When Climate Policy
Hits the Food Chain
There was an interesting article recently in the Financial
Times describing the outrage in Ireland when dairy farmers were told that
they would have to cull cows from their herds because they are excreting too
much nitrogen into the environment—meaning, in other words, that they are
producing more manure than is now allowable under European Union regulations.
The farmers have rebelled as they did in Holland when
similar restrictions were being proposed there.
Maybe, instead of looking at it as a producer’s problem, we
should be asking urban dwellers/consumers what they would think about reducing
or eliminating dairy products in their diet. For example, if you live in Amsterdam, Dublin,
or perhaps, Manhattan, are you ready to give up your wine and cheese at night
for, let’s say, wine with chips and salsa?
Of course, that still gets us back to agriculture…but it
would now be vegetable based--corn and tomatoes instead of dairy and cheese. Though, then, with less cow manure to help
fertilize the fields, we would need more artificial nitrogen-based fertilizer
made from natural gas and chemical plants in order to grow the additional corn
and tomatoes to do that.
And, that means we would need to consume more fossil fuels
which everybody says are bad for the environment—which makes you wonder whether
forcing farmers in Europe to reduce the size of their dairy herds makes any
sense at all in the first place.
I guess what it points to is that enforcing any kind of
climate policy has its limits, especially when it starts affecting our food
chain.
After reading the article, it made me “dig” a little deeper
into other environmental policies like carbon capture. From what I could read, a beautiful, green
cornfield near where I live, captures about 3/4ths of a metric ton/acre of
carbon dioxide each summer as the corn plants take it out of the air during
photosynthesis.
Compare that to an acre of concrete, masonry buildings in
Manhattan which take no carbon dioxide out of the air, but just add to it each
and every day. Maybe to solve the
climate crisis, we should just ban people from living in cities where there is
little or no green space and no carbon capture going on.
I doubt that we will get to that. There are just too many people and too many
votes living in the cities to ever get that done.
Yet, it makes you wonder.
Why should we be putting the onus of cleaning up the planet on dairy farmers
and cheese producers? Is it because
there are so few of them?
Maybe the deep thinkers in places like Brussels, Washington,
Albany, etc. who are coming up with all of these ideas need to take a step back
and think things through a bit. I doubt
that any of them are ready to give up enjoying the cheese they savor as an hors
d’oeuvre before dinner and, who knows, wine could be the next thing to go. A lot of energy, fertilizer, pest control,
etc. goes into viniculture to say nothing of the heat, energy and raw material
it takes to make a glass wine bottle.
And, if we were to ban wine as well as cheese—then we really
would have a crisis on our hands!
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