Over the last few months I’ve been coming across little bits of information that really point to agriculture as the most important aspect to climate change, and I thought I would put some of them together here in a post.
The Numbers
Just where are all the greenhouse gases coming from is not as easy a question to answer as you might think. The working diagram seems to be this from the World Resources Institute. Looking at the diagram one can see that the agriculture sector accounts for 13.5% of greenhouse gases, but at the same time deforestation accounts for 18.3%. It’s clear some portion of deforestation is connected to agriculture, but how much? Where do biofuels fit in here? Other sectors like transportation and industrial processes also clearly play an important role in agriculture. Even though it’s not possible to clearly see agriculture’s role in this diagram, some interesting comparisons with other sectors can still be made.
According to Dr R. K. Pachauri’s presentation notes, on the website linked to below in the meat section of this post: Green house gas emissions from livestock production are 80% of emissions from agriculture and 18% of all green house gas emissions from human activities. For these he sites an FAO report from 2006 I haven’t been able to locate.
From these figures it’s possible to deduce that green house gas emissions from agriculture are 22.5% of all those related to human activities. Many of these gases are not just CO2, but other more environmentally damaging gases like N2O and CH4.
Emissions Are Only Part of the Story
Beyond the actual emissions from agriculture, there’s another important factor to consider. Agricultural land is one of the most important sources of carbon sequestration on the planet, and our current system of chemical intensive agriculture destroys the soil’s ability to store carbon. This is because the soil contains an enormous number of microorganisms and is an ecosystem within itself, but one fungus in particular is largely responsible for sequestering the carbon, which can’t grow in soil damaged by agricultural chemicals.
Reforming our current system of agriculture to one that uses organic methods would likely turn an industry that’s a net producer of 22.5% of the worlds man made greenhouse gases to one that’s a net consumer of green house gases. This change is unlikely to reduce agricultural output.
How can it be that if we got rid of all the agricultural chemicals there would be no reduction in yields? It’s the simple fact that most modern crop varieties were bred to need chemicals, for no reason except corporate profits. When a company like Monsanto or Dow sells both chemicals and seeds, it’s natural when they create a new variety they would want to promote their own chemical products too. Therefore they breed their new varieties specially to not be able to grow without these chemicals. This is one of the reasons the same company who sells Round-Up sells Round-Up ready seeds, and so on. There’s no credible evidence to suggest commercial varieties are any more productive as a whole than properly maintained non-commercial varieties which don’t need the chemicals in the first place.
Anne of Agrarian Grrl’s Muse made a great post on this and the associated Rodale Institute report. Be sure to check out the video.
According to the report if the US switched it’s corn and soy bean acreage to organic production, this alone would meet 73% of it’s Kyoto Protocol obligations. And again, there’s likely to be no significant loss of crop yields in the long run.
When carbon is sequestered into the ground one of the results is higher quality soil, and associated higher yields. Many gardeners know sequestered carbon in the form of compost, and even non-gardeners know the term topsoil. As well as reducing global warming, this would be a very good thing for agriculture in the long run, building up our topsoils and putting carbon into the ground. There would be other benefits. Carbon would significantly improve the soil’s ability to retain water, meaning greater tolerance to drought. This would also significantly reduce N2O emissions (from livestock), because nitrogen binds to carbon when it’s in the ground.
Perennial vs Annual
One of the characteristics of modern agriculture are large swaths of farmland planted with mono-cultures, then plowed under at the end of each year and replanted the next. These are called annual crops.
It turns out annual crops are significant green house gas producers. In the process of plowing, the ground is damaged and sequestered carbon is released. In addition more work needs to be done by tractors which also emit CO2. The plants are weaker, with shallower roots, and more prone to diseases and drought.
Perennial crops on the other hand, those which stay in the ground for more than one year, are more disease and drought resistant, and generally stronger plants. They stand up better to weeds, because they maintain their ground cover and more firmly establish themselves into the ground. Their deeper root systems tend to sequester more carbon, in addition they need less tractor work and chemicals.
The Seed Ambassadors recently posted a paper discussing perennial grains.
Biochar
This is something that’s been in the news lately, and a number of blog posts have appeared on the topic.
Basically biochar is made with a process called pyrolysis which involves burning farm waste at low temperature with reduced oxygen. The result is something similar to charcoal, and when buried in the ground decomposes into soil with a very high carbon content. While a lot is still unknown about it at this point, it’s believed this is a system that can be used to sequester large amounts of carbon quickly into the ground, building up fertility rapidly in the process.
Alan of Bishop’s Homegrown, as well as publishing several posts on the topic, is making his own. He refers to the ground made with biochar as Terra Pretta, the name given to the fertile ground created by an ancient civilization with this technique in the Amazon rainforest.
Biochar is already attracting the attention of big business. Anne recently posted about trojan efforts at producing Terra Pretta, requiring fossil fuel inputs!
It’s clear there’s a lot of potential for turning organic farm waste into sequestered carbon and rich agricultural land using this technique, and a lot more work needs to be done on it.
Meat
I posted on this controversial subject before, and I noticed a tense silence amongst my readers, resulting in only a few polite comments.
18% of greenhouse gases related to human activity comes from producing meat, the largest single source. In addition, the gases like N2O and CH4 that come from livestock, are some of the most significant contributors to global warming. While it’s certainly possible for people to eat meat if they want to, the rate it’s being produced and the production methods used are seriously damaging the planet. It seems pretty far-fetched to think we can continue as we are, even increase production to meet demand in emerging economies like China, while at the same time addressing global warming. People who eat meat need to eat a lot less of it.
If you’re interested, the person who recently made this statement and attracted attention to this issue is the chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Dr. R. K. Pachauri. He has a blog! He also made a post about his statement and the controversy it caused, and for those of you who showed restraint here and didn’t say anything negative, you can go there and blast him with a comment personally! In fact, you can be the first, because at the time of my writing this post there were 34 comments on his post, none of them negative. Now we just need to convince him to set up an RSS feed…
Agriculture Opted Out
In Europe both the automotive and airline industries tried to opt out of the Kyoto Protocol green house gas emission limits, and there was an outcry. They have since been brought back into the carbon credits trading scheme.
On the other hand the agriculture ministers announced they were opting out of these same limits, and it seems like there wasn’t a single voice of opposition. For some reason it seems the most natural thing in the world that something sacred like our food production should not have to change, even though reform of the agriculture sector would probably by itself meet almost all of Europe’s obligations under the Kyoto Protocol.
In fact Europe is very unlikely to be able to meet it’s obligation under the Kyoto Protocol without significant participation from the agricultural sector.
What Can You Do?
Eat less meat.
Grow your own organic vegetables, or buy them locally from someone you trust.
Grow heritage/heirloom plant varieties in your vegetable garden, save your own seeds and learn basic plant breeding. The resulting skills and plants are going to be needed in the next century.
Compost your household and garden waste when possible.
Use common sense when driving a car, travelling by plane and heating your house.
Tell your politicians it’s not our position as consumers to have something trivial like low energy light bulbs forced upon us, rather it’s their responsibility to save the planet by reforming agriculture in a meaningful way!
While you’re at it, tell your politicians we don’t want biofuels made in a way that results in net CO2 production, reduces available land for food based agriculture, results in environmental pollution, results in deforestation or involves any new technologies like GMOs, synbio or nanotechnologies without proper regulation and long term testing.
