Farmers versus eco-disaster
Farmers can help to solve all these problems, and the importance of their role is cropping up more and more, as eco-disasters force world leaders to look more closely at the big picture.
Farmers couldn't do much about the catastrophic forest fires which engulfed Portugal and Spain this summer because too many of them had gone out of business.
When European environment and agriculture ministers met last weekend, they agreed that the loss of more than 20% of the rural population in many Mediterranean regions had left large areas of land poorly managed, with brush and debris building up, becoming an incendiary hazard.
The same threat may be emerging in Ireland, with brush fires seeming to have increased since we were forced by the EU to reduce hill sheep numbers, in order to prevent over-grazing.
Last weekend European Ministers were told that if they can stop the depopulation of rural areas, they will reduce the growing brush fire threat, and also increase biodiversity, and prevent build up of animal diseases caused by the increase in feral animals. Eco-disasters have heightened the risks of tampering with nature, or with farming.
In Switzerland, there is increasing worry about the disappearance of alpine farms, increasing the danger of avalanches.
While upland farmers keep the landscape safe, their lowland colleagues can mitigate the effects of the high oil price, by growing crops for fuel in place.
These biofuels fulfilled only 4% of the EU's energy needs in 2003; the target is to replace 5.75% of all transport fossil fuels with biofuels by 2010.
In the soils and trees on their land, farmers also "lock up" the carbon dioxide which causes climate change , and wind power from farms also replaces climate damaging fossil fuels.
The timber from farms replaces concrete and other materials whose manufacture is highly polluting. Food production is the farmer's primary role, but defences against flooding can also be provided , by allowing land by coasts and rivers to absorb rising water levels, and keep it away from towns and villages.
Farming itself contributes 10% of the EU's climate changing greenhouse gas emissions, but it is one of the few sectors which holds out real hope for combating emissions, and becoming "climate neutral."
This is the buzz-word: for example, organisers of the 2006 FIFA World Cup aim to stage the first ever climate-neutral finals. Already, the German Football Association is to invest 500,000 in an aid program in a region of India seriously affected by the tsunami disaster, including farming measures which will compensate for one third of the 100,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions forecast to be generated in Germany by increased traffic volumes at the finals.
Farming is the main source of biomass, such as grass, trees, leaves (or even municipal waste), that can be burned instead of fossil fuel, to generate electricity.
The use of biomass in the EU-25 has risen to 68.8 million tonnes of oil equivalent in 2003 from 46.8 million tonnes in 1993.
Here in Ireland, forestry growers are looking at heating their own homes and also selling firewood or wood chips for energy generating.
But farmers cannot play their role if they have been driven off the land by low profitability, as has happened in the vast tracts of Spain and Portugal which burned up this summer.
Here in Ireland, only one in five farms is now sustained solely by farming, and beef and dairy farming profits are heading south.
The EU has left farmers in a very vulnerable position, depending on non-index linked decoupled payments from Brussels, subject to review in 2008 or 2009.
More and more are turning their backs on farming in Europe, deterred by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair's anti-CAP stance.
He wants more spending on technology, less on farming.
But no technology can make up for the environmental consequences of an empty countryside.
