Wednesday, December 08, 2010

Was Cancun's Agday hijacked?

Why do we have Agday at Cancun? Agriculture has to stage it’s own day because its not included in the official program, even though there have been 16 of these Conferences of Parties. There has been one major shift from last year’s Agday. That green ideology dominates the organizations involved is obvious by the way the Summary of the Agriculture and Rural Development Day uses the WWF and Animal Liberation’s trick – in the now discredited FAO report “Livestock’s Long Shadow” - that ‘proved’ that cattle were the world’s most destructive animal by making them responsible for deforestration of the Amazon. This time it’s all of Agriculture in the frame: “Over a third of direct global emissions is due to agriculture and other land use change…” Other land use includes deforestration – which is as much a timber industry activity, and there is no attempt to calculate the amount of emissions sequestered by farmers. By this sleight of hand, Agriculture becomes a net emitter: “It is estimated that agriculture has the potential to sequester up to 90% of agriculture’s total emissions.” And so we return to that old song; Agriculture is the problem, not the solution. Handicap agriculture with deforestation for whatever purpose and it's easy to paint a picture with only one colour.

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