In the Netherlands, they say thousands of farms may be forced to close.
In Ireland dairy farmers are being forced to reduce herds to remain within government-set limits.
In New Zealand and Canada, farmers face new carbon taxes.
Politicians in the Netherlands reacted to farmer demonstrations with an offer of more than $45 billion Cdn to buy out as many as 3,000 of the biggest greenhouse-gas emitters.
“We don’t want to make fires or block roads, but if we do nothing, it’s over,” said dairy farmer Bart Kooijman. “We’ll just get kicked off the land.”
While it’s one of the biggest victims onf more extreme weather, agriculture is also a major climate offender. From farm to fork, the food system generates about 31 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, said a report on edairynews,
Methane from ruminant farm animals, manure, commercial fertilizers, land clearing such as in Brazil and pesticides are all contributing to greenhouse gas emissions.
Agricultural emissions rose 14 per cent between 2000 and 2018, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation. If action isn’t taken fast, researchers estimate that food-related emissions alone would push the earth past 1.5C of warming that world leaders set as a target in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
So after focusing for years on fossil fuels, policymakers are beginning to target farming too.
The biodiversity summit in December in Montreal reached agreement on cutting methane emissions by 30 per cent by 2030, a goal that dairy industry analyst Sylvain Charlebois of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia has said will be devastating for Canadian farmers.
Meeting that goal means politicians are implementing new rules.
In New Zealand, the world’s largest dairy exporter, the government said it would begin taxing agricultural emissions by 2025, a world first according to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
Irish farmers are expected to cut emissions by a quarter before 2030. Denmark wants its farming and forestry sectors to cut emissions as much as 65 per cent.
Politically, however, agriculture could prove trickier to tackle than sectors like mining, energy or cars, which are dominated by a small number of big, corporate players.
Farmers are a force of millions, some with small holdings that have been in families for generations, giving them an attachment to land – and occupation – that runs deeper than profit, said edairynews.
Soaring food, fuel and fertiliser prices are already spurring public discontent. Polish and Greek farmers drove tractors to their capitals to voice grievances in 2022 and protests in solidarity with Dutch farmers erupted across Europe.
Farmer protests have surged around the globe – in Europe they’re up 30 per cent from 2021 – and are expected to gain momentum in the coming months and years, driven by inflation, drought and tightening environmental regulation, according to a tracker produced by political risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft.
Agriculture is a major export sector for many countries, but food is also a basic human need, and what we eat is often engrained in our heritage and sense of identity. It’s a more politically charged issue than many, said edairynews.
That’s why the Dutch standoff has struck an international chord, catapulting farmers to the centre of a global culture war that’s seen them demonised by activists advocating vegan lifestyles and lionised by right-wing groups opposed to government regulations on everything from COVID to climate.
On Twitter, activists using the hashtag #NoFarmersNoFood have tapped a primordial fear – that imposing environmental safeguards means the world won’t produce enough food for a growing population.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has already exacerbated worries over food insecurity by pushing up the price of grains and fertilisers.
Farmers have picked up the refrain, warning that climate-related regulation will mean not only less food but higher prices in the supermarket for consumers already grappling with the worst inflation in decades.
The debate has exacerbated the disconnect between rural and urban dwellers, stretching an old political divide into a cultural chasm. When the Dutch town of Haarlem banned meat advertising due to the severe climate impact of modern livestock rearing, some farmers saw it as another front in a broader campaign that could ultimately extinguish their livelihoods.
Farmers are “ordinary people but they feel treated like criminals.
"Everything farmers do is bad; poison sprayers, environmental polluters, mistreatment of animals,” says Caroline van der Plas, leader of the populist Farmer-Citizen Movement, which stormed on to the Dutch political scene in 2019.
“They feel undervalued and have no space to expand or develop their business and are very worried about their future.”
Start-ups are racing to develop new technologies such as seaweed-based pellets that reduce emissions, but farmers are frustrated because, for now, the only realistic way to meet the targets is to reduce herd sizes.
Bryce McKenzie, a dairy farmer based in Otago in the South Island, New Zealand, has cut his herd of 700 cows by 50 in the last year, but it’s not enough.
He co-founded Groundswell NZ, the fringe farmers group that organised the protests, two years ago after losing faith that the government’s much-vaunted partnership with big agricultural lobby groups could save the sector.
“We don’t want a country planted in pine trees and then not be able to grow food,” says McKenzie. “We want food security for the future.”
So far, only three per cent of all climate finance has gone into food systems, according to the Global Alliance for the Future of Food.
The issue for farmers, consumers and policymakers is that we’re running out of time. Weather-related disasters have surged fivefold in the last half century.
Last year, floods submerged swaths of Pakistan while drought scorched crops from the US to Brazil, all exacerbated by climate change.
Chuck Fossay, who’s farmed outside Winnipeg, Manitoba, for more than 50 years, knows the impact of extreme weather because he lost most of his 2021 canola crop to drought, then in 2022 his fields drowned in floods.
Fossay started growing corn for the first time in 2007 – something he wouldn’t have attempted in the 1970s.
But climate rules are adding to his worries, such as huge price increases for nitrogen fertilizer which is needed in greater amounts than for other crops.
Canada’s carbon tax means Fossay paid 7.7 Canadian cents more per litre to fuel his grain dryer this year.
Voluntary federal targets to cut nitrogen emissions by 30 per cent threaten to further squeeze margins. Farmer groups expect to lose $8 billion in foregone output this decade.
Fossay is part of a pilot program encouraging farmers to use more efficient fertiliser. While he’s eligible for up to $4,400 in rebates for his canola acres, the fertiliser costs an extra $3.70 an acre and would cost $13,300 to use across his entire farm.
“We’re being asked to do something to benefit all of society, yet we’re the ones left with the bill,” said Fossay, who farms with his brothers on land that’s been in the family since the early 1900s.
“We have to do what we can, but it has to be achievable and it has to be fair.”
