The cow in the room

Števo writes*

The European Union is not on the path to carbon neutrality within the Paris Agreement goals, not only because of a lack of sufficient carbon pricing and green investments, but also due to its subsidies for unsustainable sectors with high greenhouse gas emissions. The Dutch, for example, give €40 billion of subsidies for fossil fuels.

While removing subsidies for fossil fuels is crucial for reaching Dutch sustainable goals, there’s a need to focus on subsidies for animal agriculture. In the EU, animal farming, creates more emissions than all cars and vans together. This result is partially due to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which accounts for one-third of the EU budget. More than half of the CAP goes to animal agriculture. The situation is similar in the Netherlands. Ten percent of Dutch GHG emissions come from animal farming, but that sector gets more subsidies than plant-based agriculture.

Support for animal farming is also counterproductive because animal-based foods increase rates of heart disease, diabetes, cancer and obesity. Finally, there is the moral case against slaughtering almost a billion animals per year in the Netherlands, to deliver blood-soaked calories.

Politicians know farmers do not like their sustainability policies after many protests. Action to remove animal agriculture subsidies brings political opposition and risks reviving the flagging popularity of the Dutch farmer’s party (BoerBurgerBeweging), but it’s necessary for achieving sustainability in the Dutch agricultural sector.

An end to subsidies would remove one-third of the animal farmers’ incomes, which could be compensated by increasing prices. Those higher prices would function as a carbon tax by encouraging customers to move towards (relatively) cheaper plant-based products.

Some animal farmers would also be forced to end their operations without subsidies, so the EU should use redirect saved money towards helping them transition to more sustainable plant-based farming.

Bottom line: The EU and the Dutch government are giving almost a billion euros of unsustainable and immoral subsidies (which also promote unhealthy diets) to animal agriculture in the Netherlands every year. If these subsidies were removed, plant-based foods would see an increase in consumption; that higher demand could be met by redirecting animal-farming subsidies to farmers growing more plant crops.

* Please help my Environmental Economics students by commenting on unclear analysis, alternative perspectives, better data sources, or maybe just saying something nice :).