Greenpeace has again, through irresponsible sensationalism, tarnished a legitimate environmental issue.
It commissioned a report looking into agriculture’s production of greenhouse gases, which contribute to climate change.
The headline on the news release accompanying the report was “Stop climate-killing agriculture, new report demands.”
In it, Greenpeace sustainable agriculture campaigner Jan van Aken states, “The saturation bombing of farmland with fertilizers can and must be stopped” and, in keeping with the organization’s usual anti-technology bias, calls for agricultural methods that “work with nature, not against it.”
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Greenpeace Canada produced its own news release calling for a special tax on fertilizer.
The organization’s incendiary rhetoric is more likely to turn farmers against the organization’s goals than to build support.
While Greenpeace’s media machine ratchets up the hype, the full report, produced by professor Pete Smith of the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, is a thoughtful document with much to interest farmers and engage them in a common cause to make better use of fertilizer and improve livestock management.
The report’s review of existing research draws attention to what should already be widely known, namely that as it feeds a hungry world, agriculture produces a lot of nitrous oxide and methane, greenhouse gases more potent than the widely vilified carbon dioxide.
Methane has 23 times the potency of carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide almost 300 times.
The report says agricultural food production generates 17 to 32 percent of total human produced greenhouse gas emission.
Between about a quarter to half of that results from conversion of uncultivated land and forest into cultivated land.
Of the remainder, the lion’s share comes from nitrous oxide and methane emissions from fertilizer and livestock. Emissions from things such as tractors are a minor contributor.
The report notes that as much as half of the nitrogen fertilizer laid down by farmers is lost, turned into nitrous oxide through volatization and denitrification.
It also says the rising global demand for meat is increasing the number of methane belching ruminant livestock, which in turn increases demand for feedstuffs to feed them and for fertilizer to produce the crops.
For these reasons, Greenpeace calls for policies to reduce fertilizer use and meat consumption, particularly in developed countries.
But such blunt demands would yield unwanted consequences. It would be better to encourage the more sophisticated responses that agriculture has already begun to adopt.
Fertilizer is essential to meeting the world’s increasing food demands. Without it and other yield enhancing technology, even more natural land would be forced into cultivation, resulting in greater environmental degradation and greenhouse gas production.
Soaring fertilizer prices already present a strong incentive to use nutrients efficiently.
Indeed, Canadian farmers are among the world leaders in adopting management and technology, such as minimum and zero till seeding, precision farming and variable rate application that limit greenhouse gas emissions in crop production and build carbon in the soil.
And new technology promises more advances, such as stabilized and slow release nitrogen products and crops genetically modified to make better use of nutrients.
These technologies should be embraced throughout the world to soften agriculture’s impact on climate change.
As for livestock’s role in greenhouse gas production, we need a more sophisticated policy than simply telling North Americans and Europeans to eat less meat.
Health experts have been telling us that for years to address heart disease and obesity. But even if we eat less, hundreds of millions of people in fast developing China and India are now climbing out of poverty toward a middle class life, including a diet with more meat.
It would be unethical to deny them the comforts that the developed world enjoys.
Again, we need to turn to science for help. Researchers are working on pasture crops and feed additives to reduce the amount of methane ruminants produce. They are also finding ways to economically capture methane from manure to produce heat and electricity.
Greenpeace says we must farm with nature. That is true, but we also must embrace innovation and scientific advances to accommodate the world’s growing population and affluence.
Bruce Dyck, Terry Fries, Barb Glen, D’Arce McMillan and Ken Zacharias collaborate in the writing of Western Producer editorials.
