Agriculture in China Faces Climate & Technology Challenges

The destructive power of climate change has reminded us of the need to view the issue with a multi-dimensional perspective, says Chinese Vice Minister of Agriculture Niu Dun, so we should tackle the challenges by renewing the agricultural system and continuously developing the country’s economy. Chinese government is helping farmers, herdsmen and fishermen create a sustainable mode of production, by applying new technologies with lower costs and lower emissions.

By Han Mo, Liu Xiang in China View (17 January 2010):

As climate change poses a great challenge to China’s agricultural sector, the government and farmers should tackle it in a scientific and systematic way, Chinese Vice Minister of Agriculture Niu Dun said in an interview with Xinhua.

Climate change has posed great threats to the traditional farming sector, and extreme weather events, such as droughts, floods, hailstorm, tropical storms, have ruined harvests far more often than before, Niu said.

He was in Berlin to attend the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture, held during the 75th International Green Week in Berlin, the world’s largest agricultural and food fair.

“The destructive power of climate change has reminded us of the need to view the issue with a multi-dimensional perspective,” he said. “We should tackle the challenges by renewing the agricultural system and continuously developing the country’s economy.”

The Chinese government would help farmers, herdsmen and fishermen create a sustainable mode of production by applying new technologies with lower costs and lower emissions, Niu said.

“The government will intensify investment of agricultural infrastructure and projects and impart more scientific knowledge and climate-friendly concepts to farmers,” the vice-minister said.

“We want to build a comprehensive service system in the rural areas to offer multi-facet assistance to agriculture, such as providing peasants with quality seeds, machinery and advanced technologies,” he said.

All these could help cut down losses caused by climate change and improve rural living standards, Niu said.

Despite unfavorable weather conditions and the international financial crisis, China’s total grain yield was expected to hit a record high of 1,061.6 million tons in 2009, the sixth consecutive year of growth. The per capita annual net income of Chinese farmers has exceeded 5,000 yuan (735 U.S. dollars), up more than 6percent from 2008, according to the latest data.

At the forum, Niu rejected accusations that China blocked a deal last month at the Copenhagen climate change conference. “China has set the new target of cutting carbon dioxide emissions per unit of the GDP by 40-45 percent by 2020 from the 2005 level,”he told 50-plus foreign agriculture ministers.

“Above all, it was not conditional or linked with commitments by any other countries,” he said.

Under the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities in addressing climate change, “China has demonstrated its highly responsible attitude towards the international community and future generations,” the Chinese official said.

Some 1,600 exhibitors from 56 countries were taking part in the10-day annual fair, showcasing their best farm produce, livestock,farm machines, garden tools and newly-developed technologies.

Niu told Xinhua that attending the forum offered a chance to “broaden our vision about new trends of modern agriculture.”

Source: www.chinaview.cn

Heat’s on for Farmers: “The Seed as it’s Emerging gets Sunburnt and Dies.’’ 

Queensland farmer Linton Brimblecombe grows about 4000 tonnes of beetroot a year. But that’s becoming harder to sustain and he says the climate is to blame. “Humans are having an effect on the environment – we have to acknowledge that. We can’t disregard the impact we are having on the earth.’’

Graham Readfearn in the Courier Mail (15 January 2010) and on his Green Blog:

BEETROOT grower Linton Brimblecombe used to sit on his father’s farm in the Lockyer Valley and occasionally gaze questioningly at the smoke coming from the exhaust pipes of tractors.

“I spent a lot of time on tractors, I used to ponder where does that emission go? What effect was that chimney stack having on the rest of the environment?’’ he says.

Move forward about three decades (but remain on the same patch of prime food production land) and this fourth-generation farmer may now be getting the answer to that question.

“For the past eight years it’s become a lot warmer, and it’s a struggle,’’ he says.

Brimblecombe grows about 4000 tonnes of beetroot a year exclusively for Golden Circle and to keep up with the demands of his buyer, grows right up to early February. But that’s becoming harder to sustain and he says the climate is to blame.

“We are noticing an increase in days over 30C and a decrease in days below zero,’’ he says. “The seed as it’s emerging gets sunburnt and dies.’’ 

Adapting to the changing climate is the only option for Brimblecombe, but then fruit and vegetable growers have been adapting to gradual changes in the climate for decades.

“The options? We could move to a different growing district,’’ he says. “We could grin and bear it and work harder. There are options such as mulching the soil so that it’s cooler – and we’re looking into that – but everything comes with a cost.’’

Industry bodies and government scientists say that in the coming years, the problems are only likely to get more challenging for growers like Brimblecombe. 

Acceleration of increasing temperatures coupled with an increasing population demanding more food will test the ingenuity of Queensland’s fruit and vegetable growers more than ever before.

“You’ll often hear people in the industry talk about food security – making sure that we have secure food production under changing climate scenarios,’’ says David Putland, the climate change project officer for Queensland horticulture peak body Growcom. “I think most growers realise that climate change is a serious issue for food production.’’

Two weeks ago Growcom announced two new research projects with backing from state governments in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, looking at the avocado industry and apple and pear growers. Almost all of Queensland’s apples are grown in the Stanthorpe area, the warmest and most northerly apple-growing region in Australia.

But earlier this year, scientists at James Cook University found that since 1979, the tropical belt had been expanding,pushing its boundary, and the warmer weather that goes with it, south by as much as 600km. Recently the Bureau of Meteorology confirmed Australia had just been through its warmest decade on record. Each decade since the 1940s, the bureau said, had been warmer than the previous one.

“Fruit crops like apples and pears require chilling hours to develop the flower and the fruit and to get a good yield,’’ says Putland. “If it gets warmer and you don’t get those necessary chilling hours, we could see yields going down.’’

But Putland says that while this is of concern, it is not a time to panic, although it is a time to prepare.

“Some of this can be fixed, but it costs a lot of money. You can plant new varieties and have more irrigation – perhaps using micro-sprayers to keep the crops cool. There are clay-based reflective particles you can spray on hard fruit like apples and pears. All these things will make food production more expensive. That will only get worse with mitigation strategies to reduce emissions on farms.

“If those costs are too great and farmers go out of business, that’s when food security is threatened and you have bare shelves at certain times of the year and higher prices. That’s one of the challenges for managing and selecting new crops. At what point does the risk become unacceptable for a certain crop?

“You need to plan ahead and work out what the changes will be and identify when some crops might cease to be viable in some regions so you can then plan to grow something else. We have more than 120 different crops just in Queensland. Sometimes we just can’t answer all the farmers’ questions.’’

Queensland’s economy has more than a passing interest in horticulture. According to Growcom, horticulture is Queensland’s “second-largest primary industry, worth more than $1.8 billion per annum’’.

But the peak body says climate change is throwing problems at these farmers that employ about 25,000 people and supply Queenslanders and the rest of the nation with one-third of all the fruit and vegetables on their plates.

Days of continued high temperatures can put heat stress on plants. Crops under stress could be helped with increased irrigation, but would this be sustainable in the long-term as water availability becomes less predictable?

Putland says there are signs that the “winter growing window’’ for crops such as lettuce is narrowing, meaning farmers will need to change planting schedules or risk being beaten to the market by rivals in the south.

In a submission to the Government’s Garnaut Review, national peak body Horticulture Australia Council said horticultural crops were “very temperature-sensitive, and impacts on growing regions (eg stone fruit, pome fruit) and cropping times (eg wine grapes, mangoes, avocados) are already being felt’’.

Gatton-based Peter Deuter, a principal horticulturalist at the Queensland Government’s newly formed Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation, says the most pressing issue for farmers is finding ways to adapt to rising temperatures.

“The change in climate in the past 50, 20 and 10 years shows temperatures have increased in all areas. All the climate-change scenarios say these temperatures will continue to increase. There are no scenarios which suggest that temperatures are going to fall. Here in the Lockyer Valley, we’ve had a 1.1C rise in temperatures since 1967.’’

Deuter says that so far, farmers have adapted well to the changes they’ve already seen and they could continue for the next five or 10 years in the same way. 

“Future scenarios are changing because climate change is happening more rapidly than we thought. We need to be careful and not just think that everything is fine. The rate of change is increasing.’’

Turning research from scientists into practical information for farmers, says Deuter, will be a key component in helping farmers to continue to produce fresh food.

“We don’t want to get caught with our pants down. Climate change wasn’t really an issue in horticulture until five years ago. The temperature is the major factor and there’s not a lot of disagreement about that. We need a good-quality watching brief.’’

Deuter says that overall, the contribution of horticulture to climate change is minuscule. Across Australia, he says the industry contributes about 1 million tonnes of greenhouse gases compared to 90 million for the entire agricultural sector.

Even so, back in Laidley, Linton Brimblecombe is starting to look seriously at ways that he can reduce the carbon footprint of his own property.

“I could easily justify me riding a tractor because compared to a highway full of vehicles it’s nothing. But what I wasn’t thinking about was the fertilisers and electricity and diesel I use to grow my crops. There’s an acknowledgment that humans are having an effect on the environment – we have to acknowledge that. We can’t disregard the impact we are having on the earth.’’ 

Source: www.blogs.news.com.au

Rising Biofuel Demand in Germany; Electric Vehicles Tested in Canada

Quebec’s power utility is teaming up with Mitsubishi Motors to road test the performance of up to 50 all-electric vehicles against the rigors of the Canadian climate and measure their infrastructure needs, while Germany’s biodiesel industry sees rising demand in 2010 from oil companies for blending with fossil fuels, the head of Germany’s bio-ethanol industry association said. From Reuters World Environment News.

Susan Taylor for Reuters World Environment News (18 January 2010):

OTTAWA – Quebec’s power utility is teaming up with Mitsubishi Motors to road test the performance of up to 50 all-electric vehicles against the rigors of the Canadian climate and measure their infrastructure needs.

The C$4.5 million ($4.4 million) project, which organizers say will be Canada’s biggest trial yet of all-electric vehicles, is planned for this autumn near the Boucherville research facility of Hydro-Quebec, the provincial government-owned electricity utility.

“It will allow us to advance our knowledge of the technology and its integration into our grid, which in turn, will help us plan the necessary charging infrastructure for homes, offices and public places,” said Thierry Vandal, Hydro-Quebec’s chief executive.

Organizers said the road test is the first to include a car manufacturer, public utility, municipality and local businesses, which will integrate Mitsubishi i-MiEVs into existing fleets.

Mitsubishi says its Innovative Electric Vehicle, or i-MiEV, is an all-electric, highway-capable, charge-at-home commuter car.

Quebec was Canada’s first province to adopt California’s strict auto emission standards. The new rules came into effect January 14 and impose increasingly stringent limits on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from cars and light trucks.

Source: www.planetark.org
Michael Hogan for Reuters World Environment News (18 January 2010):

BERLIN – Germany’s biodiesel industry sees rising demand in 2010 from oil companies for blending with fossil fuels, the head of Germany’s bioethanol industry association said.

The German government’s plan to raise maximum permitted bioethanol levels in gasoline could boost sales while other European countries were also raising blending levels, said BDBE chief executive Dietrich Klein.

“We are optimistic after a difficult period,” Klein said at the Green Week trade fair. Germany’s new government planned to raise maximum permitted bioethanol levels in gasoline from five percent to ten percent, called E10 blends, to cut pollution.

The new regulation could take force by summer 2010, with major volumes of E10 fuel enter the market by next winter.

Meanwhile, heavy competition from Brazilian bioethanol was substantially reduced in 2009 and was likely to remain at low levels in early 2010, said Lutz Guderjahn, executive board member of German bioethanol producer Cropenergies, a unit of German sugar producer Suedzucker.

Brazilian bioethanol sales to Europe had fallen by about half in 2009. “With global sugar prices so high, Brazil is finding it more attractive to export sugar rather than processing it into bioethanol,” Guderjahn said.

“I expect this trend to continue in 2010 although much will depend on the outcome of the Brazilian and Indian sugar crops this year,” said Guderjahn.

GRAIN ATTRACTIVE FEEDSTOCK

Low prices made grains, especially maize and barley, the most attractive current feedstock for bioethanol production, said Guderjahn.

This was also because comparatively high soybean markets meant bioethanol producers were achieving high prices for animal feed meal by-products, he said.

Large EU sugar crops this winter were also likely to mean large supplies of cheap sugar for bioethanol feedstock, said Suedzucker board member and BDBE vice chairman Markwart Kunz.

Farmers in countries including Germany were expected to produce well over their European Union production quotas in this winter’s crop. Such sugar produced above EU quotas cannot be sold as food and must be marketed for other industrial uses including bioethanol.

“We will see a large volume of non-quota sugar available for bioethanol output this year,” said Kunz.

Despite current high sugar prices, such non-quota sugar would still be attractive as bioethanol feedstock, he said. Non-quota sugar was about 40 percent cheaper than quota sugar eligible for sale as food.

Source: www.planetark.org

In the end (a word or two from the editor)

I cannot resist giving the last word to well-known Brisbane engineer David Hood – a friend and serious climate change action advocate – with his concern over the visit of supreme sceptic Lord Monckton. Here’s what David wrote to the Brisbane Institute, which is jointly sponsored by the Queensland Government and the Brisbane City Council. In fact, Queensland’s Minister of Transport and the City’s CEO are among the Institute’s Board of Directors. Read More

“I am appalled that the once respected Brisbane Institute (BI) is giving credence to thoroughly discredited climate sceptics.  

“Last year BI entertained Jay Lehr, the Science Director of The Heartland Institute, that well known think tank funded by the tobacco industry to lie about smoking being safe, and now funded by Exxon Mobil et al to tell the world that burning fossil fuels is safe for the planet.  

 “As if that wasn’t enough, BI is now supporting and funding that well know crackpot, Lord Monckton, and his mate Professor Ian Plimer at a debate here in Brisbane on 29 January.   This event is bringing significant discredit upon BI which says it is simply allowing both sides to have their say.  

“I would have thought that when 98% of refereed scientific and engineering research papers agree that anthropogenic climate change is happening, and when the largest gathering of world leaders ever in history agreed just last December at COP 15 in Copenhagen that “climate change is happening, is caused by human activity, is serious, and requires immediate solutions” there is no further debate.

“The problem world leaders had, as you well know, was in agreeing what those solutions are, and when to implement them.   In other words, we have moved on a long way on from debating the science. 

“This event is putting the Brisbane Institute, and its supporters, in a very bad light, by giving credence to well known purveyors of false science, cherry picked data, partial or out of context quotes, and simply false information. It is great shame to see BI exposing itself to ridicule from the science and engineering community.”

That’s the word- or two – from David Hood. More from me next week.

Ken Hickson