Farmers Know Best About Climate Anomalies: Food Sovereignty People's Forum Series

Text / Zhang Siwei Responsible editor / Hsu Po-jen Photography / Chih Yi-lin

Summary:

Farmer partners in the agrarian movement from 10 countries in East and Southeast Asia belonging to the international grassroots peasant organization La Via Campesina held a regional conference in Taiwan at the start of spring in February this year, to jointly discuss the way forward for global uprising, and on the eve of Farmers' Day on February 3, together with Taiwan's farmer friends and the general public, took to Ketagalan Boulevard to talk about farming.

The theme of this session was "Climate, Energy and Farming," and the speakers were Vice President Yoshitaka Majima of the National Federation of Farmers' Movements of Japan (hereafter referred to as the Farmers' Federation), Chairman Lai Wei-chieh of the Green Citizens' Action Alliance (hereafter referred to as GCAA), and Mr. Tien Shou-hsi of the Alliance for the Defense of Rural Villages (hereafter referred to as the Rural Alliance). The speakers discussed the impact of climate change on farming, and analyzed and debunked the false energy dilemma of "carbon reduction vs. abandoning nuclear power," and finally pointed out that replacing the current giant power generation with a decentralized renewable energy system should be the way forward for future energy development.

Farmers Know Best About Climate Anomalies

What impact does the climate anomaly caused by global warming have on agricultural production and food prices? Mr. Majima pointed out that because of global warming, a drought of the kind not seen in 50 years occurred in the United States last year, and both Taiwan and Japan imported a great deal of American corn, so price fluctuations became very large, and food prices around the world were greatly affected. Mr. Tien Shou-hsi, based on his farming experience, described the climate change phenomena he has directly felt in recent years.

He said that during the second rice crop harvest period, in past years the harvest was carried out in mid-November, but last year it was delayed by a full month before it could be harvested, because days of heavy rain made it impossible for combine harvesters to enter the fields, and as a result the rice ears sprouted in the fields and the yield dropped by 20%. Mr. Tien Shou-hsi pointed directly to this as a rarely seen climate anomaly of the past.

GCAA's Wei-chieh, citing his many years of habit of buying handmade dried radish from Meinong farmers, which for the past two years has been out of stock due to anomalous winter rainfall in Meinong, explained that farmers who labor and produce according to the four seasons and solar terms feel climate anomalies most deeply, and at the same time consumers also feel the impact of climate change because of abnormal reductions in agricultural production.

Carbon Emissions That Keep Increasing the More We Reduce?

Facing continued climate anomalies, governments of all countries have vowed to reduce carbon, but what is the real situation? The speakers offered their views. Mr. Majima pointed out that although countries around the world have all pledged to reduce carbon, actual carbon emissions have continued to rise. Japan is also a major carbon emitter, but the government is unwilling to take responsibility; although the Japanese government set carbon reduction targets, in reality it completely abandoned the target of reducing greenhouse gases by 25% before 2020, and it has not truly implemented the goals of the Kyoto Protocol. Majima pointed directly to this behavior as deserving international condemnation.

And after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, in order to make up for the energy gap, natural gas and thermal power generation increased accordingly, but no thought was given to how the industrial power generation that accounts for 80% should be reduced. Mr. Majima worriedly pointed out that the current degree of warming has not yet raised the global average temperature by 2 degrees, but if it ever reaches that point, there would be no knowing how to solve it, with no concrete method.

Lai Wei-chieh pointed out that the Taiwan government says it is reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and its strategy is to rely on nuclear power to reduce thermal power generation, but after setting the energy-saving and carbon-reduction targets, the result has been more reduction and more emissions. In Taiwan from 1990 to 2010, carbon dioxide emissions increased every decade: from 1990 to 2000 they doubled, and from 2000 to 2010 they increased by half, and the data show that within the past 20 years they have increased by 2.5 times.

Nuclear Power Cannot Be an Option for Carbon Reduction

In order to reduce carbon, must nuclear power be developed? Mr. Majima, using the situation of Japanese farmers after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, told everyone that nuclear power cannot be an option. Majima said that Fukushima is about 200 km from Tokyo, and the impact and radiation it produced is 268 times that of the Hiroshima atomic bombing, making it a major event in human history. His friend farms 14 km from the nuclear power plant, and he cannot go home; radiation persists locally, and the rice paddies have also suffered land subsidence and soil salinization due to the earthquake and tsunami, and to this day no one can enter.

Nuclear disasters cannot be controlled and have a huge impact on the earth; in particular, humans who depend on agriculture and food for survival cannot coexist with nuclear power. From May to October last year, all nuclear power plants in Japan were not operating, showing that Japan has hope of abandoning nuclear power, because Japan's land has many fault zones and it cannot be predicted when the next major earthquake will occur, so immediately stopping nuclear power generation is the primary goal.

Now every Friday tens of thousands of people gather outside the Prime Minister's residence to protest, demanding the abandonment of nuclear power. And because agriculture was greatly affected by this nuclear disaster, local farmers led cows to the front of Tokyo Electric Power Company and piled up contaminated spinach in protest, expressing that if there were no nuclear power, rural areas could actually still sustainably produce food and energy. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the Japan Farmers' Federation assisted farmers in negotiating with Tokyo Electric Power, demanding that Tokyo Electric Power compensate for the loss of agricultural income before and after the disaster, but the power company does not want to pay compensation, and litigation is underway. Mr. Majima said that the Farmers' Federation will continue its efforts to demand that Tokyo Electric Power return to farmers the justice they deserve.

Small Farmers Generate Small Power Breaking Out of the Energy Dilemma

So how can we break out of the dilemma of "either thermal power or nuclear power"? All the speakers pointed out that developing small-scale, decentralized renewable energy power generation is a possible way out. Mr. Majima mentioned that according to official Japanese statistics, Japan's potential renewable energy power generation capacity is 2 billion watts, 40 times that of nuclear power generation, including solar power, wind power, hydroelectric power and so on.

The Farmers' Federation is currently also assisting rural areas in developing renewable energy. Starting last year, it began assisting with the installation of solar panels in various places, and in March last year, in the Fukushima area it planned solar installations together with citizens, began using solar power generation at the Farmers' Federation's own shops and warehouses, and also set them up at the Farmers' Federation direct-sales center in Chiba Prefecture. At the same time, it demands that the Japanese government follow the German model, requiring power companies to have an obligation to develop renewable energy and requiring power companies to buy the electricity generated by community power plants, even if their power generation costs are higher.

Lai Wei-chieh further explained the importance of decentralized power generation. Taking agriculture as an example, he said, nuclear power plants and thermal power plants are like the centralized model of large farms, and must still be solved by decentralized power generation like smallholder production. Decentralized power generation means no big power plants; renewable energy generation cannot be given to big conglomerates, but should be community-based, for example everyone forming a rotating savings group to do wind power generation.

In Taiwan, large-scale wind power generation was protested in the past because of noise problems, so it needs to be combined with communities. Majima also responded that wind power generation being protested over noise should be because power generation is alienated from the community and large capital is involved; according to German experience, community-based power generation has relatively fewer such problems, and Japan also has a lot of big capital doing renewable energy development, but the Farmers' Federation believes that small community power generation is still the better choice. Mr. Majima offered a very good annotation for imagining future energy development, saying: "Power generation is just like agriculture: small is beautiful."

A request from a farmer from Fukushima: "Please make sure your country does not develop nuclear power" (Chen Ning)

Not only alternative energy, but also a diverse and decentralized power supply (Chen Jung-chang (small farmer of Yuanshan Township, Yilan County / team leader of the Yilan Irrigation Association))

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