Climate Farmers

Last year the Dutch young farmers’ organisation NAJK and the European Council of Young Farmers (CEJA) set up the Climate Farmers project (www.climatefarmers.eu). The aim was to find out what young farmers could do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Not by investigating what powder to put a cow’s stomach to reduce methane emissions but by looking at what is actually happening on farms and in the fields. The idea was to establish links and share experiences between countries.

The project highlighted the different approaches to the climate issue in the various Member States. In Spain, for instance, the government, with Kyoto in mind, primarily looks at other sectors, but farmers do play a role. The national government wants to reduce the use of fossil fuels and encourage storage of organic matter in the soil. Swedish farmers can address the problem by participating in a climate certification programme. Practical examples at farm level include young farmers in France creating buffer zones and windbreaks as a way to store CO2. Other Member States focus on grazing to store CO2 in grassland and reduce the use of fuel…

You can read more on the Climate Farmers project on the FoodPoliticsEU blog here: http://foodpolitics.eu/