The record-breaking hot and dry summer in Europe in 2018 triggered a public debate on climate change, and at the same time dealt a heavy blow to farmers. The German grain harvest is expected to be 19% lower than the average of the past three years, and many farmers are now questioning whether they can sustain their cattle through the winter.
In August, farmers demanded state compensation, but this brought the debate back to climate change—some critics loudly questioned whether modern intensive agriculture and monoculture might not be suitable for extreme weather brought about by climate change. They also pointed out that all economic sectors are required to help achieve Germany's goal of approaching carbon neutrality by 2050, and that agriculture, which accounts for 7% of German greenhouse gases, must also be changed.
The German Minister of Agriculture Julia Klöckner came to defend the farmers. "In this case, one thing we shouldn't do is tell farmers'you are responsible for climate change'," she said in August. "Climate change is a global phenomenon. [...] Agriculture is also part of the solution."
In its 2050 Climate Action Plan, the government expects that the agricultural sector will reduce its annual carbon dioxide emissions of 65 million tons by 34-31% in 1990. Although a completely zero-emission agricultural sector will never be possible, Germany must find a way to make changes in this regard to achieve its goals and comply with the Paris Climate Agreement.
But which measures will be the most effective? The sector’s highly diversified emission sources and its competitive emphasis on other environmental aspects of agriculture (such as biodiversity) make choices unclear. Changes in reducing emissions in one region may eventually generate emissions in another region. For example, reducing livestock may lead to purchases from abroad, or turning cultivated land into grassland may cause food shortages in the future, if climate change reduces crop yields-the heat wave of last summer triggered this specter.
Global agricultural emissions account for 11% of total emissions. The situation is similar in many developed countries, the United States (2016) is 9%, and France, which has the largest agricultural sector in Europe, is as high as 17% (2017). Since 1990, agricultural emissions in the United States and France have both risen or stabilized, while Germany has fallen by nearly 18%. This is mainly due to the closure of many farms in eastern Germany after reunification.
"Compared to the energy or industrial sectors, agriculture emits very little emissions-that doesn't mean we still can't get better," a member of the Christian Democratic Party (CDU) where Prime Minister Angela Merkel is a member Klöckner said in August.
But the broader view of the food supply chain shows a different picture. According to the Ministry of Environment, a typical German diet produces about 1.75 tons of carbon dioxide per person per year, which is almost as high as traffic emissions. Emissions from the food supply chain (including crops and animal farming (in Germany and abroad), fertilizer production, cargo transportation, food retail, and food preparation) account for 25% of Germany’s total greenhouse gas emissions, although not all of them are emitted in Germany. The calculations were performed by the Agricultural Policy, Food and Consumer Health Protection Scientific Advisory Committee (WBAE) and Forest Policy Scientific Advisory Committee (WBW).
In the agricultural sector, specific measures to achieve emission reduction targets have long been difficult to determine. This is partly because the sector’s emissions are very diverse-from animal husbandry, farmland, marshland and the use of mineral fertilizers, just to name some of the main sources of greenhouse gases. In addition, in public debate, other agricultural issues often exceed agricultural emissions-such as the large-scale use of single crops or monocultures, and the loss of biodiversity.
The greening measures (such as crop diversification, fallow land, buffer zones, harvesting crops, and maintaining permanent grassland) and organic farming methods introduced by the European Union in 2014 are mainly aimed at protecting natural resources and biodiversity and improving the conditions of animal husbandry. Almost as an afterthought, they are also automatically understood as "good for the climate", although the entire agricultural subsidy system is not in line with climate or environmental protection goals at all. Lischka) Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU) said.
"When defining some greening measures at the European level, the focus is on controllability rather than practicality."
The German Farmers Association (Deutscher Bauernverband – DBV) stated that environmental measures in EU agricultural policy “could have achieved more results”. "But the red tape and the lack of flexibility and tolerance of agricultural enterprises make certain greening measures impossible to apply." “When defining some greening measures at the European level, the focus is on controllability rather than practicality,” said Steffen Pingen, head of the DBV Environment Department.
The idea of using the same measures to protect natural resources and mitigate climate change at the same time seems to be the perfect solution. But a closer look will reveal trade-offs and conflicts of interest.
Although environmentalists and climate activists hope to change Germany’s meat production and export practices, stop large-scale imports of soybeans and more organic agriculture, traditional farmers and government consultants insist that only intensive agricultural practices can produce carbon. Food with a smaller footprint. They say that reducing German production will not benefit the growing global population or will only lead to the transfer of production abroad (carbon leakage).
Another point of contention is the impact of bioenergy on the climate. Farmers emphasize the reduction in carbon dioxide emissions brought about by the increase in crops planted for power generation, claiming that this will help curb climate change. There are approximately 9,000 biogas plants in Germany, usually run by farmers, and account for 7% of Germany's electricity generation. On the other hand, many environmental and climate activists question its positive climate impact (depending on the types of energy crops and where they are produced), and criticize monoculture and land consumption for inedible crops. In 2016, the government saw an intensification of conflicts over land for food crops, grassland or energy plants, and stopped further increases in biogas power generation.
(Please refer to the CLEW file on German bioenergy here.)
37.5% (24.5 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2016) of agricultural emissions directly come from methane emissions from German farmed animals, mainly from cattle and dairy cows. Other livestock such as pigs and poultry do not emit much directly (unlike dairy cows, they are not ruminants and do not emit a lot of methane), but they emit emissions through the land used for breeding, barn emissions, and manure.
Environmentalists want to reduce the size of Germany's livestock industry, preferably combined with rising meat prices and reduced exports. The heat wave of last summer severely restricted the harvest of hay and corn, causing farmers to consider reducing the number of herds. This move was welcomed by environmentalists.
(See the CLEW article on meat consumption and agricultural exports here.)
In fact, meat consumption in Germany is declining, which provides another reason to reduce livestock raising. However, neither the government nor the farmers association has taken steps to promote vegetarianism. “It is not a successful strategy to patronize German consumers and tell them to change their preferences in eating meat,” said Steffen Pingen, head of DBV's environmental department. "Our goal is to produce agricultural products in a climate-efficient manner as much as possible."
Farmers said that the Climate Action Plan 2050 did not mention reducing the number of cattle, but mainly through improved efficiency and voluntary best practice rules on how to raise and raise dairy cows and cattle, the livestock industry’s emissions are expected to be reduced.
At the same time, German farmers produce more meat than the people of the country eat. The overall self-sufficiency rate for beef in Germany averaged 108% (2013-2015), 118% for pork, and 125% for dairy products.
The climate activists of the German Observatory not only pointed out domestic consumption of meat and dairy products, but also pointed out that Germany's large export of animal products and related imported feeds, such as soybeans, are the main sources of greenhouse gas emissions.
According to 2015 WTO data, Germany is the world's third largest exporter and importer of agricultural products. Since 2000, imports and exports have continued to grow. One third of Germany’s agricultural exports. The Ministry of Agriculture implements a strategy that is conducive to exports and received 8.8 million euros in support in 2017.
According to calculations by consulting companies adelphi and systain, Germany currently uses about 22 million hectares of land worldwide for its food retail trade.
The German Ministry of Agriculture reports that approximately 27% of the original protein required by German farm animals is provided by soybean products, of which 75% is imported, mainly from South America. From 1997 to 2018, the amount of land used to grow soybeans worldwide almost doubled. In 2010, Germany used approximately 6.4 million hectares of soybeans abroad to raise livestock, accounting for 130 million hectares of the world.
Steffen Pingen of the German Farmers Association stated that no German farmers produce products specifically for export-but since the world market for agricultural products determines prices, they must still be competitive there. Since more efficient farming methods can reduce emissions per unit of food, German farmers believe that if everything is grown in the best place (that is, where natural conditions are favorable), it is good for the climate. "This is why wheat should be grown in Germany and soybeans in South America," Pingen said, and the Ministry of Agriculture supports this view in this report.
Harald Grethe, professor of international agricultural trade and development at Humboldt University in Berlin and chairman of WBAE, pointed out that food that Germany no longer exports must be grown elsewhere. If it is grown on grasslands or prairies, it may lead to an increase in overall emissions or previous forest areas. . "But of course, if the Germans switch to a more sustainable diet, then the existing arable land can be farmed less densely and can be cultivated in a more climate-friendly way."
(For more information on emissions from livestock and food exports, see this CLEW article.)
Cultivated land is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the German agricultural sector. They emit about 26 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (40%) laughing gas (N2O) each year, mainly due to the use of synthetic fertilizers. Laughing gas is 300 times more harmful to the climate than carbon dioxide.
Reinhild Benning, senior consultant for agriculture and animal husbandry at Germanwatch, said that the solution is to grow more legumes at home, such as beans, clover or lupins, which are typical sources of protein. Substituting imported soybeans can not only reduce freight emissions and help protect the forests and savannas of South America, but also reduce the need for synthetic fertilizers due to its natural nitrogen fixation capabilities.
WBAE stated that restricting synthetic fertilizers (nitrogen) can reduce annual emissions of 5.8 million carbon dioxide equivalents (65 million tons from the agricultural sector). This can be achieved by improving production technology, better planning the use of fertilizers, and optimizing farming methods to achieve a similar harvest using less fertilizer.
However, the WBAE report found that legumes, as part of the government's "Protein Plant Strategy", earn 6 million euros per year, and they can only help prevent global warming if they do not replace more productive plants such as corn or wheat.
In terms of restricting the use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, Germany has not complied with its own N2O emission reduction targets. By 2010, the nitrogen surplus should be reduced to 80 kg of nitrogen per hectare (kg/ha), but in recent years it has been close to 100 kg/ha or higher. The target for 2030 is 70 kg/ha. "The latest reforms of the fertilizer law are not ambitious enough," said Benning of German Observer. "For the government, climate and water protection don't seem to be as important as meat and milk exports."
Because synthetic fertilizers are not allowed, organic farmers who use beans, intercropping, and more frequent crop rotations say their farming methods are more climate-friendly, and the same is true for laughing gas emissions and other soil emissions.
The German government has set a goal for 2030, which is 20% of the cultivated land under organic farming. In 2016, the share was 7.5%. With a revenue of 9.48 billion euros in 2016, Germany is Europe's largest organic food market, but its market share is still only 4%.
Organic farmers adopt more diversified crop rotation methods and prohibit the use of herbicides, pesticides and artificial fertilizers. Gentle farming methods and crop selection help build a layer of humus in the soil, which is called a carbon sink.
The “Fourths per Thousand” initiative joined by Germany at the 2015 United Nations Climate Summit in Paris aims to increase soil carbon storage by 4% every year to offset the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Germanwatch's Benning said that because of the adoption of sustainable methods, organic farms emit much less greenhouse gases than traditional agricultural operations.
But WBAE's government advisers said that this is only partially correct. Although reduced use of mineral fertilizers, more legumes in crop rotation, smaller cattle herds, and grassland protection through outdoor animal husbandry generally result in a significant reduction in emissions per hectare, the carbon footprint of organic products is not always greater. small.
Scientists write that because organic farmers produce fewer crops and meat per hectare, only those farms with a high proportion of legumes and 80% of traditional farms can truly achieve a smaller carbon footprint. They concluded that generally “organic agriculture cannot be recommended as a climate protection measure”.
However, in the same year of the WBAE report, the Ministry of Environment issued recommendations stating that organic foods generally have a smaller carbon footprint.
On the other hand, studies listed by the World Wide Fund for Nature show that 100% organic agriculture in the EU will reduce emissions from this sector by 35%. The organization said that combined with mild farming techniques, organic agriculture can transform Germany's soil from a net emitter to a net sink of carbon.
The yield of organic farms is about 25% lower than that of traditional farms. The Farmers Association believes this is another reason why expanding organic agriculture for climatic purposes is not a viable method.
"If we don't reduce our food consumption, it means that only organic farms need 20% to 30% more land to grow the same amount of food. Using more land will lead to more greenhouse gas emissions," Grethe of WBAE explain.
But even WBAE said that grassland can store up to 50% more carbon dioxide than farmland. Organic farmers usually protect grassland better. They use grassland to graze animals and harvest their own feed, especially clover.
Since 1991, instead of protecting this precious carbon sink, Germany has lost more than 600,000 hectares of grassland, mainly due to increased demand for bioenergy (biogas and biofuel) and fodder plants such as corn and rapeseed. According to WBAE, this results in annual greenhouse gas emissions of 25-3.1 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.
Farmers see the growing of energy crops and their increased use for power generation as a contribution to climate action. However, the government saw an intensification of conflicts over land for food crops, grassland or energy plants, and in 2016 stopped further increases in biogas power generation.
In order to reduce land competition between solar panels and farmland, large-scale ground installation systems can usually only be installed on land that is not suitable for farming.
(Please refer to the CLEW file on German bioenergy here.)
Once lost, the grassland sink is difficult to recover, because it may take up to 200 years to restore the carbon dioxide-rich humus layer. Therefore, the most climate-related action is to protect the remaining grasslands, WBAE concludes.
Although the surface area of grassland has increased since 2013, environmentalists say that agricultural subsidies in Germany and Europe will not help solve the problem. In order to protect the remaining grasslands, Brussels prohibits the conversion of any permanent grasslands into farmland. If grassland has not been part of the farm's crop rotation for five years or more, then it is considered permanent-this is why even environmentally conscious farmers cultivate pasture every five years. "From a climate point of view, this is completely crazy. But how can I explain to my grandchildren that I basically lost the arable land they might need in the future and turned into a permanent grassland?" Ask the organic farmer and the Green Party Member of Parliament Friedrich Ostendorf.
Grethe said it is clear that farmers will demand compensation for the restrictions on allowing large amounts of land to be cultivated. But even under existing rules, Germany can use EU agricultural subsidies to take measures such as "grazing premium" to reward farmers for using their pastures to graze, thereby protecting these areas, he said.
A very similar problem affects swamps and peatlands. Dry peat releases carbon. Although only 5% of Germany's farmland uses marshes, these drainage areas release 50% of soil-related greenhouse gas emissions and 5% of Germany's total emissions.
Researchers and the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (BfN) suggest that in addition to preventing the existing peatlands from being drained and cultivated, the drained areas can be restored and become carbon sinks again. Another option is to use intensively used former peatlands as moist, expansive grasslands, despite the low carbon absorption potential, which can still be used as grazing land or harvesting hay.
But land competition is fierce. "Restricting the amount of land that farmers can cultivate by requiring the use of extensive farming, the restoration of marshes, or the conversion to permanent grassland will definitely mean a loss for farmers, or even deprivation," DBV's Pinggen said. In addition, farmers stated that this may lead to carbon leakage problems-if the food produced in Germany is reduced, production will be transferred abroad and may lead to higher emissions.
A compromise might be to completely protect the existing marshes and only partially restore the former peatlands so that they can still be used as pastures.
Climate-friendly farming methods can be used for livestock raising, crop planting, and peat soil and grassland. But farmers in Germany are rarely obliged to follow these best practices. In the absence of specific rules or incentives for running climate-friendly operations, their main concern is economic well-being, or in many cases just the survival of their farms.
For traditional farmers, every new “greening” rule, every new obligation to improve animal welfare or more conservative fertilizer use means that income may decrease, whether through different land use, mandatory investment or A more time-consuming procedure.
Angelika Lischka of NABU said that farmers regret the bureaucracy of environmental protection and the fact that these measures have little reward but only compensation for losses.
Approximately 38% of the EU budget is used to subsidize the agricultural sector in Europe. In 2016, each German farm received an average of 15,300 euros in subsidies, depending on how much land they own. A few large farms (14.5%) received more than 60% of total direct payments.
Both the European Union and the German government believe that this is necessary to ensure that Europe produces enough food for its population and does not rely on imports.
Both say that "public funds should be used for public goods", which means that subsidies should be used to benefit the entire society through healthy food and an ecologically balanced and climate-friendly environment.
Recently, greening rules have been added to the EU's 58.8 billion euros (2018) Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), a complex subsidy distribution system. Since 2014, 30% of regional subsidies under the CAP have been linked to compulsory measures, such as crop diversification, maintaining permanent grasslands, or using 5% of arable land as “ecological priority areas”. However, not only can farmers choose the simplest and least effective measures, the evaluation of greening policies shows that the resulting environmental and climate protection effects are minimal.
"A large part of these subsidies are flat rates and not targeted. Germany uses about 5 billion euros in EU subsidies, which are only paid directly to farmers based on the area of arable land," Grete said.
If subsidies flow to large recipients of meat production for export purposes, if they use soybean feed imported from Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay, where former carbon sinks such as forests or savannahs become fields, then hundreds of these Ten thousand dollars in subsidies are lacking from the German Observer Reinhild Benning said that the farm uses fewer animals and regional feed to ensure animal welfare and climate protection.
Grethe said that in order to reform the system, the idea that all payments should be rewards for the environment, climate, and other social services must be more deeply rooted.
Protecting or restoring swamps and grasslands are the two most effective but also the most expensive emission reduction measures in the agricultural sector. WBAE researchers calculated that reducing the use of mineral fertilizers is not cheap, but other efforts, especially those related to changing dietary habits, may be cost-neutral and may even save consumers money.
At the same time, the changing climate will also incur costs, especially through more frequent extreme weather events. Due to the rising average temperature, Germany is expected to maintain a benign and favorable climate, and even better growth conditions for certain plants.
But in the summer of 2003, German farmers reported that they had lost 600 million euros due to the drought. This happened again in 2018 and they demanded 1 billion euros in compensation, indicating that Germany's drought resistance may be limited. In other years, excessive rainfall caused problems.
Professor Frank Ewert of NABU and the Leibniz Agricultural Landscape Research Center (ZALF) said that the same formula that reduces agricultural emissions can make farmers more resilient. Evert said in an interview: “When growing more types of crops, farmers will always have crops that are more resistant to extreme weather than other crops.”
NABU President Olaf Tschimpke said in a press release that reducing animal husbandry and raising prices to reasonable levels also helps minimize the risk of extreme weather effects.
Other adaptation measures may be the introduction of (drip irrigation) irrigation to offset the reduction in summer rainfall (approximately minus 21% by 2100), mild soil cultivation methods or new heat-resistant crops. However, a 2012 study by the German Environment Agency (UBA) found that all of these may incur investment and/or operating costs, and may not achieve a sufficiently high or stable harvest.
Since most of the agricultural subsidies and rules are determined by the European Union, all eyes will be focused on Brussels in the next two years, when the next CAP funding period of 2021-2027 will be decided on a budget of 365 billion euros. Following the poor performance of the last greening policy, the European Commission’s June 2018 proposal referred to “a new'condition' system [the system] linking all farmers’ income support with the application of environmentally and climate-friendly agricultural practices” . The document stated that with this, 40% of the total CAP budget is “expected to be used for climate action”.
"Unfortunately, no one knows what this 40% target actually means or how it is calculated," Angelika Lischka from NABU told Clean Energy Line, which is an assessment shared by the farmers' association.
Benning of Germanwatch is worried about the worst and wants the best results. "Agricultural Commissioner Phil Hogan basically said that each country can choose what climate action measures it will take. But setting goals without clearly linking each euro to a specific climate service has failed. "she says.
Both Germanwatch and NABU have issued their new CAP proposals, which require strict restrictions on subsidies and climate action in agriculture, as well as rewards (payments) to farmers who choose ecologically beneficial methods (such as agricultural natural payments or ANP).
While participating in the EU-level CAP reform process, the German government reduced its domestic work on agriculture and climate policy. In the autumn of 2019, the Minister of Agriculture hopes to propose a new farming strategy; by 2021, the government hopes to propose an overall strategy on how to reduce emissions from the German livestock industry. As a key area in the 2050 Climate Action Plan, agriculture must also be included in the climate protection law to be passed in 2019.
Affected by the summer drought, farmer Friedrich Ostendorff felt that his colleagues were deeply concerned about extreme weather. "The only benefit is that the farmers talk to each other again-just because they don't know what to do," he told Clean Energy Line.
WBAE's Grethe said: "If politicians provide the necessary rules and rewards, farmers will have a high willingness to operate in a more climate-friendly way."
At the end of August 2018, the Minister of Agriculture Julia Klöckner declared the summer drought a “national weather event”. "Climate change has arrived," she said at a press conference, and she provided 340 million euros in compensation to 10,000 farms whose survival was threatened. The reason is: "The farmers who literally produce our means of survival are not just any department."
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