Opinion: Farmers are the climate change scapegoats

There are two distinct groups of people associated with net zero.

Consultants who tell us everything we need to know on the subject and have a vested interest in the climate emergency, because let’s be honest, this newly created industry pays them a good wage.

Then there are the farmers, who are on board because their milk buyer requests it.

They sit quietly, listen carefully, and try their hardest to make a difference, only to find what they are doing isn’t enough and they are even more confused than they were before.

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About the author

Cath Morley

Cath Morley grew up on a mixed livestock farm in Derbyshire. She now lives and works on a Lancashire dairy unit with her husband, Chris Halhead. They milk 150 cows with three robots and rear all their own replacement heifers.

Read more articles by Cath Morley

Meeting after meeting presents us with yet another new idea to help reduce our carbon footprint. One example is the clever use of genetics to make our cows more efficient and produce less methane.

They will eat less food, drink less water and, at the same time, produce more milk.

I have no doubt that somebody, somewhere will come up with the goods and we will have a new wonder-cow in our sheds. 

She will be able to live off a diet of daffodils and seaweed, while routinely averaging 18,000 litres per lactation. Sounds fabulous, but I’m pretty sure it’s not going to happen any time soon.

Pushing cows harder for yield, feeding them additives and breeding them to the point of super-cow status is all a bit Orwellian for me.

It won’t be good for them, I suspect they will not have longevity, and ultimately we will need to breed more replacements, which certainly isn’t going to help with emissions.

All the major milk processors are heavily invested in lowering their carbon footprint, as the government has set targets which have to be met.

Reports are widely available online and nearly all of them proclaim that around 80% of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from their entire UK businesses come from agriculture.

That seems an awful lot.Especially when you consider all the different elements: farm collections, refrigeration, pasteurisation and processing plants, fuel, storage facilities, packaging plants, delivery depots and offices.>

Call me cynical, but I think it’s very convenient for these big companies to pass on 80% of their GHG emissions just like that, making it our problem to deal with, not theirs.

It’s passing the buck on a large scale. But who can we pass our emissions on to? No one.

We farmers are at the bottom of a very large heap and as yet all the carbon sequestered on farms through hedgerows, trees and pastures is not accounted for within the many different carbon footprinting tools.

This gives us all a much higher footprint. Like I said, very convenient.

I am not a climate change denier, but the system is unfairly skewed in favour of those who have more power and money than farmers.

We shouldn’t follow like sheep, trusting that the cherry-picked information provided to us will have our best interests at heart. We are being manipulated into changing what we do, so everyone else can carry on as normal.

Net zero will happen a lot quicker if the general population changes its behaviour and, until there is a massive reduction in flights and car journeys, no-one will convince me that cows are the problem.