From the cows that graze farmland, to the newspapers that show farmers damaging the environment, farming is often seen as black and white. This simplifies the different approaches taken by farmers, which can benefit the natural world. Moreover, farming is more than just good or bad, black or white. Farming is complex and inspirational, as a recent workshop held as part of Lancaster University’s COP26 Festival aimed to highlight.

Image by Matthias Zomer, Pexels

On the evening of 20th October, Professor Claire Waterton and Naomi Hammett, a PhD student at Lancaster University, led a 1-hour workshop into greenhouse gas emissions on farms in Lancashire and Cumbria. This was part of the COP26 Festival at Lancaster University, which aims to showcase leading research on the environment and climate change. The workshop began with a 9-minute film about the environmental challenges facing farmers today, before moving to a series of discussions with farmers and non-farmers to explore what they can do ‘beyond net zero’ greenhouse gas emissions.

Although the film was short, it was by no means lacking in depth. The range of perspectives covered was enlightening and insightful, focusing on how farmers are faced with the daunting task of reducing their greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible. Most importantly, the film told stories from the farmers’ perspectives and showed how important it is to listen to one another if we are to make progress in tackling the climate crisis.

In particular, the film showed what environmental and economic challenges confront farmers in a time of significant changes from Brexit, COVID-19 and the climate crisis. Many farmers explained that although they were trying to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, their efforts were rarely recognised. For example, attempts to plant more hedgerows and enrich biodiversity in Lancashire largely went ignored by policy makers and wider society. Instead, the farmers who attended mainly saw themselves as blamed for increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

But what are greenhouse gas emissions and why is farming important in this context? Greenhouse gases trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere, hence why they are associated with global warming. Think of them as a kind of insulating cover on the Earth, keeping the planet warm and preventing extra heat from escaping. These include carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane, with methane ringing many alarm bells in agriculture because of its rapid warming effect. In the discussion, the farmers identified livestock as a source of these emissions because cows release methane as they digest food and pass gas. This link means that many livestock and dairy farmers are labelled as environmentally harmful.

This, however, is not the full story. Many farmers are making attempts to reduce their methane emissions. For example, garlic and citrus food pellets are being used as a way to reduce methane emissions from the digestive processes of livestock. These pellets are eaten by cows. Within their digestive process, the bacteria that would usually produce methane are killed due to the pellets, all without harming the animals themselves.

The film also showed that farmers were keen to think about how to address climate change along with non-farmers. Indeed, the workshop created the opportunity to meet (virtually) with the farmers and discuss what greenhouse gas emission reductions meant for them.

Image by Laura Brown

Perhaps then, the next time you see a cow or a farm, you might think about the complexity of the greenhouse gas ‘landscape’ you observe including emissions as well as ‘sinks’ (where farming practices result in the take up of carbon into the soil and vegetation). I came away with a greater awareness of what farmers are doing for the environment and how these are helped (in some ways) by carbon accounting tools behind the scenes. Carbon accounting aims to record the emissions that are part of the farm system, whether that’s through imports, raising animals or the transport of goods. But these tools are subject to shortcomings and don’t always capture the stores of carbon in grassland and vegetation. The trees farmers plant, the grasslands they maintain and the garlic pellets they feed their animals are not often found in most of the emissions figures.

Overall, as Professor Claire Waterton put forward, the workshop highlighted that ‘different choices’ are needed for ‘different farmers’. Each farm is different and no one approach is right. Similarly, there is no right answer for how to address climate change. What the seminar highlighted was that farmers are also working to make a difference for the food we see on the shelves.

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