TADEAS:
Savory Institute
Denmark recently became the first country in the world to put a tax on livestock emissions. The tax will go into effect in 2030, and after a 60% tax break is applied, farmers will end up paying 120 krone ($17) per tonne of CO2-equivalent coming from their livestock, which will eventually rise to 300 krone ($43) per tonne in 2035.
This move comes on the heels of other measures the Danish government has implemented in recent years to reduce emissions and meet climate goals and, given that agriculture is one of Denmark’s largest sources of emissions — with pork and dairy being their largest industries — this is an opportunity to make some headway towards those goals.
We at Savory are particularly disappointed in this tax given that our new Savory Foundation — which focuses on funding large-scale grassland regeneration projects around the world — is based in Denmark, but more than that, we have serious concerns with regards to how this new tax makes no effort to incentivize a transition towards carbon-sequestering forms of regenerative grazing.
Yes, our global agricultural system is massively flawed and contributes significant amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but this is a blanket tax on ALL forms of livestock management that makes no differentiation between land-degrading carbon-emitting forms of production or land-regenerating carbon-sequestering forms of livestock production.
If Denmark really wanted to incentivize a transition towards a more sustainable livestock industry — which we agree is needed — they could create a sliding scale for this tax so that regenerative farmers who are improving soil health and sequestering carbon aren’t penalized. This could be accomplished either through soil samples analyzed in a lab — even though that would be costly to producers so ideally would be subsidized by the government — or modeling based on the latest research of what’s possible, not just average emissions of the typical producer which is the basis for this tax.
Still, even if we were to expand the conversation from just emissions to one that also includes drawdown, the focus on greenhouse gases is a reductionist view that misses the forest for the trees. The climate crisis is intrinsically tied to our global loss of biodiversity, our broken water cycles that amplify droughts and flooding, and our impoverished soils, rural communities, food systems, and everything in between.
At the intersection of all these issues is ecosystem function, so why do we only ever hear about carbon? The global narrative surrounding climate change would be best served by a shift towards restoring ecosystem function. Imagine an alternate world where Denmark's new tax was one that took a more holistic look at ecosystem function — assessing not just carbon but also biodiversity and water-holding capacity — and rather than penalizing everyone involved it paid farmers who demonstrated positive improvements to their ecosystem processes?