Tag Archive for: Climate Change

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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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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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.

KEEP READING ON THE NEW YORK TIMES 

Soil Carbon Can’t Fix Climate Change by Itself—but It Needs to Be Part of the Solution

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Author: Marcia Delonge | Published: September 26, 2016

A rigorous study just published in the prestigious journal Science argues that soil alone cannot be can be counted on to save us from climate change. Yet the stark analysis does not undermine the importance of better understanding, protecting, and building carbon in soils (“carbon farming”). In fact, the findings reinforce the need for soil carbon science and action to remain priorities, especially when it comes to agriculture.

The study in a nutshell:  Scientists from the University of California used 1-meter (3.28 ft) deep soil samples from 157 places around the world, which were analyzed with sophisticated carbon dating methods to improve the way that soil carbon is represented in some of the best Earth System Models. They found that models may have been overestimating how much carbon would likely be stored in soils under climate change, particularly in response to the so-called “CO2 fertilization effect” (the effect of higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations on fostering plant growth). The findings suggested that the size of the resulting soil carbon “sink” that will be available soon enough to effectively mitigate climate change is lower than previously estimated (by anywhere from 5.9% to 87%). They conclude that models need to represent soil carbon more accurately when simulating climate change scenarios, and emphasized the importance of emissions reduction strategies.

So what does this mean?

If you’re wondering about the implications of the study for soil carbon, climate change, and agriculture, here’s what you need to know:

  • As my colleagues have written, we are well beyond the stage where we can choose between either reducing emissions or increasing carbon sequestration. We need to act on both, and quickly.
  • To review the basics, there is a lot of carbon in the atmosphere (as CO2, the main climate change culprit today), but there is far more in soils. If you have been following “carbon farming”, you know that this feature of the carbon cycle is the basis for much enthusiasm. Since plants suck up CO2 and return carbon to the soil, there is constant movement between these two “pools.” Because the soil pool is large, small changes in soil carbon can mean relatively big changes in atmospheric carbon. This is great if soil carbon is increasing, but worrisome otherwise. Either way, understanding soil carbon is one of the keys to the climate change solution.
KEEP READING ON UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS 

Looking to Nature in the Search for Global Soil Solutions

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Author: Zoe Loftus-Farren | Published: October 25, 2016

Soil is the unsung-hero of our food system. We depend on it to grow the food we put in our bodies, yet we treat it poorly, compacting it with tractors, depleting it of nutrients, and filling it with chemicals. The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that globally, 25 percent of soil is degraded. Team BioNurse, a project of the Ceres Regional Center for Fruit and Vegetable Innovation in Chile, has come up with a creative way to help combat this degradation, one that turns to nature for inspiration.

An interdisciplinary team of seven that includes industrial designers, architects, and agronomists, Team BioNurse has designed a soil restoration mechanism that mimics the Yareta plant, a so-called “nurse” plant found in the harsh environment of the Andes. The resilient Yareta provides shelter for seedlings of other plants, protecting them from the elements and facilitating their establishment in the extreme mountain landscape. In doing so, this hardy plant paves the way for the succession of other, more delicate species.

Team BioNurse designed a “BioPatch” that works the same way. Made of corn stalks and other biological materials, the BioPatch is planted with seedlings of plants that help restore soil health but which would struggle to grow in degraded soils. It nurtures these seedlings, providing them with the necessary nutrients and microbes to thrive under tough conditions, protecting them from wind and UV radiation, and directing water to their roots. The BioPatch is then placed on degraded agricultural fields, which, as BioNurse Team member Camilia Hernández points out, can also be “very harsh environments.” As the seedlings take root, they help amend the underlying soil.

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Coffee and Climate Change: In Brazil, a Disaster Is Brewing

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Author: Lulu Garcia-Navarro | Published: October 12, 2016

Coffee lovers, alert! A new report says that the world’s coffee supply may be in danger owing to climate change. In the world’s biggest coffee-producing nation, Brazil, the effects of warming temperatures are already being felt in some communities.

You can see the effects in places like Naygney Assu’s farm, tucked on a quiet hillside in Espirito Santo state in eastern Brazil. Walking over his coffee field is a noisy experience, because it’s desiccated. The leaves from the plants are curled up all over the floor, in rust-colored piles. The plants themselves are completely denuded.

“We’ve had no rain since last December,” Assu tells me in Portuguese, “and my well dried up. There was nothing we can do, except wait for rain.”

But the rain doesn’t come.

In fact, it’s been three years of drought here in Sao Gabriel da Palha. This region is part of Brazil’s coffee belt. Farmers here have been growing robusta — a coffee bean used in espressos and instant coffee — since the 1950s. Assu says he doesn’t know what to do.

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Why ‘climate-smart Agriculture’ Isn’t All It’s Cracked up to Be

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Author: Teresa Anderson | Published on: October 17, 2014

There’s a new phrase in town. A growing number of governments, corporations and NGOs are using the term “climate-smart agriculture” to describe their activities. With climate change affecting farming worldwide, you might assume we should be celebrating this as a step in the right direction.

But many organisations in the food movement are wary of – or even opposed to – this concept. They share growing concerns that the term is being used to green-wash practices that are, in fact, damaging for the climate and for farming. Many are worried that the promotion of “climate-smart agriculture” could end up doing more harm than good.

At the United Nations secretary general’s climate summit in New York last month, heads of state such as President Barack Obama referred to the need for “climate-smart” crops to weather the challenges ahead. The Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, announced the launch of the new Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture, involving governments, corporations, research institutes and NGOs.

This was followed by announcements from McDonalds, which use 2% of the world’s beef, andWalmart, the world’s largest corporation, about their own “climate-smart” initiatives.

Proponents of “climate-smart agriculture” claim that their approaches aim to achieve a “triple win” of increasing food security, adaptation and mitigation. So far so good, right? Actually, no.

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Solving Climate Change With Beer From Patagonia’s Food Startup

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Authors: Bradford Wieners | Published on: October 3, 2016

Yvon Chouinard, the short, bluff, fatalistic founder of Patagonia, the company renowned for its pricey parkas, fuzzy fleeces, and exhortations to buy fewer of them, sits in a cafeteria-style Chinese restaurant in Jackson, Wyo. He scratches a clam from its shell, forks it into his mouth, chews, checks the time. “Oh, we’re fine,” he says, and Birgit Cameron, seated on his right, does her best to look reassured. A fairly recent addition to the Patagonia family, Cameron seems as eager to make a good impression this evening as Chouinard is indifferent to how he’s perceived. The two are expected in 10 minutes at the Center for the Arts in Jackson, where they’ll appear on stage together and introduce Unbroken Ground, a 26-minute film produced by Patagonia that highlights the suppliers of Patagonia Provisions, the three-year-old sister food company that Cameron heads. Depending on your level of cynicism, Unbroken Ground may strike you as a well-turned documentary about the ecologically enlightened suppliers behind the foods she sells, or perhaps as a slick marketing piece. Naturally, it’s both.

“It’s hard to get people fired up about how cotton is grown in Turkey,” Chouinard says, “but we’ve got to, because the way 99 percent of cotton is grown, it’s a disaster. And it’s the same with where most of our food comes from. So we use film because a lot of these little guys we’re working with don’t have the resources to make a movie. We do.”

At 77, Chouinard long ago stepped back from Patagonia’s day-to-day operations, but he and his wife, Malinda (also present, but not to be quoted), remain the owners and stewards of the brand. They mostly split their time between here, where their home faces the Teton Range, and Ventura, Calif., where Patagonia’s headquarters and their children and grandkids are. Both published books in the last two months: Yvon, an updated edition of his memoir-cum-management treatise, Let My People Go Surfing; Malinda, with co-author Jennifer Ridgeway,Family Business: Innovative On-Site Child Care Since 1983, a monograph promoting kindergartens at corporate offices.

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Pope Francis’ Message for World Food Day

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Published: October 14, 2016

On the occasion of the World Food Day, this Sunday Oct. 16, which this year has as theme: “The Climate Is Changing,” Pope Francis sent to the Director General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the following Vatican-provided message:

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To Professor José Graziano da Silva
Director General of the FAO

Illustrious Sir,

1. The fact that the FAO has chosen to devote today’s World Food Day to the theme “Climate is changing. Food and agriculture must too”, leads us to consider the struggle against hunger as an even more difficult objective to attain in the presence of a complex phenomenon such as climate change. With regard to facing the challenges that nature poses to man, and that man poses to nature (cf. Enc. Laudato si’, 25), I would like to submit some reflections to the consideration of the FAO, its Member States and those who participate in its activity.

What is the cause of the current climate change? We must question our individual and collective responsibilities, without resorting to the facile sophistry that hides behind statistical data or conflicting predictions. This does not mean abandoning the scientific data we need more than ever, but rather going beyond merely interpreting the phenomenon or recording its many effects.

Our condition as people who are necessarily in relation to one another, and our responsibility as the guardians of creation and its order, require us to retrace the causes of the current changes and to go to their root. First and foremost, we must admit that the many negative effects on the climate derive from the daily behaviour of people, communities, populations and States. If we are aware of this, a mere evaluation in ethical and moral terms is not sufficient. It is necessary to act politically and therefore to make the necessary decisions, to discourage or promote certain behaviours and lifestyles, for the sake of the new generations and those to come. Only in this way can we preserve the planet.

The responses to be put into effect must be suitably planned, and cannot be the fruit of emotion or fleeting motives. It is important to plan them. In this task, an essential role is played by the institutions called upon to work together, inasmuch as the action of individuals, while necessary, becomes effective only if framed in a network made up of people, public and private bodies, and national and international apparatuses. This network, however, cannot remain anonymous; this network is fraternity, and must act on the basis of its fundamental solidarity.

2. Those who are engaged in work in the fields, in farming, in small-scale fishing, or in the forests, or those who live in rural areas in direct contact with the effects of climate change, are aware that if the climate changes, their life changes too. Their daily lives are affected by difficult or at times dramatic situations, the future becomes increasingly uncertain and in this way the thought of abandoning homes and loved ones begins to arise. There is a prevalent sense of abandonment, the feeling of being abandoned by institutions, deprived of possible technical contributions or even of just consideration on the part of all those of us who benefit from their work.

From the wisdom of rural communities we can learn a style of life that can help defend us from the logic of consumerism and production at any cost, a logic that, cloaked in good justifications, such as the increasing population, is in reality aimed solely at the increase of profit. In the sector in which the FAO works, there is a growing number of people who believe they are omnipotent, or able to ignore the cycles of the seasons and to improperly modify the various animal and plant species, leading to the loss of variety that, if it exists in nature, has and must have its role. Producing qualities that may give excellent results in the laboratory may be advantageous for some, but have ruinous effects for others. And the principle of caution is not enough, as very often it is limited to not allowing something to be done, whereas there is a need to act in a balanced and honest way. Genetic selection of a quality of plant may produce impressive results in terms of yield, but have we considered the terrain that loses its productive capacity, farmers who no longer have pasture for their livestock, and water resources that become unusable? And above all, do we ask if and to what extent we contribute to altering the climate?

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