§ Mr. LazarowiczTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what assessment she has made of the impact of farming on the Government's climate change strategy. [87267]
§ Mr. MeacherThe UK's climate change programme sets out the policies and measures in each sector of the economy that the Government have put in place or have planned to meet and move beyond its Kyoto Protocol target. On current projections, greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture—mainly methane from enteric fermentation in livestock and nitrous oxide from agricultural soils—will be an estimated 14 per cent. below 1990 levels by 2010. This is mainly due to reductions in cattle numbers from yield improvements, and reductions in synthetic fertiliser usage—although, because emissions in other sectors are also falling, agriculture's share of total UK emissions is expected to remain at the present level of around 7.5 per cent.
Action that the UK Government and the devolved Administrations are taking to reduce emissions from agriculture includes encouragement of biomass including renewable energy crops, application of the climate change levy to agricultural businesses (with some discounts for energy intensive horticultural businesses), agri-environment schemes and set-aside.