Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumFood, Farming and Climate Change: It’s Bigger than Everything Else
4/13/15
Record-breaking heat waves, long-term drought, 100-year floods in consecutive years, and increasingly extreme superstorms are becoming the new normal. The planet is now facing an unprecedented era of accelerating and intensifying global climate change, with negative impacts already being widely felt. While global climate change will impact nearly everyone and everything, the greatest impact is already being felt by farmers and anyone who eats food.
When we think of climate change and global warming, visions of coal-fired power plants and solar panels come to mind. Policy discussions and personal action usually revolve around hybrid cars, energy-efficient homes and debates about the latest technological solutions. However, the global agriculture system is at the heart of both the problem and the solution.
Industrial agriculture is a key driver in the generation of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, heavy machinery, monocultures, land change, deforestation, refrigeration, waste and transportation are all part of a food system that generates significant emissions and contributes greatly to global climate change. Industrial agricultural practices, from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) to synthetic fertilizer-intensive corn and soy monocultures, genetically modified to tolerate huge amounts of herbicide, not only contribute considerable amounts of GHGs, but also underpin an inequitable and unhealthy global food system. Modern conventional agriculture is a fossil fuel-based, energy-intensive industry that is aligned with biotech, trade and energy interests, versus farmer and consumers priorities.
....While many people may be familiar with the term peak oil to describe the diminishing supply of petroleum, few are familiar or prepared for peak coffee. Farmers and scientists now openly discuss the notion of endangered crops, including everything from cocoa and wine grapes to salmon and peanuts. The emergence of super-charged pests related to climate change, like the La Roya coffee fungus in Central America, is threatening not only our morning cup of joe, but the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of small-scale farmers. The International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) has detailed how much of Ivory Coast and Ghana, the two largest cocoa-producing countries in the world, will be too hot to grow cocoa by 2030. The average cocoa farmers plot in Ghana is five hectares, and farmers there are very reliant on income from cocoa sales.
Compared to large-scale industrial farms, small-scale agroecological farms not only use fewer fossil fuel-based fertilizer inputs and emit less GHGs, including methane, nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide (CO2), but they also have the potential to actually reverse climate change by sequestering CO2 from the air into the soil year after year. According to the Rodale Institute, small-scale farmers and pastoralists could sequester more than 100% of current annual CO2 emissions with a switch to widely available, safe and inexpensive agroecological management practices that emphasize diversity, traditional knowledge, agroforestry, landscape complexity, and water and soil management techniques, including cover cropping, composting and water harvesting....
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/04/13/food-farming-and-climate-change-its-bigger-everything-else
Buzz Clik
(38,437 posts)RiverLover
(7,830 posts)Buzz Clik
(38,437 posts)RiverLover
(7,830 posts)Buzz Clik
(38,437 posts)... and simply said, "I don't know."
Your actual answer and followup, however, speak volumes.
RiverLover
(7,830 posts)which means it was only asked to be divisive.
Buzz Clik
(38,437 posts)... it could have been (and was) a pivot point in the conversation to discuss the likelihood that small farmers are actually more environmentally friendly than corporate farmers. It's a topic that interests me.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Buzz Clik
(38,437 posts)"...small-scale agroecological farms..."
Knowing what size is meant and how many farmers actually engage in agoecological farming is key.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)I'm trying to gauge how the size of their land fits in the small-large spectrum. Thanks.
Blanks
(4,835 posts)To a food security mentality.
What this would do is evaluate what areas would have food if there were a disaster (whether terror or environmental) and put community sustaining food supply infrastructure in that area.
Where I live there are primarily two crops: cotton and soy beans. If there was a natural disaster that cut off truck transportation (as it did in New Orleans during Katrina) I guess we'd have to eat cotton.
We need a federal government program where people are guaranteed a buyer for their crops (and eggs etc) a return to local meat processing, a reduction of food miles on our food and a return to healthy farm communities, all in the interest of national security.
We had a small standing army before WWI, after WWI we returned to a small standing army. We don't need a huge cache of weapons, what we need are healthy people who could serve if the need arose.
RiverLover
(7,830 posts)There is no national security, truly, without food security.
If only the cons weren't controlling the defense budget & doing their best to scare the crap out of Americans over a virtual boogeyman. All those billion$ could do so much for Americans here at home.
Blanks
(4,835 posts)People should be afraid that if there were even a minor disruption in our fuel distribution system, if they can't get in their car and drive to Wal-mart for two weeks, what are they gonna do?
What if there were a combination of things, transportation infrastructure (say a couple of bridges) and a natural disaster. Communities should have plans to protect their citizens.
Congressional republicans think Iran when they talk about national security, what about even a small amount of climate change (drought) ruining a community's cash crop. What are we doing for them? Particularly if several communities are effected at the same time.
I'd like to see democrats talking about global warming from a food security Perspective, talk about the effects rising sea levels have on our ability to take care of the populations that are threatened. Let the republicans talk about Benghazi as though that's a national security issue. Point out to the American people that it is a distraction, the real issue is how vulnerable our communities are to the elaborate supply network that we have become dependent upon.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)out Monsanto. So that leaves us. We need to create this system. The link above is trying to do just that.
One way that the government could help us right now is here already. In every county courthouse is an agriculture program that was meant to help increase the output in that area. They are supposed to be the trouble shooters. They are usually called an extension office and are hooked to state colleges. I have used them for info often but they could help us in many ways if their goals were widened.
But the problem is that they do very little hands on help. If you are raising animals and there is a problem you call the vet and he will even come out to look at the animal. When it comes to crops we have no one like that. They do sponsor one night classes by someone who knows a lot about gardening or small farming but it is a lecture. Big deal so I go home and try to do what they say - there is no one to come out to take a look at the problem I am having and help me with how to fix it. What I would like to see them do is provide hands on help for the people trying to do small farming and gardening. They do not have to do the farming just trouble shot the problems.
And that is the other problem. I asked the extension officer were he was from - Iowa. I knew immediately that he was going to give me big agricultures answers. We live in an area where most of the land is considered marginal. Big ag answers do not work on marginal land. This office could be used to make a lot of these changes but it does not bother.
We have a tool now if we could just get it to work for us.
Blanks
(4,835 posts)We shared a building when I worked in the public works department for a rural Kansas county.
That's what I'm talking about though, we need to shift our federal financial resources from being concentrated into weapons and equipment into other 'national security' resources that are spread throughout the countryside. County health departments are another asset that should be expanded in rural areas and be better prepared to deal with outbreaks. More active duty personnel at guard and reserve armories prepared to deal with local emergencies that affect national security.
I guarantee you that if the democrats develop a program propping up small town economies (aka red states) across rural America, the republicans aren't getting control of congress again for decades.
As far as big Ag, it's gonna take more than one program to whittle their influence down, and I don't think it'll happen at all without the return of government anti-trust laws and enforcement.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)the big agriculture problem. Droughts, eventual peak oil, climate change, etc. will be forcing change on its own soon. In the mean time those of us who want a smaller sustainable economy can start setting that up.
GreatGazoo
(3,937 posts)While the positive role of small farms should not be discounted, the push to reduce carbon emission from farming will move faster when new techniques are adopted by the largest farms.
The era of chemical farming may be ending since GM crops have proven to be a failure. The initial marketing promise of GM crops was that they would use less pesticides and less labor than prior crops but biological resistance to the chemicals began immediately. Now 20 years in, we have Roundup Ready canola growing in corn fields beside Roundup ready weeds like amaranth and the intended crop (corn or soy). Yields are down, spraying is up and inputs are more costly than ever. As more countries around the world ban the growing or importation of GMO crops, their value drops. So there is an economic (as well as moral) incentive to move away from chemical GMO farming.
The real key is going to be scaling zero carbon techniques to larger operations. Money is pouring into research and product development -- for example, Elon Musk (Tesla) is being courted to help create an electric motored tractor. This one change could be transitioned across hundreds of thousands of farms with great impact since farm tractors are typically fueled with the dirtiest of diesel fuel.
Additionally the use of robots in farming is on the rise and holds great promise for replacing not just labor but also the chemicals presently used to suppress weeds. Research in Australia has produced this solar powered robot which will be merged with robotic weeding, planting and harvesting guts:
Prototype of weeding guts for Ladybird:
The disruption of local climates and their traditional crops may prove harder to address.
RiverLover
(7,830 posts)The robot is fascinating. Better than life-killing herbicides, but I'm sure it doesn't come cheap.
Here's another way to supplant herbicide use, for rice anyways: ducks!
While the report admits that agroecology can be more labor-intensive because of the complexity of knowledge required, it shows that this is usually a short-term issue. The report underscores that agroecology creates more jobs over the long term answering critics who argue that creating more jobs in agriculture is counter-productive. Creation of employment in rural areas in developing countries, where underemployment is currently massive, and demographic growth remains high, states the report, may constitute an advantage rather than a liability and may slow down rural-urban migration.
Mark Bittman put it aptly in his column on the UN report at the New York Times, saying:
Agro-ecology and related methods are going to require resources too, but theyre more in the form of labor, both intellectualmuch research remains to be doneand physical: the world will need more farmers, and quite possibly less mechanization....
UN: Eco-Farming Feeds the World
blackspade
(10,056 posts)LiberalArkie
(15,715 posts)But when you think about it, if you take away the industrial pollution necessary for our casual lifestyles (cars, boats, airplanes, disposable everything and the like), if it was just 7.3 billion humans, the earth could sustain that...
...except for the fact that most of the 7.3 billion humans depend on fossil fuels for just about everything they (we) need, myself included. Which throws your answer right back out front again; there are just too many people on this planet.
I don't envy the next generation. I see the next 15 years as going from bad to worse and after that, a downward spiral for our species and all of the ones we're taking with us.
The2ndWheel
(7,947 posts)to keep more people alive every year that otherwise wouldn't be. It didn't matter before. There was always somewhere else to go, even if it didn't always go smoothly. Once we got on that road, we couldn't get off.
It's not just that there are too many people. Too easy of an answer when dealing with complex questions concerning something as complex as the web of life. It's also doing too many things. Expecting a better life for every successive generation. Giving ourselves the ability to fly through the air or travel at 50mph. The list goes on and on, and goes however far back in history that you care to go.
We didn't get here because we're dumb. We got here because of every little success building on the previous one. There's another one for the list; accumulated knowledge.
LiberalArkie
(15,715 posts)(I tried some ideas and everything sounded so horrible)
The2ndWheel
(7,947 posts)Especially attempting to self impose them on other people. What's human history without the striving for freedom?
We don't do limits. We don't like them. We'll try to get around any and all of them. That's what we do.
libdem4life
(13,877 posts)ffr
(22,670 posts)Unsustainable farming and water use in the U.S. has been going on since at least 1849.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1017&pid=206583
libdem4life
(13,877 posts)lawns or they have to cut back and the Howl is heard at each state house. Like many things, California is the worst offender. They built the Los Angeles sprawl and the Central Valley on desert. Just for starters. Northern California still has water, but I could almost see the threatened split between Northern and Southern California right about the North of the Central Valley over this at some time.I don't know what the answer is, though.
I also lived in Arizona...same song, second verse.
I now live in the Midwest...speaking of drought...another bread basket...yes, truly unsustainable.
GreatGazoo
(3,937 posts)and they also have the potential to free small farms in developing countries from petroleum inputs. Presently farms, even most organic ones, use the dirtiest version of diesel fuel for tractors and generators.
There is a push now to get more solar powered pumps to farmers in Africa so that they can irrigate more area and be independent. Great application of existing technology:
One example:
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/SunEdisons-Solar-Water-Pumps-Help-Farmers-in-Emerging-Economies