Just 2 Degrees: Farmers vs Planet? How Tigray fighting hit Egypt’s ecosystems

Many farmers tout running sustainable farms. We talk about what that means, and whether it’s actually possible. And the conflict in Tigray had longstanding effects on Egypt’s ecosystems.

Host: Reagan Des Vignes
Guests: Alemayehu Gemechu of Egypt’s Agriculture ministry; World Agroforestry Centre’s Patrick Worms; Anissa Putois of PETA, and WWF Spain’s Luis Suarez

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coming up years after a conflict in Ethiopia killed hundreds of thousands of people markets are bustling again factories and banks are open and roads are being rebuilt the country is increasingly susceptible to climate shocks with the UN warning that Millions now need farming assistance Europe’s Iberian linkx is making a comeback decades after the felines figures fell because of habitat loss and hunting and agriculture feeds everyone on the planet but there’s still major contention over the way livestock are rared does Peter have recommendations even on how animals should be treated before they’re slaughtered that’s a difficult one because as you say we don’t think that animals should be slaughtered emissions and waste are also an increasingly controversial issue with some producers Keen to clean up their act Farmers would dearly love to use fewer pesticides because that means they get less exposed to toxic products and they have lower expenses just 2° is on now what are your thoughts on the only way to make a farm sustainable is to not engage in livestock farming at all oh dear [Music] growing inequality conflict and the climate crisis all contribute to daily hunger for millions of children according to the UN 25% of kids under the age of five have little access to the nutritious food needed to develop and they more than 50% likely to suffer a life-threatening form of malnutrition known as wasting a UNICEF report looked at underfed youth in nearly 100 countries research say less than 10% of young people get the fruits and veggies their body needs and less than 5% get proteins from sources like eggs or meat the report adds that the majority of those suffering reside in South Asia and subsaharan Africa and it is set to roen for countries like Ethiopia where drought parches cropland 80% of the population or more than 98 million Ethiopians rely on agriculture for food and income the UN food and agriculture organization wants economic breakdown armed conflicts and climate shocks have put 13 million in dying into farming assistance the report recommends 175 million in funds to help the most vulnerable by enhancing Crop Production productivity protections for livestock and renewing Animal Health Facilities the African Development Bank group and the government in of Ethiopia in partnership with others have launched a project to develop the country’s wheat industry financing will support 500,000 small hold of farmers in the Ethiopian states of Afar amhara amoria and Somali and of course this is to increase wheat productivity from three to four tons per hect share based on the scripting are are you confident though that this money will tricken will trickle down to Farmers and that there’ll be a transparent uh distribution process sure most of because ethopia is working for food security at uh National level and at household level because we are working seriously on that even the result shows that even if you see now inan land is even around rivers or irrigations are available even underground waters are available we are working on withs with the support of development African Development Bank so D Ser it is a leadership agendas and expert agendas Ethiopia’s government was at war with elements of the northern Tri gr region for two years that started November 2020 um what impacts do the conflict have on local agriculture amazingly surprisingly at conflict are also there is an agricultural production productivity or agricultural work still now it has not stopped farmers are working even if you look for our current data or our years data also it is increasing from time to time maybe the conflict areas are most of the time on the day there are anti anti-government groups on the day there are not available they they may come at during night so on the day the farmers are working on their field at night they are they will be at their home so the government can manage not only that in Ethiopia we have extension workers at Village level we have about 18,000 extension workers at at Village level Agricultural Extension workers at Village level to serve that farmers so daily they serve the farmers then they back to their home so it is not this much affect the agricultural practices across the African continent I understand there’s a crisis of getting nutrient rich food to the population for example I know there’s aggressive marketing of cheap ultr processed food and and sugar sweetened beverages in some countries in Africa do you think this is a big problem in Ethiopia in Ethiopia the problem economic crisis is not only for Ethiopia or or for Africa it is a world problem or Global problem but Ethiopia is working for the success for example we haven’t imported uh any wheat or any food items uh from newor so we are compensating these economic issues or economic problem issues but uh I think in ethopia is best for if you compare it with other countries because even I saw some African countries agriculture practices uh their incomes when I compare with Ethiopia Ethiopia is on transition across the world extreme weather is damaging horiculture and livestock farming through floods dry spells and fires and these events are increasing in frequency making it difficult and in some cases impossible to recover what’s been lost it may seem ironic some say the planet is retaliating for the massive greenhouse gas emissions that come from the industry but the argument continues about elements of farming that are particularly damaging to the environment and the need to change our consumption habits from one that Fells trees and pollutes the soil and water to a system of regeneration with little to no impact on the natural world the farmers would ultimately like most of us like to continue making a living but they aren’t toned deaf on the isue with some of them trying to delve into sustainability one chicken farmer in Paris who wants to reduce his Farm’s carbon footprint is aiming to produce the best meat with the least amount of feed possible and to find out which animal protein is the best option P Mar oel is advising that we not focus solely on carbon it is accurate that the carbon footprint deals with a lot more than just CO2 but what does producing the best meat really mean some companies advertise that their meat and eggs are produced from animals that were grassfed and pasture raised I.E organic is that better for the environment or do free range animals mean higher emissions because more trees and land need to be cleared to raise them meanwhile a lot has been said said about just how dangerous too much water vapor carbon dioxide and methane are to the atmosphere but we know a lot less about nitrous oxide emissions from the gas are soaring which is why efforts are underway to fully understand where it comes from and how we can avoid releasing more of it 50 or so cows nibble on New Zealand’s Canterbury Plains building up strength for the milking season but this is no ordinary Farm beneath these Green Meadows are research labor at measures just how much of an impact the herd has on the environment we can draw some gases from the from the different depth of the soil to measure for example at what depth nitrous oxide as a greenhouse gas is produced nitrous oxide is naturally emitted by microscopic organisms that act on nitrogen in soil and during joint studies scientists from New Zealand and China have discovered one of them I am to apply these fightings to soil Improvement in China you know even a small Discovery could potentially have significant impact the microb which researchers say is unique to New Zealand is a significant find considering the potency of nitrous oxide a gas that’s 300 times more powerful at heating up the planet than carbon dioxide and more urgently one whose density has increased in the atmosphere by 20% over the last 150 years comprehensive research on the microb is important to New Zealand the country is Keen to meet its climate targets a formidable challenge considering its dairy industry earns billions annually in exports and China New Zealand’s largest meat and milk market and who’s looking to ramp up its own exports benefits from the findings too a lot of it’s about producing uh food and a sustainable fashion that is uh kind and to the environment with low environmental impact and uh those are things that we can probably learn from each other as we advance uh our food production systems New Zealand and China will continue research on technologies that improve traditional farming methods with more than 30 young scientists monitoring how soil samples react to fertilizer and cow manure let’s work with Patrick wors a senior policy adviser at the world AGR forestry Center about what Farmers want what they need and are willing to do when it comes to protecting the environment the best way of thinking about sustainable farming is not that we maintain wherever we are today because we can’t do that current farming practices have degraded soils they emit lots of greenhouse gas emissions they consume too much water uh they’re just not very good at what they are doing they’re just good at one thing which is producing lots of stuff so instead I prefer to talk about regenerative farming and regenerative farming is not a set of practices regenerative farming is something you do to meet a better world you start with the farming practices as they are today and you think about how you can improve these farming practices to improve your soil quality for example or increase your resilience to extreme weather events or reduce your dependency on toxic inputs or reduce the cost of the inputs or the fertilizers you have to buy and every year you get a little bit better and if you have that mental attitude that you’re going to improve your farming system over time holistically not just looking at your bank account not just looking at productivity but looking at the state of your soil at your water function at your greenhouse gas emissions at the carbon you’re locking down at the biodiversity you’re hosting then you’re going to be making progress can you just talk about um what you’ve generally seen farmers do incorrectly on their Farms that the environment Now farmers are not making mistakes but farmers are being encouraged to make mistakes that benefit certain interests for example in most of the world the advice that farmers get comes from people who are being paid to sell those Farmers inputs fertilizers or pesticides or herbicides or irrigation systems or what have you and when you speak to Farmers what they very often tell you is Patrick I want impartial advice because most Farmers realize that the cheapest and most effective way of improving their farming practice is to change the way they manage things your soil the water the plants the animals so then what do you think about the eu’s green deal which lots of farmers are against in part because it’s very complicated and expensive Farmers if you talk to Farmers as opposed to listening to the propaganda in the media you realize that farmers are not against the Green deal as such Farmers know that pesticides are toxic they use them Farmers know that pesticides are expensive they use them Farmers would dearly love to use fewer pesticides because that means they get less exposed to toxic products and they have lower expenses they don’t mind any of that what they do mind is the lack of trust that the current agricultural system in Europe displ to WS them what are your thoughts on the only way to make a farm sustainable and avoid the harmful land and water use deforestation harmful pesticides and toxic waste from animals is to not engage in livestock farming at all oh dear well look at any ecosystem and it contains animals there is no ecosystem that only contains plants a good farming system is a farming system that mimics ecosystemic processes because it’s cheaper to let the ecosystem take care of something than to have to spray a chemical to do it instead right that means that the best farming systems all integrates animals now that doesn’t mean you have to eat those animals at the end of it but personally I happen to eat them so the trick is not that animals are bad or livestock is bad the trick is is that the way we currently raise livestock is terrible right now livestock is being raised in extremely intensive systems and that generates an enormous amount of negative externalities but that’s because they have been taken away from the land they are not interacting with cropping land anymore they’re being kept in a separate system and in that separate system their manure is a problem their methane emissions is a problem Animal Welfare is a problem and the amount of land they require to eat the wrong food that we’re giving them we’re giving cereals to remnants it’s completely crazy um is a problem as well but when you integrate animals into your farming systems your farming system becomes more efficient the animals provide fertility they provide they if you use them right they replace um plowing because of the way they manage to land they increase your biodiversity I have a friend who’s a farmer who raises cattle and his business model is to take completely destroyed pieces of land restore them to his cattle and when the biodiversity hits a certain Target which is measured by University he goes to the public Authority and says hey this field now hits your target for a nature reserve it’s got the right level of bird diversity of arthropod diversity of prass diversity so would you like to call it a nature reserve and this said yeah of course we like to call it a nature reserve good then you need to pay me to maintain your nature reserve on my land with my cattle it’s a beautiful business model and it’s a livestock based one no doubt many of us feel better when we believe the animals we consume or raised in conditions that made them happy another irony considering the animal’s eventual feate so does ethical farming A system that takes Animal Welfare into account matter for Environmental Protection I know Peter St on the consumption of animals I I see all these social media posts quite often um every animal that’s been eaten Peter says these animals would like to have a full life and would not like to be eaten um but while we are still where we are does Peter have recommendations even on how animals should be treated before they’re slaughtered so that’s a difficult one because as you say we don’t think that animals should be slaughtered at all they they are not here for us they should have their own lives they have uh a value as well each one of them is an individual like you and I who wants to uh to spend time with in peace with a free of suffering uh and not be taken to the slaughter house um as I was saying there are degrees so what we need to do is move away from the Intensive um farming model as a priority the problem is many countries um such as France for instance are going the other direction they’re taking it much further and and having these huge huge um operations with thousands and thousands of animals cramped together when really they should be the government should be encouraging a switch to plant-based farming so going in that direction even if we are realistic we know it’s not going to happen tomorrow but we can’t be going back backwards we really need to be going towards this uh plant-based transition which is even a recommendation from the United Nations for environmental reasons as well so on this episode we talked a bit about the carbon methane and nitrous oxide emissions from farms I want to get your perspective though though on two terms firstly Organic Farms what does that mean to Peter but specifically when it comes to animal farming uh research has shown that a switch to all organic farming would actually increase uh greenhouse gas emissions uh and to come back to actually Animal Welfare the the conditions for animals in farms are very similar whether it’s organic or uh free range or supposedly High welfare or just uh traditional farming uh and that is because animals are usually the majority the vast majority of them are kept confined uh in dirty dark sheds uh they are sometimes they suffer mutilations um they are separated uh from their mothers and they are then sent to the slaughter house when they’re very young to to meet a terrifying and violent death so you don’t believe those tags on suan foods that says organically produced uh the organic Parts obviously can be believed but I don’t believe the the labels that say high Animal Welfare or free range those don’t mean very much in terms of the actual condition for the animals um so for instance with free range an animal can actually be it can actually mean that they are just simply not caged but they can be Freer ranging inside a shed but they are packed by so many thousands of them that they can’t actually move so it doesn’t make much of a change for them and for their living conditions they’re still um suffering a lot of them are bred so quickly that they can’t even their body weight uh their bones will not um sustain their body weight so they suffer fractures they can’t even get to the food or the water and they slowly starve to death High welfare labels um sadly cannot be trusted because we’ve got we’ve seen time and time again investigations showing there’s been a recent one by uh the group animal Rising which uh recently exposed 45 UK Animal Farms that were certified by the rspca assured scheme they found widespread animal suffering uh breaches of Animal Welfare Law small and medium Farms that talk about treating animals with respect love and care and see that they’re ensuring that they are no environmental threats in the process um what are your thoughts on branding oneself as an ethical farmer I think it’s very hard to call any type of farming ethical I mean as long as you’re exploiting animals for profit and uh turning either their their flesh or their secretions into uh a product that you will then sell uh there’s nothing ethical about it um if we take Dairy farming for instance even if the cows are uh having a let’s say a better life than they were confined in sheds they’re still every uh every year having a calf taken away from them shortly after birth and these babies are either fattened or sent straight to the slaughter house for ve and the mothers themselves they have a very short and U miserable life cycle which ends uh as well in the slaughter house where they are they are killed in a violent and terrifying manner so ethical the word ethical is very hard to apply to uh to farming there are potentially degrees um in terms of intensive Farming versus a smaller scale farm um but none of them in Peter’s view can be deemed ethical at the T of the century one of the world’s rarest cats known as the Iberian lyns Tethered on the edge of Extinction now it’s in the midst of a remarkable turn around there is no other example all over the world of a speci who was so critically endangered who was and they really bring on distinction with Le less than 100 individuals H and and such a fast and strong recovery and this as its name implies this feline calls the Iberian Peninsula home specifically Spain and Portugal it faced near Extinction in the 1960s due to habitat loss State sanctioned killings and disease but dedicated conservation efforts along with the release of captive lynes resulted in the population surging from 94 in 2002 it’s over 2000 last year prompting the international Union for conservation of nature to downgrade the cat status from endangered to vulnerable on the red list of threatened species tell us about this good news and what this status downgrade means exactly well the downgrade of the ban links means that the the ban links is moving a little bit forward in the good directions in not in the direction of the extinction but in direction of the of recovery as as a species and it’s the second step we have to consider when the starting point the starting point was something like 24 years ago at the beginning of this century when a national census certified that the links was really at the brink of the extinction we have only 100 links all over the the world we say Spain and Portugal and the iucn said it was in critical critical in danger and now 24 years after we mov two steps forward and the the links is been downgraded to vulnerable that is the last step before taking it outside the the the threat yeah a lot of us saw images of the of a few links being released back into the wild in certain parts of Europe um talk about what conditions were there for this status dowr to happen well the first is is that the the population is growing is growing very fast in the last two three years for example we have a grade of of increasing of 20% of the population every year and now we are about over the 2,000 individuals in the in the wild and that’s a very good news also because it means that the population is going very well in in natural conditions we are supporting this this growth of the population with the release of animals coming from captivity we are releasing lynxes in those places where the Rabid population is very healthy and we have very high density of of of rabbits and that makes our life easier but it’s true that we are investing also a lot of efforts in knowing better the biology of the rabbit and trying to to understand how we can guarantee that they will have rabbits all over the territory and not only concentrated in so much because the lynx is a specialist is just specialized in in the diet it’s wild rabbits and and needs the a big abundance of of wild rabbits to to that’s all need yes is what the 90% of the diet of these animals is uh wild rabbits we still have some threats we still have some animals kids in the road because the population is expanding and it you know crosses different linear infrastructures like Road highways and so on and it’s also killed by some crazy people that they still don’t accept that the lynx is is returning back in their in their territories and for mistaken or or just for bad choice they they shoot to the to the animal so we still have a certain mortality they have to reduce in order to guarantee that the the the situation goes in a better way and that’s our show my guest is only appropriate I leave you with images of some of the animals we’ve talked about on this episode and the conditions in which they live which will contribute to deforestation pollution and greenhouse gas emissions [Music] am