We are pleased to announce a new noteworthy publication that was published last May in the prestigious research journal Nature.

With the title “Agricultural Subsidies and Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions” the researchers David Laborde, Abdullah Mamun, Will Martin, Valeria Piñeiro and Rob Vos (International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Washington, D.C., USA); focus on the implications of current agricultural support policies for GHG emissions. To do this, they apply a rigorous model-based analysis of the impacts of incentives on agricultural production and emissions.

According to this publication, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture are strongly concentrated in a few basic products, with beef, dairy and rice accounting for more than 80% of GHG agricultural emissions. However, the production of these emissions-intensive goods tends to receive strong support through market price support measures (which for the period 2017 – 2019 was US$ 446 billion. This suggests a clear link between agricultural support and GHG emissions.

Therefore, and as the paper authors state in the results, it is clear that, if we replace productions with higher emission intensities with productions with lower emissions, global GHG emissions will decrease.

Likewise, the impact of the current agricultural support measures on GHG emissions was estimated through simulations, where the observed levels of production and emissions by country and commodity are compared with those that would occur without government support.

However, we are not going to offer you the results, as we encourage you to consult them directly from the publication.

By now, almost everyone knows the news about the 2021 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, published last week.

This is a research carried out by 234 scientists (28% women) from 65 countries who have evaluated more than 14,000 thousand research projects on Climate Change.

And the inferences of this meticulous study leave no doubt that we are responsible for the increase in the warming of the atmosphere, oceans and land. What’s more, recent changes in the climate are widespread, rapid, and increasingly intense; unprecedented in thousands of years.

The truth is that the data is quite alarming. The negative effects that affect us due to the mismanagement of resources since the Industrial Revolution, and – worst of all is that, despite knowing the damage we were causing, we have continued with the same strategies.

For example, concentrations have continued increasing, reaching an annual average of 410 ppm CO²; 1866 ppb of methane (CH₄) and 223 ppb of nitrate oxide (N₂O)[1].

The CO² concentration is the highest in the last 2 million years, as well as the methane and nitrous oxide values ​​that show atypical values ​​in the last 800 thousand years. Sea level rise is evident, with a faster rate in at least 3,000 years; and a decrease in sea ice in the lower Arctic in the last 1000 years where other changes can be seen such as a 40% decrease since 1979.

The document also shows how during the last decades, warming has been growing progressively. To give us an idea, the period 2001 – 2020 the increase was 0.99 ºC compared to the period 1850 – 1900.

Other phenomena that have undergone unprecedented changes are the increase in extreme heat, heavy rains, periods of drought (especially in the African continent and in the Mediterranean basin), wildfires, and the state of the oceans (warming, changes in acidification, oxygen reduction and loss of biodiversity); all of them more frequent and more extreme.

And the case we must consider is that future emissions would cause additional warming; in other words, the impacts would be more serious. For example, extreme rainfall events intensify by approximately 7% for each additional degree of global warming.

And – indeed – it is global, because climate change is affecting all regions of the planet. As shown in figure 1– where the regions of the Earth are represented with 45 hexagons, – with respect to the hot extreme values ​​(days with more heat in 1 year since 1950) we note that there is no region where values ​​are shown negative (light blue), but 41 regions with increased hot extremes.

Figure 2 shows the extremes of daily precipitation (since 1950), it shows that 19 of 45 regions show an extreme of heavy precipitation (Green) and none of them show a decrease (Beige). However, areas are shown in which these changes are not very clear (Gray) due to not having a consistent tenure or significant statistical data have not been found to assess it objectively.

Figure 3 shows the distribution of agricultural and ecological droughts (where soil moisture has been below normal), showing the 12 regions with increased drought in which the Mediterranean region, West Africa and Northeast South America are located.

---

[1] Year 2019 data

Slovenia opened its presidency in the Council of the European Union last July by lowering the Portuguese flag that previously presided over this great European institution.

Slovenian diplomat Robert Krmelj described his country’s priorities for the next six months: “The Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the European Union begins in demanding circumstances, due to the pandemic, and its key task will be to strengthen the Union’s resistance to crises, including the question of the strategic autonomy of the EU, and to work on the recovery of the European economy, based on the digital and green transition”.

During this semester (from July 1st to December 31st), regarding the agricultural sector, the Slovenian presidency wants to make progress and promote the issue of sustainable food production, including rural development, organic production, preservation of biodiversity, access to safe and quality food and the improvement of the quality of life of farmers.

In addition, since, in March 2021, the European Commission launched an ecological action plan that, among other issues, set 25% organic production as a goal to be achieved in Europe. After inviting the Member States to implement this roadmap, the Slovenian presidency will be in charge of drawing the conclusions.

The Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Food, Jože Podgoršek, has ensured that “organic farming is part of the EU’s ecological transition and is crucial to protect Europe’s environment and preserve its biodiversity. The action plan will provide a sustainable future for EU farmers”.

And in relation to the EU biodiversity strategy for 2030, the presidency ratified the already established objectives: restoring degraded ecosystems and rivers, improving the situation of habitats, protected species and pollinators on agricultural lands, reducing pollution and making cities greener, and so on.