Yes. I'm one of those farmers, I suppose, who's experimenting and trying to do everything I can to reduce my risk and to be more ready for the extreme weather that's coming with climate change. I have been following some of the principles outlined by the NFU, largely focused on reducing my inputs. I've been trying to incorporate biological processes to provide my fertilizers.
I view farming as the start of a third revolution. The first one was mechanization. Then came chemistry with fertilizers and herbicides, and now we're just getting into the biological aspect. We're going to be looking at genetics to breed crops that might be able to fix their own nitrogen, or perhaps a perennial cereal crop so that we wouldn't have to seed it every year but continue to harvest it.
On my farm, yes, I've been employing intercropping and perennial cover to establish nitrogen in the soil and also to prevent erosion. I have reduced dramatically the amount of fertilizer that I'm applying because my back-of-the-napkin calculations show that this is the largest source of emissions on my farm. We're also trying to minimize how many passes we make so that we can use less fuel. Necessity is certainly the mother of invention.
Without pricing signals, though, farmers are still focused on yield. If we did have a pricing signal or output-based performance standards for our food, all those pollution prices collected on our food should be rebated to farmers on the basis of production to encourage these more sustainable food production methods.