Farming

Britain’s farmers and growers have a crucial role to play in combating climate change, and are ready and willing to rise to the challenge, says the NFU.

In a response to the report by Sir Nicholas Stern, published today, Monday, NFU President Peter Kendall said the farming industry would be in total agreement with his message that only action today will avoid a catastrophe tomorrow.

“My over-riding ambition is for British agriculture to be part of the solution to climate change, not part of the problem”, said Mr Kendall.

“That will require maximising the positive contributions farming can make to climate change on the one hand, and minimising the negative impacts on the other.

“On the positive side, the potential to replace fossil fuels by bio-energy is immense.

“We can grow biomass for sustainable heat and power; we can process biogas from our farm wastes; and, of course, we can produce biofuels from crops like oilseed rape and wheat.

“Even after allowing for the cost of harvesting, processing and transportation, bio-fuels still yield net savings of 70 per cent in greenhouse gas emissions compared with fossil fuels. The Government’s Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation, which requires oil companies to use a minimum of 5 per cent of bioethanol or biodiesel in their fuels by 2010 will reduce CO2 emissions in Britain by two million tonnes.

“And by producing the raw materials for biofuels sustainably in the UK, we can avoid the environmental damage associated with imported biofuels, such as palm oil.”

Mr Kendall said the NFU was one hundred per cent behind proposals in a leaked letter from Environment Secretary David Miliband to the Chancellor Gordon Brown to offer tax breaks for anaerobic digesters, which reduce greenhouse gas emissions from livestock waste, and precision farming equipment, which allows crops to be grown with maximum energy efficiency.

He argued this approach could usefully be extended to other aspects of the climate change equation, such as tax breaks to encourage the use of flex-fuel vehicles capable of using high blends of biofuels.

He said: “I am a confirmed believer that, when it comes to changing patterns of human behaviour – which is what this will all boil down to – carrots work better than sticks.

“We will achieve far more by incentivising farmers and growers to reduce the negative impact that farming has on climate change than by threatening them with new taxes or yet more controls.

“The success of the Voluntary Initiative in improving the efficiency with which crop protection chemicals are used has provided us with a blueprint for achieving the maximum reduction in the so-called diffuse pollution that David Miliband refers to in his letter to Gordon Brown.

“It also has the crucial benefit of having the minimum impact on the productive potential of farming, which will be of such vital importance in meeting our needs for both energy and food.”