Unlike other prolific lobbyists, such as the energy, defence or tobacco industries, agriculture projects a wholesome public image of bucolic pastures and earthy men and women tending to livestock.“Everyone likes the idea of a small farmer — it’s a romantic notion of farming, sometimes among non-farmers who are fairly well off,” said Mairead McGuinness, an EU commissioner who previously sat on the European parliament’s agricultural committee.
New incentives for climate-smart agricultural practices fall short, they add.“Ranchers’ profit margins are so very thin and are becoming even thinner when having to produce beef in the face of climate change and severe weather,” says Meredith Ellis, who rears cattle using sustainable grazing methods on her 3,000-acre farm in Texas.
Nusa Urbancic, chief executive of the Changing Markets Foundation, says that as farming’s contribution to emissions has become clearer — livestock production is the largest source of human-caused methane emissions, for instance — the meat and dairy industries have managed to convince policymakers of “agricultural exceptionalism”.
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