Climate change. Farming in the frontline.
How the pursuit of Net Zero will change the face of farming as we have known it
Peter Carruthers
In February this year, the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the UK government’s ‘expert advisor on climate change’, released its ‘Seventh Carbon Budget’.
Its Executive Summary opens with a clear, unambiguous ‘statement of faith’.
“The climate is changing. Greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere are outside the range that our species has ever previously experienced. Heatwaves and floods have become regular fixtures instead of ‘once in a lifetime’ events for many around the world, including in the UK. Global warming has unequivocally been caused by greenhouse gas emissions, with 100% of the observed long-term temperature change attributable to human causes.”
As the report notes, “the UK’s Climate Change Act (2008) requires the Government to propose regular, legally binding milestones on the way to achieving Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions, known as carbon budgets”. The role of the CCC is to “advise the Government on the level of these. Parliament must then agree each carbon budget for it to be set into law [by June 2026]. Investors, businesses, households, and government can then act with a shared understanding of the path as well as the end goal.” In other words, everyone must pitch in to help make Net Zero happen, and regulation and legislation will ensure they do.
The document goes on to remind the reader that the deadline for achieving ‘Net Zero’ is 2050, just 25 years time, “with any residual greenhouse gas emissions balanced by removals”.
The report then sets out how this might be achieved via “an emissions reduction pathway from 2025 to Net Zero by 2050”. Electrification and low-carbon electricity supply will make the greatest contribution, but other sectors will also need to decarbonise. Adaptation measures will also need to be ramped up. While, “large parts of the UK’s service-based economy will see little impact.. for some, for example in oil and gas and some parts of farming, there will be significant change”.
It is the expectations of, and potential impacts on, farming and the land of the CCC’s Seventh Carbon Budget that are of particular interest to us here, and I will summarise those below. But first, a brief outline of the global picture.
Global farming and climate change
The climate-change phenomenon and the pursuit of Net Zero affects us all. But it has particular significance for farming and farmers. Farming and food production, especially livestock production, are major sources of greenhouse-gas emissions, but farming is also an important carbon sink.
The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (2022) (the latest) states that agriculture, forestry and other land uses are responsible for 22% of global greenhouse-gas emissions, but land absorbs about one-third of human caused emissions (‘fact sheet’).
Using earlier data, ‘Our World in Data’, concluded that food production as a whole is believed to account for 26% of global greenhouse-gas emissions, with 82% of this arising from the production stages, and 18% from the supply chain. About 58% of food emissions come from animal products and half of those from beef and lamb (BBC), so livestock in total account for 15% global emissions and beef and sheep for 7.5%.
As the article notes, “reducing emissions from food production will be one of our greatest challenges in the coming decades.. and will need a menu of solutions: changes to diets; food waste reduction; improvements in agricultural efficiency; and technologies that make low-carbon food alternatives scalable and affordable”.
Over recent years, these statistics have presented a huge threat to farming, especially beef and sheep production, with calls to phase out cattle and sheep altogether and replace them with more ‘climate friendly’ foods.
For example, a 2019 report by a group of British universities, concluded that for the UK to meet its Net-Zero-by-2050 target, national consumption of beef and lamb would need to drop by 50% by 2029, and be phased out completely by 2049. To mark its 150th anniversary, Sainsbury’s issued a ‘Future of Food’ report with scenarios for 2025, 2050 and 2169, proposing a future in which meat and milk are replaced by algal milk and protein, insects, lab-grown meat and jellyfish. By 2050, Sainsbury’s even expects to be printing meat in its shops using 3D printing technology!
The Seventh Carbon Budget and farming
The CCC’s Seventh Carbon Budget’s section on farming and the land begins by noting that “agriculture is currently the fourth highest-emitting sector in the UK economy, accounting in 2022, for 11% of UK GHG emissions”. However, “net emissions from land use, land use change, and forestry are currently close to zero”.
Under the proposed carbon budget, by 2040, agricultural emissions will fall by 39% relative to 2022, but due to reductions in other sectors, will account for 27% of UK GHG emissions and become the UK’s second highest-emitting sector. But, “by this point the land use carbon sink will be growing, turning the land use sector into a small net sink”.
“By 2050, the combined agriculture and land use sectors can reach Net Zero emissions through low-carbon farming approaches and carbon sequestration from woodland expansion and peatland restoration.”
In other words, farming is expected to cut its own emissions and ideally soak up more of those of other sectors. Among other measures, this will this be achieved as follows.
Reducing meat consumption by 35% (vs 2019) and cattle and sheep numbers by 38% (vs 2023) by 2050.
Increasing average crop yield by 16% (vs 2022) and increasing low-carbon mobile energy use in the fleet by 93% (vs 2025) by 2050.
Restoring peatlands, with 79% of upland and 56% of lowland in “natural or rewetted condition, and 10% of lowland peat “under raised-water level management.
Planting new woodlands, with annual planting rates increasing from 17,000 ha in 2025 to 60,000 ha by 2040. By 2050, the proportion of UK land under woodland will increase from 13% to 19%.
Planting energy crops, with annual planting rates increasing from 0 ha in 2025 to 38,000 ha by 2040.
Converting agricultural land to agroforestry, with annual planting rates increasing from 8000 ha in 2025 to 204,000 ha by 2050. Increasing the length of managed hedgerows from 420,000 km in 2025 to 613,000 km by 2050.
As the Seventh Carbon Budget notes, “delivering the Balanced Pathway for the agriculture and land use sectors will require a transformation in UK land use”. Overall, an estimated 19% of the UK agricultural area will be required for “land-based measures” by 2050.
Actions will be “guided by policy, but delivered by farmers and land managers”, who will “diversify land use and management, while continuing to produce food” (although the report does not say how much food). The outcome will be to turn agriculture from a net source of emissions to approximately net zero. The document calls for “immediate policy action” to release land early for measures such as woodland creation.
Farming organisations have been wary and critical of some aspects of the Seventh Carbon Budget. For example, the CLA sees one of its essential aims as simply assigning lto and managers the task of ‘transforming’ land so woodland and peat can balance out Agriculture’s emissions, ie stop grazing cattle and sheep and plant woodland, energy crops etc.
The CLA article goes on to point out several serious omissions in the CCC’s report.
Grassland. The report does not incorporate carbon removal through rotational and regenerative grazing in the pathway, and “contains significant gaps around how grassland could be managed to meet climate objectives, and deliver more holistically for nature, public nutrition, cultural heritage and rural communities”.
Methane. “The CCC uses GWP100 to account for methane, rather than the more precise metric GWP*… GWP100 ignores the cyclical decay of methane, overestimating its long-term warming contribution whilst underestimating its short-term warming contribution… it is concerning to see the CCC has not examined how its choice of accounting metric might set different trajectories for decarbonising Agriculture and Land Use.”
Forestry. “The CCC does not sufficiently promote commercial forestry … despite this being a key way to achieve carbon removal whilst minimising land take from agriculture.
‘A vision for land use in England’
In January of this year, “the government opened a consultation calling for ideas of how England should manage land use changes to balance food security, nature recovery, infrastructure needs and climate goals” (BBC).
The consultation, described as a “national conversation”, opened on 31 January and will close on 25 April. To start the ‘conversation’, the government issued a consultation document, setting out the background and aims of the consultation/conversation. The outcome of the process will be a ‘Land Use Framework for England’, which will be published later this year.
Among other data, the consultation document presents the government’s analysis of the “proportion of England's total agricultural land area that may need to change in use or management by 2050”. Overall, 1.6 million hectares of farm land will need to be ‘repurposed’ to meet the government’s legal environmental and climate targets by 2050, as follows.
1% (50,000 ha) with small changes maintaining the same agricultural land use (eg “introducing nature within fields”, by planting herbs or other plants along field margins).
4% (370,000 ha) changing to combined food production and environmental and climate benefits (eg more trees alongside food production).
5% (430,000 ha) repurposed for environmental benefits, with limited food production (eg species-rich grassland, short-rotation coppice, peatland restoration).
9% (760,000 ha) removed from food production altogether and fully dedicated to environmental/climate benefits (especially for woodland creation).
The consultation document prompted inevitable concern and criticism. As the BBC reported, while NFU President, Tom Bradshaw, welcomed the consultation, he was concerned about food security: any future plans, he said, must have "British food at its heart". Leader of the Opposition, Kemi Badenoch, said the plans would add even more burdens on farmers.
Overall, many in farming doubtless feel that the direction of travel set out above could signal the ‘end of farming as they have known it’. We shall explore this further, including from a biblical and prophetic perspective, in subsequent articles, and at the Hope Countryside online meeting below.
As a rural ministry, we also have a pastoral and prayerful concern for farming people who feel these developments present them with an existential threat. For relevant prayer points, see this season’s Seeds of Prayer here.
This article is offered as background reading for the forthcoming Hope Countryside online meeting on ‘Climate change, faith and farming’, Saturday 5 April, 9.00 - 10.30 AM. If you would like to find out more, discuss and pray about these critical issues, please join the meeting. Click here or below for more details and login.
