In Brazil the agricultural sector and the government are working on schemes joining intensive dairy farming with biodiversity preservation. Pedro Braga Acuri, R&D-director of Embrapa Gado de Leite, the Brazilian Dairy Cattle Research Centre showed a scheme called Silvopastoral system: planting trees in grassland and savannas. For two reasons, to restore forest and stop the climate change. It turned out being economical: a win-win situation. Thanks to the moderate shade, grasses under the trees grow better than in treeless areas. And the trees (eucalyptus) will deliver an income too.’ This system promotes biodiversity and it contributes to carbon sequestration’, Pedro Acuri said. ‘The amount of accumulated carbon by forest restoration is higher than emissions saved by using liquid bio-fuels’.
Roberto Jank, Tim Nelson, Ted Coats and Pedro Arcuri
Brazilians also developed a crop-livestock system: grains simultaneously planted with forage grasses. According to the R&D director there are a lot of advantages: no plowing, reduced costs, improved fertilizer efficiency and a tendency to decrease methane emissions from the soil.
Dairy and beef in Brazil
Dairy and beef farming are very important in Brazil. More than 80 percent of the farmland is pasture: 247 million hectares. The savannas have a potential of another 127 million hectares.
Dairy farming is concentrated in the ‘belly’ of Brazil near Sao Paolo, Belo Horizonte and Curitaba. It was settled there in the 16th to the 19th century. New developments are in the savannas of Cerrados and in the north-eastern district near Recife. But Pedro Acuri also mentioned the presence of dairy activities near the Amazon jungle to supply milk to the region.
Cutting woods for hamburgers
The media writes a lot about cutting down the rain forest. The wood cutters set the axe in the trees to make farmland or land for beef production. ‘Cutting wood for hamburgers’, the headlines scream. Bad for nature, a danger for biodiversity and bad for the climate. In Brazil it happens, Pedro Acuri admitted, though the official policy is to keep the forest untouched. Cutting is not because of dairy farming, but for arable land, plantation, beef production or other reasons. When the woodcutters and new arable farmers are settled, dairy farmers and the dairy industry follows. It’s the policy of the government to encourage dairy farming, because it helps to get social and economic sustainability.
The dilemma: biodiversity versus hungry people
Nature has to be preserved, the participants of the Summit agreed. Deforestation and biodiversity are important issues, but Brazilian dairy farmer Roberto Jank sharpened the discussion by saying that biodiversity is less important than hungry people. That’s what the participants admitted too. The trick is finding a balance between protecting biodiversity and feeding the world. That’s possible by intensifying food production. ‘Intensification is bad news in communicating with the people. That’s not what they want. It’s better to change the name to precision farming. It’s a question of using the right words’, Dave Chadwick of North Wyke Research in the UK suggested.
Working on biodiversity in New Zealand
Sustainability is a key issue to the dairy sector in New Zealand. The goal is to get a thriving dairy sector balancing with nutrient loss, climate change and habitat loss. Ted Coats of Dairy NZ told the audience that New Zealand is working on biodiversity and sustainability. Last year the sector invested 22.4 million NZ$ in sustainability and biodiversity. On farms the guidelines for water quality have lead to positive biodiversity impacts. Thanks to subsidies, marginal farmland is returned to native forest cover. ‘The increase in dairy farming will slow down due to lack of suitable land and water’, Ted Coats predicted.
The whole world is watching New Zealand
As dairy farming with 4 million cows is the most important economical activity in New Zealand, the discussion about greenhouse gas emissions by dairy cows accelerates. It’s a big issue. Sixty percent of the greenhouse gas emissions come from dairy farming. The sector was booming in the last years, but is now slowing down. New Zealand is aiming to be carbon neutral in 2018. ‘The whole world is watching us’, Ted Coats said. In the Parliament there are discussions about introducing a system of carbon rights for agriculture. It means that the total emission of greenhouse gases can not increase anymore. Every farmer will get a carbon quota. He is not allowed to produce more. If he wants to increase he would have to buy carbon rights from a colleague. In some parts of the world such a CO2-rights trading system already exists for other industries.
Simple solution with uncut grass-strip
Sometimes simple solutions can help. Dave McCraven of the Dairy Research Institute Scottish Agricultual College in Dumfries gave an example during an excursion of the participants at the Summit. SAC discovered that on a dairy farm with grassland a strip of two to three meters of non cut grass near to a hedge helps getting many more insects and because of that many more birds. The farmer can receive a subsidy of 440 pounds per hectare for not cutting that strip. |