Comment: Agriculture, climate change shouldn’t be exclusive

Any time food and farming are spoken of with distain or blamed for something, farmers take it personally.

It’s an attack not necessarily on the product grown, but on our character.

It’s why I believe it’s hard for many in agriculture and food to digest the latest news, media reports and research that discusses agriculture in a negative and damaging way to a lifestyle many are proud to be a part of. 

If farmers didn’t love farming much as they did, they wouldn’t be doing it. It’s not an easy lifestyle nor as profitable as it once was.

In the last few years, the expanded coverage of agriculture’s relationship to and with climate change has been at the forefront of media and the minds of Canadian consumers. 

According to the recently released Canadian Centre for Food Integrity’s 2021 Public Trust Report, respondents indicated that global warming/climate change are of increasing concern and were among the top five issues of greatest concern for most Canadians – including the rising cost of food, keeping healthy food affordable, energy costs and healthcare costs.

Climate change and agriculture are interconnected processes. Both impact people on a global scale. One needs the other in order to survive. The adverse effects of each, impact the other. 

Agriculture has an intimate relationship with our land and the environment – with our soil, our water, our focus on sustainability and regeneration. Without this, there is no agriculture. There is no food for people. Both are required for mankind’s survival. Without air and food, we can’t survive. 

According to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, “10 per cent of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions is from crop and livestock production, excluding emissions from the use of fossil fuels or from fertilizer production.” 

Worldwide, an exact number is harder to source and reference, but according to statistics from Our World in Data and the World Resources Institute, “agriculture is responsible for 18.4 per cent of global emissions.” 

Addressing climate change in the way we are now is the right thing to do. Tackling climate change is a must, according to most Canadians. But like most of life’s problems to be solved, it’s not the why, it’s the how. 

How to address or ‘fix’ climate change is the greatest question to face our existence at this point in history.

And as a sector, we must ask ourselves – how are we telling people what we’re doing to address climate change — as an active contributor to climate change and an active problem solver and willing participant in addressing it?

When I think of climate change, I refer to the basic necessities we need as humans. What is absolutely necessary for us to have, do and consume as humans if we’re going to address our existence on this planet? It can be a daunting thought.

Many of us remember Maslow’s hierarchy of needs from our high school days. It’s a system named after American Abraham Maslow and taught in psychology. 

The idea, portrayed as a pyramid about human motivation, places the most basic needs of humans on the bottom, known as physiological needs – things such as breathing, food and water. 

Without these, we can’t advance to the next step in the pyramid as humans. 

People need to have food in their bellies and a shelter over their heads before they are motivated to look for a job, as the theory explains. 

As we meet our needs as humans, we progress through our hierarchy of needs – safety (a roof over our heads), love (friends, family, belonging), esteem (respect, confidence), eventually reaching the top of the pyramid known as self-actualization or self-fulfilment. 

I think about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs a lot when I think of how we address climate change. If we were asked tomorrow, what would be the basic things we would need as human beings to survive. What would those things be? 

Those early days of the coronavirus pandemic may have given us a glimpse.

I recently read a thread on Twitter from The Economist, which discussed agriculture’s role in climate change, specifically animal agriculture. One of its posts said “animal-based foods account for 57 per cent of agricultural greenhouse gases, versus 29 per cent for food from plants.” 

These types of headlines and statistics are hard to digest as both a consumer and an agriculture-food enthusiast. There are so many numbers and headlines being shared across social media that you don’t know what sources to believe. 

But secondly, it is hard to see media outlets pit farmer versus farmer – farmers who raise animals versus farmers who grow and harvest grains – both for food production purposes that feed us as humans.

The Economist ended the thread by saying, “Eating less meat or giving up flying are simple ways people can help mitigate climate change.”

And that’s when it hit me: The Economist, an international weekly newspaper, was comparing food to travel. One is a basic physiological human need that is a necessity. The other is a privilege that can only be reached in self-actualization, if we’ve progressed through the rest of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs pyramid.

We should not compare something as basic as food as a greenhouse gas emitter to that of travelling, which we’re fortunate to do as humans but is not absolutely necessary — again, as the recent pandemic showed us. 

We need to proactively share with consumers how we’re addressing the biggest question our sector is facing: What are agriculture and food doing to address their contribution to climate change? How can we do better? Because we can always do better. 

Perhaps the way we’ve been producing food will need to, should be or will be asked to change to address how we adapt to climate change. Should we anticipate these questions?

But I also want to ensure that the people with the minds and talent needed for this conversation and these big picture questions will have food in their bellies. 

When did the most basic needs as human beings – breathing air and eating food – become mutually exclusive ideas? 

The conversation around these two processes and the intertwined relationship is what needs to be discussed – and in the right way. 

What are we doing in having this conversation with our consumers about agriculture and climate change? It is surely needed and not at the detriment of each.