Putting a price on pollution

After years of land degradation, he has seen many farmers struggled to grow enough food for their families. Some of them are now using a wide range of methods to increase the organic matter in soils.

In the long term, he noted that a lot has to be done to improve the soil’s water absorption, nutrient supply and biodiversity, and help prevent erosion.

According to him, better soils raise farm yields, improving food security and making agriculture more resilient to climate change.

However, Mogaji told The Nation that farmers were more likely to make big efforts to cut carbon if there is a system in place to help them improve farm resiliency against severe weather events and increasing farm profitability.

He said farmers need all the encouragement focus on “smart” farming and the latest technology, as agriculture is a key future growth engine to create jobs and improve food security.

He believes there is a link between economic empowerment and sustainable and environmentally friendly agriculture. Mogaji wants the government to work with the agric sector to measure and reduce its energy costs and find ways to adapt to climate change. Increased temperatures are having a marked effect on productivity, and rising costs for producers in terms of more spraying and labour.

At the global level, however, the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research( CGIAR) research programme on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) has warned that global carbon tax would increase undernourished by 80 to 300 million people.

Scientists from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and the CGIAR Research Programme on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) explored how a global carbon tax together with land-based climate change mitigation options would affect the cost of major food commodities.

To do this, they used established climate stabilisation scenarios for achieving 2 °C with the Global Biosphere Management Model (GLOBIOM), a partial equilibrium model that considers both biophysical and economic changes.

Research showed that a $10 tax/tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent would achieve some mitigation cost-efficiently, and thus not raise food prices significantly.

However, the study revealed that a higher carbon tax such as $100/tonne – which would be necessary if the global community employed carbon taxes as a principle mitigation tool – would cause steeper food price increases, in large part because of the wide extent of inefficient food production practices and the cost of shifting from these practices to more efficient production.

It said: “Higher food prices would lead to more food insecurity and undernourishment in some countries. As long as current food production remains at low levels of productivity, the higher the carbon tax, the higher the food prices, and the more people who would experience food insecurity.”

Researchers estimated that a uniform carbon tax could increase the number of undernourished people by 80 to 300 million in 2050.

They found that the carbon tax would raise the price of most food commodities, but most significantly in emission-intensive beef, rice, and milk.

While food prices would increase across the globe, the study revealed that prices would increase the most in Oceania, Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia due to emission-intensive agricultural production, emission-intensive diets, or both.

Challenges

Given the increased political interest in reducing the negative environmental impacts of agriculture, including by mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, various tax instruments are emerging to improve environmental sustainability. One of them is the Carbon Tax. This is because energy use emissions have various negative externalities, including environmental damage, negative health impacts, and climate change effects. As a consequence, countries are instituting taxes on energy use as a means of charging for these damages, with the additional effects of reducing emissions. Nigeria has the potential to cut a reasonable per cent of its annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions arising from agriculture and livestock. Analysts believe the potential reduction could be achieved cost-effectively by efficiently utilising fertiliser, adopting zero-tillage and managing water in cultivation. The implementation of these measures will require the collaboration of the government, private sector, and farmers.

Climate change is threatening Nigeria’s food security with frequent dry spells, heat waves and erratic rainfall, adding to farmers’ woes.

As Nigeria population continues to surge, experts said a lot must be done to double food production by 2050. Thus scientists and policymakers are faced with the challenge of meeting the growing demand for food whilst also reining in on GHG emissions.