Rip Grassland! – NRC

The Ukraine war caused a shortage of flour and sunflower oil in the supermarket. Not a disaster in itself, but what if that war spreads and we really get a shortage of food? In the longer term, global warming can also lead to food shortages. The last time the Netherlands had too little to eat was in World War II. Throughout the war, posters were hung in the countryside with the text: Farmers, your people demand bread, fat, potatoes. Tear up grassland! Will grassland tearing be the solution again when war or climate change threaten our food supply?

‘Scheurt grassland’ was an initiative of the government, in particular of Secretary-General Hirschfeld and of his unsurpassed director-general of food supply Louwes. They knew that a meadow yields more food if you plow it and grow potatoes on it, or rapeseed for rapeseed oil. It was one of the measures with which they managed to save the Netherlands from famine, at least until the hunger winter of 1944-1945.

In a new famine, land will still provide more food if crops grow on it than if cows graze on it. Four-fifths of our agricultural land is pasture or used to grow feed maize for animals. In addition to grass and maize, cows also eat soy, grains and waste from the food industry such as sugar beet pulp. This ‘concentrate’ makes up one third of their feed. Cows need this as a source of protein, because a beef cow has to eat many kilos of protein in the form of plants to grow one kilo. Producing a kilogram of beef protein therefore costs four times as much farmland as a kilogram of protein in the form of beans and grains, even if you include the higher quality of animal protein.

If you have cow feed converted into milk by a dairy cow, it yields more protein than with meat production, but two thirds of the feed protein in a dairy cow also ends up in urine and manure. Only a third is in the milk. If we plow meadows and forage maize fields (the farmer calls it ‘tearing’) and grow wheat, beans, potatoes and rapeseed on them, we can eat them all ourselves. When that ruptures, a considerable amount of greenhouse gas is released into the air, but who is hungry does not care.

It is said that the pastures where Dutch cows graze are unsuitable for growing crops, but that is not true. Some pastures are indeed too swampy for modern arable farming. These are the stream valleys and the peat meadows, remnants of old swamps. A tractor sinks into it. But the largest part of the meadows is sandy and clay soil that you can use with large agricultural machines to plow, sow and harvest without any problem.

There is an even simpler way to produce more food. That is to stop burning food in cars. When you fill up with petrol you will see E10 on the pump. That means ten percent of your gasoline is not from petroleum but is made from wheat or corn. All the cars in Europe together burn an amount of wheat alone every day, enough for fifteen million loaves of bread. If you drive diesel, you will read B7 on the pump. That means that seven percent of your diesel is biodiesel. It is made from edible oils such as palm oil, rapeseed oil and sunflower oil. The amount of edible oil burned by diesel drivers in the EU per year is four times greater than the total EU imports of sunflower oil and rapeseed oil from Ukraine when there was no war there.

The argument for biogasoline and biodiesel is that it reduces the CO₂emissions, because plants CO . during growth₂ to ban. That reasoning is incorrect. Growing grains and edible oils and converting them into biogasoline and biodiesel cause much higher CO emissions₂ than removing those crops from the air during growth. that CO₂ is released from fertilizer and pesticide plants, from tractors, from ships that transport palm oil from Indonesia or corn from the US, and from the factories that convert grains and oils into biofuel. Furthermore, large amounts of greenhouse gas are released when clearing jungle for palm oil and plowing virgin land for the cultivation of oilseeds and grains for biofuel. The EU knows that biofuels have little or no effect on CO . emissions₂ but the lobbies of the industries involved are too strong. For politicians too, biofuel is irresistible if quick fix† After all, which minister dares to restrict driving? The lobby is getting even bigger, because airlines are going to burn biokerosene en masse for the accusations about CO₂to combat aircraft emissions.

There will probably have to be famine before we stop doing this. But it is reassuring to know that we can easily solve this famine by no longer burning food in cars and planes. And of course by tearing up grassland.