The World Farmers Organisation (WFO) General Assembly in Luxembourg from 20-22nd May saw the launch of its Farmers Route, which highlights the critical importance of farmers’ own voices being heard. The WFO’s climate change working group took its own route navigating its way through a technical workshop filled with important national and global climate policy issues.
The journey started with a presentation from Dr Michelle Cain at Oxford University who talked about her work on a new GHG accounting metric for methane. Hayden Montgomery from the Global Research Alliance flagged potential new options to mitigate methane emissions from ruminant livestock including animal breeding, low emission feeds and vaccines. Don Syme, New Zealand’s representative in Rome, took us for a tour round his country’s new zero carbon bill. This takes a split gas approach and proposes to reduce all greenhouse gases (except biogenic methane) to net zero by 2050 together with reducing emissions of biogenic methane by 24–47 per cent by 2050.
Finding a successful route for agriculture to the level of investment required to help the sector deliver on the climate challenge is a road strewn with potholes.
Vicky Noens, member of the UNFCCC Standing Committee on Finance and Kees Blokland of Agriterra turned their headlights on full beam to help the audience understand the climate finance landscape.
The final part of the journey navigated its way through the current negotiations on agriculture in the UNFCCC, the so-called Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture. The next set of talks are in June when soil carbon and water management are up for debate. The NFU drafted the Farmers Constituency response to the consultation on these subjects.
The NFU facilitates the WFO’s climate change working group which contains farmers organisations from Canada, Cambodia, Denmark, France, Japan, Mauritius, New Zealand and Rwanda and supported by farmers from Germany and Norway.