Haber fertiliz nitro BS
12 23 CONVERT TO MORANO BS
SEE HOLLAND DUTCH
INCLUDES AGRIBIZ GENERIC FERT KOCH
see uber1: https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/6950F840-FB80-FCB0-D505-8AB1FA685F08#-1516
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AN 3 26 FARM
'Lost all hope': Trump policies are crushing food industry in Republican heartland
Trump-loving farmers threaten 'to quit' as president’s war spikes fertilizer prices
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7 25 kelly the first morano BS
penn itit AO power black rock guy said grn energy can’t do it; opp zone // jack kemp blue collar ---; will ai ~ us w/ change of prez; nuke, gates; coal gas; bright spot of AI “useless eaters” am renn enterprise zones; cliate nutters losing , also int’l; no pushback on trump mille argentina, netherland farm throw manure; getty fdn bill gates, branson? media corps AP NPR, crap studies, vanilla ive cream gone; comb public health and climate japan gas carcinogen; even cda carney vs trudeau puppet of of--- WEC zero out carbon tax for time being [tariff?] no pushback; mtg trump EPA wash mtg; award most conseq cab; endangerment, UN climate agenda, Rio, permanent changes vs term 1; hassled in restaurant by cli activists.
Feb. 9, 2024,
Koch Industries’ Fertilizer Plant Purchase Sparks Antitrust Plea
Danielle Kaye
Reporter
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- Koch’s $3.6 billion deal prompts lawmaker letter to DOJ, FTC
- Iowa Democrats flag potential harm to workers, farmers
Iowa state lawmakers are highlighting potential harm to workers from Koch Industries Inc.‘s $3.6 billion acquisition of a fertilizer plant in the state.
All 36 Democratic state representatives this week called on the Federal Trade Commission, the Justice Department, and Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird (R) to examine how the purchase could further entrench Koch’s market power, posing the risk of not only higher fertilizer prices but also job losses.
Their plea could be buoyed by the federal agencies’ new focus on labor markets when assessing deals. The federal government has scrutinized consolidation in the agricultural industry, and particularly probed how mergers and acquisitions affect labor markets.
“They’re definitely paying more attention to labor market effects of mergers and other types of business behavior that might be anticompetitive,” said Eric Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School who advised the DOJ’s Antitrust Division on labor issues last year. “If this is the type of merger that would reduce the number of employers in a labor market, like a city or rural area in which people commute, then it would definitely be a concern to the FTC and DOJ.”
This week, the FTC condemned Microsoft Corp.‘s plans to cut 1,900 jobs from its video game division following its acquisition of Activision Blizzard Inc. The DOJ has also opened an investigation into the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center over alleged abuse of its labor market dominance, according to reporting from the Capitol Forum, following a complaint filed by unions last summer.
President Joe Biden’s 2021 executive order to bolster competition specifically identifies concentrated market power in agricultural input industries—including fertilizer—as a threat to farmers’ livelihoods, suggesting the letter from state lawmakers could capture regulators’ attention.
Labor and Monopoly
Along with questions about short and long-term fertilizer costs for farmers, Iowa Democrats say Koch has yet to disclose whether the roughly 250 fertilizer plant workers could risk losing their jobs as a result of the acquisition.
Consolidation in agriculture is “squeezing farmers, it’s suppressing workers, and consumers are having to pay the most they ever have for groceries,” said Iowa State Rep. J.D. Scholten (D), who spearheaded a letter to the agencies on Feb. 5. “We as a society need to start judging some of these mergers.”
The labor movement “goes hand in hand with the anti-monopoly movement,” Scholten said. A federal probe would put a “huge spotlight” on the fertilizer deal, he added.
Herbert Hovenkamp, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School focused on antitrust law, said federal antitrust enforcers are more aggressively scrutinizing mergers over labor impacts. But regulators must distinguish job losses resulting from violations of antitrust law from those that constitute lawful elimination of duplication in the wake of a merger or acquisition.
“When the government says it’s opening up an investigation, that doesn’t mean it’s made up its mind—it means it wants more information,” Hovenkamp said, referring to the potential for federal agencies to probe the Koch deal.
$3.6 Billion Purchase
Koch Industries subsidiary Koch Ag & Energy Solutions announced in December its purchase of the Iowa Fertilizer Company plant in the town of Wever from Dutch chemical company OCI Global. Koch, the second-largest private company in the US, is one of five companies that dominate the US fertilizer market, according to Mordor Intelligence.
Koch Fertilizer spokesperson Greg Lemon said the acquisition is “consistent with the significant investments we have made in our business to increase production, improve reliability, and expand our customers’ access to the products and services they need.”
The FTC and DOJ under the Biden administration have focused on labor market impacts, a departure from past decades of a narrower focus on consumer welfare. New merger guidelines finalized by the agencies in December include, for the first time, the effect of corporate mergers on workers. The FTC’s proposed updates to its merger review process also require standard disclosures from deal-making companies on how their workers will be affected.
Iowa State Rep. Megan Srinivas (D) said the antitrust agencies’ focus on investigating labor impacts “coincides nicely” with the potential harm to workers lawmakers have identified in connection with the Koch acquisition. A key motivation for the letter was to ensure job opportunities for the Iowa workforce, she said.
In their letter, the Iowa lawmakers argued workers, farmers, consumers, and taxpayers could all be harmed by concentration of market power resulting from Koch’s fertilizer acquisition.
DOJ and FTC spokespeople confirmed both agencies received the lawmakers’ letter but declined to comment on whether they intend to take action.
The Iowa Fertilizer Company plant Koch plans to acquire was built with more than $100 million in state tax subsidies and additional federal tax benefits, according to news reports and government announcements. When the project was announced in 2012, state officials said it would promote competition against companies like Koch and benefit local farmers. Srinivas linked lawmakers’ push for an antitrust investigation to the plant’s reliance on taxpayer dollars.
“We owe it to our constituents and Iowans that we decide whether the previous tax incentives will now unfortunately be undermined in their intent,” Srinivas said.
Agriculture and environmental groups also urged the FTC and DOJ to investigate the deal in a letter to the agencies in January.
To contact the reporter on this story: Danielle Kaye in Washington at dkaye@bloombergindustry.com
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anna Yukhananov at ayukhananov@bloombergindustry.com; Michael Smallberg at msmallberg@bloombergindustry.com
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9 22 oversight BS shillenberger cut frack less fert (ukraine war grain stopped]
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[### Nitrogen wars: the Dutch farmers' revolt that turned a nation ...
The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com › environment › nov](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/16/nitrogen-wars-the-dutch-farmers-revolt-that-turned-a-nation-upside-down)
Nov 16, 2023 — The long read: In 2019, a looming crisis over pollution led the Dutch government to crack down on farm emissions. The response was furious ...
LONG READ
Nitrogen wars: the Dutch farmers’ revolt that turned a nation upside-down | Farming | The Guardian
...
:{
Conspiracy theorists seized on another part of the press release. Noting the contribution of housing and infrastructure to nitrogen emissions, it stated that “the government considers it important that the licensing of housing construction … does not come to a halt”. This statement seems to have been the basis for the idea, which took off on social media, that the government planned to replace Dutch farms with apartment buildings that would be used to house migrants from Turkey and the Middle East.
A former FvD candidate was invited on to Tucker Carlson’s Fox News programme, where she repeated this same conspiracy theory. (She wore a red bandana, a symbol of support for the protesters, tied around her neck.)}:
In 2022, as discontent with the government intensified, protesters showed up at the home of Christianne van der Wal, the new minister for nature and nitrogen policy (the element had been given its own cabinet post). Stepping out of her front door to confront the men in her driveway, she told them: “My children are inside shaking.” Undeterred, the protesters attacked a police van that had been sent to protect her. One night six months later, in a Ku Klux Klan-style protest, a group carried flaming torches to the home of another cabinet minister.
Alongside such violent actions, fierce but peaceful protest against the government continued. Farmers’ associations and feed companies supplied farmers with Dutch flags to be flown upside down as a sign of displeasure; along many rural roads, upside down flags were placed every 100 metres or so. Alongside their own upside-down flag, the Grins posted a sign on their lawn reading “We are fed up with this policy”.
This year, relations between the government and the agricultural sector have deteriorated further. In June, the largest farmers’ union dropped out of negotiations for an agreement over nitrogen policy, blaming the government’s intransigence. By then, the far right had successfully linked it to the refugee problem. Some rural municipalities wanted to select the nationality of refugees relocated in their communities.
...
---
[### Farmers on frontline as Dutch divided by war on nitrogen ...
The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com › environment › jun](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/25/farmers-on-frontline-as-dutch-divided-by-war-on-nitrogen-pollution)
Jun 25, 2023 — Government's buyout scheme is meeting fierce resistance from farmers in Netherlands.
[### EU okays $1.61 billion for Dutch government to buy out ...
Reuters
https://www.reuters.com › world › europe › eu-okays-1...](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-okays-161-bln-dutch-govt-buy-out-farmers-reduce-nitrogen-2023-05-02/)
May 3, 2023 — EU okays $1.61 billion for Dutch government to buy out farmers, reduce nitrogen. Reuters. May 3, 20234:02 AM PDTUpdated 8 months ago.
[### In the clash over Dutch farming, Europe's future arrives
Mongabay
https://news.mongabay.com › 2023/09 › in-the-clash...](https://news.mongabay.com/2023/09/in-the-clash-over-dutch-farming-europes-future-arrives/)
Sep 8, 2023 — Livestock-induced nitrogen emissions spurred the clash over the future of farming ... Dutch farmers' union, the Netherlands Agricultural and ...
MANY LNX SOME PIX
Mongabay Series: Covering the Commons, Planetary Boundaries
In the clash over Dutch farming, Europe’s future arrives
by Ashoka Mukpo on 8 September 2023
Despite months of protests by farmers and an electoral rebuke, the Dutch government has pressed ahead with an attempt to make its farming system more ecologically sustainable.
But there are deep divisions in the Netherlands over how extensive any reforms should be, and clashes over the role that new technologies should play in them.
This summer, talks over a potential consensus position between the Dutch government and the national farmers’ union collapsed in failure.
The clash between the continent’s green movement and its agricultural industry is building steam, with the EU’s flagship conservation law barely squeaking through parliament in June.
This is the third story in a three-part Mongabay miniseries on the Dutch nitrogen crisis and farmer protests of 2022: The Dutch, and European, green agenda crashes into the continent’s food systems. Read Part One and Part Two.
LEEUWARDEN, Netherlands — To a din of mooing and the occasional sound of urine hitting the floor, Kees de Koning strolled past a row of pens holding a dozen or so cows, their heads poking through the slats as they chewed on the feed piled below. Until its manufacturer took it back a few weeks earlier, this is where the “cow toilet” was.
“It’s a bit like a feed dispenser, on the back there’s a unit that closes down,” he explained in the matter-of-fact tone of a polished guide. “And that unit has a pissoir — how do you call it? A urinal. It closes from behind, and we start tickling the hind of the cow, just below the vulva. It’s more or less a hormonal process, and the cow starts peeing.”
With an encyclopedic knowledge of dairy farming in the Netherlands, de Koning is the managing director at Wageningen University & Research’s Dairy Campus in Leeuwarden. Here, in a sprawling complex of industrial barns housing around 500 cows, the future of Dutch dairy farming is being honed. The Dairy Campus is an academic research facility, but it’s also an important locus for the dairy industry. De Koning and his team design their experiments with the input of farmers’ organizations and share their findings with a wide group, including dairy companies and policymakers in The Hague.
The cow toilet, along with other new technologies being tested here, is part of an effort by the Dutch dairy industry to escape its nitrogen problem as painlessly as possible. By capturing urine before it mixes with the ubiquitous feces spread across the barn’s floor, the toilet’s inventors hope to reduce ammonia emissions. It’s not the only potential solution under development. De Koning points to the barn’s ceiling, where industrial sprinklers will be part of an upcoming test of another system meant to wash urine into containers below the floor.
Kees de Konig, the director of Wageningen University's Dairy Campus in Leeuwarden, Netherlands.
:
With the industry facing pressure from the EU, technologies like these could potentially allow farmers to dodge the tougher approach that some policymakers have in mind: big cuts to the number of livestock in the Netherlands. De Koning, who himself was raised on a small dairy farm, is optimistic.
“I’ve seen the development of the industry into quite a success story. And I think it still is a success story,” he said. “I think you can use the same way of thinking that we did in past decades to overcome those challenges.”
Not everyone is so sure. Most ecologists are skeptical that there’s a technological quick fix to solve the stikstofkrisis, or nitrogen crisis. Ammonia emissions from livestock farming in the Netherlands, they say, have been at high levels for too long, and now the only way to save habitats on the brink is to reduce the nation’s herds of cows, pigs and chickens. Some of de Koning’s counterparts at Wageningen, one of the world’s premier agriculture research universities, have suggested that a deeper transition away from livestock farming, along with meat and dairy consumption as a whole, is unavoidable in the long run.
“I have some colleagues in the environmental sciences group who think the only solution for the future to save nature is to get rid of all cows … That’s quite an interesting way of thinking,” he said. “I don’t like it.”
Whether with cow toilet or cutbacks, the Netherlands has to dramatically slash its nitrogen emissions to stay in the EU’s good graces. And the questions being raised in the arguments over how to get there are familiar ones for the environmental movement. Who pays for a transition to a more sustainable system? Should the private sector be more harshly regulated? What happens to rank-and-file workers in polluting industries like intensive livestock farming?
How these questions shake out in the Netherlands, and where its powerful, 230-billion-euro ($248-billion) agricultural industry goes from here will have profound consequences for Dutch nature and society. If the past four years here are any guide for other countries facing their own ecological and climate reckonings, they would do well to prepare for a rough ride too.
A fork in the pasture
Livestock-induced nitrogen emissions spurred the clash over the future of farming in the Netherlands, but they’re not the only environmental problem facing Dutch agriculture. Pesticide and fertilizer runoff is damaging waterways, and despite falling in recent years, the sector is still responsible for 16% of Dutch carbon emissions. In a trend that’s among the worst in Europe, the number of farmland birds in the Netherlands has declined by 50% since 1960.
“The problem now is that we have this mono-focus on nitrogen, while the problem is much broader,” said Anne van Doorn, a specialist in agriculture and biodiversity at Wageningen. “I think we’ve strived for way too long for a lot of cheap food with very high production levels and a lot of animals.”
When the newly minted Farmers-Citizens Party, the BBB, rose to power in the Netherlands’ rural provinces earlier this year, it vowed to oppose key provisions of the government’s nitrogen plans, including mandatory buyouts of “peak emitters” and an overall halving of ammonia emissions by 2030. But the real problem for the party and its allies in the Dutch meat and dairy industry isn’t in The Hague; it’s in Brussels. EU regulations require protection for high-value conservation areas under the Europe-wide Natura 2000 network. If the Netherlands doesn’t come up with a viable plan to keep them from being further damaged by nitrogen emissions, it will face hefty fines.
For the most part, there’s consensus in the Netherlands that change is needed to protect the environment, especially when it comes to livestock farming. Even the powerful Dutch farmers’ union, the Netherlands Agricultural and Horticultural Association (LTO), says it “accepts its responsibility” to protect biodiversity and the climate.
But what kind of change, and how deep it should run, is far from settled.“The farming industry has been really successful in creating doubts and creating their own narrative about what actually is going on,” said Raoul Beunen of the Open University. “And they’re much more successful than nature conservation organizations and the government in influencing the narrative.”
To find a way forward after years of heated conflict, Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s cabinet, led by Agriculture Minister Piet Adama, initiated negotiations with the LTO and other industry representatives late last year. Nitrogen was just one of the issues on the table. Adama and other members of the cabinet hoped that despite the tensions, they could reach an “agricultural agreement” that would serve as a road map to a more sustainable future for the country’s farmers.
Rutte’s governing coalition set aside 24.3 billion euros ($26.2 billion) for the transition — a huge sum in a country with only 50,000 or so agricultural businesses. Around 7.5 billion euros ($8.1 billion) of that has already been earmarked for buying out up to 3,000 “peak emitter” farms, many located near nature reserves, at up to 120% of their value. What to spend the rest on is still up in the air. And environmental advocates are nervous.
“This really is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” said Roos Benard, a biodiversity campaigner at Greenpeace Netherlands. “There is so much money to really make a change, but will it all be spent on false solutions?”
One of the arguments is over how much of it will be used to fund technological innovation on existing farms. Those who support investments into research and development say technology has a track record of success, having already played a big role in reducing nitrogen emissions by more than half since the 1980s. Critics say that’s precisely the point: whatever gains could be made with improved barn filtration and floor slats are already on the books, and dreams of an eco-friendly techno miracle are just a way to keep the status quo intact.
“If you import [more] nitrogen than you export, you’re going to get accumulation,” said Wim van der Putten, a soil expert at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology. “The key problem is that agriculture is so intensive here … it can only be stopped by reducing the amount of animals.”
If the track record of recent farm innovations meant to reduce nitrogen emissions is any guide, there’s reason to be skeptical. A new study found that barn floors and stable belts designed to separate cow manure from urine are only about half as effective as their manufacturers claim.
“There is a kind of technological optimism that leads us into delay, and actually consolidation of existing power,” said Adam Calo, an assistant professor of environmental politics and governance at Radboud University. “And the [technologies] that do emerge and get funded are the ones that integrate nicely with the current model. A technology that would support agriculture with much less cows isn’t as appealing, right?”
Breaking the piggy bank
How much livestock the Netherlands should keep in five, 10 or 20 years is the burning question. Some agricultural researchers say that for farming to be truly “circular,” a state where it produces as little waste and pollution as possible, there will have to be far fewer livestock and a large reduction in meat consumption, not just here in the Netherlands, but in the wealthy world at large.
In models designed to promote recycling, some cows would remain; by feeding them food waste that would otherwise be trashed, a limited number of animals would actually boost efficiency. But their overall number would drop sharply.
“Right now, the only way to have a business model for a farm is to increase scale by lowering the costs per animal and product,” van Doorn said. “So, it’s a race to the bottom. The key to change this is to create agricultural systems that have less animals, more added value to the products, and for farmers to get paid to take care of the environment.”
But a transformation that large won’t come easy. Policymakers would have to win the support of farmers themselves — not an easy task in the climate of mistrust and, at times, outright hostility that’s come to define their relationship with The Hague.
Dutch farmers used to be much more integrated with the state, sitting on “production boards” where they helped shape agricultural policy. But when slashing the size of government became the preference du jour in The Hague, they were scrapped, along with other direct ties to the countryside.
“I was in the local board of [agricultural] extension services in the late ’70s and ’80s,” said Jan Slomp, a former dairy farmer. “I witnessed from the ’70s going forward that there was basically a 90% cutback in those services funded by government.”
Now, convincing farmers to exit the system they’ve grown used to, and which was imposed on them over decades, will take time and hard work. Ecologists and environmental advocates say they’re hopeful that with the right support and a communication reset, enough farmers might move toward nature-positive models to achieve a critical mass.
“There are lots of farmers who want to adapt their farm,” van Doorn said. “I’ve never spoken to a farmer who said ‘No, I don’t want to change.’ But they need the right conditions.”
One of those conditions, a crucial one, is ensuring the transition doesn’t ruin farmers financially. Shifting to nature-positive farming isn’t cheap, and it involves risk. For a while, many farms would likely be less profitable. Banks are well aware of this risk; a 2020 analysis found that financial institutions in the Netherlands are reluctant to hand out loans for investments in “innovative,” environmentally friendly farming practices.
If the deal is sweet enough, though, there’s reason to think many farmers would take the leap. In a 2022 study, when offered a combination of heavy loan packages with low interest rates, price guarantees, and subsidies, almost a quarter of surveyed Dutch dairy farmers said they’d adopt green practices. And success loves company; watching their neighbors survive the transition might inspire other farmers to change as well.
But a strategy like that would come with a hefty price tag, especially at the scale needed to transform the entire sector. Environmental advocates say it shouldn’t all fall on the public to fund it: banks, agrifood companies and supermarket chains that have grown fat with profits over the past 75 years should have to pony up as well.
“I think if the government makes clear that behind the nitrogen crisis, there are big corporations that have contributed to it and are still profiting from it, and also show their willingness to hold them accountable for their role and ask them to pay their fair share to finance a just transition, that could be a way out,” said Wouter Kolk, campaign leader at environmental group Milieudefensie.
Rabobank, which finances five out of six farmers in the Netherlands, says it’s committed to supporting a green transition for the agrifood sector. But the bank has said it will not cancel or modify existing loans to farmers already entrenched in intensive production systems.
In an email to Mongabay, Rabobank said it’s in favor of the government’s nitrogen plans, with farmers who score highly on ESG markers receiving interest rate cuts and support to “move to a more sustainable business model.” But writing down loans would violate financial regulations and endanger the bank’s health without addressing a core problem: a greener farming system means higher prices for consumers, and most aren’t willing to pay them.
“The revenue model of the Dutch farmer is not sufficient to invest in the necessary steps, as the parties further down the value chain, such as processors, retailers, and consumers, are not paying a higher price for sustainability,” said Joris Hoff, a spokesperson for Rabobank.
Wherever the money comes from, pulling off a transformation of Dutch farming would require cooperation across society, and a committed long-term approach by the government. But the last few months have been a bleak referendum on the Netherlands’ prospects there, along with, increasingly, the EU itself.
“My fear is that environmentally friendly policies will increasingly become these sorts of divisive issues, which in a democracy will result in deadlock at precisely the moment when deadlock is the thing we can least afford,” said Ewald Engelen of the University of Amsterdam.
Rabobank building
Rabobank is the largest financier of the Dutch agricultural system and holds most farmers’ debt. Image by Ashoka Mukpo / Mongabay.
A bull in the road for Europe’s green movement
After months of negotiations with Rutte’s cabinet, in late June the LTO announced that talks over the future of Dutch farming had hit a dead end and it was pulling out. The parties had reached an impasse over how many cows could be kept per hectare, and whether regulations on emissions were to be binding or voluntary.
For weeks, the negotiations had been teetering on a cliff, but now they had hit the rocks below.
“It does not lead to the restoration of trust between our industry and the government that we so desperately need,” the LTO chair said in a video message to the association’s members.
Reluctantly, Rutte’s cabinet said that with or without the LTO’s support, it would draw up and implement its own agricultural reform plan. But the collapse of the talks was an ominous sign for the government. A month later, embroiled in a dispute with members of his coalition over asylum policy, the longest-serving prime minister in Dutch history tendered his resignation. (Rutte remains head of the “caretaker” government until elections expected in November.)
Rutte’s resignation shocked most political observers. But not the BBB. Since their big win in March, party officials had been waiting for this moment, predicting the demise of the ruling coalition and telling reporters they expected parliamentary elections to be held before the end of the year.
Rutte’s government drowned in the quicksand of European migration policy, but years of nitrogen-related political gridlock had already weighed it down. For all its belated efforts to address the stikstofcrisis, Rutte’s cabinet will now leave office without having made a meaningful dent.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte resigned in June. Image by Alexandros Michailidis / Shutterstock.com.
The BBB says it’s ready to capitalize on that failure. According to recent polls, the party is currently in a three-way tie for the lead. There’s a not-unimaginable future where a year from now, the BBB’s leader, Caroline van der Plas, will have risen from complete obscurity to become the next prime minister of the Netherlands.
By one telling, the last four years in the Netherlands have been a warning sign for the global environmental movement. When plans to address biodiversity and climate change — whether through decarbonization, expansion of conservation areas, or agricultural reform — collide with people’s livelihoods and sense of place in the world, chaos can and will follow.
“Political scientists have already … predicted that the green transition will become a new political cleavage,” said Jeroen Candel, a political scientist at Wageningen.
Already, the Netherlands’ political miasma has begun to seep across its borders, a cloud descending onto other parts of Europe like ammonia from a megafarm. In the same week that Rutte resigned, the flagship conservation package of the EU’s “Green Deal,” the Nature Restoration Law, barely passed in a hotly contested vote in the European Parliament. For months, lobbyists for the agricultural industry had campaigned hard against the law. In the end, it squeaked through — but not before key provisions were gutted by their allies on the right.
Outside the vote, rival protesters faced off, holding placards and waving banners. On one side, Greta Thunberg stood with a crowd of youthful environmentalists, exhorting parliamentarians inside to “pass the strongest law possible.” On the other, farmers from 20 countries across the continent had gathered to demonstrate against it. Dozens had driven their tractors to the protest.
The Netherlands, known for its cheese wheels and stroopwafels, can now add a new EU export to its list.
“If there is some kind of main message of the Netherlands towards the world, it would be to act now,” said Kirsten Haanraads of WWF Netherlands. “The environmental and societal costs will be much higher and more painful if we wait too long, for farmers and citizens alike.”
Citation:
Koetse, M. J., & Bouma, J. A. (2022). Incentivizing a regime change in Dutch agriculture. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 44, 265-282. doi:10.1016/j.eist.2022.08.001
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https://townhall.com/columnists/mandygunasekara/
Mandy Gunasekara is a senior policy analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum and former Chief of Staff at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Articles
‘Not All Farmers Have a Future’ Is a Recipe for Famine
By Mandy Gunasekara
Farmers around the globe are feeling unfairly targeted and unfortunately, they are right. From the Netherlands to Ireland to Canada, ...
August 06, 2022
no lnx
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
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Farmers around the globe are feeling unfairly targeted and unfortunately, they are right. From the Netherlands to Ireland to Canada, nations are increasingly targeting their respective agriculture sectors under the banner of climate change. Going after farmers could not come at a worse time as the war in Ukraine has triggered an international food shortage, which one United Nations official recently stated is “threatening global hunger on an unprecedented scale.”
For example, the Netherlands, while a relatively small country, is the second-largest agricultural exporter in the world, the largest exporter of meat among all EU nations, and the third largest dairy exporter in the world. The Dutch climate proposal up for consideration would close up to 30% of their farms and force farmers to kill off livestock in order to comply with European Union (EU) environmental rules. When the newly created Dutch Minister for Nature and Nitrogen Policyannounced the plan, local farmers were given three options—(1) Comply; (2) Relocate; or (3) Shutdown. There was no sleight of hand, the government made it clear “there is not a future for all [Dutch] farmers within [this] approach.”
Dutch farmers are pushing back and have expressed anger at being unfairly targeted compared to other industries in their country. They are also frustrated that the proposal did not include more moderate alternatives to reduce nitrogen without putting farms out of business.
Similar scenarios are playing out elsewhere. After the Irish government made climate standards more stringent, one local farmer explained it “made whole classes of farms unviable.” Canadian farmers are worried Prime Minister Trudeau’s nitrogen reduction proposal will significantly cut yields to canola, corn, and spring wheat that are extremely important to global food supplies.
:{This is no coincidence and will likely expand. Extreme environmentalists have long agitated to transform the agriculture sector, especially livestock farmers, and the global diet in the process. At the United Nations, this concept is referred to as the Food System Transformation, which will develop “essential steps needed to transition to healthier, more sustainable food systems.”
This includes the establishment of an International Panel for Food System Science (IPFSS)—akin to a global food police—which would “provide support in justifying difficult or controversial decisions,” like shutting down livelihoods and exacerbating a food crisis.A future IPFSS would also be charged with reducing “misinformation” online as the quickest way to force acceptance of bad ideas is to quash dissent.& ...A key component of a global food transition is to reduce meat consumption, either by convincing people to become vegan or by purposefully limiting supply to consumers. The fact that livelihoods may be ruined—and some may starve in the process—is just a necessary part of this global transition to stop climate change, so the extremists say.}:
There are also efforts to create protein or meat alternatives including a push to make eating crickets mainstream. Ontario, Canada, will soon be home to the world’s largest insect farm owned by a company that cites the bugs as “an excellent-value protein at a fraction of the environmental impact.”
The Biden administration is also pushing these disastrous policies. Like a wolf in sheep's clothing, the innocuous-sounding “climate smart ag” hides a much more extreme agenda. Biden administration official Samantha Powers recently commented on ongoing fertilizer shortages, stating coldly that it may “hasten transitions that would have been in the interest of farmers to make eventually anyway” such as “natural solutions like manure and compost.”
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Matt Vespa]
Sri Lanka embraced this “natural” approach in April 2021, when the government banned the use of chemical fertilizers to “protect the soil and biodiversity.” As a result, crop production fell by an average of 30 to 50 percent, and today the country is in shambles. The Sri Lankan people are starving, the economy is collapsing, and the President and Prime Minister have fled the country after citizens breached the official residences.
Like much of the green agenda, green agriculture as pushed by extreme environmentalists at the UN, the EU, and in the Biden administration is very dangerous. It purports to “solve” environmental problems by shutting entire industries down, rejecting the benefits of modern farming, and dismissing the resulting consequences that largely impact marginalized populations.
There is a better way to improve the environmental impact of agriculture. It will be solved by technology and by working alongside farmers, not shutting them down.
Mandy Gunasekara is a senior policy analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum and former Chief of Staff at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
---
lnx
:{example, the Netherlands, while a relatively small country, is the https://dutchreview.com/culture/innovation/second-largest-agriculture-exporter/"...meat among all EU nations, and the third largest dairy exporter in the world.
The Dutch climate proposal up for consideration would close up to 30% of their farms and force farmers to
https://apnews.com/article/netherlands-the-hague-climate-and-environment-fcc706577d9e2e5d221141286f573158 " kill off livestock in order to comply with European Union (EU) environmental rules.
When the newly created Dutch Minister for Nature and Nitrogen Policy announced the plan, local farmers were given —(1) Comply; (2) Relocate; or (3) Shutdown. There was no sleight of hand, the government made itclear “there is not a future for all [Dutch] farmers within [this] approach.” pushing back and have expressed anger at being unfairly targeted compared to other industries in their country.
They are also frustrated that the proposal did not include more moderate alternatives to reduce nitrogen without putting farms out of business. Similar scenarios are playing out elsewhere. After the Irish government made climate standards more stringent, one local farmer explained it “made whole classes of farms unviable.” Canadian farmers are worried Prime Minister Trudeau’s nitrogen reduction proposal will significantly cut yields to canola, corn, and spring wheat that are extremely important to global food supplies.}:
:{This is no coincidence and will likely expand. GRETA Extreme environmentalists have long agitated to transform the agriculture sector, especially livestock farmers, and the global diet in the process. At the United Nations, this concept is referred to as the Food System Transformation, which will develop “essential steps needed to transition to healthier, more sustainable food systems.”
This includes the establishment of an International Panel for Food System Science (IPFSS)—akin to a global food police—which would “provide support in justifying difficult or controversial decisions,” like shutting down livelihoods and exacerbating a food crisis. A future IPFSS would also be charged with reducing “misinformation” online as the quickest way to force acceptance of bad ideas is to quash dissent.}:
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ref AP
BY ALEKSANDAR FURTULA
Published 9:18 AM PST, June 22, 2022
STROE, Netherlands (AP) — Thousands of farmers gathered in the central Netherlands Wednesday to protest the Dutch government’s plans to rein in emissions of nitrogen oxide and ammonia, driving their tractors across the Netherlands and snarling traffic on major highways.
The protest was organized earlier this month after the government published nationwide targets for reducing emissions, sparking anger from farmers who claim their livelihoods — and those of thousands of people who work in the agricultural service industry — are on the line.
Calling it an “unavoidable transition,” the government mandated reductions in emissions of up to 70% in many places close to protected nature areas and as high as 95% in other places. The government has been forced to act after courts in recent years began blocking permits for infrastructure and housing projects because the country was missing its emissions targets.
Organizers said some 40,000 farmers converged on a green field in the small agricultural village of Stroe, about 70 kilometers (45 miles) east of the capital, Amsterdam. A stage was set up for speakers to address the crowd and music blared out of speakers while children bounced in a giant inflatable pig.
Farmers hooted their tractors’ horns as they drove onto the field, where a banner on a truck read, in Dutch, “What The Hague chooses is deeply sad for the farmer,” a reference to lawmakers in the city that houses the Netherlands’ parliament. Another banner on a tractor said: “We can no longer be stopped.”
Marijn van Heun, a 23-year-old dairy farmer from the central Utrecht province, said the government plans were stripping young farmers of their futures.
“We cannot invest. Our fathers, our uncles, cannot invest in the future. And so as young farmers we also have no prospect of ... taking over a farm,” he said.
The national infrastructure authority urged motorists to delay travel as slow-moving convoys of tractors defied appeals not to use highways as they drove toward the demonstration. The traffic chaos continued throughout the day.
As tractors returned home, some farmers blocked a highway. A tractor and a truck collided elsewhere.
Earlier, in The Hague, a few dozen farmers and their supporters, some wearing T-shirts with the text “No farmers, no food,” gathered for a breakfast before heading to the protest.
“This is where the rules are made,” said dairy farmer Jaap Zegwaard, who parked his tractor on the edge of a park in the city. “I was asked to come here and provide breakfast so we can show we are food producers, not pollution producers.”
The ruling coalition has earmarked an extra 24.3 billion euros ($25.6 billion) to finance changes that will likely make many farmers drastically reduce their number of livestock or to get rid of them altogether.
The plans, which have to be carried out by provincial governments, have been opposed even by members of Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s own party and other members of his coalition. Provincial governments have been given a year to formulate plans to meet the reduction targets.
One government lawmaker, Tjeerd de Groot, tweeted that he had planned to attend to discuss the plan with farmers but called off his trip on the advise of a government security agency.
“Does the law of the tractor apply in our country?” he tweeted.
Farming is a key sector in the Dutch economy, with exports worth nearly 105 billion euros last year. But it comes at a cost of producing of polluting gases, despite farmers taking steps to reduce emissions.
Zegwaard said farmers were prepared to talk about how to reduce emissions, but objected to the industry shouldering most of the blame.
“Now the agricultural sector is dismissed as a major polluter and that is not right,” he said.
Associated Press writer Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, contributed.
---
ref 2 industry pub?
https://www.dairyglobal.net/world-of-dairy/country-focus/the-netherlands-nitrogen-should-be-slashed-70-in-key-areas/three options
€24.3 billion has been reserved for tackling the nitrogen problem. The money is used to support farmers who are unable to continue their business in the same way. Photo: Wick Natzijl
In key parts of the Netherlands, nitrogen emissions must be reduced by 70%, referring to 131 areas close to vulnerable nature. This means that not all farmers can continue with their operations, said the Dutch government recently.
The Nationaal Programma Landelijk Gebied (National Program for Rural Areas) indicates per area how much nitrogen emissions must be reduced by 2030 to give nature a chance to recover. In some, it is 12%, but there are 131 areas where it is very significant. Areas are spread all over the country, within a kilometre of the protected ‘Natura 2000’ area.
The provinces are currently tasked with a plan and must indicate before 1 July 2023 how they intend to achieve the goals. In doing so, measures can be taken for the livestock industry, construction and traffic. However, the demand for this is greater from livestock operations. According to the RIVM (National Institute for Public Health and Environment), these are still responsible for about 60% of nitrogen pollution caused in the Netherlands in sensitive nature areas.
ALSO READ: Interview | Saskia Korink, CEO Trouw Nutrition: Seeking balance between agriculture and the planet
Saskia Korink has been CEO of Trouw Nutrition since 2020. On the global market, the company is embracing sustainability, as that is where great strides need to be made in the coming years. “We think it is important that Trouw Nutrition is not associated with deforestation.” Read more…
Ministers Christianne van der Wal (Minister for Nature and Nitrogen Policy) and Henk Staghouwer (Minister of Agriculture) see 3 options for farmers in the most vulnerable areas:
- They can make their business more sustainable
- Relocate
- Not all farmers can continue with their business
Reduction of nitrogen
The nitrogen plan should lead to a 50% reduction in total nitrogen emissions by 2030, in other words, in 8 years. According to the plans, farmers must reduce their emissions by 40%. This means that there will have to be around 30% less livestock.
Permits for livestock farmers
In 2019, it was determined that the nitrogen policy in the Netherlands was not up to par. Permits were issued for livestock farms and large construction projects near nature reserves, in the hope that conservation measures would later rectify the adverse effects of nitrogen emissions.
It has been stated that the Dutch government has set aside €24.3 billion (US$25.5 billion) to tackle this issue and to give financial aid to farmers.
*Source: NOS (Dutch)
ref 3 explainer
BY MIKE CORDER
Published 5:23 AM PST, June 28, 2022
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Farmers protested around the Netherlands as lawmakers voted Tuesday on proposals to slash emissions of damaging pollutants, a plan that will likely force farmers to cut their livestock herds or stop work altogether.
The government says emissions of nitrogen oxide and ammonia, which livestock produce, must be drastically reduced close to nature areas that are part of a network of protected habitats for endangered plants and wildlife stretching across the 27-nation European Union.
As tractors gathered outside the parliament building, Prime Minister Mark Rutte said farmers have the right to protest but not to break the law.
“Freedom of speech and the right to demonstrate are a vital part of our democratic society, and I will always defend them,” Rutte said. “But ... it is not acceptable to create dangerous situations, it is not acceptable to intimidate officials, we will never accept that.”
WHAT IS THE GOVERNMENT PROPOSING?
The ruling coalition wants to cut emissions of pollutants, predominantly nitrogen oxide and ammonia, by 50% nationwide by 2030. Ministers call the proposal an “unavoidable transition” that aims to improve air, land and water quality.
They warn that farmers will have to adapt or face the prospect of shuttering their businesses.
“The honest message ... is that not all farmers can continue their business,” and those who do will likely have to farm differently, the government said in a statement this month as it unveiled emission reduction targets.
Livestock produce ammonia in their urine and feces. The government in the past has called on farmers to use feed for their animals that contains less protein as a way of reducing ammonia emissions. The problem is compounded in the Netherlands, which is known for its intensive farming practices, with large numbers of livestock kept on small areas of land.
It is not only farmers being targeted. In the past, the government also has cut the national maximum speed limit on highways from 130 kilometers per hour (80 miles per hour) to 100 kmh during the day as a way of reducing nitrogen oxide created by vehicle engines.
The government has been forced to take action after a series of court rulings that blocked infrastructure and construction projects because of fears they would cause emissions that breach environmental rules. It is giving provincial authorities a year to work out ways to meet the emission reduction targets.
WHAT ARE FARMERS DOING?
Some 40,000 farmers gathered last week in the central Netherlands’ agricultural heartland to protest the government’s plans. Many arrived by tractor, snarling traffic around the country.
On Monday and into Tuesday, farmers again took their protests to crowded highways, driving slowly along the roads or stopping altogether. Some have dumped hay bales on roads, and small groups demonstrated at town and city halls, in some cases starting bonfires outside the buildings.
Some farmers set hay bales ablaze Tuesday alongside highways, while others gathered in towns and cities, including The Hague.
Farmers argue that they are being unfairly targeted as polluters while other industries, such as aviation, construction and transport, also are contributing to emissions and face less far-reaching rules. They also say the government is not giving them a clear picture of their futures amid the proposed reforms.
WHAT ARE THE NATURE AREAS THAT ARE THREATENED?
The government has published a map with reduction targets across the country based on proximity to areas designated as part of the EU’s Natura 2000 network of vulnerable and endangered plant and animal habitats. There are Natura 2000 sites across the 27 member states, covering 18% of the bloc’s land area and 8% of its marine territory.
On its website, the European Commission says conservation and sustainable use of Natura 200 areas is “largely centered on people working with nature rather than against it. However, Member States must ensure that the sites are managed in a sustainable manner, both ecologically and economically.”
Dutch farmers argue that other EU countries are not clamping down on the agricultural industry as hard as the Netherlands. During a protest Monday, a group of farmers at a Dutch Natura 2000 region near the German border put up flags and a “Welcome to Germany” sign to symbolically make it part of the neighboring country.
HOW IMPORTANT IS AGRICULTURE TO THE DUTCH ECONOMY?
Agriculture — from dairy farming to growing crops in fields and greenhouses — is a significant part of the Dutch economy.
According to a national farming lobby group, LTO, there are nearly 54,000 agricultural businesses in the Netherlands with exports totaling 94.5 billion euros in 2019.
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ref 4 irish times
:{THU, 28 JUL, 2022
KATHLEEN O'SULLIVAN AND RACHEL MARTIN
With a 25% cut to emissions now formally expected of the agricultural sector by 2030, farm groups have reacted with dismay.
Government leaders agreed on the figure on Thursday afternoon, with Cabinet to meet and sign off on a memo.
It had been hoped that a figure would be agreed by Government leaders ahead of a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday morning, however, that decision had been further delayed.
The Climate Action Plan 2021 sets out an emissions reduction range for the agriculture sector of between 22% to 30% by 2030.
President of the Irish Farmers' Association Tim Cullinan has described the sectoral emissions ceiling for agriculture as a "potentially devastating blow for Irish farming and the rural economy".
The IFA said that this deal "is all about the survival of the Government rather than survival of rural Ireland".
“The Government has agreed to a target without any pathway to get there or any budget to assist farmers in reducing emissions," Mr Cullinan said.
"They have no idea of the economic and social impact of today’s decision on the farming sector or rural Ireland. Farmers across the country will be rightly worried about what this means for their future.
“The implementation plan to achieve the target will be vital.
"I want to make it clear that any attempt to undermine farmers' livelihoods or the viability of sector, in order to achieve these targets, will be opposed vigorously by the IFA."
Mr Cullinan stressed that the Government will have to come forward "with real proposals and proper funding" to support climate measures, including on-farm renewable energy, and "ensure that farmers get full credit for this".
“We are still strongly of the view that the Government has not complied with the requirements in the Climate Act in relation to carbon leakage and the distinct characteristics of biogenic methane. These will have to be taken on board by the Government,” Mr Cullinan said.
Stephen Arthur, IFA dairy chairman told the Irish Examiner that "this is going to be a serious hit on the most viable enterprises in agriculture".
"A sell-out"
One of the sectors most under the spotlight is the dairy industry.
However, speaking to the Irish Examiner, Dairy Industry Ireland director Conor Mulvihill said while the targets set for agriculture and Industry are "hugely challenging", the organisation welcomes clarity,
"We will actively work with our suppliers and staff in our processing facilities to achieve metric-based improvements," he said.
"In recent years the Irish dairy industry has navigated Brexit, Covid and the Ukraine Crisis and has come out even stronger. While we do not underestimate the extreme challenge of these targets given existing technologies, we will strain every sinew to achieve them with our partners.
"We call on government to give appropriate supports to enable us to positively achieve these targets and protect the social and economic sustainability of rural Ireland."
The Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers' Association has said that the Government's decision would have "wholly negative and predictable economic, social and demographic consequences for the massive areas of the state that depended on farming".
Pat McCormack, president of the ICMSA, described the 25% target as "a sell-out" of Ireland's family farm model.
Mr McCormack said that farmers and the communities they formed and which depended upon them, "were not interested in hearing any more platitudes from politicians and groups who professed to appreciate the dilemma faced by farming communities but who cheerfully signed-off on policy that ‘at a stroke’ made whole classes of farms unviable".
He said that politicians "were happy to sacrifice the one sector in which Ireland enjoyed a unique natural benefit, global reputation, and which had been the one and only economic sector left working after the crash of a decade ago".
Mr McCormack said that the decision to go past 22% to 25% represented "much more than ‘just’ an additional 3%".
"The original target was going to be very difficult but at least warranted an effort," he said.
"Pushing that to 25% reduction over an eight-year timeframe now moved policy from ‘difficult’ to ‘impossible’ and actually meant that the policy was now literally incredible in that it was not credible or possible to have confidence in."
He said that if the sector is to move towards a low-emissions model, "then the ambitions and targets must be possible and achievable".
"If the historic process and transition is to win the confidence that will be necessary for it to succeed, then it simply must be realistic," Mr McCormack added.
"If it is not realistic – and 25% is not realistic – then the whole process loses all momentum, trust and confidence."
He added that Government has "badly let down family farms and their communities".
"We won’t be fobbed off by vague promises of future income streams," he said.
"Our livestock industry - both dairy and beef - is the lifeblood of rural Ireland and Minister McConalogue and the three party leaders of the coalition have struck it at its very heart today."
Money will have to be "front-loaded"
Dermot Kelleher, president of the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers' Association added that Government "must now insist on a complete blanket ban at EU level on meat imports from outside the EU, given the incredible stress farmers have been put under in recent weeks".
"Farmers have been made to feel that the high quality, high protein, nutritious food they supply to European markets is now something to be ashamed of," Mr Kelleher said.
"It would now be hypocrisy on a grandiose scale if farmers are forced to watch beef, chicken, and dairy from all over the world being shipped into the EU on favourable terms while Irish farmers are faced with cuts."
Mr Kelleher said that while farmers are "willing to do everything they can" to improve sustainability and reduce emissions, the Government will "have to step up to the plate and deliver on the financial support that farmers need to implement existing and soon-to-be available technologies".
“Moreover, money will have to be front-loaded into research on carbon storage in soil, trees, and hedgerows with a view to farmers being able to either offset emissions like other sectors or to sell carbon credits," he said.
“Farmers are already innovating in terms of being more sustainable with a lot of focus on manure management, improved genetics, and reduced fertiliser and energy use. A lot will depend on a viable price being paid to beef farmers to finish cattle earlier because this costs money.
"Nonetheless, farmers have always adapted, and we know that farmers will do their best to achieve ever-greater results on producing the best, most nutritious and sustainable food in the world.”
The Irish Natura and Hill Farmers Association president Vincent Roddy has cautioned that any reduction in agricultural output will "also impact heavily on the rural economy".
This, he added, is “something that many rural businesses have not yet woken up to and my hope is that they recognise how this is a battle for them, just as much as it is for our farmers".
"Vague remarks about diversification will no longer do"
Agri environment advisor and farmer Thomas Duffy said more detail was needed on the specifics of how the additional reduction will be achieved.
"25% will be extremely challenging," he said. "Firstly, we will need to see 100% adoption of the Teagasc MACC [Marginal Abatement Cost Curve] - including protected urea, clovers and improved breeding. But there will be that will need to be made up between what the MACC can achieve and 25%.
"We will need to see clear plans and strong actions and supports for farmers to achieve alternative income on-farm. Vague remarks about diversification will no longer do."
SUSTAINABILITY & CLIMATE
Check out our Sustainability and Climate Change Hub where you will find the latest news, features, opinions and analysis on this topic from across the various Irish Examiner topic desks and their team of specialist writers and columnists.
==-=
ref 5 DW
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has called for changes to food production and consumption in a bid to tackle a trio of threats facing the world.
"The climate crisis, ecological crisis and health crisis, they are all interlinked," Thunberg said in a video posted on social media on Saturday to mark International Biodiversity Day.
The focus on food and interlinked crises marks a new direction for Thunberg's environmental activism, which has previously targeted fossil fuel policies and political decision-makers.
Greta tackles disease, environment and emissions
"The way we farm and treat nature cutting down forests and destroying habitats, we are creating the perfect conditions for diseases to spill over from one animal to another — and to us," the 18-year-old activist said.
"Millions have died from COVID-19, Zika, Ebola, West Nile fever, SARS, MERS, HIV-AIDS," she said, listing zoonotic diseases that have jumped from animals to humans.
The World Health Organization has said the coronavirus was probably transmitted from bats to humans through another animal. Scientists say 60% of the infectious human diseases that emerged from 1990 to 2004 came from animals.
The cost of meat
26:06
Thunberg also spoke about the consequences of food production on the environment: "If we keep making food the way we do, we will also destroy the habitats of most wild plants and animals driving countless species to extinction.
"They are our life-supporting system; if we lose them, we will be lost too," she said.
She said switching to a plant-based diet could save up to 8 billion tons of carbon dioxide, a major polluting greenhouse gas, each year.
More people going meat-free
Her comments come amid growing demand for meat-free alternatives due to concerns about health, animal welfare and the environment.
In Germany, the total value of meat produced in the country fell in 2020, according to recent data released by the country's Federal Statistics Office.
Meanwhile, the production of vegetarian and vegan substitute products in the country surged.
kmm/sms (Reuters, AFP)
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ref 6 medium
Transition steps for food system transformation
By Niamh Kelly, Policy Research Officer for the Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems
[
](https://un-food-systems.medium.com/?source=post_page-----924de079c399--------------------------------)
UN Food Systems Coordination Hub
·
2 min read
·
May 26, 2021
As part of its ongoing work with the UN Food Systems Summit, the Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition has produced a brief for the Scientific Group, ‘The Transition Steps Needed to Transform Our Food Systems’. This short paper draws on the Panel’s Foresight report ‘Future Food Systems: For people, our planet and prosperity’ to outline the essential steps needed to transition to healthier, more sustainable food systems.
The policies that fed the world in the twentieth century are no longer fit for purpose. Food systems are failing to provide healthy diets for 3 billion people, and they are in a spiral of decline with the natural environment. Change is imperative, and policymakers in every country will need to chart a way forward contingent to their own circumstances and constraints. However, the complexity of food systems present a challenge in the early stages of the transition process.
This brief seeks to guide policymakers through this transition and discusses the priorities and principles to inform choices; addressing tradeoffs and compromises; and the challenge of resourcing the transition. It considers how actions could be incentivised and supported, and addresses impediments to change. Finally, the brief sets out key priorities for different classes of stakeholder across the food system. All of these have important roles to play: international organisations, governments, donors, civil society and companies working within the food system.
This is the second of two papers produced by the Global Panel for the Scientific Group. The first paper, ‘COVID-19 and Food Systems: Rebuilding for Resilience’ was featured recently.
*The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the United Nations Food Systems Summit.
REF 7
FSS_Brief_Food_System_Transformation
15 PP
- Introduction
The United Nations (UN) Food Systems
Summit and N4G meetings in 2021 reflect
a growing international recognition that
the policies that fed the world in the
twentieth century are no longer fit for
purpose. Urgent reform is essential to
achieve the goal of universally accessible
and affordable, healthy diets which are
delivered by food systems that are
environmentally, economically, and
socially sustainable.
Today’s food systems are asked to nourish
the world’s growing population in ways
that do no harm to either human or
planetary health. However, the growing
problems facing food systems now amount
to a two-fold crisis. First, global progress in
addressing malnutrition in all its forms
(including undernutrition, obesity, and
micronutrient deficiencies) and reducing
diet-related diseases has stalled.
Food
systems are failing to provide affordable
healthy diets for three billion people.1 This
affects their health, the mental and
physical development of children, and the
earning potential of those children
throughout their lives. Those affected risk
being locked into lifelong inequality.
Second, food systems are in a spiral of
decline with environmental systems:2
they...
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VOX NO LNX
Sri Lanka’s economy is in free fall. Runaway inflation reached 54.6 percent last month, and the South Asian country is now headed toward bankruptcy. Nine in 10 Sri Lankan families are skipping meals, and many are standing in line for days in the hope of acquiring fuel.
The dire situation culminated last weekend in an uprising in which an estimated 300,000 protesters took over President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s home and offices and set fire to Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s home. Rajapaksa resigned after fleeing the country, leaving Wickremesinghe as interim president.
There’s no singular cause for the crisis, which had been building for years due to political corruption and right-wing authoritarian politics that weakened democracy. In April 2019, the crisis accelerated after suicide bombings at churches hurt the island nation’s critical tourism industry, which weakened its currency and made it more difficult for the government to import essential goods.
At the end of 2019, tax cuts slashed government revenue, while in 2020 the Covid-19 pandemic further decimated the tourism industry, with skyrocketing inflation pouring more fuel on the fire.
Pandemic aside, that’s not an atypical set of conditions for the collapse of a developing country like Sri Lanka. But in the spring of 2021, President Rajapaksa made an unusual decision: He banned synthetic fertilizer and pesticide imports practically overnight, forcing Sri Lanka’s millions of farmers to go organic. It proved disastrous, as a group of Sri Lankan scientists and agriculture experts had warned.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa standing behind a United Nations podium.
According to one estimate, the president’s agrochemical ban was poised to save Sri Lanka the $400 million it was spending yearly on synthetic fertilizer, money it could use toward increasing imports of other goods. But Rajapaksa also argued that chemical fertilizers and pesticides were leading to “adverse health and environmental impacts” and that such industrial farming methods went against the country’s heritage of “sustainable food systems.”
“There is a section of the Sri Lankan NGO society and civil society, which has been arguing for the spread of organic farming in Sri Lanka for quite a while. ... This has also been actively supported by many international groups,” R. Ramakumar, an agricultural economist at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in India, told me.
Instead of fixing the crisis, however, the move only worsened it.
“The organic policy was implemented to sort of ameliorate an ongoing crisis … ironically, what it did was that it ended up exacerbating the crisis,” Ramakumar said.
The agrochemical ban caused rice production to drop 20 percent in the six months after it was implemented, causing a country that had been self-sufficient in rice production to spend $450 million on rice imports — much more than the $400 million that would’ve been saved by banning fertilizer imports.
The production of tea, Sri Lanka’s literal cash crop — it’s the country’s biggest export — fell by 18 percent. The government has had to spend hundreds of millions on subsidies and compensation to farmers in an effort to make up for the loss of productivity.
}:
While agrochemicals cause a host of environmental and public health problems, which in part inspired the ban, they also help farmers grow more food on less land, which is critical for small, developing countries like Sri Lanka that rely on agriculture for both sustenance and export income. Moving away from an agrochemical-heavy food system makes sense in a lot of ways, but the Sri Lanka example underscores the importance of being mindful of the economic, political, and social context of any reform.
Around five months into the ban, farmers were allowed to begin using synthetic fertilizers on tea and a few other crops while keeping the ban in place for others, but by that point, much of the damage was done.
The blinkered organic rollout accelerated an economic crisis long in motion, but it also crystallized the stakes of the debate over conventional versus organic farming, demonstrating just how critical high-yield crops are in economies still based largely on agriculture.
Sri Lanka, which only recently emerged from a catastrophic civil war, had been a bright spot in international development: In 2000, 17 percent of Sri Lankans were undernourished and by 2019, that figure fell dramatically to 7 percent, lifting around 2 million people out of hunger. The economic crisis that has now reached a boiling point, caused in part by the organic farming disaster, will horrifically, and ironically, undo some of that progress.
Agriculture is all about trade-offs
Synthetic fertilizer makes crops grow faster and bigger than organic fertilizer, such as animal manure, and pesticides control insect infestations and diseases that can destroy crops. Experts say the widespread adoption of the two agricultural inputs since the mid-20th century, known as the Green Revolution, helped lift countries like Sri Lanka out of grinding poverty.
“Sri Lanka started subsidizing fertilizers in the 1960s and we saw that rice yields tripled,” says Saloni Shah, a food and agriculture analyst at the Breakthrough Institute, a US-based environmental nonprofit that advocates for technological solutions. “[Sri Lanka] became self-sufficient in rice ... that’s huge for all Asian countries, from the food security standpoint.”
That resulted in much of the labor force moving out of agriculture and into higher-paying jobs, Shah says, a story that played out across the globe over the past 60 years. But the expansion of conventional agriculture hasn’t been without steep costs; agrochemical use is also rife with serious environmental and public health problems.
Pesticide exposure is linked to a range of health issues, including respiratory and central nervous system symptoms, and around 1 in every 8 suicides worldwide is done by ingesting pesticides, with especially high rates in South Asia.
When synthetic fertilizer and pesticides leach into waterways, they can kill off wildlife and poison drinking water sources, and their production and application emit high amounts of greenhouse gases and degrade soil.
Many organic agriculture advocates also argue that low-income countries’ reliance on imported chemicals from high-income countries strips them of their own food security and makes them vulnerable to the kind of agrochemical price hikes that Sri Lanka experienced. A majority of Sri Lankan farmers supported an organic transition, but wanted more than one year to do so — and they needed more support than they were given to switch to organic.
In 2008, Indian farmers from the Farmers Heritage Movement show a canister to be used with natural fertilizer in the village of Chaina. Pedro Ugarte/AFP via Getty Images
As horrible as the effects of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides are, they have to be weighed against the consequences brought to bear by crop yield loss: hunger, decreased export income, increased deforestation, and, if banned outright, as Sri Lanka has shown, political crisis. But there are ways to minimize the effects of agrochemicals without abandoning them altogether.
Minimizing the harms of industrial agriculture
The US-based environmental nonprofit World Resources Institute (WRI) says that it’s not enough to just maintain current yields — governments around the world need to increase yields per acre to feed 10 billion people by 2050, lest farmers be forced to clear more and more land to make up for lower yields, with massive environmental effects.
Meeting that inevitable demand — while also minimizing the environmental and public health issues brought about by agrochemicals while continuing to increase crop yields — is tricky but possible. Shah, the food and agriculture analyst, says a more sustainable approach requires making crops higher-yield through breeding, making nitrogen fertilizers more efficient, and instituting “precision farming” technologies, like drones and sensors, to more accurately analyze where fertilizer is being over- or under-applied.
A 10-year study in China, in which 21 million farmers were trained on how to better manage soil, water, and fertilizer, shows the progress that can be made. The program resulted in an 11 percent yield increase for maize, wheat, and rice, and a 15-18 percent reduction in nitrogen fertilizer use.
Practices popular among organic agriculture proponents would also help, like employing cover cropping, double cropping, adding organic fertilizer along with chemical fertilizer on fields, and planting trees and shrubs on farms, known as agroforestry.
“I think that in the Western world, we can get lost in the organic/conventional debate,” Shah said. “Agriculture is the backbone of economic development — for livelihoods, for food security. … It should be less so about ideology and which one is better, but more so what combination of technologies, practices, and market conditions will be helpful to spur development and to empower farmers.”
But implementing any of these practices in the near future won’t be possible in Sri Lanka, given that they’d all require money the government doesn’t have.
“It seems like it’ll be a long road to recovery,” Shah added. “It’ll depend on what type of financial aid package they’re able to negotiate with the [International Monetary Fund]. And if they’re able to reduce some of the debt burdens.”
“I’m speculating now at this point,” Ramakumar, the agricultural economist, said, “but if they follow the voice of science and reason, then it is not an irretrievable situation ... But it depends on who comes to rule Sri Lanka and what policies they adopt.”
In time, Sri Lanka may get some relief from the tension of its agricultural trade-offs. According to the economic theory of the Environmental Kuznets Curve, once countries reach a certain level of per capita income, economic growth and environmental pollution can decouple as the country can afford to implement stronger environmental regulations and practices without sacrificing economic growth, like crop yields.
Decoupling the two is far from guaranteed, but some countries have achieved it. As Sri Lanka gets richer, it’ll be more able to prioritize the environment and public health without millions going hungry, but the current crisis — made worse by the sudden, hastily executed organic transition — has made that day farther away.
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Sri Lanka's organic farming disaster, explained - Vox
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Sri Lanka Nitrogen Policy Report Summary: This summary provides an overview of the full UKRI GCRF SANH policy report for Sri Lanka (2022). This report is the first of its kind providing a necessary step to understanding the current nitrogen policy landscape for Sri Lanka within the broader South Asian context.
(PDF) Sri Lanka Status Report on Sustainable Nitrogen Management
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Pixabay. Spearheaded by Sri Lanka, United Nations member states endorsed a proposed roadmap for action on nitrogen challenges called the Colombo Declaration on Sustainable Nitrogen Management. Colombo, 24 October 2019 - At a time when the world grapples with the menace of air pollution killing 7 million people prematurely every year, Sri ...
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