Autor/es reacciones

Carlos Astrain Massa

Director of the Forestry and Agrosystems Division of the Navarre Government's public company “OREKAN Gestión Ambiental de Navarra” (Navarre Environmental Management),

The article works on databases regarding subsidies, emissions and correct agricultural productions and, therefore, the results are in line with previous publications in the same sense.  

It concludes on the overproduction in the European Union of agricultural products of animal origin and economically supported by a major part of the CAP budget, resulting in this way responsible for a large part of the greenhouse gas emissions produced in the EU. This result is unquestionable, which leads us to propose a change in our food production system and our habits towards diets with less animal protein and more vegetable protein in order to reduce this environmental impact, even from the EU's own CAP agricultural and climate change strategy. And this transition must be endorsed in the political instruments, which can basically already be found, and financial instruments to support it.  

But this essential reduction in animal products and, therefore, in greenhouse gas emissions must take into account the animal production system to be used. And here we are faced with a dilemma. On the one hand, including what is presented to us as animal production, we have two models: extensive livestock farming that conserves and interacts with biodiversity, is self-sufficient in its resources, does not pollute our soil or water, maintains pastures as organic carbon storage and maintains family farms; and on the other, industrial livestock farming that is disconnected from the environment where it is located, requires extremely high levels of external resources, pollutes soil and water and favours the investment of large companies. What is the origin of the animal protein that EU citizens are prepared to eliminate or maintain?

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