"A holistic understanding is one of the strengths of organic farming"
Voices on climate
Two of the researchers at FiBL who are deeply involved in climate issues are Lin Bautze and Raphaël Charles. Lin Bautze studied environmental and resource management and global change management and works in the Soil Fertility & Climate group at FiBL. Raphaël Charles is an agronomist and arable farming expert and heads the Department Suisse Romande.
Climate is an important topic at FiBL Switzerland. Where is the focus?
Lin Bautze: We have discussed at length whether the focus in the future should be on climate adaptation, climate protection or both. Climate resilience is a combination of the two. You cannot engage in climate protection without also considering climate adaptation. The same applies vice versa.
Raphaël Charles: A lot of work has been done on emissions at FiBL in recent years. Now we want to become more active in the area of adaptation, i.e. resilience in the sense of adaptation.
New question: What does that mean in concrete terms?
Lin Bautze: The development of new resilient cropping systems, research into the water cycle and water use efficiency; the expansion, analysis and research of combined land uses – in other words, everything that brings agriculture and energy production together. It also includes the development of low-emission production and food systems, and support for the further development of national and international climate policy; and data to inform this development.
What is the situation at the international level?
Lin Bautze: We have good contacts with agricultural policy specialists at important international climate institutions. There are also many strong players in our African projects. In Europe, we are also very well connected through large climate projects such as ClieNFarms, Climate Farm Demo and OrganicClimateNET. FiBL contributes its expertise in organic farming to these projects.
Raphaël Charles: And we work closely with FiBL France in the Drôme region of southern France. That's where you'll find the climate of tomorrow. No one else in the Swiss agricultural sector has a location abroad that shows what our climate future will look like.
What about the financing of climate projects in agriculture?
Lin Bautze: There are areas that I believe have great potential for climate adaptation, but do not yet have enough funding. I am thinking of agroforestry, syntropy and other more complex, integrated agricultural systems. There is certainly also a funding gap when it comes to transferring knowledge into practice.
Raphaël Charles: Thanks to climate action plans, additional funds are available in the cantons. However, they are often not used in the way we would like. Concrete basins are being built, and water is being pumped out of lakes to irrigate potatoes. But hardly anyone is looking at water as a resource, the water cycle, or new resilient farming systems.
Lin Bautze: This is also about the narrative: do we want the current level of agricultural production in the climate sector? Then we need measures that change the systems as little as possible, such as concrete basins. Or are we prepared to look at agriculture as a holistic system and ask how we can make it sustainable? That may mean converting or restructuring, as is currently happening in Freiburg, Germany, where olive trees are being planted. Or trees and hedges are being reintegrated into agricultural production.
Will everything simply shift northwards when cultivation moves north?
Lin Bautze: The effects of climate change in Switzerland vary greatly from region to region in terms of warming and precipitation shifts. At the same time, we still have the power to determine how extreme the effects of climate change will be, depending on whether we manage to reduce certain emissions. That's why it's impossible to make sweeping statements.
Which crops will become interesting for Switzerland given climate change?
Raphaël: Farmers are experimenting with sugar beet on alpine pastures. If it works this year, five hectares of sugar beet will be growing on the alpine pastures next year. The soil there is good, has not been used for agriculture and has sufficient water. The soil in the valley is becoming increasingly dry.
Lin Bautze: But there are also pitfalls. Millet is a good example. For a while, many farms started growing millet. However, the market for it isn't big enough yet.
Raphaël Charles: Another example is chickpeas. In the last two wet and cool years, some farms suffered total crop failures. Climate change is a process; we don't suddenly have an average temperature that is consistently 1.5 degrees higher.
How could consumers be encouraged to consume in a more climate-friendly way?
Lin Bautze: I think it's really difficult for consumers to understand what a climate-friendly diet is at the moment. One example is animal husbandry. I've always been taught that the goal is to reduce our consumption of animal products. But for Switzerland, the goal should be to promote grassland-based animal husbandry, because we have grassland, which is a climate-friendly resource that we need to use.
How is climate change changing work on the farm?
Raphaël Charles: There will be a big change in the way we work. You start at 4 or 5 in the morning, even though you no longer have any animals. Organic farming involves a lot of manual labour. You can maybe weed for two or three hours in the morning, because it's too hot to work outside during the day. This also raises the question of what a good size for an organic farm is.
What is a good size?
Lin Bautze: There is no one-size-fits-all. It depends on what crops you grow, what your focus is, how many people work with you, and where your farm is located. Whether you are organic, biodynamic or conventional, you have to see what you can achieve with the external conditions you have.
What role should the State take in all this?
Raphaël Charles: The government must ensure that future conditions allow for human-based agriculture: good soil, diversification, etc. The retail trade is heading in the wrong direction because it promotes specialisation, which is not in line with the changes that food systems require. The state must work to ensure that good prices are paid for smaller items/quantities/batches and productions, instead of simply importing them.
Lin Bautze: In general, the question is where we should focus government support. For example, we need to ask ourselves whether net zero is really a sensible goal for agriculture.
What role can organic farming play? Can it serve as a model, or is it too preoccupied with its own conflicting goals, for example, in terms of resource efficiency?
Raphaël Charles: What we can offer is the ability to think about the climate while also considering other issues such as biodiversity and limited resources. This organic-specific integrated thinking, which is lacking in many other places, must be cultivated at FiBL and in organic farming in general.
Lin Bautze: This holistic understanding is one of the strengths of organic farming. But even organic farms need to adapt more to climate change. Although they may be slightly better equipped to buffer extreme weather events than other farms because their soil is healthier and/or their operations are more diverse, organic systems still have a lot to learn. That's what we're working on at FiBL.
Interview: Adrian Krebs, FiBL