The government has released a new climate change report, calling for any new agricultural policy introduced post-Brexit to include measures to ensure reductions in agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Parliament’s Climate Change Committee’s report (‘Meeting Carbon Budgets – Implications of Brexit for UK climate policy’) shows that since the passage of the UK’s Climate Change Act in 2008 industry and power generators have achieved cuts in greenhouse gas emissions of around 50%, and the waste industry has cut emissions by a huge 80%.
In that period, agricultural emissions do not appear to have dropped at all.
The Committee’s Director said that if the current voluntary approach to cutting farming emissions does not deliver, other steps will be needed.
Lord Krebs, Chair of the Climate Change Committee’s Adaptation Subcommittee agreed with the sustainable environmental charity Soil Association that the UK needs to see more sustainable management of soils, to build the carbon content of soils.
He said that any new support for farming post-Brexit should ensure that public subsidies ‘bring to the fore’ incentives to save carbon.
Peter Melchett, Soil Association Policy Director said: “The ambitious new targets agreed at the Paris climate summit, which comes into force on 4 November, will require further cuts in UK emissions if we are to keep global temperature changes below 2 degrees centigrade, with zero carbon emissions from farming after 2050.
“Government scientists have long recognised this will require a revolution in farming, and it is vital that any post-CAP payments to farmers start to encourage that transition”.
