We’ve all seen this “question” thrown around. It’s a smear disguised as an inquiry meant to present climate activists and climate-conscious people as trying to take jobs away from “hard working” farmers. When talking about climate issues with people, this one of the most common responses I get. But here’s the thing: I know it’s a bullshit question but I don’t how to explain why it’s a bullshit question. Any help? Thanks in advance.
I don’t follow. How is climate action going to affect farmers at all? Farmers don’t have anything to do with emissions.
Farmers are responsible for plenty of emissions. We dealt with this behaviour here in The Netherlands for a while.
Controversial opinion
I was on their side with regards to the lack of transition planning until they started setting things on fire and blocking supermarkets and emergency services. Now they can go get fucked and fall in line with the rest of us.
Land use (and with that agriculture) has a lot to do with emissions. Imagine a forest cleared to farm palm oil. All that stored carbon is now in the atmosphere. Think about the staple crop rice emitting methane, due to the nature of water submerged fields.
If not emissions, water usage is also a big concern. Like farming water intensive crops in areas where water is sparse, just because the crop is very profitable, but maybe not very nutritious.
Also, beef & dairy - cows burp & fart A LOT of methane which is 20x more warming than carbon dioxide.
I’m asking about climate action affecting farmers in general. Yes, water is a good point. My main point is that farmers are an incredibly small part of emissions, the majority come from construction, oil and gas, and ranching.
Oh, sorry I misread your first comment.
First: acriculture is a major greenhouse gas contributor, globally.
The amount of greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture is significant: The agriculture, forestry and land use sectors contribute between 13% and 21% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Source: Wikipedia
I’m not sure how they affected by climate action. I can only assume it’s a sector, where it’s very difficult to remove emissions, unlike other sectors without impacting the crop amount? Like reducing farm animals or fertilizers and machinery?
Here is a short breakdown of emissions in agriculture from “ourworldindata.org”.
Well, disingenuous questions are usually meant to derail the topic at hand by forcing you to address a topic you haven’t prepared for. In such cases, I would put the burden of explaination on the person who asked, perhaps with some equally unanswerable questions.
“What about them? Do you expect they will be able to farm better in a desert? Is helping them through climate change initiatives more difficult than surviving climate catastrophe?” etc. etc. ad neaseaum.
“What about them? Do you expect they will be able to farm better in a desert? Is helping them through climate change initiatives more difficult than surviving climate catastrophe?” etc. etc. ad neaseaum.
If you respond with that the disingenuous person will accuse you of whataboutism. To be clear I’m not saying that you’re wrong about the climate catastrophe, but they WILL attack your character if the first attack did not derail the topic. You cannot engage in a good faith argument with them because they will not meet you on the high road.
Farmers can actually become a huge part of solving the climate crisis. Regenerative farming techniques can be applied at scale, in any farming system. There are several third party certifiers such as Regenified and Rodale that farmers can use.
“Telephone operators being fired didn’t stop us from switching to digital phones. Why coddle farmers more?”
or a bit longer:
"People aren’t entitled to doing a job that harms everyone else. If a plumber only knows how to work with lead pipes, we don’t have to poison people just to prevent the guy from having to learn something new.
It’s our job as a society to take care of people who become unemployed because they only know how to do harmful jobs. To help them retrain if they can, and ensure they have a comfortable lifestyle. Farmers that would face bankruptcy deserve a bailout, and like everyone, all farmers deserve a universal basic income/universal basic services".
It is not wrong that farmers would be screwed financially if a government goes as hard as it needs to on sustainability without shielding farmers.
In terms of assets, pretty much all the industrial equipment and many of the buildings of a 20th century industrial farm would be useless in a sustainable farming setup. Obviously all the animal torture factories would have to go, but what use is a combine harvester in a food forest? Also, between the 4-fold reduction in crop production because you no longer need to feed farm animals, the reduction of food waste, and the higher yield per acre from sustainable farming, the price of agricultural land itself would also plummet.
This means that pretty much every industrial farm that has leveraged its assets for a loan would be financially screwed, and so would every bank and investor that gave out those loans without accounting for this possibility. A capitalist stock market would be shocked by your government choosing a healthy country over private profits, and this could cause a financial crisis and economic depression without either a slow ease-in by the government or seizing investor assets in a coup or revolution.
Furthermore, in terms of labor, the current skillset of industrial farmers has remarkably little in common with sustainable agriculture. All they know is torture animal, drive combine harvester, exploit they workers, be conservative, poison land, and lie. So while we may even need more farmers for sustainable agriculture than for industrial agriculture, many people who are farmers right now would probably need to start at ground level, knowing less relevant information than a gardener.
Farmers are going to be among the worst effected by climate change. By taking action on climate change we are protecting farmers.
https://www.ecosia.org/images?addon=firefox&addonversion=4.1.3&q=drought%20farmers