Farmers must stop squabbling over whether organic or
conventional agriculture is most environmentally friendly, a
leading scientist has warned.
Ian Crute said it was vital to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions from all types of agriculture. “The notion that this is a
case of organic farming good, conventional farming bad, doesn’t
really get us anywhere,” he said.
The former director of Rothamsted Research made the comments as he
prepared to take on a new role as the first chief scientist at the
Agricultural and
Horticultural Development board. He starts in the post on
Tuesday (2 September).
In an exclusive interview with
Farmers Weekly, Prof Crute
said it was “completely fruitless” to try to paint one type of
agriculture as better than the other. Both organic and conventional
farming contributed to climate change, he said.
More investment in scientific research was needed to uncover better
ways that agriculture could help to mitigate climate change. It was
important to obtain numbers and adopt an analytical scientific
approach to removing emissions.
“There is no good data which would say that the emissions of
nitrous oxide from organic systems compared to systems which are
using synthetic fertiliser are necessarily any worse or any
better.”
Prof Crute acknowledged that organic agriculture did not use
synthetic nitrogen, often using livestock manure instead. But there
was no reason why synthetic nitrogen could not be produced from
renewable inputs, he said.
Renewable electricity and renewable sources of hydrogen could be
used to make nitrogen in a completely renewable way. “At the
moment, we use natural gas primarily. But there’s nothing magic
about renewability.”
So far as livestock systems were concerned, Prof Crute said
livestock were clearly a source of greenhouse gas emissions in
terms of methane, as well as a source of nitrogen pollution.
“I could argue very strongly that efficient pest, disease and weed
control using pesticides was a far greener solution in terms of the
efficiency with which nitrogen is used than an inefficient system
using far more land and inputs inefficiently.”
Peter Melchett,
Soil Association
policy director, disagreed that organic production did not offer
clear environmental benefits. “The environmental benefits of
organic systems over conventional are clear,” he said. “It has a
positive impact on wildlife and produces lower levels of pollution,
mainly due to the absence of artificial chemicals and
fertilisers.”
Farming’s impact on climate change was also reduced by organic
production, he added. “Winter cover crops, shallow ploughing and
increased organic matter from the use of manure increase soil
carbon and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
But
NFU policy director
Martin Haworth endorsed Prof Crute’s comments. The NFU
instinctively supported the call to spend more money on research
and development into “market failure” issues, he said.
“We need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from all systems and
science is key. Producing more and impacting less was our message
at this year’s NFU Conference and we are really pleased that it has
been taken on.”