Agriculture and Sustainability Flashcards
Define mitigation strategies.
An anthropogenic intervention to reduce the sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases.
Define adaptation strategies.
Adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities.
What are the expected effects of global warming on the planet?
- Higher likelihood and frequency of climatic extremes
- Megadroughts
- Sea levels rising – approximately 600 billion tonnes of melted water per year
- Global land change
How will global warming impact animals?
- Wildlife heavily affected by climate disasters, such as the Australian bushfires
- Heat waves killing sea creatures
- Biodiversity loss due to changing conditions
- Coral bleaching and so loss of habitat
What are some examples of threats to be reduced?
Habitat degradation
Exploitation
Invasive species and disease
Pollution
Climate change
What are some effects of climate change on companion animals?
- Pets often not taken care of during extreme heat
- Heat related illness risks increasing with temperature, due to lack of awareness and no heat acclimatisation
What are some effects of climate change on farm animals?
- Droughts causing hay shortages, causing farmers to thin herds
- Heat stress
What are some methods to increase resilience of farm systems?
- Technical and management changes
- Transformational and systemic changes
- Managing heat stress in dairy cattle
How can heat stress in dairy cattle be managed?
- Fans in collecting yards
- Select animals that are more heat resistant
- Tree and artificial tree shelter
What are the 4 options of Australian farming?
Choice: cows are allowed to choose between indoor and outdoor
Indoor: cows cannot access the outside but are protected from the heat
Gene-edit: Cattle are genetically modified to make them more resistant to heat stress
Status-quo: (Outdoor + natural shade provided by trees)
What is an example of a species that is more heat resistant?
Goat as the ideal climate-resilient animal model in tropical environments
Vaguely describe the contribution of agriculture to climate change.
- 40% of CO2 emissions in the last 30 years
- 30-40% of total HGH emissions
- Approximately 50% due to livestock
Where do the emissions from agriculture come from?
- Fertiliser and equipment manufacturing
- Deforestation, draining wetlands, expanding rangelands and burning savannah
- Crop rotation, livestock production, fisheries and aquaculture
- Processing, packaging, transportation, refrigerator
- Disposal
How does life cycle analyses help understand the carbon footprint of food products?
- The food sector (especially livestock) contributes largely to climate change
- We absolutely need to reduce food-related emissions
- The carbon footprint of different food can come from various aspects of pre, within or post-production
What are the impacts of agriculture on biodiversity?
- Land use – transformations of ecosystems
- Pollution and other harmful practices – tiling, pesticides and monoculture
- The food supply chain
What are the challenges facing agriculture?
- Feeding a growing population
- Producing more resource intense food
- Addressing biodiversity loss:
What is land sharing in regards to biodiversity?
- Better agricultural practice/enhancing biodiversity locally
- May have indirect consequences (increase the need to transform other lands) if local production is decreased and consumption is maintained
What is land sparing in regards to biodiversity?
- Intensifying production on current lands to be cleared for agriculture
- Hidden ‘business as usual’
What do we need to do in order to produce more food?
- Dramatically reduce waste
- Stop lands artificialisation
- Shift the demand towards less resource-intensive food
How are views on animal agriculture affect animal welfare?
- Most systems involve practices that are not supported by the public or worse
- The public needs more education
- Future technologies must take into account the public’s perspective
- Animal agriculture involves practices that do not align with the public’s values
- These practices are heavily criticized by a growing part of the population
- Animal agriculture may lose its social license on Animal Welfare grounds
What is the issue with net zero?
Net zero is the aim of the UK government and this will include agriculture. Is this achieved at any cost? Cannot plant enough trees to offset emissions from global cattle and not be able to feed the global population.
What are the 3 distinct questions about arable production?
- Can current grassland be effectively redeployed for arable production?
- Will current arable land remain fertile long term without livestock?
- Will there be any unintended consequences of arable conversion?
Describe land productivity.
More cropland and less grassland = crops do not survive well and soil chemistry must be considered. Dominating landscape is grassland. Leads to ineffective allocation of national resource endowment.
What is the effect on the economy if there is less livestock production?
Ruminants - meat and milk production, grains, manure, overseas export
Meat processing - food processing, restaurants, households, government, overseas export
- How does the transaction pattern change?
- How does the employment structure change?
- How is the national economy affected?
What are the estimated impacts of meat tax?
Can decrease greenhouse gases and 1.4 Mt from livestock and economy wide has 2.5 Mt. Achieve purpose but at a cost to other parts of society.
What is the question behind research into converting to arable land?
Research into whether plant food for human consumption can be grown by converting partial parts of farmland for animal use without too much economic damage to farmer.
