Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
on-farm, wholesale, retail and domestic refrigeration is a component of the figure given for
processing. In total, the FAO estimate that just 2.2 per cent of all livestock emissions come
from fossil fuels, and 11 per cent of intensive livestock emissions come from fossil fuels. It
is hard to reconcile this with sets of statistics which show that, in the UK, fertilizer produc-
large extent these are emissions that the backyard poultry keeper or the peasant making a
'marginal livelihood' from a dairy cow, does not have.
The FAO analysis accounts for CO
2
from tractors, fertilizers, on-farm processing and a
miniscule amount for transport - but it doesn't register all the high impact baggage that
tends to come with intensive farming, in order to accommodate its so called economies
of scale: 4x4s, concrete yards, paved roads, electric lights, air conditioning, refrigeration,
burglar alarms, slaughterhouse costs, animal waste disposal, health and safety measures,
carcase incineration, livestock registration and identification, product tracking, computer-
ized accounts, conferences, packaging, advertising, middlemen, retail chains, just-in-time
delivery, supermarket journeys, processing waste disposal, domestic waste disposal, jour-
neys to work etc. You don't buy into the intensive farmers' club with just a tractor and sack
of fertilizer - intensive farming brings with it all the paraphernalia of an industrialized urb-
anized lifestyle, which the peasant in a local economy for the most part manages without.
That is why nearly two thirds of global warming is caused by fossil fuels. The FAO, by
failing to account for all this have contrived to stigmatize lifestyles which, taken in their
entirety, and providing there is enough land to accommodate them, ought to be applauded
for their low impact.
The FAO is not alone in its bias. In the UK, a Cranfield University report concludes that
'the global warming potential from arable cropping is dominated by N
2
O, not by CO
2
from
fuel use … In agriculture N
2
O dominates, with substantial contributions too from meth-
of productivity, whereas there is a wide difference in fossil fuel use between a muscle-
powered, organic, locally-centred arable economy, and a highly mechanized, export-orient-
ated agriculture serving distant urban consumers.
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An analysis that focuses unduly on biospheric emissions and is blind to wider fossil-fuel
penalties could, for example, conclude that the extra fossil fuel required to power an indus-
trialized system of rice cultivation that replaced a peasant system, was negligible compared
to the methane emissions that emanated from both of them. Similarly current advice to im-
prove the yield of dairy cows in order to reduce methane emissions fails to take into ac-
count increased fossil fuel emissions that may result from intensification. This biospheric
bias is most pronounced with livestock. Since animals concentrate nutrients at the top end
of the food chain, it stands to reason that they concentrate methane and nitrous oxide emis-
sions at the top end of the carbon chain, while the fact that they can move means that their
