Agriculture - primary culprit

Some of you may have taken the time to read, or at least speed-read the 21 page 'Summary for Policymakers' (2.2mb PDF) from the just released IPCC report. Of those who did, how many people noticed the emphasis on agriculture as a primary cause of greenhouse gas emissions?

The global increases in carbon dioxide concentration are due primarily to fossil fuel use and land-use change, while those of methane and nitrous oxide are primarily due to agriculture. - IPCC Summary for Policymakers, p. 2

The global atmospheric concentration of methane has increased from a pre-industrial value of about 715 ppb to 1732 ppb in the early 1990s, and is 1774 ppb in 2005. The atmospheric concentration of methane in 2005 exceeds by far the natural range of the last 650,000 years (320 to 790 ppb) as determined from ice cores. Growth rates have declined since the early 1990s, consistent with total emissions (sum of anthropogenic and natural sources) being nearly constant during this period. It is very likely that the observed increase in methane concentration is due to anthropogenic activities, predominantly agriculture and fossil fuel use....

The global atmospheric nitrous oxide concentration increased from a pre-industrial value of about 270 ppb to 319 ppb in 2005. The growth rate has been approximately constant since 1980. More than a third of all nitrous oxide emissions are anthropogenic and are primarily due to agriculture. - IPCC Summary for Policymakers, p. 3

Beneficial creatures have nowhere to live

If you haven't already, take a lunch-break to read our recent article on Soil for a bit of foundational understanding of the importance of sustainable farming practices to the well-being of the planet.

Often, as consumers, our food concerns are about pesticide usage. If it kills insects, what will it do to us, we ask? This is a valid concern, but we should ask 'why' do farmers need to use pesticides in the first instance? The answer is 'monoculture'. Large-scale single-crop farming necessitates the use of fossil-fuel based poisons.

Let them get back to work!

Why so? Well, picture an enormous field of corn waving gently in the breeze. Have a guess which insects will be happy living in that field? You guessed it - only those that like corn!! Just like ourselves, you see, insects and spiders need somewhere to live, and each creature has its own housing preferences.

Without our intervention, the insect (and animal) kingdom avoids population imbalances through natural predation. Nature provides a vast array of natural diversity in plants, which in turn gives beneficial predatory creatures like hedgehogs and ladybirds somewhere to live. For every hundred aphids there are several ladybirds to keep them in check, etc. For every 'pest', there is a natural enemy to take care of it.

As payment for defending our food from annihilation, all predatory insects ask, as a wage in return, is to be allowed to live! This means being kept safe from dosings of chemicals, and providing a home that is not constantly obliterated by the use of heavy machinery.

I'm cheap, and chemical free!

Traditional, sustainable, farming methods incorporate intercropping, green manures, 'bio-corridors' (hedges, thickets, resting land), and a reduction in mechanisation - all of which encourage populations of beneficial insects and wildlife.

The lack of diversity inherent in large scale monoculture farming invites not only problems with insects, but also soil fertility itself - creating the need for fossil fuel based fertilisers as well, which, like pesticides, consume an enormous amount of energy in their production and transportation, and contaminate our land and water.

As consumers, we can make a very healthy and powerful change by using our food dollars in the right places. Shop local, and try to support 'the little guy'. Get to know farmers in your area. Support farmers that encourage natural diversity and reduced mechanisation in their systems.

Production for the global market... effectively precludes diversity. What a farm produces is not determined by local conditions but by the requirements of a global marketing system that prizes standardized products, extended shelf life, and the capacity to withstand long-distance transport. This has led to an agriculture that is highly specialized, growing a shrinking number of varieties. Wild nature, meanwhile, is systematically excluded from industrial farmland, adding to the pressure on non-agricultural plant and animal species whose habitats have already been whittled down by encroaching development. Studies in Germany, for instance, have shown that industrial farming is that nation's leading contributor to bio-diversity loss, with over 500 plant species alone endangered or extinct as a result of agricultural practises.

Agribusiness = Sterile environment

As farmers specialize production in fewer and fewer varieties of the one or two crops they grow, the planet's agricultural biodiversity steadily erodes. In the United States today, almost three-quarters of potato production comes from just four closely related varieties; 76 percent of the nation's harvest of snap beans comes from just three strains; and 96 percent of pea production comes from just two pea varieties. The corn industry is so dependent on inbred lines of hybrids that one seed company official admitted that "the corn seed industry is probably working from the narrowest base in history." If genetically engineered crops are allowed to dominate the fields of industrial farmers, agricultural diversity will deteriorate still further. - Bringing the Food Economy Home, Norberg-Hodge, Merrifield, Gorelick, p. 36, 37

Here are a few interesting associated facts:

Local foods have other environmental advantages over industrial foods. Since local foods are more often consumed fresh, they usually require far less packaging, processing, and refrigeration: fresh peas, for example, require only 40 percent of the energy expended for a frozen carton of peas, and only 2.5 percent of an aluminum can of peas.

Geographical Breakdown of Food Packaging

There is also the problem of what to do with the waste that results from all the packaging required by foods transported thousands of miles. In the United Kingdom, at least a quarter of household waste is made up of packaging, two-thirds of which is used on food. More and more land must be devoted to burying this huge amount of waste, because it is produced on a scale that natural processes cannot possibly absorb. Much of the packaging is non-biodegradable plastic, and even paper cannot break down in dense, poorly aerated landfills. Burning all this refuse is an even worse option: trash incinerators contaminate the air with hundreds of pollutants, including carcinogenic substances such as dioxin, while leaving behind an ash residue contaminated with heavy metals and other toxins. - Bringing the Food Economy Home, Norberg-Hodge, Merrifield, Gorelick, p. 20

The good news is that local farmers' markets are on the increase.

Farmers' markets were once very common throughout the world, but they declined along with the number of diversified small-scale farmers. Now they are on the rise again. According to the USDA, there were over 2,800 farmers markets in the United States in 2000, a 63 percent increase since 1994. The United Kingdom went from having no farmers' markets at all in the mid-1990s, to having more than 270 at the end of the decade. - Bringing the Food Economy Home, Norberg-Hodge, Merrifield, Gorelick, p. 20, 21

Locally bought produce is normally picked the previous day, or even the same day, as opposed to gas-ripened after days or weeks in transport or storage. It's healthier and tastier. Promoting local farmers reduces food miles, and promotes a greater variety of locally grown fresh produce. As mentioned above - the modern globalised system of agriculture pushes only the kinds of produce that are convenient for their systems - specifically those that 'transport well', rather than those that are good for us.

Diversity is stability. Work against specialisation, and support farmers that are working in harmony with nature.

An enduring agriculture must never cease to consider and respect and preserve wildness. The farm can exist only within the wilderness of mystery and natural force. And if the farm is to last and remain in health, the wilderness must survive within the farm. - Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America