Tag Archive for: Impact of Agriculture on Climate

Four Areas of Agriculture That Can Help Solve Many Environmental Problems and Improve Human Health

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Author: Dr. Joseph Mercola | Published on: September 10, 2016

Agriculture has a significant impact on life on Earth. It provides food, sure, but it’s also an integral part of the ecosystem as a whole. Done correctly, it supports and nourishes all life.

When abused — as it’s been done since the “green revolution” in the 1930s — agriculture contaminates and destroys soil, air and water, reducing biodiversity and threatening wildlife and humans alike, thanks to toxic chemicals and destructive farming methods.

The featured short film, “Unbroken Ground,” explores four areas of agriculture, featuring pioneers in each field, that can help solve many of the environmental crises’ currently facing us:

Reinventing Food

As noted in the film, there’s a growing movement toward more sustainable agriculture; a shift so great that it’s almost like we’re reinventing the food system all over again.

However, rather than focusing on more and newer technologies, this shift involves a return to basics — a going backward, if you will — which is really the only way to make progress at this point.

Continuing to destroy the soil, air and water we need to sustain life simply isn’t a viable option anymore. Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard says:

“I’ve always thought of my company, Patagonia, a clothing company, as an experiment; making decisions based on quality and responsibility. And I can tell you, it’s not an experiment anymore.

I’ve proven to myself, it works! Applying that to food — this is another experiment. But I think it’s the most important experiment we’ve ever tried.”

The Land Institute — Regenerative Farming

According to Wes Jackson, Ph.D., founder of the Land Institute, grains account for about 70 percent of our daily calories, and grains are grown on about 70 percent of acreage worldwide.

The continuous replanting of grain crops each year leads to soil degradation, as land is tilled and sprayed each year, disrupting the balance of microbes in the soil. Top soil is also lost each year, which means that eventually, our current modes of operation simply will no longer work.

We will not have any usable topsoil left, and this may actually occur far sooner than most people realize. Soil erosion and degradation rates suggest we have less than 60 remaining years of topsoil.1

Forty percent of the world’s agricultural soil is now classified as either degraded or seriously degraded; the latter means that 70 percent of the topsoil is gone.

Agriculture also accounts for 70 percent of our fresh water use. When the soil is unfit, water is wasted. It simply washes right through the soil and past the plant’s root system.

We already have a global water shortage that’s projected to worsen over the coming two or three decades, so this is the last thing we need to compound it.

Soil degradation is projected to cause 30 percent loss in food production over the next 20 to 50 years. Meanwhile, our global food demands are expected to increase by 50 percent over this span of time.

“Regenerative agriculture actually BUILDS topsoil,” Chouinard says. “Wes is doing the most important thing in agriculture in the last 10,000 years.”

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Our Best Shot at Cooling the Planet Might Be Right Under Our Feet

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[ English | Español ]

Author: Jason Hickel | Published on: September 10, 2016

It’s getting hot out there. Every one of the past 14 months has broken the global temperature record. Ice cover in the Arctic sea just hit a new low, at 525,000 square miles less than normal. And apparently we’re not doing much to stop it: according to Professor Kevin Anderson, one of Britain’s leading climate scientists, we’ve already blown our chances of keeping global warming below the “safe” threshold of 1.5 degrees.

If we want to stay below the upper ceiling of 2 degrees, though, we still have a shot. But it’s going to take a monumental effort. Anderson and his colleagues estimate that in order to keep within this threshold, we need to start reducing emissions by a sobering 8%–10% per year, from now until we reach “net zero” in 2050. If that doesn’t sound difficult enough, here’s the clincher: efficiency improvements and clean energy technologies will only win us reductions of about 4% per year at most.

KEEP READING ON THE GUARDIAN

10 Options for Agriculture at Marrakech Climate Talks

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Authors: Dhanush Dinesh and Vanessa Meadu | Published on: September 2, 2016

New guidance to help countries make crucial decision on future of agriculture under climate change

There is no question that action is needed to address climate impacts on agriculture while reducing greenhouse gases produced by food and farming. In fact the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement explicitly referred to food security, and a large majority of countries at the Paris climate conference showed their willingness to take action on agriculture. A major opportunity lies ahead, as a 5-year discussion on agriculture under the UN Climate Talks culminates at the November meetings in Marrakech. New guidance is now available to help countries decide how to shape the future of food and farming under a global climate agreement.

Since 2011, a United Nations technical body (known as SBSTA) has been deliberating issues related to agriculture, with many parties and observers making submissions, and debates continuing over several workshops on the topic.

To provide countries with the necessary knowledge base to make a decision in Marrakech, the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) and partners have compiled a new report setting out 10 options that build on the latest submissions and deliberations by countries. Each option is elaborated with an overview, ways forward and pros and cons.

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Revolutions Start From The Bottom

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Our food choices are deeply connected to climate change. Unbroken Ground, a compelling new Patagonia Provisions film directed by Chris Malloy, explains the critical role food will play in the next frontier of our efforts to solve the environmental crisis.

This film explores four areas of agriculture that aim to change our relationship to the land and oceans. Most of our food is produced using methods that reduce biodiversity, decimate soil and contribute to climate change. We believe our food can and should be a part of the solution to the environmental crisis – grown, harvested and produced in ways that restore our land, water and wildlife. The film tells the story of four groups that are pioneers in the fields of regenerative agriculture, regenerative grazing, diversified crop development and restorative fishing.

WATCH THE FILM ON PATAGONIA PROVISIONS

U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Underlines Importance to Include Agriculture in COP22

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Rabat – U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Jonathan Pershing underlined, Thursday in Rabat, the importance of taking agriculture into account during the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP22)’s debates.

“It is necessary to work on how agriculture will be dealt with during the COP22”, Pershing told the press after a meeting with Moroccan Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries Aziz Akhannouch, noting that the agriculture and forest sector contribute to greenhouse gas emissions by up to 30%.

The meeting was an occasion to discuss and recommend concrete measures and solutions, notably carbon capture and storage and good agricultural practices meant to preserve the soil, he added.

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How Does Agriculture Change Our Climate?

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Agriculture, deforestation and other land use account for roughly 20 percent of all GHG emissions

Since the start of the Green Revolution, the productivity of the global agricultural system has more than doubled, improving food security for a growing population and meeting dietary demands of an increasingly wealthy world. This astounding productivity has also imposed environmental costs. While global agriculture faces a number of challenges, the most surprising challenge to food security may come from agriculture’s impact on our climate.

Right now, the world’s agricultural sector, which in this report refers to management and land clearing related to agriculture, accounts for about one fifth of total greenhouse gases. That’s more than all of the world’s cars, planes, and trains combined. Emissions from agriculture and deforestation are three times greater than emissions from the global building sector, and equal to all industrial emissions. In fact, energy production is the only sector that has a higher share of emissions (37 percent).

In this report, we consider emissions from just part of the global food system: deforestation and agricultural management. The share of emissions from transportation of products in the global food supply chain, packaging, and food waste, for example, are important but not included here. When these activities are also considered, the global food system accounts for roughly 30 percent of global emissions.

Despite agriculture’s central role in changing the global climate, there are promising opportunities for mitigating emissions and reducing the demand for high-emissions food in the first place. Developing a global food system that both achieves food security and reduces agriculture’s environmental impact is one of the foremost challenges of our time.

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U.S. Agriculture Secretary Thinks Farmers Can Help Solve Global Warming

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Author: David Biello

Many large-scale farmers in the U.S. don’t care to hear much about climate change. Perhaps that is because agriculture—including livestock-rearing and forestry—is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas pollution. Nevertheless, American farmers, ranchers and foresters have begun to adopt practices that could cut pollution, or so says a progress report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture on the “Building Blocks for Climate-Smart Agriculture and Forestry.”

Scientific American spoke with U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, who has held that job longer than most of his predecessors after stints as governor of Iowa and a presidential hopeful.

[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]

Can American agriculture solve climate change while also surviving it?
Agriculture can contribute to the solution. I say that because there are other industries and other sectors that also have to do their part. But agriculture needs to be part of the solution.

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A switch to ecological farming will benefit health and environment – report

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Author: John Vidal

A new approach to farming is needed to safeguard human health and avoid rising air and water pollution, high greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss, a group of 20 leading agronomists, health, nutrition and social scientists has concluded.

Rather than the giant feedlots used to rear animals or the uniform crop monocultures that now dominate farming worldwide, the solution is to diversify agriculture and re-orient it around ecological practices, says the report (pdf) by the International panel of experts on sustainable food systems (IPES-Food).

The benefits of a switch to a more ecologically oriented farming system would be seen in human and animal health, and improvements in soil and water quality, the report says.

The new group, which is co-chaired by Olivier De Schutter, former UN special rapporteur on food, and includes winners of the World Food prize and the heads of bio-science research groups, accepts that industrial agriculture and the global food system that has grown around it supplies large volumes of food to global markets.

But it argues that food supplies would not be greatly affected by a change to a more diverse farming system.

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Change the food system, not the climate!

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In the run-up to the meeting of the AGRIFISH Council, happening today in Brussels and addressing agricultural emissions, Slow Food sent a letter to Phil Hogan, EU Commissioner for agriculture and rural development, in coalition with other NGOs.

The letter states that agriculture should be required to contribute to emissions reductions to meet the more ambitious climate targets set out in the Paris Agreement.

Agriculture and the whole food system play a decisive role and must be at the centre of the debate on climate change. Food production is one of the main causes – and victims – of climate change, and could also be­come one of the solutions.

Every day, millions of people are losing land, sources of water and food, and risk becoming climate refugees. These people already live in the planet’s most disadvantaged regions. At stake, therefore, is also a question of social justice.

The commitments of the international community to fight climate change cannot overlook agriculture. In order to confront the problem of global warming, it is essential that governments renew and strengthen their com­mitment to limiting emissions. But this alone is not enough. We need a radical paradigm shift—economic, social and cultural—and the promotion of a new kind of agriculture, one that is sustainable and respectful of the environment.

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We can’t fight climate change without tackling agriculture emissions: Bob McDonald

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Author: Bob McDonald

When it comes to air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, we generally think of the usual suspects: fossil fuel-powered electrical generating stations, vehicles and industry. But, in fact, agriculture represents roughly one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions, as well as a significant amount of air pollution, and that means we need to make significant changes to the way we farm to help curb global warming and clean up the air we breathe.

Two reports released this week say that improvements in agricultural practices based on current technology will not be enough to bring those emissions down.

The first report, in the journal Global Change Biology, was from an international team that focused on emissions from gases other than carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is absorbed from the atmosphere when crops are planted and released after harvest, so in that sense, agriculture is carbon neutral.

Instead, the researchers looked at methane, which comes from livestock and decaying organic matter, and nitrous oxide, which is produced by fertilizer. Both are significant greenhouse gases. The report states that current mitigation plans would only reduce emissions by 20 to 40 per cent, not enough to meet the targets set by the Paris climate accord.

A second report in Geophysical Research Letters shows that agricultural practices in the United States are responsible for more particulate matter in the atmosphere than all other industrial sources. The use of nitrogen fertilizers, techniques used for soil preparation, decaying organic matter and livestock activity produce tiny airborne particles that combine with other air pollution to create aerosols that contribute to a variety of respiratory diseases and public health problems.

Reducing emissions while maintaining production

The agriculture industry faces the difficult challenge of reducing emissions without compromising food production, because more and more mouths to feed are being added to the planet every day.

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