A chara, – The president of the Irish Farmers Association, Tim Cullinan, uses multiple scientific misunderstandings and flawed premises to support his misleading argument that farmers are being unfairly treated in the allocation of national carbon budgets between sectors (“Farmers will take fair share of pain to reduce emissions”, Opinion & Analysis, July 11th).
Despite Covid and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the essential reality of climate action is unchanging: unless climate stability at the agreed warming limit is enabled, future economic or social sustainability will likely become untenable. Global society, and the farming system that feeds it, is already being hit hard by the climate impacts driven by greenhouse gas emissions from use of fossil fuels, cement, agriculture and land, which are disproportionately emitted by richer nations. Meeting the Paris Agreement goal fairly requires immediate, substantial and sustained reductions from all sectors in emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous oxide and methane, the principal greenhouse gases (GHGs). This message from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is unequivocal.
Mr Cullinan uses the words “food” and “farmer” indiscriminately. Food from animals contributes to less than 15 per cent of calories in the human diet globally, so “food” is not, as implied, a synonym for “beef and dairy” (the principal food type produced in Ireland, which is overwhelmingly exported and mainly targeted at wealthier consumers).
Different food types have very different GHG intensities, therefore reducing high GHG types of food production such as intensive meat and milk production, and, instead, increasing crop production for food and permanent continuous cover forestry for biodiversity and carbon storage, can result in highly effective climate mitigation action that also greatly improves nitrogen use efficiency and increases the food and carbon efficiency of land use. Limiting intensive beef and dairy production is thus entirely consistent with protecting global food production to meet the Paris Agreement goal equitably.
Cattle and sheep farming results in substantial methane emissions from ruminant digestion and manure that contributes significantly to ongoing global warming, which could be reduced by limiting such production. It is the ongoing policy choice to produce sustained or increasing amounts of ruminant methane, rather than much less, that continues to be a major failure in limiting Ireland’s aggregate GHG warming impact consistent with the Paris Agreement goal.
Mr Cullinan’s emphasis on the CO2 resulting from breakdown of animal methane is diversionary, it is not a significant carbon budget issue. In reality, his recommended “alternative method of measuring the global warming potential”, called GWP*, shows that cutting agricultural methane is a very powerful lever in limiting warming. Accordingly, failing to cut agricultural methane deeply by 2030 has a very substantial mitigation opportunity cost.
Our research indicates that a cut of over 40 per cent in agricultural methane by 2030 would be required for Ireland to meet the Paris Agreement goals on a globally equitable basis.
Also, Ireland has not “ignored” climate science or carbon sequestration; informed by scientists, the Climate Change Advisory Council (CCAC) has examined and reported on animal methane and land carbon impacts in detail. Contrary to what is implied, farmed grasslands in Ireland are in fact a huge net source of CO2 equivalent emissions: organic soils emit 8.4 million tonnes annually while mineral soils remove 2.3 million tonnes. If public monies are to reward carbon uptake for farmers on mineral soils, does the IFA accept that the typically lower-income farmers on peaty soils would have to pay out at the same rate for their soil carbon losses, adding up to a much larger amount in total?
Moreover, the idea that reducing beef and dairy production here will result in increased emissions elsewhere might be a valid “carbon leakage” argument if a nation and the sector in question has met its own climate targets. But Ireland and its agricultural sector have not done so. The 2020 EU target was badly missed, in largest part because agriculture, due to dairy expansion, has substantially increased its sectoral emissions since 2013.
National carbon budgeting consistent with fairly meeting the Paris Agreement goal requires radical emissions reductions that add up within the agreed limit on warming. Having risen quickly since 2010, cutting agricultural methane and nitrous oxide even faster by 2030 is now crucial to meeting warming impact limits. As research at DCU and UCC, echoed by the CCAC, shows, the lower mitigation target agricultural lobbyists are arguing for would require others in society to take a highly unfair and very costly additional share of the radical efforts that Ireland has accepted must now be made.
Societal debate on climate action and meeting carbon budgets is essential, but opinions need to rest on facts. – Yours, etc,
PAUL R PRICE,
BARRY McMULLIN,
Dublin City University,
Dublin 9.