Agriculture is key to solving the climate crisis, but most farmers don’t have the financial incentive to switch to more eco-friendly practices, says banker and farmer Berry Marttin. He explores how improving the systems around carbon and biodiversity credits could bolster the economic viability of a green transition, offering hope for a world in which sustainable produce is not only possible but also profitable. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Chapter 1: What is the focus of Berry Marttin's talk on farming and climate change?
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hume. Modern farms and current agricultural practices are vital to life as we know it. They're also a major contributor to climate change. As a banker who works with farms and a farmer himself, Barry Martin is deeply aware of the problem.
But he believes that farming is also a major part of the solution. Kommend, innovativen Ereignissen, um die Landwirtschaft als Leiter im Kampf gegen den Klimawandel zu machen.
Chapter 2: Why is farming considered a risky business?
An der Farm ist Geld der König. Es ist ein Geschäft. Ich bin selbst ein Farmer. Ich rieche Kettel, growe Korn und baue Hefe. Aber ich bin auch Banker. Und ich habe die Landwirtschaft für mehr als 30 Jahre finanziert. I actually have the honor to sit at the kitchen table of large and small farmers on all continents, except Antarctica. Not many farmers there.
Well, one thing I can assure you, farming is a risky business. Profits are very small. You are dependent on the weather, and you don't know what that's going to be. You grow a crop, you don't know the price, you don't know the quality. So there's not much room for error there. And yet, farming needs to change if we want to reach the goals of Paris and feed a growing population.
Chapter 3: How does agriculture contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss?
Mehr als 20 Prozent aller Grünhausgase werden von der Landwirtschaft oder Landwirtschaftsveränderung emittiert. Das betrifft Deforestation, und lasst mich sicher sein, wir stoppen das sofort, chemische Fertilisatoren, Emissionen von Tieren, Diesel aus Ihrem Tractor, aber das globale Landwirtschaftssystem verwendet auch 70 Prozent aller Wasser,
Widerbringung ist auch ein großer Beitrag an Biodiversität und Speziesverlust. Das alles zusammen ergibt einen sehr effizienten Effekt. Aber es ist auch eine große Teilnahme der Lösung. Wissenschaftler bestätigen, dass Landwirte Carbon aus dem Wasser nehmen können, indem sie Bäume wachsen oder sie in den Sog legen. Der Effekt wird so groß wie Wind und Solar bezeichnet. Das ist ziemlich etwas.
Chapter 4: What are the challenges farmers face in transitioning to sustainable practices?
So, if that's the case, why farmers are not rushing to change their ways and save our planet? The reality is quite different. First of all, biological processes take time. At least five to ten years to start changing the quality and characteristics of your soil. It takes time to change your herd or to grow trees. Also, biological processes are very variable. They depend on weather,
Sie bedienen sich von Feuer, Regen, Träumen. Zudem haben wir nicht alle klimafreien Landwirtschaftstechniken getestet. Einige davon haben sich nicht einmal an die regionalen Bedürfnisse eingestellt. Dann gibt es die Kosten. Wenn man sich verändert, braucht man mehr Arbeit, neue Maschinen, Training, wahrscheinlich eine Verletzung einer Pflanze. Dann gibt es den Konsumenten.
Der heutige Konsument ist nicht bereit, are able to pay for more sustainable foods. So, if you put all this together, it takes a lot of time, effort and money to transition. There is no viable business case at this moment. It costs the farmer more than it pays to transform. Meanwhile, at the other side of the fence, my neighbor, who didn't change his ways of farming, is enjoying a nice cash flow.
I call this the valley of death. This transformation is long and is the best way actually of my neighbor to buy me out. As one farmer once said to me, the best way of guaranteeing my farm for the next generation is to pay my bills tomorrow. Why should I risk the farm? Let's help the farmer then to do the transition.
Chapter 5: Why are carbon and biodiversity credits not scaling effectively?
Actually, I'm a true believer, I'm a true believer that we should pay for eco-services, that we should pay the farmer for the investments in nature and in carbon. We do have the instruments already, that are the carbon and the biodiversity credits. But why are they not scaling?
Zuerst haben wir eigentlich keine Standardmetriken oder Accounting-Regeln, um den Kohlenstoff auf der Landwirtschaft zu messen. Lass uns noch weiter gehen. Wir wissen nicht, wer wirklich diese Kohlenstoffe und diese Biodiversitätskredite besitzt. Ist es die Regierung? Ist es der Landwirt? Oder ist es der, der die Produkte kauft? Wir wissen nicht über den Preis. We don't have a price transparency.
It's actually a big wild west out there. If you want to sell corn, you can get the price immediately from the Chicago Board of Trade. If you want to sell a ton of carbon from your farm, you actually don't know. You really don't know. And then we have the discussion about permanence. And what is that? It's that carbon and biodiversity are very variable and they're dependent on weather and fire.
So the farmer needs to be protected against those variations. We need a good insurance scheme. And last, the government. Governments, please, set the basic legal framework for us to be able to use those credits. And, very important, a minimum price for the benchmark. Farmers are great stewards of the land, good entrepreneurs, smart operators.
And once the right conditions are set, I'm absolutely sure they will quickly adapt and change. How do I know that? While I was at Rabobank, I have participated in many structures and schemes to support farmers to transition. Some of them failed, some of them were very successful. But all the good ones, all the successful ones, involved some form of income or risk mitigation.
Let me share with you one successful project, one I'm pretty proud about. And that's Project Acorn. ACORN wurde designt, um Ökoservice für kleine Farmer in kleinen und sehr schwierigen Ländern zu bezahlen. Was wir dort gemacht haben, ist, dass wir Satellitenbilder und sehr einfache Fotos mit mobilen Telefonen von Bäumen auf unserer Farm benutzt haben.
das Daten abzuschauen und zu kalkulieren, wie viel Kohlenstoff eigentlich gespeichert wurde. Mit dieser Kalkulation haben wir zertifizierte Kohlenstoffkredite an den internationalen Markt durch ein Auktionssystem eingestellt. Und wir haben sie einfach durch den höchsten Bidder verkauft. Wir konnten bis zu 35 Dollar pro Tonne Kohlenstoff erhalten.
Das sieht nicht viel aus, aber wenn du 2 Dollar pro Tag lebst, ist das ziemlich substanziell. Acorn today reaches more than 310,000 farmers and has issued 300,000 tons of carbon. And it's still growing. I think it's an amazing project. And if we could scale this up to the whole world, customize it to the needs of farmers in Brazil or Bangladesh, I think we could accelerate change.
But let's be realistic. This is not easy. Many carbon and biodiversity credit schemes have failed. However, it's not different than what happened with agricultural commodities, bonds of shares. It took time and effort to get them standardized and quoted on global stock exchanges. Let's see how all of this comes together and how I see it working out on the farm level.
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