The NFU Vice President was speaking at the FNSEA-French Government International Forum in Paris.
After taking part in a round table with other industry experts to share the NFU’s views on how farmers are playing their part, Mr Smith said: “This was an important opportunity for the NFU to showcase how our farmers and growers are making real strides towards improving productivity and consequently reducing their emissions through our industry’s Greenhouse Gas Action Plan.
"There are exciting new technologies out there that can help farmers reduce their carbon footprint but it needs remembering that these will only arrive on farm if farmers can afford to make the necessary investment.
"It was interesting to hear a determination from our EU colleagues that GHG savings should not be achieved by simply winding down food production and thus gifting our markets to countries where there is not the same enthusiasm to reduce GHGs.
He added: “Our land can be used to produce tasty, affordable, high quality food whilst we lead the way in improving efficiency on-farm and making the most of clean energy systems.
“For example, we know that European first generation biofuels industry have a contribution to make in tackling climate change and reducing GHGs from the EU transport sector but this potential is being ignored by policymakers.”
This conference came just after the publication of a European Joint Research Centre report which highlighted the potential for future GHG reduction targets to decrease EU food production, lower EU competitiveness with the resulting leakage in emissions possibly outdoing any mitigation effort in Europe.
However it is also clear that farmers will need to produce more food to feed a growing population in the face of a changing climate, when, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggested last year, “all aspects of food security are at risk” from climate change.
NFU Vice President Guy Smith also sits on the Advisory Board of the UK’s Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU).
Our key messages:
Agriculture is different
The majority of GHG emissions from agriculture are fundamentally different from other sectors of the economy, as they arise from complex natural processes. At present, we can only guess at how far we can manage nitrous oxide and methane emissions. However agriculture can make a realistic contribution to the global mitigation effort by improving productivity and so reducing emissions.
This is why in England the agricultural industry Greenhouse Gas Action Plan has made a firm commitment by 2020 to reduce our sector’s GHG emissions by 11 per cent or three million tonnes CO2 equivalent per year.
On improving resource use efficiency and productivity...
Factors which farmers can manage include efficiencies of resource use (e.g. nitrogen, energy). And there are also business efficiency gains to be made – so farming can be more profitable as well as ‘climate smart’.
On renewables...
The NFU believes that land can indeed be multifunctional, yielding an agricultural benefit as well as producing energy. With many forms of land-based renewable energy available (bioenergy, wind power, solar, etc.) to help meet the UK’s share of European targets, the agricultural sector will play an increasingly significant role as an energy producer – up to 25% of Britain’s clean energy needs by 2020. This amount of renewable energy from agriculture would offset one-third of our sector’s GHG emissions – over five times the target in the GHG Action Plan.