Climate Change and Agriculture: From the Field to the Table

Transcription

1 Climate Change and Agriculture: From the Field to the Table Meredith Niles, PhD Candidate in Ecology University of California, Davis Hazon Conference August 18, 2011

2 Outline Climate Change and Agriculture/ Food System The Consumer Connection Adopting Climate Change Practices: What Will It Take? Case Study Focus: California and New Zealand Conclusions

3 Greenhouse Gases and Agriculture Greenhouse Gases: The Big Three Carbon Dioxide Methane- 23 times as strong as carbon dioxide Nitrous Oxide- 310 times as potent as carbon dioxide California Dept. of Food and Agriculture

4 Global Agriculture Emissions Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007

5 Domestic Agriculture Emissions 1/3 of domestic methane emissions are from livestock emissions 2/3 of domestic nitrous oxide emissions are from agriculture US EPA Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report: INVENTORY OF U.S. GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS AND SINKS:

6 Food Emissions and You Weber, C.L. and S.H. Matthews Food-Miles and the Relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices in the United States. Environ. Sci. Technol. 42:

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8 Food Emissions and You

9 Adopting Climate Change Practices So if we have some idea of where the emissions come from and what prevents them- how do we change behavior? What policies work?

10 Yolo County Project

11 Yolo County Project Project Title: Agricultural Mitigation and Adaptation to Climate Change in Yolo County, CA Louise E. Jackson, Van R. Haden, Hyunok Lee, Dan Sumner, Vishal Mehta, David Purkey, Mark Lubell, Steve Wheeler, Toby O Geen, Allan Hollander, Josh Perlman, William Salas, Mihaela Tomuta, and Michael Dempsey

12 Yolo County Project 12 Semi-structured interviews Stakeholder Advisory Group Survey of Yolo County Farms on adaptation & mitigation practices 34% Response Rate, n= 162 Questions about climate change perceptions, environment, government, information sources, crop types, management practices

13 New Zealand Agriculture and Climate Change

14 New Zealand Agriculture and Climate Change

15 New Zealand Climate Change Policies New Zealand is the first country in the world to include agriculture in an emissions trading scheme (ETS) Implementation began in 2008 and includes all sectors of the economy including agriculture and forestry Objectives: Reduce net emissions below business as usual levels by encouraging behavior change To comply with international obligations including Kyoto Protocol

16 Processors in the NZ ETS Five types Meat Slaughter Facilities Dairy Processors Live Animal Exporters Nitrogen Fertilizer Companies Egg Producers (on farm-obligation) Processors act as the middle man in the NZ ETS

17 New Zealand Processors 17 semi-structured interviews in August- September 2010 of New Zealand processors My hope is to develop something that will help our farmers as a cooperative in total and work out a system which we can actually reduce our costs as we move forward, collectively, as opposed to individually. The opportunities and challenges are to our suppliers to influence their behavior and play a much greater farm advisory role than we have traditionally done.

18 Conclusions Food and agriculture contributes to climate change; individual habits do matter We need to work with farmers and other types of scientists to understand how to implement changes Participatory research and communication is key

19 Acknowledgements Funding support from the U.S. National Science Foundation IGERT, California Energy Commission, NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and the Ernest E. Hill Climate Change Fellowship from UC Davis UC Davis: Mark Lubell, Ryan Van Haden, Louise Jackson and others previously mentioned New Zealand: Margaret Brown, Robyn Dynes, Greg Lambert, Jill Walcroft, Isabelle Vanderkolk