from the EU Commission.
These include:
- The first by the USDA back in November 2020, to assess the impact on EU and global food production of the EU Green Deal;
- One by the HFFA, an independent scientific German consultancy on global agriculture, which considered specifically the socio-economic impact on plant breeding in May 2021;
- Another by the EU Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) in July 2021;
- One focusing on economic and environmental impacts by the University of Kiel in September 2021;
- A study commissioned by COPA-COGECA to consider the impacts on livestock farm incomes by Wageningen University was published in October 2021;
- Then, last week, the latest in the series was published by Wageningen University and Research. This study was commissioned by Crop Life Europe, which represent European companies involved in the development and supply of sustainable crop protection.
There are common threads to those studies. All identify the planned 50% reduction in overall use and risks of pesticides, the 20% reduction in fertiliser use, the 25% target for agricultural land under organic production, the objective to have at least 10% of agricultural land under high diversity landscape features, and the encouragement towards plant-based diets – among others – as factors which will reduce Europe’s production capacity. In addition, they warn that they will lead to lower yields, create a competitive disadvantage to EU produced crops and animal products, create an incentive to imports with possible carbon leakage, lead to various levels of farm income losses, increase food prices, and worsen global food insecurity.
Some of those studies highlight the need for new technology to mitigate the negatives from an economic sustainability perspective, from access to genetic editing/modifications to reduce the need for pesticides and improve plant resilience, to new technologies to help livestock farmers reduce methane and other emissions from cattle and slurry.
The USDA study points out that, because the EU Green Deal ambitions to make trade deals the EU signs with the rest of the world conditional on the same food production standards, the impacts would go far beyond the borders of the EU. They predict a global erosion of production capacity, reduced trade, EU and global GDP reductions, consumer price increases, and therefore greater global food insecurity, with particularly negative impacts on the countries and peoples that are already most food insecure.
Laudable ambition, but insufficient data
None of the studies appear to be able to make comprehensive assessments of all the elements of the Farm to Fork and Biodiversity Strategies. These are complex policies with major implications for land use, which are being integrated into the next Common Agriculture Policy from 2023. The only EU Commission-linked assessment, the one undertaken by its JRC, clearly states that inadequate availability of data on pesticide use, and lack of differentiation between conventional and organic farming systems are only two of a number of limitations to the accuracy of its modelling approach. We are dealing with a policy with high and laudable ambitions for the climate and the environment, but whose effects cannot be assessed effectively because of lack of data.
Perhaps partly because of this lack of clear evidence base for the policy development which underpins it, the EU Green Deal as it pertains to EU and global food production, could have some unplanned, but major negative economic outcomes.
The agri-food sector must, like every other sector, reduce its GHG emissions, its impact on biodiversity, water and air quality. Uniquely, the agricultural sector holds the key to carbon sequestration as well as land use for food, fibre and fuel production. Agriculture is where a major part of the solution lies, and the Irish Carbon Action Plan seeks an emission cut from the sector of between 22% and 30%.
Food security, self-sufficiency and trade
Many countries may have the ambition to become self-sufficient in food, but not all can do so readily and continue to need to import some of their needs. Not every country can produce the diversity of foods that their consumers expect, either.
Most of us take for granted the products on our supermarket shelves, including exotic or out of season fruit and vegetables and other foods. We can bemoan the food miles, but global food trade is a necessary reality. Ensuring an even playing field for food produced sustainably, often at greater cost to farmers, in international trade deals is essential both for the environment and the economic viability of producers.
Irish and European farmers will welcome the fact that the Green Deal demands our trade negotiators must make any trade deals conditional on the respect of the same environmental standards as those applicable to EU producers. Provided of course it is duly implemented, including as part of the much-maligned EU/Mercosur agreement.
Irish farmers will not be found wanting in doing more to reduce their environmental and climate impact, given time and supports. With their Marginal Abatement Cost Curves (MACC) for carbon dioxide and ammonia and the SignPost programme, Teagasc have brought forward an effective set of climate actions which farmers are showing huge interest in implementing. We owe it to ourselves and to a hungry world to find a better way to cut national emissions from agriculture with the urgency required than, as some may suggest, sacrificing unwisely the production capacity of our sustainable, grass-based livestock and dairy sectors.
© Catherine Lascurettes, Cúl Dara Consultancy
