On 15 December, the European Commission presented measures to enable agriculture to improve soil carbon sequestration (see EUROPE 12854/15).
It has identified a number of practices (reforestation, agroforestry, conversion of land to fallow or permanent grassland, catch crops, etc.) that could be supported by the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), but also, in the longer term, by a future market for carbon sequestration.
The EU’s agricultural organisations and cooperatives (Copa-Cogeca) welcomed in a statement a great opportunity for farmers, provided that a market-based approach is favoured.
Copa-Cogeca appreciate the Commission’s recognition that carbon farming is very site-dependent in application and that there cannot be a one-size-fits-all approach to carbon farming. It regrets that the use of organic fertiliser is not included in the communication, “since it is a very beneficial practice in terms of carbon capture, biodiversity, and water and soil benefits”.
But some NGOs have pointed out a loophole in the scheme: the possibility of selling absorbed carbon to a company would mean that it would not have to reduce its emissions or pay for them. Especially since, as WWF points out, “carbon removals in the terrestrial sector, unlike fossil fuel emissions, are difficult to measure”.
The European Coordination Via Campesina, for its part, regrets that the communication makes “no mention of the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from industrial agriculture” and fears that this “’carbon agriculture’ opens the way to an unprecedented financialisation of agriculture, where farm incomes would be dependent on a speculative carbon market”.
The European Commission will adopt a legislative proposal by the end of 2022.
Link to the European Commission’s working document on agricultural soils: https://bit.ly/3GWic6F (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)