Here's an interview I did with Richard Douthwaite (right) of FEASTA. It appeared in last week's Farming Examiner as the front page and centre page spread.
Oliver Moore: Can you outline the overall situation with regard to the sustainability of farming, as you see it Richard?
Richard Douthwaite: Modern industrialised farming, particularly tillage, has been described as a way of converting fossil energy into food energy. There�s a lot of energy used in the application of fertilizer, in tractors, in sprays, then in packing and getting the food to the customer. The whole process is not sustainable. In traditional forms of farming, it took 4 units of energy to produce each unit of energy in food. Most of that energy was directly from the sun, and all from renewable sources. Now there are 40 units of energy going into the production of food in the Europe, and perhaps up to 90 in the US. Most of that is from fossil fuels. That can�t continue.
OM: Within this broad picture, what is the key problem?
RD: The problem is that we�re not recycling the nutrients. Quite a lot of the nitrogenous fertilizer breaks down in the soil and becomes nitrous oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas (GHG), and one of the main sources of GHGs in farming. A lot of energy is used in the production of those nitrogenous fertilizers and most of it is wasted because the nitrogen is not taken up by the plants. There's more waste when the crops leave the farm because the nutrients they contain aren�t recycled: There�s nitrogen in the proteins that go off, and there�s phospates going off too. They are consumed by whoever eats the food and go into the sewage system, and don�t get back onto the land. As a consequence of this, we need to apply more artificial fertilizers. There is a growing problem with phosphorous. There�s a finite supply: rock phosphate is getting scarcer and scarcer, and that then means that more and more energy is needed to make it available to us and to transport it from places like Morocco.
So we need to think of how fertilizer can be better retained in the soil, so that if you are putting nitrogen on, it stays there. We need to minimise the use of artificial nitrogen, and to start replacing it with organic sources, such as legumes which fix nitrogen. Then, we need to make sure that any that escapes is recycled.
OM: What are the future implications for farming?
RD: Agriculture is likely to become more labour intensive again. The trend towards the larger farms will be reversed as the cost of food and fuel rises in real terms and takes a higher proportion of non-farmers' incomes. Farmers won't just be growing food. They will be producing fuel, chemicals, fibres and building materials as well. A whole new category of multi-purpose crops will emerge.
OM: How do you envision these multi purpose crops being utilized most efficiently?
RD: It may emerge in a way similar to the co-op creamery structure of a century ago, where the co-op would take the milk and the farmer would take back the whey. I envisage a co-op bio-refinery in each community to which farmers would deliver crops like miscanthus, which would be refined to give protein powder, biogas, diesel fuel, plastics like nylon, pesticides and soil improvers. The farmers would take the improvers back to their farms to recycle the nutrients that were in the crop they delivered to the refinery. Because transport will become more expensive, the plants' bulk will be reduced in rural areas and there will be centralised refineries regionally that take the valuable bits and process them further. At the bioenergy show in Tullamore this year, miscanthus was being sold in compressed blocks for people's fires, just like the wood blocks made from compressed sawdust. But 20% of dried grass is plant protein � that�s too valuable to burn. Quite simply, we should be taking out the valuable bits before burning any biomass.
OM: So the biorefineries would produce biofuels like biodiesel?
RD: Yes, but I should emphasise that these would be second-generation biofuels, produced by breaking down the cellulose found in all plants. Feasta is very much against the production of most first-generation biofuels, such as ethanol from maize and wheat and biodiesel from oilseed rape. These make no sense from an energy or a climate point of view. Their production is entirely driven by tax-breaks and the net result has been to increase hunger around the world. The only first generation biofuel that is acceptable is ethanol from sugar cane in Brazil.
OM: If farmers go in this direction in the near future, what�s in it for them?
RD: If farmers can increase the carbon content of their soils, or the semi-permanent biomass that�s growing on them, they need to be rewarded in some way for doing this because they would be helping prevent climate change. Part of their reward would be that they made their soil much better. It is however, very difficult to measure the carbon content of soils to pay farmers a set amount per tonne for the carbon that they have taken in. Feasta is therefore setting up a working party to develop a new concept of best practice - to develop a better understanding of the types of farming that involve sequestering more and more carbon in the soil or in the plants growing on the soil. It needs to become financially beneficial to follow best practice. There could be payments through REPS, or the price of the crops could be subsidised in some sort of way. We�re going to need people in the working party with expertise in this area, and we�re getting very good co-operation from the universities and from Teagasc on this.
OM: Are there any new developments that might help with soil performance and quality?
RD: Feasta has become particularly interested in the inclusion of charcoal in the soil. It has recently been discovered that the pre Columbian Indians put charcoal into the soil because it held the nutrients there. Also, there was an increase in microbial and fungal activity which made the soil more fertile. These soils still exist in the Amazon basin where they are called terra preta, which means dark earth. What happens, it seems, is that the fungi feed on sugars sent down by the plants, and they in turn send up nutrients to the plants. So the plant sequesters carbon too. Terra Preta promises to do three things: 1 sequester more carbon in the soil; 2 hold nutrients there more efficiently; 3 give bigger crops.
OM: Where does Feasta stand on the cows vs cars debate?
RD: We don't think there should be a debate at all. Some civil servants seem to think that because cows' digestive systems give off methane, a GHG, Ireland should reduce its greenhouse emissions by cutting the number of either cars or cows. This is, we think, a total misconception. We've tried to get the IFA to make the case that cows are very different because the methane they release is not adding fossil carbon to the air but it just doesn�t seem to be bothered. It seems to hope that its political muscle will shield its members from any herd-reduction measures the government might introduce. The ICMSA has a very much better attitude.
OM: But isn�t methane a serious GHG?
RD: Methane is a very serious GHG. It�s probably 60 times worse than CO2. Official figures suggest that it is 23 times more, but that�s over a 100 year period. However, all its heating effect is concentrated in the first few years before it is broken down. But - and this is crucial - the carbon in the methane released by cows comes from natural sources. It is not adding continuously to the carbon in the air, because the plants that the cows grazed on picked up the carbon from the air. So the cows are part of the natural carbon cycle. They are not leading to a net increase in the warming effect. If you increase the size of the national herd, you get a once off increase in methane; you don�t get a continuous increase in CO2 levels, as you do if you are burning fossil fuels in a car. So there is no comparison at all between cars and cows.
OM: I presume you are talking about grass-fed animals, where the grass gets its nitrogen from legumes? And surely processing, distribution and so on need to be taken into account before you can presume diary and beef will be acceptable in sustainability terms?
RD: If meat and milk is to be produced anywhere in the world, Ireland should be one of the places producing them because the fossil fuel emissions from producing them here are lower than they would be almost anywhere else. You've also got to consider the carbon emissions if forest is cleared for beef production in places like Brazil. And, because Ireland is close to a lot of people who need meat and milk products, it should not take a lot of energy to get the food to them, although more of it will go by sea in future rather than by truck.
OM: So, in certain relatively easy to attain circumstances, we can keep our beef and dairy industries.
RD: Yes, I think so. But many more cattle will be kept indoors so that the slurry can be turned into biogas. This will be used for heating, for electricity and compressed to run vehicles. Farmers have been very slow to realise that the energy content of a bullock's dung is worth more than its meat.
OM: What's the biggest challenge facing Irish farmers?
RD: They, in common with farmers around the world, have got to find ways of turning their sector from being a source of greenhouse emissions into a sink which removes them. At present, about a quarter of the world's greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture and changes in land use, such as forest clearance. Those emissions not only have to stop but, because the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is already above the safe limit, CO2 needs to be removed from the air quickly, before it has set off a disastrous uncontrollable global warming process. We might have thirty years to do this. There's no high-tech solution. Only the world's farmers can respond in time.
