Month: October 2019

ffinlo Costain is the chief executive of Farmwel, a think tank working on climate and food security.

Farmers own and manage more than 70 per cent of land in the UK. Unfortunately, many of them feel marginalised and threatened by the current focus on ruminant methane in causing global warming. However, this focus is ill-informed and runs the risk of alienating precisely the constituency we must inspire in the race to mitigate and adapt to climate change, restore biodiversity, and increase our food security. It could also drive dangerously unsustainable land use and the further intensification of animal and arable agriculture.

New science, by a team of researchers for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), based at the University of Oxford, categorically shows that methane from the UK’s ruminants is not causing global warming – instead ruminants provide a viable pathway to net zero emissions from UK agriculture by 2030.1,2,3

Although livestock produce methane almost constantly, the focus on their emissions is misleading – it’s the warming impact of those emissions that actually matters.

Grass-based cattle and sheep systems can be climate neutral by 2030, and help to restore biodiversity and soil health

Far from being unsustainable, as many people have argued, grass-based cattle and sheep systems can be climate neutral by 2030, and they can help to restore biodiversity and soil health.

For the full article https://veterinaryrecord.bmj.com/content/185/14/449.full