Farmers For Action (FFA)’s Steering Committee have issued a new year statement, calling on farmers across Northern Ireland and the UK, to take a stand against being levied with “the lions share of blame” for climate change, and the implications that come with this.
As part of this call, he is encouraging farmers to reject novel measures aimed at reducing methane emissions from the agriculture sector, including chemical feed additives, until the long-term effects of including such additives in the food chain have been studied and concluded.
FFA spokesperson, William Taylor, said:
“2025 must be the year farming families take a stand on behalf of our consumer customers that food quality and reputation comes first, way beyond reducing methane, which in the case of livestock is a natural cycle.
“We already have across these islands the highest grain yields in the world, the lions share of the highest yielding cows in the world, the highest vegetable yields in the world all due to our climate suitability and professional farming families – why on earth would we put at risk any of this in the market place?”
Climate change
Instead, Taylor argued that attention must be redirected towards the fossil fuel industry and at the government, who it claims, is propping up the interests of this industry by refusing to foster the uptake in usage of bio-fuels, which would help reduce the country’s carbon footprint.
Holding the world’s oil and gas conglomerates to account for their contribution to global warming, would prevent the farming community from shouldering the brunt of the blame, which Taylor argued, is wholly misplaced and unjust.
“On the climate change front, the 2025 argument must be turned on the world’s oil and coal giants as the perpetrators and the following narrative perused with the blame lying firmly at government’s door for not using bio-diesel at every opportunity.
“The truth is for decades, the worlds big fossil fuel corporates and grain and oil seeds corporates have seen to it that these [bio-fuels] are not used because it would interfere with their profits and diminish consumption of fossil fuels to a level where it should be to save the planet,” Taylor said.
He remains steadfast in his belief that farmers should be fairly compensated for their role in safeguarding the country’s food security, and should be viewed not as “the cause of climate change, but as the solution”.
