That is no problem. I will answer that question, because I work on agricultural emissions. It is worth clarifying first what the emissions are.
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It is worth clarifying first what the emissions are. Today, we have talked a lot about nitrogen. It is a complicated element to get your head around. Agriculture is responsible for emitting small amounts of nitric oxide—it does not emit nitrogen dioxide, which is the gas that we have been talking about in urban settings, but nitric oxide can be oxidised to produce nitrogen dioxide in the atmosphere. It makes a small contribution, but it is not significant relative to the transport emissions.
As has been mentioned, agriculture emits large amounts of nitrous oxide, which is a completely different gas. It is a greenhouse gas that does not have a direct impact on human health; it has only an indirect impact through the climate change impacts that it causes.
The other nitrogen gas that agriculture is responsible for emitting is ammonia, which we heard a little bit about from the first set of panellists. In answer to one of the questions, a member of that panel said that ammonia emissions from agriculture are increasing. We are going to suffer the consequences of not reaching ammonia emissions reduction targets—and ammonia causes all sorts of problems. It is an indirect greenhouse gas that causes problems for biodiversity, causes acidification and so on. There is a raft of issues related to ammonia.
Peter Chapman’s question was also about how we can continue to use nitrogen in agriculture in a more environmentally friendly way. That is a complex matter. Nitrogen is critical to agriculture—our production systems are dependent on inputs of nitrogen in many ways, so we need to continue to use it. However, there are lots of small steps that we can take to increase efficiency in nitrogen use, including technical fixes and more efficient farming processes. Farming continually improves its efficiency; we are seeing precision agriculture coming through, which will help.
There is probably no magic bullet, and some of what we need to do will be costly. We have done a cost analysis of various measures. Some things can be done at low cost, but for other things the costs start to increase, so there is an issue about how we get finance into the industry to support that.
It is not all about supply: demand—what products people want to eat from our food industry—is also an issue. Meat products, for example, are associated with higher inputs and emissions than plant-based products are. Trying to reduce emissions is about both supply and demand.