Farmers Face Growing Climate Change Dilemma: Scientist
Date: 27-Mar-09
Country: SINGAPORE
Author: David Fogarty, Climate Change Correspondent, Asia
Farmers Face Growing Climate Change Dilemma: Scientist Photo: Michaela Rehle
A
Bavarian farmer, followed by his cows, walk along a street near Bad
Hindelang, about 160km (100 miles) south of Munich September 11, 2008.
Photo: Michaela Rehle
SINGAPORE - Farmers of the future will have to use cattle and sheep that
belch less methane, crops that emit far less planet-warming nitrous oxide
and become experts in reporting their greenhouse gas emissions to the
government.
Agriculture is a major source of greenhouse gases and globally that share
will rise as demand for food from growing human populations also increases,
scientist Richard John Eckard of the University of Melbourne said on
Thursday.
But farmers are facing a near-impossible challenge: feeding the world while
trying to trim emissions and adapt to greater extremes of droughts and
floods because of global warming, he said.
In coming years, farmers will have to monitor and report emissions as more
nations move toward emissions trading.
"We want agriculture to feed the world. We want farmers to be viable and
continue to increase the rate of productivity growth. At the same time,
we're telling them they are going to face a more harsh climate they need to
adapt to.
"On top of that you impose a policy that you can now only emit a fraction of
the emissions that you were emitting," he told Reuters from Perth, Western
Australia, during a climate change conference.
Eckard said research into ways of trimming those emissions while maintaining
production growth was not advanced enough.
Australia, a major beef, dairy, wheat and wool producer, is aiming to launch
the world's most sweeping emissions trading scheme from mid-2010.
Emissions from agriculture will be exempt until at least 2015 in part
because technology to curb farm emissions is still in its infancy but also
because adding costs to farmers is unpopular.
But the government has said it is determined to tackle emissions from
agriculture one way or another because they comprise 16 percent the nation's
total. In New Zealand, about half of national emissions come from
agriculture.
CLEVER CATTLE, SMART CROPS
Methane, which is about 20 times more powerful at warming the atmosphere
than carbon dioxide, comes from the stomachs of ruminants, such as cattle
and sheep. Nitrous oxide, about 310 times more powerful than CO2, comes from
the soil in wheat, maize, rice and sugar cane crops.
Eckard, who also works for the Victorian state government, said Australia
had launched a national effort to find ways of tackling methane and nitrous
oxide (N2O) emissions.
He leads a team that focuses mainly on intensive livestock systems and N2O
emissions from wheat and grazing.
He said steps under development in Australia included dietary supplements
and vaccines that curb methane production in livestock, as well as improving
the rate, source and timing of nitrogen fertilizer use.
"We've evaluated oils and found out that for every one percent extra oil we
put in the diet of a ruminant you get about a six percent reduction in
methane," he said, referring to cottonseed and canola oil.
There was also a major project to breed a super variety of sheep and beef
and dairy cattle that need less food to grow.
Scientists are also developing crop varieties that need less water and
nitrogen fertilizer, Eckard said.
(Editing by Valerie Lee)
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