A Farmer’s View From COP28
By Kristjan Hebert: Saskatchewan, Canada
It takes a long time to get from my snowy farm in rural Saskatchewan to the sparkling city of Dubai. Canada and the United Arab Emirates are almost on opposite sides of the planet. The most daunting stretch was the 14-hour flight from Toronto.
But I had a story to tell—and the people who gathered for a United Nations climate conference in November and December needed to hear it.
My message was simple: Farmers are part of the solution.
COP28 is a big deal. Some 85,000 people attended, including 150 heads of state. Its events filled dozens of buildings. The only thing that I’ve seen that approaches its size is a huge commodity show, but not even that provides a good sense of COP28’s immensity.
In the past, farmers were rarely part of the program. Yet we were often blamed for the reckless spewing of greenhouse gases. In our absence, we could not defend ourselves, let alone explain what we do.
We were taken for granted, as if we could quit doing our work and food still would show up on dinner plates.
This started to change two years ago at COP26 in Scotland, as explained by Mateusz Ciasnocha of Poland (and my fellow member of the Global Farmer Network). It continued last year at COP27 in Egypt, reported Maria Virginia Solis Wahinsh of Argentina (also of GFN).
I’m pleased to report that agriculture advanced further at COP28. As a member of Saskatchewan’s delegation to the event, I was constantly busy, taking part in seven or eight panels to discuss sustainability, natural resources, and more.
The biggest obstacle farmers must overcome in these gatherings is a general prejudice. Lots of supposedly sophisticated people believe farmers are simpletons. They think we’re poorly educated, stuck in our ways, and not at all progressive. This narrow viewpoint is what excluded farmers from UN climate conferences for a quarter century.
It’s also wrong, as conference organizers are starting to recognize and as I set out to prove in Dubai.
My farm is in fact a high-tech operation. It’s nothing like the “Old MacDonald” mythology of primitive practices on ten acres—a cherished stereotype among people who remember a nursery rhyme from childhood but haven’t bothered to visit a 21st-century farm.
Take the innovation of soil sensors. Farmers traditionally have been good at figuring out what happens above the ground and in the first few inches below. On my farm, we’re starting to learn what happens deeper down. We’re doing this with soil probes—metal rods loaded with sensors that gather data on moisture and nutrients and help us run algorithms to use data to improve crop yields.
We exploit this information in lots of ways—and one of the most important is to advise us on the use of fertilizer. Many non-farmers have the mistaken idea that people like me just blanket our fields with the stuff, but in fact we carefully measure it and deliver it to precise places, in precise amounts, and at precise times. This is good for our crops, as it gets the boost it needs when it needs it, and good for the environment, as it protects the soil and prevents runoff.
Much of the phosphate in our fertilizer, by the way, comes from human waste which we recycle from sewage. This is the very definition of regenerative agriculture.
Farm soil is a resource in the fight against climate change. That’s why farmers like me are joining the “4 per 1,000” initiative, which seeks to boost the carbon content of soils. By removing carbon from the atmosphere and burying it in dirt, we not only help the climate but we also create richer farmland for our crops. This is called carbon sequestration.
Once we figure out an accurate and reliable way to calculate carbon sequestration, we can build a system that pays farmers for stashing carbon in their soil—and create a powerful new incentive for farmers to fight climate change as we feed the world.
This is a big and complicated challenge that involves science and policy, and the tactics that work on my farm won’t work in other places that need their own regional strategies.
Yet progress starts with farmers speaking about agriculture, technology, and climate to people—and when we do, as I did at COP28, open-minded policymakers, activists, and the public are interested and receptive.
I’m glad I made the trip and told my story.
Kristjan Hebert grows malt barley, hard red spring wheat, canola, fall rye, yellow peas and oats with his family on 30,000 acres in Saskatchewan, Canada. Trained as a CPA, Kristjan utilizes precision agriculture technologies including minimum or no-tillage, crop rotation and variable rate fertilization as part of their nutrient management plan. Kristjan is a member of the Global Farmer Network. This column originates at www.globalfarmernetwork.org.
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