We throw away more fruit and veg than we eat; buying low emission bulls and more…

Climate change and agriculture conference 2012, Media bulletins

Australian farmers dealing with climate change

  • We throw away more fruit and veggies than we eat
  • The genetics of burping – buying low emission bulls
  • See the future of your vineyard under climate change? Take a walk downhill.
  • We don’t need to go vegetarian to slash agricultural emissions
  • Minister Ludwig launches new strategy to fight climate change with $50 million in grants
  • Ross Garnaut talks about food security under a changing climate.

Some of today’s stories from CCRSPI – the agriculture and climate change conference in Melbourne.

While world leaders gather in Doha for the UN Climate Change Conference COP 18, Australia’s farm leaders and researchers meet at the MCG in Melbourne to discuss practical adaptation and responses to a changing climate. They’re discussing the viability of carbon farming, climate threats to winemakers, managing methane, sceptical farmers acting on climate change and more.

A major theme today is methane. Methane is rarer than carbon dioxide, but it’s also 25 times more potent in its impact on the climate – and it’s intimately connected to our favourite foods.

Livestock produce it as they digest their food, and every morsel of uneaten or wasted food lets off methane as it decays in landfill.

Food analyst Steve Spencer will outline that we throw away more fruit and veg than we eat. Seafood is almost as bad, with every prawn on the barbie being the twin of a prawn in the bin. Steve has many ideas on how we can avoid waste, cut emissions and save billions.

Aside from the emissions issue, wasted food is wasted money – well over $5bn worth of food goes to waste annually, just in NSW, according to Steve.

Buy low emission bulls and breed for less methane. If your uncle Barry has gas, you should be worried. It turns out that methane production levels (read: burps – cows don’t fart much) are partly due to hereditary factors, at least in cattle. This means we may be able to breed cattle to produce less methane.

Other stories from today include

  • A farmer’s perspective: Lucinda Corrigan reveals what it will take to get us to do our bit for the climate.
  • Climate change is sending winery harvests haywire. A snip in time could help
  • A Rosetta stone in the orchard: turning abstract climate science into local adaptation
  • Want to see the future of your vineyard under climate change? Take a walk downhill.

 

I’ve attached two overview releases below.

  • The first covers methane –  How cow burps and rotting vegetables are destabilising the climate:  farmers and scientists talk solutions
  • The second covers the changing wine industry: the last good vintage?

Media are welcome at the conference in the Olympic Room at the MCG. Enter via gate 3.

More information on these stories and others at http://www.scienceinpublic.com.au/agricultureandclimate

For interviews: Thami Croeser: 0421 133 012, AJ Epstein: 0433 339 141 or email niall@scienceinpublic.com.au

How cow burps and rotting vegetables are destabilising the climate:  farmers and scientists talk solutions

When you hear ‘climate change’, you probably think ‘carbon dioxide’. However, it’s not the only greenhouse gas. Methane is a rarer gas, but it’s also 25 times more potent in its impact on the climate – and it’s intimately connected to our favourite foods. Livestock produce it as they digest their food, and every morsel of uneaten or wasted food lets off methane as it decays in landfill.

This is a key focus at today’s conference on agriculture and climate change at the MCG. The ideas our conference speakers have to reduce emissions are clever, contentious, and sometimes shockingly obvious.

We throw away more fruit and veggies that we eat

Food analyst Steve Spencer’s idea is ‘obvious’: if we want to reduce emissions from decaying food, we should stop throwing it away. And yet, we throw away more fruit and veg than we eat. Seafood is almost as bad, with every prawn on the barbie being the twin of a prawn in the bin.

Aside from the emissions issue, wasted food is wasted money – well over $5bn worth of food goes to waste annually, just in NSW, according to Steve.

Households aren’t the whole problem, and reducing waste isn’t just a matter of eating what’s on our plates and using food before it goes off. Before food even reaches the supermarket, a lot of it is wasted as failed harvests, second-rate produce or just surplus stock.

Steve has many ideas on how we can avoid waste, cut emissions and save billions – and he’d love to chat about them.

The genetics of burping – breeding for less methane

If your uncle Barry has gas, you should be worried. It turns out that methane production levels (read: burps – cows don’t fart much) are partly due to hereditary factors, at least in cattle. This means we may eventually be able to breed cattle to produce less methane.

This would be kinder to the climate, and possibly worth millions in carbon credits too. In fact, each one per cent reduction in the greenhouse gases coming from Australia’s beef cattle could be worth over eight million dollars under the federal Carbon Farming Initiative.

This exciting prospect has NSW DPI researcher Kath Donoghue looking at ways that producers can start purchasing ‘low emission’ bulls, who in turn can foster herds of low-emission cattle. The answers, it seems, may be in the genes.

Hold onto that steak: vegetarianism might not be the only answer to climate change

It’s often argued that if we were all vegetarian, we’d see a big drop in our greenhouse emissions. Jude Capper, an Associate Professor at Washington State University, doesn’t think this is necessary. Maybe we can have our steak and eat it too – by making the meat industry more efficient.

As a consultant to the meat industry, Jude has many questions for people who advocate for large-scale vegetarianism. How would we feed our pets? Where would we get our leather? Could we really grow suitable vegetarian food in the rangelands where cattle are often raised worldwide? And do we really want to see cows disappear from the landscape, only to be seen in zoos and conservation parks?

We don’t need to go vegetarian, she argues, because there are huge opportunities to cut emissions in livestock production by becoming more efficient. She presents the example of her home country proudly, where the emissions involved in producing a unit of beef have dropped by 16% since 1977.

Cows making less gas: don’t hold your breath

Dr Richard Eckard knows a lot about animal guts and ‘enteric methane’ – that’s the gas that livestock make as they digest food. We know it’s a potent greenhouse gas, and researchers across the globe are working to find ways to make our cattle, sheep and pigs produce less of it. There’s all kinds of tricks to get them to make less gas, but after a long hard look at the options, Dr Eckard has concluded that we’re still some decades away from finding the ‘silver bullet’ – or tiny silver bullets, in this case.

Speaking at a conference on agriculture and climate change in Melbourne, Eckard said: “We know that simple measures like oily feeds can reliably bring down methane production by a modest amount, but we’re only just learning how the microbes in a cow’s gut function. It’ll be some time before we’re able to control them in a way that is practical, cost-effective and sustainable on-farm. As we learn how to do this, we may start seeing much bigger drops in the methane produced, but it’ll take a while – and a lot of research – before we’re sure.”

Dr Eckard explores the options, ranging from genes to methane capture, on Wednesday morning.

A farmer’s perspective: what it will take to get us to do our bit for the climate

Lucinda Corrigan has a broad perspective on the methane issue – she speaks today as a successful pastoralist, but she’s also a board member of Meat and Livestock Australia and of several CRCs.  Lucinda and her husband Bryan run the Rennylea Pastoral Company, which was recently awarded Primary Producer of the Year at the NAB Agribusiness Awards.

On Wednesday Lucinda will discuss how to get farmers on board. For all the importance of science in driving forward our capacity to reduce emissions, farmers must be part of the solution. What will it take? Ask Lucinda, or come along on Wednesday morning and find out.

For interviews:

Thami Croeser: 0421 133 012
AJ Epstein: 0433 339 141

The last good vintage?

Winemakers stare down a changing climate

Tuesday 27 November 2012

A few places in Australia have the perfect terroir. But will they keep it in a changing climate.

Wine regions like the Hunter Valley or Margaret River are climatic ‘sweet spots’, combining just the right mix of rainfall and temperatures, in just the right soil, to grow the perfect grape for your chardonnay or pinot.

Now the climate is changing, and these sweet spots may be turning sour. Wineries in North America, Europe and Australia are noticing that grapes aren’t growing like they used to – they tend to be ripening up to a month early, before they’re the right colour or flavour.

Today Australia’s wine makers and scientists meet to discuss these challenges at the Climate Change Research Strategy for Primary Industries Conference at the MCG in Melbourne.

Topics include:

Climate change is sending winery harvests haywire. A snip in time could help

Climate change is causing grapevines in Australia to mature up to a month sooner than they used to, and this is bad news for the quality of our wine. It could also make Aussie wine harder to sell if wineries must relocate – ‘made in the valley just south of the Barossa valley’ just doesn’t sound good, and relocating to new sites would cost the industry millions.

Treasury Wine Estates, owner of Penfolds, Wolf Blass and Yellowglen, has a simple alternative to relocation, that might yet save our favourite tipples. They’ve found that pruning the vines later can trigger vines to mature later – so that grapes ripen at times similar to what they used to, before the seasons started to shift. Dr Paul Petrie talks us through this discovery on Thursday.

A Rosetta stone in the orchard: turning abstract climate science into local adaptation

Under climate change, sea levels will rise and things will get hotter, but what does that mean for individual farms? It can be tricky to make sense of climate projections locally, and this can be a hurdle to getting on with adapting to a new climate.

South Australian researchers have developed a system that helps quantify exactly how much harm cherry orchards and vineyards face as the weather gets weirder. Peter Hayman worked with wineries and cherry orchard managers to turn the abstract risk of unusual weather like severe frosts into dollars-and-cents losses, and then talked about how those risks might change with the climate. Linking local knowledge to the global science of climate changing is helping farmers get ready for the changes that matter in their own regions.

Peter shares examples of real climate concerns for farmers on Wednesday at a conference on agriculture and climate change at the MCG.

Want to see the future of your vineyard under climate change? Take a walk downhill.

Peter Hayman and Dane Thomas have found a time machine for winemakers…  A hill.

A walk downhill really can be a step into the future, because lower altitudes are often warmer. With climate change already on the move, stepping downhill to a winery that already operates in warmer conditions than one’s own gives an insight into what the future might be like.

Of course, the soils won’t be the same, and sometimes valleys are actually cooler, but with a bit of careful thought a winemaker can visit wineries that already function in the conditions that they’re expecting to see on their own land as global temperatures creep upward. Dr Thomas, a South Australian researcher, shares his scientific experiences of time travel on Wednesday.

For interviews: Thami Croeser: 0421 133 012, AJ Epstein: 0433 339 141