Norway and Carbon Credits: Just Giving it Away......

Norway has decided to donate the equivalent of E1.2billion to Indonesia to not cut down rainforests.

Here's the unusual bit: without claiming any carbon credits for it.

This is very unusual behaviour for a country. Of course, it may not work out 100% smoothly, but its an interesting development nonetheless.

(Photo by Guf2001, on Wiki Commons see here)

To assess the various issues involved, see here

In general, Norway is a quirky wee country, so I suppose this maintains the trend......

Co2 and the oxygen of publicity

More Co2 is good for the planet...(!?!)

It may be getting the oxygen of publicity by being featured, but this is so worth seeing...if only to learn more about the oil industry and duped,

confused american consumer-citizens

well written links

I always drop into these three, as I like what and how they write.

I have to say that George Monbiot's site is always an interesting read. However the article about toxic dumping is revelatory. Especially in relation to Somalia.

The link entitled make wealth history is also always worth checking out.

Marion Nestle is that perfect combination of nutritionist and power-aware realist.

Importantly, these blogs/sites seem to be updated regularly, while also being thought provoking.

The new Northern situation: the challenge intensive organic food from Northern Ireland poses

On top of general recession-related worries, Irish organic farmers have another thing to contend with: technically organic but nonetheless intensive produce from Northern Ireland.

Northern Irish economies of scale and the sterling differential are continuing to put pressure on southern Irish organic producers.

In light of these effects, what were reported last week as strong signals for producer price reductions are reported to be continuing, whatever about the brave public face farmers and operators put on.

Organic farmers and operators fear and risk de-listing for putting their heads above the parapet and complaining. There are few processing and retailer options in Ireland.

Today I encountered an organic chicken in Tescos for E5.71. It weighted 1.118 kilos, and was E5.11 a kilo � down from E6.81 per kilo.

This chicken, from John Connolly in county Tyrone, was from Northern Ireland. Sourcing from the north seems to be an increasing trend for retailers.

The chicken was labelled UK2 - the Organic Farmers and Growers (OFG) certification code. There are nine UK certifiers, which includes the two Irish certifiers. This is mainly because Irish and UK certifiers can operate in Northern Ireland.

The Soil Association are the UK biggest organic certification body. They have been very critical of the OFG poultry standards.

While the Soil Association have a 500 recommended and 1000 birds maximum, OGF and others allow for 4800, with the option of going up to 9000 birds.

Southern Irish poultry farms tend to have up to 500 birds.

The natural flocking size of chickens is considered to be about 100. It is possible on smaller enterprises to allow for this, though some organic farmers stick rigidly to housing arrangements which encourage this.

Inevitably, this sort of flock size becomes more difficult when the numbers run into the thousands.

However the economy of scale of thousands of birds bring the price down for the consumer: hence half the price per kilo for Northern Irish as southern Irish organic chicken in supermarkets.

Competition from Northern Ireland is also effecting organic milk producers. Organic dairy farms in Northern Ireland are larger and more intensive. They rely more on concentrates than grass for feed. This increases the negative environmental effect, as feed production and transportation adds to global warming and the use of pesticides and herbicides more than grass growing does.

Organic dairy farms also have 2-3 times as many cows in Northern Ireland as their southern counterparts.

Up to half of the milk in Glenisk's pool comes from Northern Ireland. All of the organic milk in the discounter LIDI comes from Northern Ireland. This retails at E1.19 a litre, as does Tescos own brand organic milk. Glenisk' on the other hand, is usually about E1.65.

Inevitably, competition from the more industrialised Northern Irish farmers effects the price southern farmers can get.

There are also nutritional effects: organic milk regularly scores better than conventional when it comes to nutritional data, in particular the Omega 3 and 6 ratio. This has been found in studies across Europe.

Upon closer inspection of some of the more recent data, however, it appears that grass is at least as important as organic: milk from predominantly grass fed animals is nutritionally superior to milk from diary cows fed significant amounts of concentrates.

See for example the research of Professor Carlo Leifert from the Quality low Input Farming project in Newcastle University.

In southern Ireland, organic dairy cows are both predominantly grass fed and organic � a win win nutritionally.

However, for poultry and diary and the broader organic sector in general, scientific research specific to the Irish situation, followed by the marketing of the results, needs to be undertaken as a matter of urgency.

Otherwise people will see the word organic and think one product is the same as the next.

Consumers sometimes use the world organic as an anxiety appeaser: they see it and stop thinking, or worrying, about the broader ethics.

However, as even these two simple examples suggest, organic in one place is not necessarily the same as in another, even on an island as small as Ireland.

climate change and farming in Ireland: part 2

photo by: Mariah gale, licienced under creative commons

In November, Minister for the Environment John Gormley said that �all sectors will have to cut emissions�. According to Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Brendan Smith TD, �making significant cuts from agriculture will be very difficult�.

He warned against �significant downward pressure on animal numbers, something that would �in a global context make no sense�.

The Minister said that if Ireland was to reduce cattle numbers, the global climate change situation would actually be worsened because "Irish beef would simply be replaced on world markets by beef produced in a much less sustainable way".

This point of carbon leakage has been raised in many quarters. Essentially the suggestion is that if we stop producing, other less sustainable regions in the world will instead. This will increase rather than decrease overall GHG emissions.
Department of Environment representative, when queried, claimed that �there is no confusion between this Department and the Department of Agriculture on greenhouse gas emissions from the agriculture sector.�

Simple and straightforward. And yet, there since the EU targets were agreed, there has been a rumbling on going discussion on footing the GHG bill. Enough to remind one of Queen Gertrude's most famous line: 'The lady doth protest too much, methinks'.

What has been dubbed the 'cow tax memo' suggested, according to reports, that �imposing a levy on all livestock is the best way to avoid having to cut the size of the national herd�.

This memo proposes a levy set at �5 per tonne of CO2 emitted, to generate just over �100 million. This has been reported as an equivalence of a levy of �13 for each dairy cow, �7 for non diary cow, �1 for sheep.

Minister Brendan Smith and even the EU commission have all come out railing against the possibility of this cow tax.

According to former Green Party leader, Minister of State Trevor Sargent, who's brief also includes cattle breeding, �A myth has been peddled however claiming Minister for the Environment and Local Government John Gormley T.D. is in favour of a cattle cull to reduce methane emissions. This is completely untrue and is a gross disservice to the work Minister Gormley has been doing to help the long term viability of all sectors, including agriculture�.

He points to two crucial areas his colleague has achieved for Ireland and agriculture with regard to climate change: In the European climate change deal agreed before Christmas, �Minister Gormley ... achieved flexibility in the deal to ensure that Ireland did not face higher costs of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and that we would not be forced to reduce our national herd�.

Gormley �also met with the European Presidency�s chief climate change negotiator, and was successful in having carbon leakage placed onto the agenda for future climate change negotiations�.

Just how much agriculture should pay is an altogether more interesting question in a contracting economy.

While demand for higher end food products may reduce abroad, it is likely that agriculture, which already provides 32% of net foreign earnings, will become more prominent in the future. Ireland have various practical advantages in producing food (e.g. climate, access to markets) which do not pertain in most other economic sectors.

According to Dr Mary Kelly of the EPA �The profile of greenhouse gas emissions in Ireland is unusual in the European context, with agriculture currently accounting for 27 per cent of all emissions and 40 per cent of emissions in the non-trading sector. This makes it very difficult to effect actual reductions on the scale required in the non-trading sector�.

The Koyoto targets, it seems, might be reachable due to recession. However the EU targets will prove far more difficult. Climate change experts have predicted that Ireland's' emissions will be down by between 5 and 9% in 2009, because of the recession.

Frank Convery, professor of environmental policy at University College Dublin, was reported recently as saying that Ireland's emissions may well be as close to the 63 million tonnes permitted under Koyoto. This would save the government E300 million in the purchase of carbon credits.

A recent EPA report, issued in March of this year, considers different scenarios, including that of economic shock until 2010 � decline by 7% each year until 2010, and then growth until 2020.

According to the EPA report, irrespective of economic performance, there is only one scenario for agricultural emission projections:

�Emissions are projected to decrease by 4% over the period 2007 � 2020 to 17.8 Mtonnes of CO2e.� This estimate was actually 18.95 Mtonnes in 2008, so agriculture is performing even better than just last year's predictions from the EPA itself. Agriculture in 1990 accounted for 35% of emissions.

Individual sectors performance within agriculture underscore this fact: According to Dr Gerry Boyle of Teagasc �Technological advances in dairy production, for example, have led to a drop of 12.4% in the amount of methane produced per kg of milk between 1990 and 2006�.

Most GHG emissions from Irish agriculture are methane from livestock and nitrous oxide from soils.

Specific measures under the Rural Environment Protection Scheme (REPS) �are expected to raise awareness amongst farmers of the need to address climate change and also to promote greater acceptance and uptake of technologies that contribute to greenhouse gas abatement, such as use of minimum tillage and the adoption of low emission trailing shoe technology for slurry spreading� a DAFF spokesperson said, when queried.

Other abatement strategies include: dietary modifications, additives or probiotics to reduce methane production, breed selection, increasing the length of the grazing season and breeding more efficient animals.

The spokesperson also pointed out that the nitrates directive had resulted in �better use of nutrients with consequently less nitrogen application and therefore fewer nitrous oxide emissions�. This includes matching nitrogen use to soil type, increasing clover use on farms, use of nitrate inhibitors�.

It was also suggested that �in terms of reduced fertiliser use and consequent emissions, organic farming will also have a role to play and is supported through the Department of Agriculture Fisheries and Food's Organic Farming Scheme.�

Forestry and energy crops are also relevant. To encourage energy crop cultivation, the National Energy Crop Premium (E80 per hectare) was introduced in 2007 to supplement the EU Premium of E45 per hectare.

A new Bioenergy Scheme was also launched offering establishment grants worth E1,450 per hectare to plant willow and miscanthus. Land planted with energy crops can also benefit under the Single Payment Scheme as well as REPS and the Disadvantaged Areas Scheme, subject to some restrictions on the areas planted.

The main issue from a farming perspective is, according to Gerry Boyle, �Gaining credits for afforestation and biomass production for bioenergy is problematic�. However, �there is no basis in logic for the agricultural sector not benefiting in accessing these offsets given that it is farmers that will need to alter their land use practices�.

However, there are other laggard areas. Gary Lanigan is a Teagasc research officer based in Johnstown Castle. His area of speciality is emissions, including GHG emissions, and soil carbon content.

According to Lanigan, while fertilizer usage is down down 20-25% from 1998, and while sheep and cattle numbers are down too, he estimates that �Only about 1% of farmers are using clover�.

Considering the numerous cost and environmental benefits, this is an astounding figure.

There are many considerations in the debate on GHG emissions. A complete and comprehensive life cycle analysis might skew all the figures again: While the application of fertilizer produces GHGs, so to does the making of fertilizers.

A nagging worry of course is the possibility that the scale of the problem and the scope of the solutions simply do not match up.

In the meantime, matching efficiencies and emissions, and seeing opportunities in the constraints may help agriculture move forward sustainably.

What is innovation in farming, and how does organic fit in?

here's an article on innovation - the word, the preconceptions, and an alternative vision of it from a farming perspective

Innovation is a funny word. It conjures up images of science and technology, of the business �community�, of skyscrapers, microchips and power-suits, and perhaps most of all, of �going forward�.

Innovation can be seen as coming up with something new and useful, as a response to a specific set of circumstances. In business it can refer to the processes through which companies get to add value, and it is inherently connected to research and development.

If we apply innovation to food, we nearly always think of brave new worlds. In the past, it was tinned foods and margarine, DDT and Angel Dust. Today, it�s GM, molecular gastronomy and functional foods.

And yet, there are other ways to look at innovation and food, inspired and catalysed by the environmental challenges we face.

So is organic farming innovative? Coming up with a new, marketable, branded, certified product, more in tune with planetary needs and consumer preferences may well be seen as innovative. Food was going in a particular direction: industrialisaton farming and food was seemingly unstoppable, spurred on by cheap abundant oil and a range of synthetic inputs.

And then, along came organic food. People all over the world had started to realise that there was an environmental crises - in fact, there were various, sometimes interconnected crises. People wanted food to taste and be more natural. People wanted animal�s welfare to be taken more seriously.

Necessity bred ingenuity and food producers responded. Taking the best of the old along with plenty of the new, they began the long process of changing how food is.

Like all businesses, this had to be done with a value-adding aspect. Organic producers not only innovated in terms of what and how they produced, they innovated in distribution and in their own organisational structures, from box schemes to certification.

And still it goes on. Innovation seems to be in the high-end, cutting-edge, urban, industrial, business domain. And yet it carries on in fields on farms, far from the urban core.

An irony of innovation is that urban food preferences for more natural food have in part helped reshape the rural space, back away from the industrialised brink.

It is still the case, however, that innovation in food is seen in agri-industrial terms, by and large. Comparative funding figures and the front pages of the farming press all suggest as much.

Because of this, it was a surprise to see Offaly organic farmer Ralph Haslam on the front cover of the Farmers� Journal recently. The journal went, by it�s own front page description, from being �fearlessly on the farmers� side� to being �the voice of Ireland�s farming industry� a while back.

And yet there was Ralph, having received top prize at the JFC awards for innovation.

Ralph not only grows vegetables and produces award-winning cheeses under the Mossfield brand, he is building a dairy processing unit and biodigestor on his farm.

Ralph will spend the bones of �1 million on his new cheese and milk products plant, which will allow him to his own organic ice-cream.

And the biomass digestor is a great example of innovative business thinking. According to Ralph, �the digestor takes slurry and farmyard manure and is fed by microorganisms. These then convert the mix to a gas that runs a turbine which in turn generates electricity�

It can in fact, LPG-style, produce a BTL � biomas to liquid.

In a context where his 247 acre farm can clock up a fuel bill of �50-60000 per annum, any move towards powering anything on-site is most welcome

He found Eddie O� Neill (Teagasc Moorepark) very helpful with the plans, and indeed Pat Barry and the whole Organic Unit in general.

Ralph keeps on innovating � he�s moving from Freisen to Rotbunt cows: �They are hardy, grass based, dual purpose, and they give high protein and butterfat content in the milk� he tells me.

Putting it all together, and you have an organic farm with high levels of biodiversity, on the foothills of an ecopark, on an ecowalk trail, producing their own award-winning cheeses, building even bigger on-farm processing to add even more value and products, while converting slurry and farm yard manure to electricity. That�s innovation.

oil and Ireland's coping strategies: that $100 moment

Here's an article I wrote for the 'eye of the storm' op ed in the examiner. I haven't had an op ed before, so was v pleased to write it. It was all very frantic - I had a particular hour to get the article in by, which is unusual for me. And that hour was 2pm the day before the Saturday edition of the paper. It was also slightly outside of my normal remit, but I though I could perhaps start doing some news features for a change.

Don't worry foodies, there's plenty on food in it! I do regret not including the following things, however, so I'm glad to be able to include them now:

best place for info on peak oil is probably: this place! http://www.feasta.org/

John Gormley also obviously introduced the VRT changes and the lightbulb changes
and decoupling in Irish Agriculture has reduced the emissions from agriculture.

So here is the article:

It had to happen. With oil hitting and hovering around $100 dollars the whole world is now talking and thinking about oil. So how dependent are we on it, how much is there really left and what are we doing to adapting to a world with less oil?

It is thought that we are more efficient and less dependent on oil than we were in the bad old days of the 1970s. There are a number of problems with this thesis. Firstly, there is the fact that we are a far more globalised economy than we were back then. Since then, national economies have been deregulated and trade liberalised, so that now, many products are made up from a multitude of interconnected and intercontinental components. And plastic has, of course gone forth and multiplied.

Laptops, disposable containers, toys, toothbrushes, cameras, the list of personalised products goes on. But then, the functioning of many aspects of the economy is dependent too: medicines, food production and transport, are all either quite literally fuelled by or dependent upon oil.

Take food: Fertilizer production and transportation is heavily oil dependent. Prices are rising � Nitrogen (made by oil at present) is up 50%, Phospate (also a finite resource) is up 67% - and the consumer is starting to experience this.

With globalisation has come global sourcing of foods and agri-food inputs; we in Ireland have a very weak food producing infrastructure, once we start to consider foods other than meat and milk. Even these depend on winter feeds which are heavy oil users, both in production and transport.

According to the junior minister with responsibility in the area, Trevor Sargent, there are less than a dozen large scale vegetable producers left in Ireland at present.

Just-in-time deliveries by road mean that supermarkets have jettisoned their storage spaces and instead opted for storing food in refrigerated trucks on the roads. Food processing is ever-increasing too � both involve more oil.

So, seeing as we are so dependent on it, how much oil is left then? That depends upon how you measure it. For example, optimists suggest that there are bound to be reserves. According to the US based Cambridge Energy Research Associates:

�Those who believe a peak is imminent tend to consider only proven remaining reserves of conventional oil, which they currently estimate at about 1.2 trillion barrels�this is a pessimistic estimate because it excludes the enormous contribution likely from probable and possible resources, those yet to be found.�

Then go on: �the global inventory is some 4.8 trillion barrels, of which about 1.08 trillion barrels have been produced, leaving 3.72 trillion conventional and unconventional barrels, an order of magnitude that will allow productive capacity to continue to expand well into this century.�

Pessimists suggest that these reserves, should they be found, will be too difficult and costly to extract. They suggest that this may already be the case for reserves in deep water, the artic, extra heavy, oil shale and enhanced recovery oils. The crux of the matter is whether all the known reserves can be found, processed and delivered to market in time. Proponents of the Peak Oil theory, such as Feasta, suggest that we are already at the peak oil point, where accessible reserves will be smaller than what�s been extracted. They suggest that we need to make plans urgently to deal with energy decent, or powerdown.

So what is Ireland doing about it? Oil consumption per capita has risen 50% over the last 15 years, while our dependence on imported oil and gas stands at 85%. According to an Amarach consulting report from 2006, services and manufacturing will mostly be affected indirectly by peak oil in the short term, whereas residential and agricultural sectors are more vulnerable. They suggest that our mitigation strategies are vital.

The new Energy Minister, Eamon Ryan has begun to put some mitigating factors into place: these include funding for renewables research, the smart electricity metering programme for houses which will be rolled out in April, and improved north south energy co-operation. A National Energy Efficiency Action Plan is being finalised at present, which according to the Minister, �will allow us to save �1.7 billion or 3 million tonnes of oil every year.�

Minister Ryan states that �We are also committed to making energy efficiency savings of 20% by 2020. The public sector will have to make energy savings of 33% by this date.�

Building energy efficiency standards have also been introduced for all new houses by Environment Minister John Gormley.

Some parts of Ireland have taken matters into their own hands, most notably Kinsale and north Tipperary, in particular the town of Cloughjordan.

In Kinsale, students from the 2 year permaculture course in the local college along with their then teacher, Rob Hopkins, designed an energy decent plan, which has received some funding from the local council. The plan goes through all the key aspects of socio-economic and cultural life in Kinsale, and produces a road map for how to reduce energy use.

�We didn�t think it was going to be that big a deal, but the plan has been downloaded over 5000 times around the world� according to Klaus Harvey, who sits on the Steering Committee of Transition Towns Kinsale. This plan has become an intergal part of what has become the known as the transition towns movement. For Kinsale, food, education, housing, economy and livelihoods, health, tourism, transport, waste, energy and marine resources are all examined and mapped out in energy decent terms.

In north Tipperary, very ambitious plans are afoot. A 130 house ecovillage is being constructed at present, adjacent to the local village of Cloughjordan. According to Duncan Martin, of the ecovillage�s energy, waste and water subcommittee, �The houses will be well insulated and designed to make best use of the sun's heat�. There is an ecological charter which sets out the standard which the house must meet.

He goes on: �all our space heating and hot water will come from renewable sources. Additional heating will be provided by a district heating system. This will circulate hot water to every house from a central array of solar panels, backed up by two wood-chip boilers. The woodchip will come from local forestry wastes, so we will be independent of imported fossil fuels�.

And it�s not just the ecovillage itself. �The ecovillage is a partner in a European project called SERVE - Sustainable Energy for the Rural Village Environment. This is providing over �2 million in funding for the area around Cloughjordan to improve energy efficiency in existing houses and expand the use of renewable energy. This will cover such additions as more insulation, double glazing, solar panels, wood pellet boilers and better central heating controls�.

In total, along with the ecovillage itself, 900 houses in north Tipperary villages will benefit from the SERVE project.

Is it all enough? In the final analysis that depends upon whether we resist or embrace change.

Ollie's Christmas list: santy calling....

Dear Santy, Ollie again. I know some people think I�m a bit old for all this Santy stuff, but after last year, I can say with absolute conviction that I am a believer!

I mean, I wanted an overall majority for the Greens, and a Minister for as opposed to against the Environment. Now, I didn�t get the overall majority, but I did get a Green Minister in the Department of Ag with responsibility for organic, and a Green Environment minister.

And I wanted the Minister for as opposed to against the environment to at least watch the movie An Inconvenient Truth. Our new minister for the Environment met with Al Gore a few weeks back. I also asked for a dig out for the small organic growers. Fair play Santy, you really are a miracle worker.

And, while it�s tough for conventional farmers at the moment, with rising prices for all their agri-industrial inputs � the fertilizers, feeds, pesticides, fuel and all that, it just might encourage a few of them over to organic. Organic farmers� costs are also rising, but the playing field seems to be levelling a bit.

So it is with both hope and expectation that I�m writing this note to you. I feel a bit like the boy who has a fair bit and wants a fair bit more.

Anyway, the first one is fairly straight forward: I want the bits the Greens actually got into the programme for government to happen.

Especially 5% organic farming by 2012 and more support for farmers� markets. So if you could start working on that, Santy, great. I�d say the IOFGA manifesto is probably a good place to start, if you want to increase the organic acreage. There�s plenty of good advice in there; what�s more, I think the new Minister has already been listening to them. So, like most other kids these days, for me Christmas is just one big gift giving season.

You could add to his work by establishing a new organic development agency to kick start production, magic up a �20 million annual budget for the sector, encourage public institutions to provide organic food, and help out the tillage and horticulture sectors.

Minister Sargent, Santa�s little helper, has already done a bit for horticulture and tillage, but far more needs to be done.

He�s also started on the farmers� markets, but he really needs to start cracking the whip in a way befitting of a man with a double-barrelled authoritarian name; a minister and a sergeant.

He needs to get the county managers into a room, to tell them to tell their underlings to treat farmers� markets with the respect they deserve. And he needs to follow up on this by, with other Ministers like John Gormley, who has local government under his remit, setting local authorities targets to change their behaviour and attitude. In particular, all local authorities need to allow roadside advertising of farmers� markets. That way, you Rudolf and the rest of the Reindeers might actually find your way to one on your travels.

Here�s a real tough one for you now Santy: can you try to get some of our dusty old nutritionists to finally start accepting that, sometimes, organic food actually is more nutritious? What are they afraid of? There is so much recent research, especially into fruits, vegetables and milk, to suggest that it is more nutritious, that they�ll have to change their minds soon Santy.

In fact, if you could only stop them from trumpeting that ould broken record mantra �there is no evidence to suggest that organic food is more nutritious�, that�d be a start. It just keeps on popping up everywhere, so it does Santy, no matter what evidence comes out.

I know you have some sort of connection to Coca Cola Santy, which might colour your opinion, but even Coke are adding Green tea to a new product range of theirs, Diet Coke Plus. They advertise that this increases the antioxidants in the product, but really Santy, antioxidants are what all this new research is showing at higher levels in organic food.

So I�d recommend laying off the Coke Santy, and joining the reindeers in chompin on the organic carrots I�ve left out for you.

Yours in anticipation,

Dr. Ollie Moore

intro vid to organic

Ahhh, its good to be back

2nd draft of PhD handed over, tiny window of time....and how things have improved since I was last here!

Green minister for food and horticulture, with whom I've had an interview in the examiner last week and this....he was also at the farmers' market conference, which was also great....and he stayed and listened!

Tings luk gud, sow day do

the point of this post: have a look at the video in the link below........

intro to organic farming in the US, and it's relation to carbon dioxide

lovely little video starting with Percy Schmeiser, and going into a straightforward description of organic farming and it's relation to green house gases..........

organic farming and climate change

Following on from the recent article critically examining the DEFRA/MBS report on the sustainability/carbon footprint of organic food, have a look at this article, which appeared in the Irish Examiner a couple of weeks ago.

There are two ways to look at the effect of organic farming on climate change. One is to look at the effect of current organic production on climate change. The other is to conduct field trails that compare organic and conventional farming systems.

A fundamental problem with the former is that presently organic farming accounts for only 3% of the EU�s farming. In this context, it is inevitable that in a certified, traceable system the movement of agri-inputs and the use of various certified, traceable processes occasionally increases the organic system�s greenhouse gas emissions. As an example, organic farmers have to source guaranteed GM-free manure, rather than just use any available local source, as was the case before a percentage of GM ingredients was added to most winter feed rations on conventional farms.

In order to better asses the potential of farming systems to contribute to or take away from global warming, scenario comparisons need to be done. Comparing a world where food is produced organically to one where it is produced conventionally is far more useful than the fundamentally truncated and inevitably misleading 3% scenario.

This is especially important in the context of global warming: food production both contributes to it - 25-30% of global warming by most reckonings - and will be effected by it. Specific agriculturally-related changes include changes in what can be produced where; rising tides; increases in temperature with various regional variations (in Ireland, this includes a split between the already wet west getting wetter and the relatively dry east getting drier); increased droughts and increased cyclones. It goes without saying that each of these effects has knock-on effects, encompassing aspects as divergent as insurance premiums, holiday homes and diets.

Field trials allow for the study of something other than organic farming in the current 3% scenario. In these trials it is possible to, literally, compare organic and conventional worlds of farming.

Various field trials have been highlighted before in this diary. Other more recent research was presented in February at Biofach 2007 by the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL). This week and next, some of the key findings will be presented.

Dr. Andreas Fliessbach made a presentation on the scientific evidence of the role of organic agriculture in climate change, based mainly on field trials (the DOK trails) in Switzerland. Fliessbach first points to the lack of mineral fertilizer use in the organic system. Mineral fertilizer production necessitates large amounts of fossil fuel.

Carbon sequestering (locking carbon away, rather than allowing it to enter the atmosphere) emerges from his research as one of the major benefits of the organic system. He cites Swiss research that finds lower levels of energy use in an organic system: 46-49% lower when compared to conventional mineral fertilizer systems, and 31-35% lower when compared to conventional manure based systems.

Because energy use is not the only cause of greenhouse gases in agriculture, he compares the greenhouse gas production of organic and conventional systems. Organic farming�s �greenhouse warming potential� is 29-32% lower than conventional mineral fertilizer systems, and 35-37% lower than in conventional manure systems.

Because the ozone depleting nitrous oxide is inevitably released with nitrogen application, the lower levels applied in the organic system also emerged as beneficial. Likewise, the lower stocking rates of animals, as well as their use as a source of manure and their generally more integrated role on an organic farm emerged as beneficial.

Fliessbach concludes by summarising the various climate change reducing dimensions of the organic system. These are resource limitation; optimisation of manure use; crop rotations; mixed livestock and crop production systems; temporal or permanent grass-clover; and set-asides, extensification programmes and ecological measures.

Next week, more of the FiBL research on organic farming and climate will be presented.

To access the FiBl research into organic farming and climate change, go here, click on news and then click on the relevant link.

sex, vegetables and what you can do with them

a fun ting (we tend not to pronounce our th's round here....)

first up, a risky one to google, but well worth the watch, it's those sexy bitches who like it raw (trust me!)

Here's what I'd published in the Examiner a couple of weeks ago on the DEFRA/MBS report:

A recent DEFRA report, conducted by the Manchester Business School, has grabbed some headlines for claiming to prove that organic food isn�t always better for the environment.
A clear headed reading of the report reveals that most organic meats and wheat have lower energy uses, and all organic products have lower or no pesticide uses.
However, most media that have covered this story seem to have latched onto the fact that some of the time, some environmental impacts of some organic foods are considered higher than is the case for some conventional foods.
For example, much has been made of organic milk�s negative environmental contribution. However, if you read the report, it is clear that the energy used to produce 1lt of organic milk is less than half that used in conventional milk.
Where organic milk falls down relates (in an unspecified way) to the type of feed used by organic producers in the UK. In a context where certification means maintaining organic all the way from production to consumption, sometimes products and inputs have to have to be moved long distances. A more local conventional source may sometimes be available, but then the consumer doesn�t get a certified product.
This is always an issue for organics, and does obviously contribute to food miles. However, the question has to be asked � what�s the alternative? It is likely that with the increase in organic consumption, more products, inputs and services will be available in more and more places, thereby reducing the carbon footprint of these organic foods. The alternative to supporting organics and waiting for this to happen is to support conventional, with all its myriad environmental problems.
But in many cases, the research is, in my opinion, limited or flawed in a number of ways.
It is limited in not considering the farm as a place where the environment actually is. It�s as if there are farms, and there is the environment, and both are separate entities. In this flawed methodological construct, the lands used up by organics to produce food makes organic seem more damaging.
However, it is possible to view this construction in an entirely different way. Organic farms have been proven in numerous reports to be higher in biodiversity levels than conventional farms. So there is more nature in, or on, organic farms. There is more biodiversity in terms of farmed products and more in terms of plants in fields, life in hedgerows, birdlife and so on. Conventional farming has done enormous damage to biodiversity levels over the past 60 years.
Despite its stated focus on sustainability, this report does not consider biodiversity, animal welfare, soil condition or (in a comprehensive sense) water usage, so the report cannot be considered all-encompassing.
The UK�s Soil Association also claimed that the model used for the study amplified the amount of nitrous oxide emissions, while also increasing the land area used by organics by half.
Some good points are made, however. Car transport to and from supermarkets has a more negative effect on the environment than much food production. Interestingly, sometimes local production, even of organic, can be more energy intensive. Tomatoes produced in heated UK greenhouses have a greater negative impact than those produced in unheated ones in Spain.
So it all comes back to thinking about what you eat. If the product is out of season, and produced nearby, a lot of energy has probably been used to do this.
For all its flaws, it is clear from this report that the move towards agri-industrialisation in organics has had some inevitable negative impacts: the spirit of organic suggests more natural feeds and less concentrated feeds for animals, more crop rotations and less liquid feeds and so on. If you are lucky enough to know organic producers working in these more natural ways, make the most of them.
Overall, the three amigos � seasonal, local, organic � need to form a holy alliance. And in a choice between giving up because organic certification sometimes results in extra transport, and working toward a food system functioning with an awareness of the benefits of combining local, seasonal and organic, I know which one I�m choosing.
See the report:

organic food miles better...
This week in the Examiner, I'll be both highlighting and critiqing aspects of a report commissioned by DEFRA, conducted by the Manchester Business School. The report focuses on sustainability and food provisioning, with a particular focus on energy.
Some good points made, but plenty of errors picked up by various anti-organic truffle hounds....
The article will be more factual than theoretical, pointing to various misreadings out there and mistakes in the research itself. However, there will also be a focus on the salience of combining seasonal, local and organic, otherwise even local organic food can leave a heavy footprint (see also embedded food miles).
Theoretically, one of the main criticisms will be the conceptualisation of nature and the farm as two completely separate things...
The farming supplement of the Examiner is out on thursday....why not prepare for the article?
You can see the featured report here

ollie's christmas list: what I weally weally want

This is what I want from Santy. And if I don�t get it, I�ll be very very cross. If I do get it, the world will be a far better place.

OK, first things first. I want the Green Party to get an overall majority. Well, it is a Santy list isn�t it, and you can work wonders. You don�t even need petrol to fly around the world. The Reindeers probably produce a fair bit of Methane gas with their burps and to a lesser extent farts, but it�s still not as bad as aeroplanes now is it?

That�s another thing. I want a tax on gratuitous flying. I�ve flown once in the last two years, and I felt bad. On the plane, I read their �in-house� magazine, Cara. Hecktor, who to be fair I think is a good laugh, was interviewed in it about his travels. He made a joke about the fact that he�s flown �well over a hundred� times from Galway to Dublin. That�s completely wrong as a practice, and should have a massive environmental tax put on it. The whole world suffers because of that level and type of Co2 emissions, and it costs less than the train. Wrong, wrong wrong. Please help Santy.

Speaking of tax, how about a change in the tax system? How about punishing what harms the environment and rewarding what helps? Organic farms can sequester Co2 from the air (i.e. reverse global warming by sucking in Co2 and making it safe), have higher rates of biodiversity and loads more. OK just an increase in the REPS payment for organic producers, and an opt-out of REPS for very small organic growers. Now that�s just a wee stocking filler for a man of your talents, isn�t it Santy? Like, Denmark taxes pesticides and subsidises organic food is schools and hospitals Santy. Come on!

And speaking of organic farming, how about ending the folly of what gets called co-existence between organic and GM? We�re doing OK on that one so far Santy, but we need to stay vigilant. Can you believe, they talk about adventitious contamination, and, in the same breath, talk about the inevitability of this contamination. Santy, my dictionary says that adventitious mean �accidental�. What�s an inevitable accident Santy? I�m confused.

And what about Bird Flu. Pleeease pleeease, let the truth come out on that one. You have the power! Some experts are now are saying that wild and farmed outdoor birds are the victims, not the cause, of the deadly strain. They claim that the flu comes from the intensive factory farms of south east Asia, and gets so strong these factory farms, that it kills outdoor birds when they come into contact with it. And the flu is following poultry and poultry by-product transport routes, not the migratory paths of birds. You must have some across a few migratory birds in your travels? Did they look sick?

I also want some more stocking fillers. Little things. I want the minister for the environment to be for the environment. He argues against us even coming close to our Koyoto targets. Can you get him to go to the new Al Gore film, An InconvenientTruth? It�s really good. Very clear. Stark, I�d say. It�s on at the moment- I�m sure he�d have a chance over the season. While you�re at it, can you give him a copy of George Monbiots� new book, Heat? Well actually, seeing as this is a santy list, can you read it to him each night as he sleeps, so it embeds in his subconscious, and he just starts to act on the stuff in the book.

Out there.....
If you want a good quick sum of george monbiot's new book, have a look here:


well worth checking out.

Also, Matt Reed's blogs are a great set of resources. He's a sociologist and I love his writing style - he's a real storyteller, is Matt

Organic farming helps reduce CO2 emissions

Here's an article from 05, on some US research into organics and Co2 emissions. Happily, the number of orgnaic farmers is now on the rise in Ireland - for the first time in 6 years. It is estimated that up to 300 extra ppl will be certified organic for 06 than 05.

Ireland will be hit for about 1.5 billion euros by the EU under the terms and conditions of the Kyoto protocol. Why? Because our Co2 emissions increased so rapidly under the celtic tiger. That figure may even rise to something more like 4.5 billion, depending on how we perform between now and 2012.

Meanwhile, since the celtic tiger began all those years ago, organic farming has stagnated in Ireland. The amount spent on organic food has kept going up, but actual hectares farmed organically in Ireland has stalled, due mainly to imports. While initially, there may seem to be little connection between organic farming and the Kyoto protocol, read on.

While conventional farming contributes to green house gas emissions, organic farming actually takes the bad stuff (carbon dioxide) from the air and turns it into something beneficial. In fact, in the organic system, as in the organic philosophy, carbon is seen as useful. Growth of plants on an organic holding depends on the ability of the holding to maintain carbon. While conventional farming can deplete soil organic matter, organic farming actually builds it through the use of composted animal manures and cover crops.

It turns out that, over the 23 years of a study by the Rhodale Institute ,theres' been a 15-28% increase in soil carbon in organic systems, with virtually no increase in non-organic systems.

This study examined conventional, organic manure and organic plant/legume (i.e.manure-free) systems. The research was 'peer-reviewed' in the scientific journal, Nature; in other words, it was posited, challenged and defended by lecturers and professors from reputable academic institutions in what is the best academic journal in the area.

According to this massive piece of research, carried out from 1981 up until 2003, organic systems capture and make safe massive amounts of carbon. You can add to this the fact that organic systems actually use up less energy.

The word they use in the literature is 'sequestered'. In other words, carbon is sequestered in organic farm soil. 'Sequestered' seems, at first, an overly complex and convoluted word which just means something along the lines of removed from the air, or left behind in the soil, or taken out of action. It actually means 'to surrender for safekeeping' and it comes from the word which describes, essentially, a trustee, a sequester. In other words, an organic farm is a kind of safe keeper for carbon.

The carbon savings are massive. (Despite winning a war of Independence in the 1770s, the US still uses imperial measurements.) Organic farms sequester as much as 3,670 pounds of carbon per acre-foot each year.

Think of it in terms of cars. In the US, if they had 10,000 more 'medium sized' organic farms, that would equals 14.62 billion less miles driven.

And that�s not even counting the reductions in CO2 emissions represented by the organic systems' lower energy requirements.

A comparative analysis of the farm system trials' use of energy ( by Dr. David Pimentel of Cornell University) found that organic farming systems use just 63% of the energy required by conventional farming systems, in the main because of the massive amounts of energy required to synthesize nitrogen fertilizer.

Along with this, organic farming is a better way of holding carbon in a safe 'format' than even forests are. Farmers know more than most than 'experts differ and farming suffers'. Initially, in greenhouse gas research, vast areas of forests were considered the best available option for Co2s. Now, thanks in part to these decades of research by the Rhodale Institute, organic farms are.

In saying this, we are leaving aside all of the other benefits of organic farming. We are simply pointing out yet another reason that state policy in this country should favour organic farming. After all, 1.5 billion euros is 1.5 billion euros.

Cuba: organic island

Occasionally in the Examiner (every thursday, farming supplement) I write about different countries to Ireland, where organics are at a more advanced stage. So far, that's been Austria, Denmark and Cuba. The cuba article is below:

In the world of political philosophy, there are different types of freedom. You can have freedom to do stuff, or freedom from various types of wants. Cuba is, by Central American and Caribbean standards, a good example of the latter and a bad example of the former. So, for example, they have good health and education standards, but no open press or proper elections.

They have another thing too: Cuba feeds its population on locally produced organic food. You may of course not see this reality if you go to a five star compound on a two week holiday in Cuba. When Dr. Dr. Micheline Sheehy-Skeffington, an NUI Galway Botanist, spoke of her experiences in Cuba at a conference last year, the odd attendee who had donethe compound holiday seemed incredulous.

But the story of organic agriculture in Cuba is fascinating. Cuban agriculture was intensive, monocultural and export-orientated up until 1989. They exported commodities like tobacco and sugar to the Soviet bloc. They also relied on the Soviet bloc for subsidized inputs, including both fertilizers and fuel. They had, for example, been using c.200 kg of imported subsidized nitrates per hectare in farming in this period.

Needless to say, Cuba found itself in a tricky situation when the Soviet Bloc collapsed. What it did then was to essentially reorganise the production, distribution, consumption and to some extent control of agriculture. And they chose the organic route.

Of course �chose� is perhaps too strong a word; there was also an embargo/blockade, which prevented these inputs from getting to the island. However, facing a serious decline in nutritional levels throughout the 1990s, the transformation of Cuban agriculture has been impressive. There have been changes in state policy, in research and education, in control of production and distribution and of course in practices

Here is a summary of the changes:

� Integrated Pest Management
� Organic fertilizers and biofertilizers
� Soil conservation and recuperation
� Animal traction and alternative energy
� Inter cropping and crop rotation
� Mixing crops and animal production
� Alternative mechanization
� Community participation
� Alternative Veterinary Medicine
Adjusting to local conditions
� Reversing rural migration to cities
� Increasing cooperative use of land
� Improving agrarian research
� Changing agrarian education

� Biopesticides

� worker-managed collectives

� quotas for farmers to insure adequate supply for the whole country;

� farmers' markets where excess food crops can be sold by farmers for profit.

During the 1990s the embargo/blockage was tightened, in 1992 and 1996. However, the nutritional levels of Cubans were, from the mid 1990s on, rising, not falling, a trend which continues to this day.

Urban agriculture has been central to this, especially in a context whereby little if any fuel was available to transport food around.

According to Dr. Nelso Campanioni Concepci�n, deputy director of the National Institute for Fundamental Research on Tropical Agriculture (INIFAT), "The goal of urban agriculture is to gain the most food from every square meter of available space. The secret to the success of urban agriculture in Cuba has been the introduction of new technologies and varieties and an increase in areas farmed."

In 2002, Cuba produced 3.2 million tons of fruit, vegetables and spices in urban farms and gardens on over 35,000 hectares of urban land. Another 2,800 vegetable gardens are expected to be established by the end on 2006.

This is a classic example of necessity breeding ingenuity, and adversity producing abundance. Cubans get fresh organic produce to eat each day, no worries about pesticide drift in built up areas, and no Co2 emissions created.

Dr. Lisa Reynolds has visited Cuba on fact finding missions many times. In her most recent report, she pointed to a number of positive changes. Despite insufficient rainfall and recurring drought in eastern areas, the �agroecological techniques� introduced have stabilised the countryside. Likewise, the introduction of privately-owned farms, co-operatives and a diversified market-based system has increased productivity.

If you want to see this Cuba:

The Cuban Organic Support Group (established in 1997 by members of the Henry Doubbelday Research Association - HDRA) arrange trips. (00 44 24 7667 3491 and http://www.cosg.org.uk/ )

Likewise, WowCuba also arrange agri-trips. See http://www.wowcuba.com/discovery/ag-intro.html