UN highlights role of farming in closing emissions gap

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24817837


Changing the way farmers plough their lands could have a big impact on global emissions of greenhouse gases


Changing farming practices could play an important role in averting dangerous climate change says the UN.

In their annual emissions report, they measure the difference between the pledges that countries have made to cut warming gases and the targets required to keep temperatures below 2C.

On present trends there is likely to be an annual excess of 8 to 12 gigatonnes of these gases by 2020.

Agriculture, they say, could make a significant difference to the gap.

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1. Climate change is decreasing farm yields just when we need them to go up

http://grist.org/food/climate-change-is-decreasing-farm-yields-just-when-we-need-them-to-go-up/

One of the most disturbing details included in the recently leaked IPCC report is that climate change could begin reducing farm yields worldwide by up to 2 percent a decade. Meanwhile, demand for crops is increasing 12 percent per decade.

You don’t have to be a math whiz to see how that (doesn’t) add up.

A collision between a rising need for food and falling yields would be terrible for the environment, as well as for people. When people are starving, they are forced to make really bad tradeoffs: You might cut down your forest to feed your kids, even if you know it will lead to landslides that might ruin your farm the next year.

But that collision only happens if we don’t act, said Jonathan Foley, of the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment. There are a lot of things we can do to keep ourselves — and, more probably, our fellow humans in developing countries — from starving.