More to climate change equation than just emissions

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 31/03/2023 (390 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There is general agreement that reducing how much food we waste is perhaps the most achievable action we can take as individuals to make a difference.

When throwing away food, we are not only wasting nutrition and life-sustaining calories. We lose all of the resources that have gone into growing, harvesting, processing, packaging, transporting and marketing it too.

Every piece of that value chain is responsible for contributing greenhouse gas emissions into the environment. And when it ends up in the landfill, rotting food contributes even more greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere.

But from there, the discussion around agriculture, food and their impacts on climate change gets bogged down by conflicting agendas and competing values.

Consider the tale of two commodities and their emission footprints as examples: canola and beef.

Both are significant contributors to human nutrition and the agricultural economy. Both contribute to climate change through the emissions associated with their production. Both are actively working to reduce those emissions without harming productivity.

Canola is tagged as a leading cause of rising nitrous oxide emissions because farmers are increasing their canola acreage and applying more fertilizer per acre.

Canadian canola production has nearly doubled over the past two decades. Meanwhile, the amount of nitrogen fertilizer used in crop production has risen more than 70 per cent, resulting in a 54 per cent increase in direct and indirect nitrous oxide emissions, according to federal reports.

Of course, no one suggests that we shut down the canola industry. However, a spirited debate continues over whether the sector can reduce emissions associated with fertilizer use without affecting productivity and farmers’ profitability.

David Burton, director of the Centre for Sustainable Soil Management at the University of Dalhousie, told the recent sustainable agriculture conference at the University of Manitoba that when that canola-nitrogen equation is looked at from an “emissions intensity” perspective, the canola sector is gaining additional productivity from fertilizer use. But there’s room for further improvement.

We should also consider that canola is also being made into biofuel, which reduces the amount of carbon pumped into the atmosphere by burning petroleum-based fuels.

Burton said that improving how farmers manage nitrogen could result in less use without affecting profitability. But he said it’s also time to expand how farmers get paid for what they do to include compensation for the range of environmental goods and services that arise from improved soil management.

Meanwhile, cattle release methane when they burp and fart.

The beef debate to date, however, has focused on whether we should continue to eat it at all, primarily driven by anti-meat campaigns leveraging its environmental footprint to further its cause.

The discussion at the global level is noticeably shifting from meatless to less meat and meat that is raised more sustainably.

Why? Considering nutrition density relative to emissions, meat packs more punch than plant-based foods. But, as well, “livestock are still key to food security and nutrition for a very large share of the global population,” Ann Mottet, a FAO livestock development officer, told the Winnipeg conference.

“A large share of the most vulnerable people to climate change are poor livestock keepers for which improved practices can also build resilience,” she said. “It’s not only about reducing emissions, but it’s also about making them more productive and also less vulnerable to climate change.”

In addition to supporting humans, grazing livestock recycles nutrients in a perennial grassland ecosystem, converts the sun’s energy into protein, supports multiple species, promotes biodiversity and increases carbon sequestration.

You can’t say that about cars. Yet cattle are often compared to cars in the emissions debates.

Scientists addressing the Winnipeg conference lamented the gaps in our research and the need to better understand the tradeoffs we will need to make to reach emissions’ reduction targets.

Both of these scenarios point to a need for us to consider more than the emissions side of the question when debating our responses to climate change.

Laura Rance is vice-president of content for Glacier FarmMedia. She can be reached at lrance@farmmedia.com