There is no question that there is man-made climate change or global warming.
Nevertheless, the problems we see and have to deal with today – in agriculture and forestry – are not caused by climate change alone. In the end, climate change is a magnifying glass that shows us how unstable our production systems in agriculture and forestry are and how big the mistakes we have made over many decades so far are.
In industrial agriculture and forestry, which of course accounts for the majority of land and production globally and also here in Austria, we very often work with a yield-maximising system that is very vulnerable, very fragile with regard to the smallest changes. For many decades, we have not really taken into account the most important factors in agriculture, which are the natural conditions – the location factors: the soil, the climate, the water. And to the ecosystems that enable us to produce in the first place. For example, the soil ecosystem, which is the basis for all agricultural production. In recent decades, we have simply not paid attention to the processes within these ecosystems, to their requirements.
Let’s look at the forest as an example. At the moment, the forest in Austria is apparently under massive pressure: we have bark beetle calamities, drought damage in many regions, windthrow. Massive problems, and it seems that the forest is actually endangered, that there is another forest dieback due to climate change. There are the slogans that the forest is not climate-proof and so on, but you can’t really let that stand. The truth is that more forest is growing in Austria every year – in other words, there is more forest. Half of the country’s area is already almost forest and it is not getting any less. So the problem we have is not climate change, nor is it the forest that has the problem, but it is the forestry industry that has the problem, because the forestry industry has put maximising yields before adapting to the location and before safe, near-natural forestry. This means that for decades forestry has focused on rationalised, yield-optimised management and has forgotten to take into account the natural opportunities, the locations, the requirements of the tree species it works with or even a mixture of tree species, and this has led to the fact that around 60% of the wood produced in Austria comes from only one tree species. That this tree species, which would actually be adapted to the high altitudes, the montane altitudes and above in the mountains – the spruce, picea babies – is today distributed over the entire national area and not only distributed but often represents really stock-forming pure cultures, monocultures in areas where it does not belong at all. Where it is too warm and where it is too dry for this tree species, and if you then establish an already unstable system such as a monoculture, an age class forest in a region with a tree species that does not belong there, you do not need to be surprised if you get into difficulties. In other words, the problems that forestry has today are of its own making. These problems are only shown to us more strongly by climate change, that it is far too dry there for this work. It is absolutely wrong to cultivate pure spruce in areas with rainfall of less than 600 mm, but this has been done for decades and now it is relatively easy to say that we now have the bark beetle, which is multiplying due to climate change and it is raining due to climate change, it is getting drier, it is getting hotter and now the tree species has problems there, but of course that is not true. The problem is maybe a bit stronger at the moment, but the problem has always been there. It’s just that it’s showing itself more strongly now. That’s why climate change is sometimes used as an excuse at the moment, and that’s often the case, and I say that because I think it’s extremely important that we develop a certain awareness of the problem. We can only go new ways and find solutions if we are aware of the problems and if we don’t lie to ourselves and say that we can’t do anything about it, because these are always external factors, but that is not the case. And it is exactly the same in agriculture. The problem that we have much too hot and dry summers and extreme summers in agriculture and therefore have production losses cannot be blamed on climate change alone, if you clear out landscapes, consolidate huge flat areas to such an extent that you create steppe-like regions from a stable, resistant, small-scale cultivated landscape, that you remove all the wind brakes from these areas, divert the water away, drench them and so on. If the soils are cultivated for decades in such a way that soil life is destroyed and degraded, so that the soils can no longer hold water, then one need not be surprised that suddenly, when there is a dry summer, nothing grows anymore due to wind dehydration and erosion and soil destruction. We have to be aware that we ourselves are making a massive contribution to the fact that any climate changes are already having such a massive impact. We have to understand that we have to deal with our production bases, with the soil, with our land in such a responsible way that we do not have difficulties even with the smallest change in the climate and it is also easily possible by dealing a little with nature, by protecting the soil, by building up humus, by cultivating areas in crop rotation. Perhaps leaving a little structure in the landscape so that there is no wind erosion and drying out of the land and so on …
Just deal with the basics of good agriculture. Using crops that are adapted to the location. If you would deal with these things, then we don’t have to worry too much about climate change in the next decades. Of course we have to react to it, but we don’t need to panic if we are aware that the problems we have today are to a large extent systematic problems in agriculture and forestry and not yet climate change. Climate change simply shows us the weaknesses of our production systems on a massive scale.