Agriculture’s role in fight against global warming
Farmers can reduce carbon emissions by reducing or conserving tillage, fertilising with livestock manure, reducing livestock numbers, and cutting their fuel and power use.
They could be compensated for these actions by governments, or companies which are over-polluting could purchase carbon credits off them.
The price of carbon credits rose to record levels last week, and carbon trading could be lucrative for some farmers, if permitted. But there could eventually be added costs for farmers with high emissions.
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which regulates carbon emission trading, has allowed certain types of afforestation (for the first time in 50 years), re-forestation since 1989, re-vegetation, and crop land and grazing land management to give rise to carbon credits.
In Ireland, total greenhouse gas emissions from the land will be reduced by 14.9% in the long run, according to new projections by Professor Alan Matthews and Dr Janine Dixon of Trinity College, Dublin based on their prediction of Irish cattle output falling 15.4%, sheep 15.5%, and cereals 41.8%, within seven years, due to decoupling of EU aid to farmers.
Planting 14,000 hectares of forest per annum is also expected to help Ireland meet emission targets. Further savings can be made if a secure supply of biomass can be economically used to replace more polluting power sources in Irish industries.
