The agriculture industry is celebrating as government data released this week shows UK farming is on track to achieve its greenhouse gas emission reduction targets of three million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent by 2020. The targets are part of an industry initiative.

Defra this week published its analysis of the effectiveness of the current industry approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from English agriculture. The 2012 assessment of the industry's Greenhouse Gas Action Plan (GHGAP) "welcomes the progress made so far by the Industry Partnership" and considers it "realistic" that agriculture can meet its three million-tonne emissions reduction target by 2020.

The NFU welcomed Defra's assessment, claiming it showed promise that the government would allow the industry-led voluntary approach to continue. Defra's response can be read here. The next review of progress will be in 2016. 

NFU climate change adviser Dr Ceris Jones commented on Wednesday (28th November), "We are enhancing the way that important messages, technical advice and information are delivered to farmers and growers. In particular, we are creating a reliable up-to-date electronic library to support farm advisers in their daily work in the form of an innovative pilot Farm Efficiency Hub. This will also be openly available to farmers and land managers."

However, Defra's analysis of the GHGAP also suggests there is limited scope for further GHG reductions in the 2020s based on available knowledge and the limitations of current farming practice. The government therefore warned that "in the longer term agriculture as a share of the wider carbon economy is likely to increase and potentially exceed 20% of UK wide GHG emissions by 2050 compared to around 9% today."

In fact, the latest government analysis published earlier this year revealed that between 2009 and 2010, the last year for which data is available, there was a 0.9 percent increase in GHG emissions from agriculture, though Defra downplayed this, stating that "In the context of the longer term downward trend [in emissions]… this result is not in itself unduly worrying."

Areas of focus identified in the GHGAP plan going towards 2020 include a focus on:

• management, skills and advice
• crop nutrient management
• soil and land management
• livestock health and nutrition
• energy efficiency and renewable energy generation

The 14 industry bodies involved in the GHGAP state that their aim is to improve the UK's agriculture sector, reducing the sector's impact on the environment and avoiding compulsory regulation. They claim that the plan will maintain production whilst reducing agricultural emissions, thereby avoiding "exporting our emissions to other parts of the world" by producing less and importing more. However, the UK food system, a feature of which is significant livestock production and only limited domestic production of protein crops has already been described by food policy experts as "unduly parasitic on the planet and other countries' land and labour."

Experts have called for more research into sustainable farming techniques and argued a more fundamental shift towards lower impact methods and socially just production is needed to achieve long term food security, including a greater focus on horticulture.   

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