On July 7, the EU is expected to publish its strategy for building a competitive, resilient, and sustainable livestock sector. A draft of the Livestock Strategy has leaked. While the text is clearly still a work in progress, there are several worrying signs.
Real resilience requires tackling the sector’s contribution to global warming head-on with 1) a plan for what animal farming consistent with Europe’s climate goals looks like in 2040, 2) financial and other support to farmers to help make that vision a reality, and 3) transparent accounting about the real-world impacts of methane.
While Europe’s second dangerous heatwave of the summer is subsiding, the need to curb global warming is more urgent than ever. A strong Livestock Strategy can help.
The leaked draft of the EU Livestock Strategy is over 20 pages and has several placeholders for additional content, but there are already some clear red flags for those looking to ensure a fair and well-managed transition to agroecological farming done with the climate and nature’s limits.
No practical vision for animal farming in a warming world
The draft Strategy has no discussion of what farmed animal levels would look like if we really wanted to unlock the potential of the sector to help stop global warming.
While there is not enough detail in the draft to figure out exactly what the Commission is proposing, it looks roughly consistent with a weaker agricultural sector target as part of the EU’s weakened 2040 climate target — something IATP looked into earlier this year, finding that short-term relief from climate action will actually increase risks to farmers in the long term.
Essentially, the Strategy doubles down on technological solutions that will reduce pollution on the margins. It mentions the word “transition” often but does not define what that means or include policies to support the transformational changes needed to make the sector truly resilient.
This approach is contrary to the advice the Commission received earlier this year from its climate advisory body which found that systemic transition was needed to meet the EU’s climate targets, safeguard food security, and protect farmers’ livelihoods. German think tank Agora Agriculture has modelled what such a transition would look like: most pollution cuts come from reducing herd numbers. Technical measures have only a small role to play.
Cutting climate pollution may be lower on the political agenda today, but the public remains concerned, and the undeniable costs of global warming continue to rise. Among human casualties and many other distressing impacts, this June’s record-breaking heatwave killed several hundred thousand chickens in France. Dire risks to farmers, animals, and food production will continue to mount as climate change increases the frequency of these severe weather events.
The longer politicians or policymakers drag their feet on effective climate action, the faster change will need to happen when climate change ascends the political agenda, and that accelerated transition poses risks for farmers.
The draft Livestock Strategy is built on the assumption that politicians or consumers will not require the sector to contribute much to limiting future global warming and is asking farmers to bet their livelihoods on that outcome.
Prudent risk management would chart a different path.
No dedicated money to support farmers in rebalancing their herds
Diversifying production and transitioning away from industrial livestock production will require significant investment and a substantial commitment by farmers, both of which should be matched by a societal commitment to provide financial support.
Having a dedicated pot of money to help farmers extensify to agroecology, diversify what animals they raise or crops they grow, or to exit animal farming altogether has long been a request of food and farming groups and supported by stakeholders throughout the agri-food system.
Europe is in the middle of negotiating its next multi-year budget, so the Livestock Strategy was always limited in what it could do on the financial front. Yet, it does have an important role in signaling what is needed and monitoring from future gaps in support.
The draft Strategy promises to look into a dedicated financial instrument to help bridge any investment gaps in shifting to more animal-friendly and sustainable farm models. But without defining what sustainable animal farming looks like (the first red flag discussed above), it is questionable whether this tentative step actually supports the change needed.
More concerning is the draft Strategy’s recommendation to invest further in biogas and biomethane as a strategy to address the large amounts of manure from farmed animals that pollutes both the climate and waterways. Germany was an early adopter of biogas as a “renewable” source of energy and has spent decades subsidizing it from the public purse. Yet, without a plan for how biogas fits into a sustainable food system and farmed animals at levels nature can support, it has now built more infrastructure than it needs. In Denmark, herds have expanded in areas with the most biogas production, which highlights the risk that incentivizing biogas can actually bolster the factory farm system. Without a vision for sustainably farmed animal numbers, the draft Strategy risks making the same mistakes.
Ignoring methane pollution from farmed animals helps no one — except the agribusiness lobby
Methane is a super heating greenhouse gas, a fact the agribusiness lobby has long tried to distract attention from.
One of the industry’s tactics is to focus on methane’s role in the carbon cycle. As the cycle goes: Plants use carbon (CO2) from the atmosphere to grow; cows eat those plants and emit methane back into the atmosphere; methane eventually breaks down into CO2 and the cycle begins again.
Seems natural, no?
Yet, this simplified explanation of the carbon cycle completely ignores the intense global heating that methane causes in the atmosphere before it breaks down into CO2 (80x more than CO2 over a 20-year timespan).
Disappointingly, the Livestock Strategy seems to have adopted this industry narrative in its treatment of agricultural methane.
IATP, along with more than 30 of our food, farming, climate and nature partners, wrote to the Agriculture Commissioner in June requesting that he correct course. The Livestock Strategy needs to be transparent about global heating effects from methane pollution and the levels of pollution cuts needed in the livestock sector.
The Livestock Strategy needs three essential elements to help farmers slow global warming.
The leaked Livestock Strategy was just a draft.
For the Strategy to build resilience, competitiveness, and sustainability and truly deliver for farmers, it needs to:
- Map out what farmed animal levels consistent with Europe’s climate goals looks like.
- Identify where financial and other support to farmers to help make that vision a reality will come from and how it will monitor delivery.
- Be transparent about the real-world impacts of methane and maintain Europe’s existing accounting approach.
