Fair World Project: “Small-Scale Farmers Cool the Planet.” A 17-minute documentary highlighting the role of industrial agriculture in climate change while expounding on how small farmers are combating the climate crisis through regenerative organic agriculture.
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A global effort to give small farmers and indigenous communities control over lands is the best hope we have to deal with climate change and feed the world’s growing population.
As governments converge on Lima for the UN Climate Change Conference, the brutal killing of Peruvian indigenous activist Edwin Chota and three other Ashaninka men this past September is shining a spotlight on the connection between deforestation and indigenous land rights. The simple truth is plain to see: the most effective and just way to prevent deforestation and its impacts on the climate is to recognise and respect the sovereignty of indigenous peoples’ over their territories.
Peru’s violent land conflicts also bring into focus another issue of equal importance to climate change that can no longer be ignored: the concentration of farmland in the hands of a few.
Small farms of less than 5 hectares represent 78% of all farms in Peru, but occupy a mere 6% of the country’s agricultural lands. This disturbing figure mirrors the global situation. Worldwide, small farms account for 90% of all farms yet occupy less than a quarter of the agricultural land. This is bad news for the climate.
Just as the dispossession of indigenous peoples of their territories has opened the door to destructive, unsustainable resource extraction, the dispossession of peasants of their lands has laid the basis for an industrial food system that, amongst its many negative effects, is responsible for 44-57% of all global greenhouse gas emissions.
“Together We Can Cool the Planet” highlights the role of industrial agriculture in climate change while expounding on how small farmers are combating the climate crisis through regenerative organic agriculture.
Green World Rising is the 3rd film in the Green World Rising series. The film shows how we can be 100% off fossil fuels in a few decades. Narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, presented by Thom Hartmann, directed by Leila Conners and produced by George DiCaprio, Mathew Schmid, Earl Katz and Roee Sharon Peled. Music composed and performed by Jean-Pascal Beintus. Created by Tree Media with the support of the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.
Author: Twilight Greenaway and Michael R. Dimock
As the world prepares for critical climate negotiations in Paris this December, the former White House chef hopes to put food and agriculture on the global climate agenda—and on world leaders’ plates.
Since Sam Kass left his position as assistant White House chef and executive director of the first lady’s “Let’s Move!” campaign late last year, he has had no shortage of things to do. For one, he’s preparing to join the NBC News team as a senior food analyst. But first, Kass is planning some very important meals.
This December, 25,000 delegates from 190 nations will be meeting in Paris for the United Nation’s Conference of Parties or COP 21. The goal is to ensure every nation takes action to keep the average global temperature increase below 2 degrees centigrade by achieving a “binding and universal agreement on climate, from all the nations of the world.”
“Many who are paying attention are saying these are the most important negotiations of our lifetime,” says Kass, who hopes to bring together the leaders of as many nations as possible over food. But not just any food—he’s planning meals that send a clear message about the crucial role food and agriculture will play in either mitigating climate change, or adding to its snowball effect, in the years ahead.
From the methane produced by livestock and food waste, to the nitrous oxide that escapes from manure and fertilizer, to the carbon dioxide left unabsorbed when rainforests are cut down to make way for cattle and soybeans, food and agriculture add significant quantities of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. And yet, says Kass, they are often under-represented in climate negotiations. But, he adds, “there will be a massive cost to pay if food isn’t in that mix.”
Kass’ climate campaign began in September when he and Dan Barber, author of the Third Plate and chef at Blue Hill and the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, prepared an unprecedented meal at the UN for a significant number of world leaders including General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon and French President Francois Hollande, aimed at highlighting the fact that food waste is a major contributor to climate change. The meal included a burger made from vegetable pulp and “French fries” fashioned from starchy corn used to feed cattle.
Author: John Quinton
It sounds like a modest ambition: France wants to raise the amount of carbon in its soils by 0.4% a year, writes John Quinton. But that represents a vast amount of carbon, and its capture into soils will bring a host of other benefits. We should all get with the program!
French wine lovers have always taken their soil very seriously. But now the country’s government has introduced fresh reasons for the rest of the world to pay attention to their terroir.
As industrial emissions of greenhouse gases continue to increase and concerns about climate change grow, scientists and policy wonks are searching for potential solutions.
As well as mitigating climate change, carbon-rich soil is more fertile and raises food production. It improves soil’s physical properties – protecting against soil erosion and increasing water-holding capacity – and it enhances biodiversity.
Could part of the answer lie in the soil beneath our feet? French agriculture minister Stéphane Le Foll thinks so.
Soil stores vast amounts of carbon, far more than all the carbon in the world’s forests and atmosphere combined. Plants take carbon out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis and when they die the carbon they stored is returned to the soil.
This forms part of the soil’s organic matter: a mix of undecayed plant and animal tissues, transient organic molecules and more stable material often referred to as humus. It is food for organisms in the soil that play a vital role in cycling nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus.
These organisms decompose the organic material and return much of the carbon to the atmosphere leaving only a small proportion in the soil.
Tony Lovell will explain the reasoning behind how more green growing plants means more captured carbon dioxide — more water — more production — more biodiversity — more profit. Did you know that a 1% change in soil organic matter across just one-quarter of the World’s land area could sequester 300 billion tonnes of physical CO2.
TEDxDubbo focused attention on what we call FACETS — Food, Agriculture, Climate, Energy, Topsoil and Sustainability. These FACETS are actually potent ideas shared by everyday people with an interest in these disciplines. In many of these topics there is an awareness campaign; the aim of bringing our community together united against catastrophic failures in our food-chain, environment and health. It is worth mentioning that we are also indebted to our natural systems for our economic wealth. Failures in Food, Agriculture, Climate, Energy, Topsoil and Sustainability are not just a local issue — they are a global concern.
Author: Rashmi Mistry
In Paris later this year, global leaders will meet at the Conference of Parties to thrash out a deal to reduce dangerous greenhouse gas emissions and to find a solution to the pressing financial needs of billions of people, smallholder women farmers among them, on the frontline in the fight to adapt to climate change.
One of the solutions put forward to address these challenges is the concept of ‘climate smart agriculture’ – but what is it? And should we be worried?
Industrial agriculture is one of the major causes of climate change. Around 25 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions globally derive from the food system, including from methane from livestock production, deforestation to clear land for agriculture and nitrogen from fertilizer use.
Climate change is also creating havoc in many of the world’s farming systems, and endangers the progress made in the last few years to ensure the right to food for millions of people. Slow, insidious changes in global temperatures and shifting weather patterns, as well as increasing intensity and frequency of extreme weather events are disrupting production and distribution systems.
As a result – there is an increasing interest from both companies and policymakers in finding and promoting forms of agricultural production which can reduce emissions, as well as ways in way agriculture can adapt to changing conditions.
The Carbon Underground‘s Larry Kopald speaks at The Moral Action on Climate Change Rally in Washington D.C., September 24, 2015.
“God has an answer for climate change.
Let me repeat that: GOD has an answer for climate change.
NATURE has an answer to climate change.
Does anybody really think this incredible planet, this perfect system would have come about without a way to deal with all this extra carbon in the atmosphere?
How does the planet deal with massive carbon from volcanoes or forest fires?
The earth has had 10 times the amount of carbon in the atmosphere we have right now and dealt with it perfectly. It can, and will, do it again if we stop preventing it from doing so.
My name is Larry Kopald and I represent The Carbon Underground. And I’m here to talk about a SOLUTION to climate change.
And not just a solution. A SHOVEL READY solution.
A solution that will put the carbon back in the ground, create jobs, make us healthier, even boost our economy.
What is the magical answer?
You’re standing on it. It’s the soil.
Photosynthesis, as we learned in school, takes carbon from the air and puts it back into the soil.
So why isn’t it happening? Simple. We have destroyed our soil with chemicals and industrial techniques. Over 70% of our soil is gone or dying. Soil designed to hold all that carbon now stuck in the air creating climate change.
Here’s the good news:
Restore that soil and it will bring that carbon back and fix the climate.
There are a billion acres used to produce food in US alone.
If we restore the health of that soil we can draw down 3 billion tons of carbon per year.
That’s not a reduction in emissions, that’s 3 billion tons of carbon removed from our atmosphere every year! And put back into the soil. Where it belongs. Where it came from. Where God or nature wants it!
So we need to tell Congress to stop giving subsidies to rich farmers destroying the soil and give it to farmers who will restore the soil. And feed us better food. And help reverse climate change.
We need to tell President Obama and the next man…or the next woman…in the White House to stop focusing simply on the problem and start focusing on the solution.
And if any of them think that reducing emissions alone is the solution, they’d better talk to their own government scientists. Cutting emissions won’t cut it in solving climate change.
We must bring some of the carbon we’ve already put up into the air back down, and put it back underground.
We’ve got 500,000 people here. Let’s send a message to the 500 people there– in Congress:
FIX THE SOIL. FIX THE CLIMATE.
FIX THE SOIL. FIX THE CLIMATE.”
