{"id":56122,"date":"2020-12-22T10:00:31","date_gmt":"2020-12-22T15:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=56122"},"modified":"2020-12-22T10:00:31","modified_gmt":"2020-12-22T15:00:31","slug":"why-the-climate-change-committee-have-got-it-wrong-on-land-food-and-farming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=56122","title":{"rendered":"Why the Climate Change Committee have got it wrong on land, food and farming"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

Why the Climate Change Committee have got it wrong on land, food and farming<\/a><\/h1>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

Last week I spent what I must admit to have been two rather depressing sessions participating in a zoom conference convened by the\u00a0Climate Change Committee<\/a>\u00a0(CCC) in order to share their\u00a0vision and strategy<\/a>\u00a0for reaching net zero emissions by 2050, with a particular focus on the role of land use and agriculture.<\/p>\n

Outside of food and farming, much of what the CCC are proposing seems eminently reasonable. It\u2019s the kind of thing one would imagine \u2013 a massive and rapid move towards renewable energy generation, moving away from internal combustion engines, improving building insulation to reduce energy loss, reduction in car travel and slowing of demand for flights. But when it comes to land use, farming and food, in my opinion they\u2019ve got it completely wrong.<\/p>\n

A rather crude summary of what they\u2019re envisaging includes the following \u2013 a very significant increase in agricultural biofuel production; 10% of the farmed area planted with trees; an increase in afforestation rates to at least 30,000 hectares per year across the U.K. by 2025 and an average of 40,000 hectares per year in the 2030s, plus a \u201cland sparing\u201d agenda including dramatic increase in yields from arable crops, a significant reduction in livestock including ruminants, and no presumption of any increase in soil carbon.<\/p>\n

To add insult to injury, on the diet side, they propose a significant switch towards plant-based diets without making any differentiation between livestock which are part of the problem (intensive chickens, pig and dairy units) and those which are absolutely a necessary part of the solution (grass fed and mainly grass-fed beef, lamb and dairy cows).<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/main><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why the Climate Change Committee have got it wrong on land, food and farming Last week I spent what I must admit to have been two rather depressing sessions participating in a zoom conference convened by the\u00a0Climate Change Committee\u00a0(CCC) in order to share their\u00a0vision and strategy\u00a0for reaching net zero emissions by 2050, with a particular […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[20,141,30750,1912,30751,14417,6867],"class_list":["post-56122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-agriculture","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-change-committee","tag-food-production","tag-net-zero-emissions","tag-patrick-holden","tag-sustainable-food-trust"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56122"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56123,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56122\/revisions\/56123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}