Farmers seek voice at COP26

Farmers must be heard by those developing climate change goals and plans, leaders of several farm organizations told COP26 last week.

Speaking during the first week of the United Nations’ climate change conference in Glasgow, Scotland, Minette Batters, president of the United Kingdom and Wales National Farmers Union, said farmers’ voices have largely been kept out of the discussions even though they manage most of the landscape. In the United Kingdom, for example, 70 percent of the land is farmed.

“We are the solution,” she said during a presentation that also included speakers from Canada, Africa, and Germany.

Agriculture is a source of greenhouse gas emissions but also a sink. In 2019, Batters threw down the gauntlet, saying agriculture could achieve net zero 10 years earlier than the government target.

“We might have the eco-warriors outside the door, but I would say the eco-workforce is the farmers in this country who will drive changes going forward,” she said.

Fawn Jackson, the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association policy and international affairs director, cited a Nature United study from earlier this year that showed natural climate solutions, which farmers already know about, could reduce GHG emissions by 78.2 megatonnes.

“We really need to build a community who can help us make sure that we can implement these solutions that we need,” Jackson said.

It’s critical that agriculture be considered as an entire system in the climate change challenge, she said, and that’s what the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef is trying to do.

The roundtable that includes agricultural and conservation organizations has a goal to reduce the greenhouse gas footprint of beef production by 33 percent through protecting 35 million acres of native grassland and reducing food waste by 50 percent by 2030, she said.

This requires long-term strategic and significant investment and technology transfer, Jackson said.

Batters said three principles developed within her organization, which includes 55,000 farmers, include a focus on climate-smart farming, nature-based solutions and the bioeconomy and renewable energy.

She said producing more livestock on less land with fewer inputs is the transformation the world needs to see. This includes developing better genetics and healthier animals.

“Not less livestock,” Batters said. “It is about better, smarter livestock.”

She described nature-based solutions as “the easy bit” by planting more trees and grass and locking down carbon.

Renewable energy is part of moving farmers toward carbon-neutral production.

But there is an elephant in the room.

“The economic model has not been built yet to do this, so we have trillions and trillions circulating in green finance above our heads,” Batters said. “These monies have to hit the ground if we are going to do what is needed.

“That has to be the legacy that comes out of this COP. It will be the farmers that deliver the change and the next agricultural revolution that I believe this planet is absolutely crying out for.”

Bernhard Krusken, secretary of the German Farmers’ Association, said farmers are ready to do their part but they need consistent policies, including irrigation and water management in the context of the changing climate.

“We need incentives and we need models to remunerate these efforts,” he said, adding that farmers have to become more efficient if they are to solve the challenges ahead.

In Africa, where most farmers are small landholders who rely on livestock and their small plots to survive, Elizabeth Nsimadala said financing is considered riskier now that the climate has changed. New pests, less rain, more rain and a substantial problem with food loss threaten tens of millions of farmers.

The president of the East African Farmers Federation said traditional knowledge has been challenged by climate change.

“Our production has been taken by ransom due to the fact that we no longer receive rains as expected,” she said.

Nsimadala said farmers around the world have to work together and with other stakeholders.

“If we do not work together we will suffer together and we will fall together,” she said.

Asked why farm organizations are best placed to deliver on agriculture’s climate ambition, Jackson said looking at the food system as a whole offers clues. If Canada’s cattle industry operates on about 35 million acres, it is potentially the country’s largest conservation organization.

“We’re leaving too much on the table if farmers are left out,” she said.

Nsimadala added that the 80 million subsistence farmers in Africa can’t do it individually.

“If we are going to do it as individual farmers it’s going to take us I don’t know how many million years,” she said.

COP26 continued this week and wraps up Nov. 12.