Soil Could Become a Significant Source of Carbon Dioxide

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Author:  University of Exeter | Published:November 3, 2016

Experts have forecast that a quarter of the carbon found in soil in France could be lost to the atmosphere during the next 100 years. This could lead to soil becoming a net source of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. At present soil is considered to absorb carbon dioxide and this partially counters the impact of human-made climate change.

The pace and nature of predicted changes in climate over the next century will make the soil less able to store carbon, while business-as-usual land use change has limited capacity to counteract this trend, experts from the University of Exeter, INRA and CERFACS in France and University of Leuven in Belgium say in the journal Scientific Reports.

If, as predicted, soils lose a significant amount of their carbon this will endanger their ability to produce food and store water and this could lead to increased soil erosion and flood damage.

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The Next Hot Trends in Food

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Author: Julie Jargon and Annie Gasparro| Published: October 16, 2016

Not too far in the future, when you reach for a healthy drink, it might be full of water from a cactus.

Your main course at dinner might be a pear-like fruit from Southeast Asia that does a remarkable job of imitating meat. The next candy bar your children bite into might be infused with mushrooms that help cut down on the sugar needed to sweeten the treat. And their breakfast cereal might be colored with algae instead of chemicals.

Why the wave of exotic delights? Nutrition science—and customers’ rapidly changing tastes—are forcing the food business to search ever farther afield for new edibles.

Everybody knows standards change—fat was bad, for instance, until the big no-nos became carbs and gluten—and each time they do, a rash of new products appear that claim to be packed with good stuff and free of things that cause harm.

But now it’s no longer enough to claim a product is simply free of something that’s frowned upon. Consumers want to know that the bad ingredient hasn’t been replaced with something equally bad or worse. And they want to know the story behind their food—how it was grown or raised, and whether its production and distribution was kind to the environment. The less processed and simpler the ingredients, the better. That has left food and restaurant companies rushing to clean up their labels with ingredients derived from natural sources consumers can understand and pronounce.

For a trend to go mainstream, it has to provide health benefits, be easily comprehensible, make economic sense for the manufacturer, and of course taste good, says David Garfield,food-industry consultant at AlixPartners. It’s even better if the product tells a story and has third-party verification, such as a certified-organic label.

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Conference on Mitigating Climate Change in the Arid Southwest

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Author: Logan Hawkes| Published: November 2, 2016

Skeptic or not, according to a consensus of climate scientists and New Mexico agricultural officials, early indications of climate change are already apparent through variations in climate patterns that are challenging the region’s agricultural producers and may be a prelude to more substantial and widespread changes in the near future.

New Mexico State University Cooperative Extension Service agronomist John Idowu says the best way farmers and ranchers can mitigate or even survive challenges created by these changes is to better understand them and plan more efficient ways to deal with agricultural production in a more hostile environment.

“Farmers and other agricultural stakeholders need to develop agricultural systems resilient to expected changes, some of which have already begun,” Idowu said.

Climatologists and other agricultural planners agree that the cycle of droughts in the southwestern United States has increased over the past decades, supported by yet another and more recent study indicating the Southwest may have already transitioned to a drier climate that could plague producers for years to come.

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Greening the Chihuahuan Desert

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Author: Alejandro Carrillo | Published: 2016

The footage of this video was taken last month at the end of the rainy season in the Chihuahuan Desert, the largest desert of North America. This video depicts a “greener” area in the middle of the desert – that is how is used to be decades ago with lush grasslands and plenty of wildlife. This “greener” area is a ranch managed under Holistic planned grazing. No need for machinery, no need for seeding, no need for fertilizers, no need to deforest. Just keep cattle moving, as the bison and antelope did before. On the other side, the eroded, bare grounds shown on the video are neighboring areas using continuous grazing.

We are restoring the former grasslands that existed before while making this land productive using our cattle, thus giving hope to the people living there, to the wildlife, to the native grasses and plants, to the microorganisms. It is a win-win approach to clean the air, cover the soil, prevent erosion, sequester carbon, recharge the aquifers, protect and promote the biodiversity, and produce nutritional-dense food on a regenerative way.

Carbon Sequestration Potential on Agricultural Lands: A Review of Current Science and Available Practices

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Author Daniel Kane: | Published: November 2015

Recent reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggest that even if substantial reductions in anthropogenic carbon emissions are achieved in the near future, efforts to sequester previously emitted carbon will be necessary to ensure safe levels of atmospheric carbon and to mitigate climate change (Smith et al. 2014). Research on sequestration has focused primarily on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and reforestation with less attention to the role of soils as carbon sinks. Recent news reports of melting glaciers and ice sheets coupled with a decade of record-breaking heat underscores the importance of aggressive exploration of all possible sequestration strategies.

Soils have the potential to sequester carbon from the atmosphere with proper management. Based on global estimates of historic carbon stocks and projections of rising emissions, soil’s usefulness as a carbon sink and drawdown solution appear essential (Lal, 2004, 2008). Since over one third of arable land is in agriculture globally (World Bank, 2015a), finding ways to increase soil carbon in agricultural systems will be a major component of using soils as a sink. A number of agricultural management strategies appear to sequester soil carbon by increasing carbon inputs to the soil and enhancing various soil processes that protect carbon from microbial turnover. Uncertainties about the extent and permanence of carbon sequestration in these systems do still remain, but existing evidence is sufficient to warrant a greater global focus on agricultural soils as a potential climate stability wedge and drawdown solution. Furthermore, the ancillary benefits of increasing soil carbon, including improvements to soil structure, fertility, and water-holding capacity, outweigh potential costs. In this paper, we’ll discuss the basics of soil carbon, how it can be sequestered, management strategies that appear to show promise, and the debate about the potential of agricultural soils to be a climate stability wedge.

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The Fight Against Deforestation: Why Are Congolese Farmers Clearing Forest?

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Author: KU Leuven | Published: October 21, 2016

Only a small share of Congolese villagers is the driving force behind most of the deforestation. They’re not felling trees to feed their families, but to increase their quality of life. These findings are based on fieldwork by bioscience engineer Pieter Moonen from KU Leuven (University of Leuven), Belgium. They indicate that international programmes aiming to slow down tropical deforestation are not sufficiently taking local farmers into account.

Forests, and especially centuries-old primeval forests such as in the Congo Basin in Africa, are huge CO2 reservoirs. When trees are cut down, large amounts of greenhouse gases are released. This contributes to climate change — both regional and global.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is in the world’s top five in terms of amount of deforested land per year. According to the government, this is mostly due to subsistence farming and population growth. The argument is that small farmers grow crops to feed their own families. As there is a rise in population, farmers have to keep on clearing forest to increase the area under cultivation.

Bioscience engineer Pieter Moonen is preparing a PhD on land use and climate change in the DRC. He examined whether subsistence farming really is the main culprit for deforestation. For a year, he did fieldwork in 27 Congolese villages and questioned 270 households in a survey about agriculture and deforestation.

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Prince Charles Joins Clean Soil Project to Combat Climate Change

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Author: Fiona Harvey | Published: October 28, 2016

Prince Charles urged governments, individuals and businesses to take greater care of the world’s soils as part of an initiative aimed at keeping carbon locked in soil, rather than escaping into the atmosphere and causing global warming.

The “4 per 1000” project is a pledge to reduce the amount of carbon leaked from soils by 0.4% a year, which would be enough to halt the rise of carbon dioxide levels in the air. Nearly 180 countries have signed up to the initiative that was set up by the French government as part of its efforts to make the Paris agreement on climate change, signed last year, a success.

At a ceremony this week to celebrate the initiative, the prince said that the preservation of farmland, forests and soils were of “absolutely critical importance – for, in my experience, the fertility and health of the soil is at the heart of everything”. Drawing on his own work as an organic farmer, he contrasted organic methods with the “previously conventional” farming systems which he called “toxic”.

The 4 per 1000 initiative does not require farmers to adopt organic methods, but does encourage more attention to farming techniques, which are currently contributing to the erosion of soils around the world.

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Cop 22 – Briefing by Stephane Le Foll French Minister of Agriculture

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Authors: Ruby Bird & Yasmina Beddou | Published: Oct 21, 2016

On October 21, 2016 was held an informal Briefing with some journalists to explain and pursue the French Plan toward MARRAKECH (Morocco) for the COP 22 on 7-18 November 2016. It will be the 22nd session of the Conference of the Parties. One of the crucial issues debated was the Launch of the 4 per 1000 initiative by France on Tuesday 1st December 2015 during COP 21. Stéphane Le Foll, French Minister for Agriculture, AgriFood and Forestry; the Australian, German, New Zealand and Uruguayan Ministers for Agriculture; Graziano da Silva, General Secretary of the FAO and M. Mayaki, General Secretary of NEPAD were in attendance.
The 4 per 1000 initiative aims to generate growth in the rate of soil carbon in the form of organic matter of 0.4% per year in the coming decades. This rate of growth would make it possible to compensate for anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. It would concern agricultural soils (growth objective of 1.4 Gt of carbon per year), forests (1.3 Gt per year) and soils affected by salinization or desertification (0.5 to 1.4 Gt per year).
Growth in the organic matter of soils would make it possible to improve the resilience of agriculture and its adaptation to climate change (less sensitivity to erosion, improvement of water retention capacity, etc.), agricultural yield and, in fine, food safety.
Approximately thirty countries signed the initiative, including the majority of European Union countries, Australia, China, Costa Rica, Ethiopa, Indonesia, Mexico, Niger, New Zealand, Turkey and Uruguay. As did ECOWAS, various research centres (including INRA, IRD and CIRAD) and various non-governmental organisations, foundations and agricultural organisations.
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How Regenerative Farming Methods Can Restore Ecology and Rebuild Communities

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Author:Dr. Joseph Mercola  | Published: October 29, 2016

In Peter Byck’s lovely short film, “One Hundred Thousand Beating Hearts,” Will Harris shares the story of how he went from being a conventional “commodity cowboy” to a regenerative farming pioneer. Today, Harris’ farm, White Oak Pastures in Bluffton, Georgia, produces high-quality grass-fed products.

But while beef and other animal products are the commodities being sold to the public, what Harris is really producing is healthy soil, and the success of his farm is a great demonstration of how you can accomplish the conversion from conventional to regenerative agriculture.

From 1946 — when his father was still running the farm — to 1995, the farm used industrial farming methods and chemicals. Harris had just one focus: how many pounds of beef he could produce at the lowest price possible.

Today, such concerns no longer occupy his mind. Instead, he’s wholly absorbed in figuring out how he can make the land thrive even more. Instead of feeding cattle, he now says his business is built around feeding microbes in the soil — all those crucial microorganisms that in turn make the soil fertile.

Because while the fertilizer they laid down each year helped the crops grow, what they did not realize was the damage being done underground.

Synthetic fertilizers actually harm the microorganisms in the soil, without which soil degradation sets in, nutrition (both in the soil and the food) goes down and, ultimately, the entire ecosystem begins to suffer.

Slow Start, Big Finish

As time went on, despite always turning a profit, Harris became increasingly disenchanted with the way his farm was progressing, looking and feeling ever more like a factory than a farm. When he heard people were looking for grass-fed beef, he saw an opportunity to make some changes.

He began by giving up feeding his animals corn, subtherapeutic antibiotics and hormone implants. Initially, that’s as far as he had intended to go.

But in time he realized that “using chemical fertilizers on pastures was as wrong as using hormone implants and subtherapeutic antibiotics,” he says. The transition was by no means an easy one.

He went from being debt-free to taking out $7.5 million in loans to build the processing facilities he needed — an operation that lost money each and every year to boot. There were dark times, when he didn’t know whether he might lose the farm that had been in the family for more than 130 years.

“We took incredible risks,” he admits. “Today I’m very glad I made the changes that I made, because the farm is again profitable; cash flow positive, and two of my daughters and their spouses have come back to work on the farm. At least that last part would not have happened in the earlier scenario.”

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Doubts About the Promised Bounty of Genetically Modified Crops

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Author: Danny Hakim | Published: October 29, 2016

The controversy over genetically modified crops has long focused on largely unsubstantiated fears that they are unsafe to eat.

But an extensive examination by The New York Times indicates that the debate has missed a more basic problem — genetic modification in the United States and Canada has not accelerated increases in crop yields or led to an overall reduction in the use of chemical pesticides.

The promise of genetic modification was twofold: By making crops immune to the effects of weedkillers and inherently resistant to many pests, they would grow so robustly that they would become indispensable to feeding the world’s growing population, while also requiring fewer applications of sprayed pesticides.

Twenty years ago, Europe largely rejected genetic modification at the same time the United States and Canada were embracing it. Comparing results on the two continents, using independent data as well as academic and industry research, shows how the technology has fallen short of the promise.

An analysis by The Times using United Nations data showed that the United States and Canada have gained no discernible advantage in yields — food per acre — when measured against Western Europe, a region with comparably modernized agricultural producers like France and Germany. Also, a recent National Academy of Sciences report found that “there was little evidence” that the introduction of genetically modified crops in the United States had led to yield gains beyond those seen in conventional crops.

At the same time, herbicide use has increased in the United States, even as major crops like corn, soybeans and cotton have been converted to modified varieties. And the United States has fallen behind Europe’s biggest producer, France, in reducing the overall use of pesticides, which includes both herbicides and insecticides.

One measure, contained in data from the United States Geological Survey, shows the stark difference in the use of pesticides. Since genetically modified crops were introduced in the United States two decades ago for crops like corn, cotton and soybeans, the use of toxins that kill insects and fungi has fallen by a third, but the spraying of herbicides, which are used in much higher volumes, has risen by 21 percent.

By contrast, in France, use of insecticides and fungicides has fallen by a far greater percentage — 65 percent — and herbicide use has decreased as well, by 36 percent.

Profound differences over genetic engineering have split Americans and Europeans for decades. Although American protesters as far back as 1987 pulled up prototype potato plants, European anger at the idea of fooling with nature has been far more sustained. In the last few years, the March Against Monsanto has drawn thousands of protesters in cities like Paris and Basel, Switzerland, and opposition to G.M. foods is a foundation of the Green political movement. Still, Europeans eat those foods when they buy imports from the United States and elsewhere.

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