Elon Musk Gives Farmers a Surprise Weapon Against Their Biggest Threat

They play an essential role in feeding the planet. But in recent years, farmers have been more talked about for the role they play in accelerating climate change.

For environmental NGOs like Greenpeace, agriculture is one of the causes of climate change. It is indeed responsible, according to data from the NGO, for nearly a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, when deforestation is taken into account.

Farmers worldwide contribute greatly to climate change through two gases less known to the public than carbon dioxide (CO2), according to experts. One is methane, which is a gas with a warming power 28 times greater than that of CO2. This gas is emitted by ruminants, but also by certain rice-growing methods. 

Methane is considered the second largest contributor to the greenhouse effect after CO2. It is said to be 'a powerful but short-lived climate pollutant that accounts for about half of the net rise in global average temperatures since the pre-industrial era," according to the Global Methane Pledge.

Nitrogen is the other gas, which is a greenhouse gas emitted in particular by fertilizers and livestock effluents.

Eliminating Sheep and Cattle

In addition to these emissions, deforestation is also linked to emissions, since it is often the result of the conversion of forest areas into agricultural land, which is used to produce food for livestock or to graze them, activists say. 

Activists therefore advocate promoting what they call sustainable agriculture techniques, including limited synthetic fertilizer inputs, reducing fertilizer inputs -- e.g. from the use of livestock manure in cropping systems to alley cropping with Nitrogen-fixing trees -- while conserving and restoring forests, mangroves and peatlands.

Pressure from environmental activists in recent years has resulted in the adoption of restrictive laws for farmers in many Western countries. In 2021, a major international agreement was signed, when the United States, the European Union and more than 100 countries committed to reduce global methane emissions by at least 30% from the 2020 levels by 2030, which could eliminate over 0.2˚C of warming by 2050. 

This agreement has caused enormous anxiety among farmers. In Ireland, for instance, reducing methane emissions means reducing the number of livestock, especially sheep and cattle.

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, is one of the most influential and important voices in the environmental sphere. He not only has pushed the car industry, one of the most polluting in the world, to make a transformation towards electric vehicles - considered cleaner - but he also assures that a sustainable energy economy is possible. 

But unlike other pro-climate activists, he supports farmers and believes that there is no need to restrict them in the name of climate change. For the billionaire, farming does not constitute a threat for the environment. The farmers' actions are not as devastating as activists claim, Musk comes to declare on Twitter.

Farming Has 'No Meaningful Impact on Climate Change': Musk

"Important to note that what happens on Earth’s surface (e.g. farming) has no meaningful impact on climate change," the billionaire said on June 24. "Overwhelmingly, the risk of climate change is due to moving billions of tons of carbon from deep underground into the atmosphere."

He continued: "Over time, if we keep doing this, the chemical makeup of our atmosphere will change enough to induce meaningful climate change."

The billionaire's declaration is a great gift for farmers who are fighting, as in Ireland and Belgium recently, against local measures put in place to ensure that their countries meet the respective commitments in the fight against global warming. 

A "modeling document" in Ireland recently showed that the government wanted to eliminate 200,000 dairy cows to meet climate emissions targets. 

"Killing some cows doesn’t matter for climate change," Musk reacted on June 3.

For the billionaire, the defense of the climate at the cost of farmers losing their jobs is unacceptable. 

"I’m super pro climate," Musk said on March 6, as Belgian farmers were protesting the Flemish government's plan to reduce nitrogen emissions, and its threat to close the farms deemed to be the most polluting. "But we definitely don’t need to put farmers out of work to solve climate change. Not at all."