Former Vice President Al Gore said on Wednesday that government policy should promote “regenerative agriculture” during a discussion at the World Economic Forum (WEF).
The WEF is in Davos, Switzerland, for its annual meeting, with panels and speeches from world leaders, philanthropists, business leaders and A-list Hollywood actors, according to the program on the forum’s website. Gore made his comments during a panel discussion titled “How Can We Avert a Climate Recession?”
“But the role of policy which we’re discussing here is crucial in agriculture as well. In the US, the largest source of government subsidies to farmers is in a program called crop insurance,” Gore, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” claimed. “The title is a bit misleading… in order to qualify for these subsidies, farmers basically have to assure the government that they are not going to engage in regenerative agriculture because the incentives have been to produce as much as possible as quickly as possible, fence row to fence row instead of taking care of the productivity of the soil and not depleting its vitality.”
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“So we need policies that in recognition of the fact that governments around the world typically do subsidize farming, but don’t subsidize them in ways that incentivize them to go in the wrong direction, but incentivize them to go in the right direction,” Gore continued.
Environmentalists have targeted agriculture, particularly meat production, claiming that it contributes to climate change. The Dutch government forcibly shut down 3,000 farms to meet European Union environmental policies in 2022, leading to a backlash as a pro-farmer party won 15 of the 75 seats in the European country’s legislature the following year.
During the 2023 WEF meeting, one speaker called for an end to eating meat.
“If a billion people stop eating meat, I tell you, it has a big impact. Not only does it have a big impact on the current food system, but it will also inspire innovation of food systems,” Jim Hagemann Snabe, chairman of the Germany-based conglomerate Siemens AG, said during a panel called “Mobilizing for Climate.”
“I predict that we will have proteins not coming from meat in the future, they will probably taste even better. So why are we trying to mimic meat if we can have a better taste? They will be zero carbon and much healthier than the kind of food that we eat today,” Snabe added.
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