Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

"When ‘ecological and organic’ is combined with ‘direct and local’,
emissions are further reduced by reducing energy use for ‘food miles’,
packaging and refrigeration of food. And local food systems will reduce the
pressure to expand agriculture in the rainforests of Brazil and Indonesia."

Food, Forests and Fuel -  - Vandana Shiva
27 Dec
07http://sloweb.slowfood.com/sloweb/eng/dettaglio.lasso?cod=D4ABF2071df532
22E5lILp591810

December 3–14 2007 will see more than 10,000 representatives of
government and civil society gather in Bali for a meeting of the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This is the international
treaty under which the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated. The Protocol expires
in 2012, and Bali is supposed to begin negotiations on a post-Kyoto
framework.

In 2007, no one can deny that man-made climate change is taking place.
However, the commitment to mitigate and help the vulnerable to adapt does
not match the recognition of the disaster.

Mitigation requires material changes in production and consumption
patterns. Globalization has pushed production and consumption worldwide to
higher carbon dioxide emissions. WTO rules of trade liberalization are in
effect rules that force countries on a high emissions pathway.

Similarly, World Bank lending for super highways and thermal power plants,
industrial agriculture and corporate retail coerces countries to emit more
greenhouse gases. And giant corporations such as Cargill and Walmart carry
major responsibility in destroying local, sustainable economies and pushing
society after society into dependence on an ecologically destructive global
economy.
Cargill is an important player in spreading soya cultivation in the Amazon,
and palm oil plantations in the rainforest of Indonesia thus increasing
emissions both by the burning of forests and destruction of the massive
carbon sink in rainforests and peat lands. And Walmart’s model of
long-distance centralized trade is a recipe for increasing the carbon
dioxide burden in the atmosphere.

The first step in mitigation requires a focus on real actions of real
actors. Real actions are actions such as a shift away from ecological
farming and local food systems. Real actors include global agribusiness,
the WTO, the World Bank. Real actions involve destruction of rural
economies with low emission to urban sprawl designed and planned by
builders and construction companies. Real actions involve destruction of
sustainable transport systems based on renewable energy and public
transport to private automobiles. Real actors pushing this transition to
non-sustainability in mobility are the oil companies and automobile
corporations.

Kyoto totally avoided the material challenge of stopping activities that
lead to higher emissions and the political challenge of regulation of the
polluters and making the polluters pay in accordance with principles
adopted at the Earth Summit in Rio. Instead, Kyoto put in place the
mechanism of emissions trading which in effect rewarded the polluters by
assigning them rights to the atmosphere and trading in these rights to
pollute.

Today, the emissions trading market has reached $ 30 billion and is
expected to go up to $ 1 trillion. Carbon dioxide emissions continue to
increase, while profits from ‘hot air’ also increase. I call it ‘hot
air’ both because it is literally hot air leading to global warming and
because it is metaphorically hot air, based on the fictitious economy of
finance which has overtaken the real economy, both in size and in our
perception.

A casino economy has allowed corporations and their owners to multiply
their wealth without limit, and without any relationship to the real world.
Yet this hungry money then seeks to own the real resources of people –
the land and the forests, the farms and the food, and turn them into cash.
Unless we return to the real world, we will not find the solutions that
will help mitigate climate change.

Another false solution to climate change is the promotion of biofuels based
on corn and soya, palmoil and jatropha.

Biofuels, fuels from biomass, continue to be the most important energy
source for the poor in the world. The ecological biodiverse farm is not
just a source of food; it is a source of energy. Energy for cooking the
food comes from the inedible biomass like cow dung cakes, stalks of millets
and pulses, agro-forestry species on village wood lots. Managed
sustainably, village commons have been a source of decentralized energy for
centuries.

Industrial biofuels are not the fuels of the poor; they are the foods of
the poor, transformed into heat, electricity, and transport. Liquid
biofuels, in particular ethanol and bio-diesel, are one of the fastest
growing sectors of production, driven by the search of alternatives to
fossil fuels both to avoid the catastrophe of peak oil and to reduce carbon
dioxide emissions. President Bush is trying to pass legislation to require
the use of 35 billion gallons of biofuels by 2017. M. Alexander of the
Sustainable Development Department of FAO has stated: ‘The gradual move
away from oil has begun. Over the next 15 to 20 years we may see biofuels
providing a full 25 per cent of the world’s energy needs’.

Global production of biofuels alone has doubled in the last five years and
will likely double again in the next four. Among countries that have
enacted a new pro-biofuel policy in recent years are Argentina, Australia,
Canada, China, Columbia, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Malawi, Malaysia,
Mexico, Mozambique, the Philippines, Senegal, South Africa, Thailand and
Zambia.

There are two types of industrial biofuels – ethanol and biodiesel.
Ethanol can be produced from products rich in saccharose such as sugarcane
and molasses, substances rich in starch such as maize, barley and wheat.
Ethanol is blended with petrol. Biodiesel is produced from vegetable only
such as palm oil, soya oil, and rapeseed oil. Biodiesel is blended with
diesel.

Representatives of organizations and social movements from Brazil, Bolivia,
Costa Rica, Columbia, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic, in a
declaration entitled ‘Full Tanks at the Cost of Empty Stomachs’, wrote
‘The current model of production of bio-energy is sustained by the same
elements that have always caused the oppression of our people’s
appropriation of territory, of natural resources, and the labor force.’

And Fidel Castro, in an article entitled ‘Food as an Imperial Weapon:
Biofuels and Global Hunger’ has said that, ‘More than three billion
people are being condemned to a premature death from hunger and thirst’.

The biofuel sector worldwide has grown rapidly. The United States and
Brazil have established ethanol industries and the European Union is also
fast catching up to explore the potential market. Governments all over the
world are encouraging biofuel production with favorable policies. The
United States are pushing the other Third World nations to go in for
biofuel production so that their energy needs get met at the expense of
plundering others’ resources.

Inevitably this massive increase in the demand for grains is going to come
at the expense of the satisfaction of human needs, with poor people priced
out of the food market. On February 28, the Brazilian Landless Workers
Movement released a statement noting that ‘the expansion of the
production of biofuels aggravates hunger in the world. We cannot maintain
our tanks full while stomachs go empty’.

The diversion of food for fuel has already increased the price of corn and
soya. There have been riots in Mexico because of the price rise of
tortillas. And this is just the beginning. Imagine the land needed for
providing 25% of the oil from food.

One ton of corn produces 413 liters of ethanol. 35 million gallons of
ethanol requires 320 million tons of corn. The US produced 280.2 million
tons of corn in 2005. As a result of NAFTA, the U.S. made Mexico dependent
on U.S. corn, and destroyed the small farms of Mexico. This was in fact the
basis of the Zapatista uprising. As a result of corn being diverted to
biofuels, prices of corn have increased in Mexico.

Industrial biofuels are being promoted as a source of renewable energy and
as a means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, there are two
ecological reasons why converting crops like soya, corn and palm oil into
liquid fuels can actually aggravate climate chaos and the CO2 burden.

Firstly, deforestation caused by expanding soya plantations and palm oil
plantations is leading to increased CO2 emissions. The United Nations Food
and Agriculture Organization estimates that 1.6 billion tons or 25 to 30
per cent of the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere each year
comes from deforestation. By 2022, biofuel plantations could destroy 98% of
Indonesia’s rainforests.

According to Wetlands International, the destruction of Southeast Asian
land for palm oil plantations is contributing to 8% of global CO2
emissions. According to Delft Hydraulics, every ton of palm oil results in
30 tonof carbon dioxide emissions or 10 times as much as petroleum
producers. However, this additional burden on the atmosphere is treated as
a clean development mechanism in the Kyoto Protocol for reducing emissions.
Biofuels are thus contributing to the same global warming that they are
supposed to reduce. (World Rainforest Bulletin No.112, Nov 2006, Page 22)

Further, the conversion of biomass to liquid fuel uses more fossil fuels
than it substitutes.

One gallon of ethanol production requires 28,000 kcal. This provides 19,400
kcal of energy. Thus the energy efficiency is -- 43%.

The U.S. will use 20% of its corn to produce 5 billion gallons of ethanol
which will substitute 1% of oil use. If 100% of corn was used, only 7% of
the total oil would be substituted. This is clearly not a solution either
to peak oil or climate chaos. (David Pimental at IFG conference on ‘The
Triple Crisis’, London, Feb 23-25 2007)

And it is a source of other crisis. 1700 gallons of water are used to
produce a gallon of ethanol. Corn uses more nitrogen fertilizer, more
insecticides, more herbicides than any other crop.

These false solutions will increase the climate crisis while aggravating
and deepening inequality, hunger and poverty. Real solutions exist which
can mitigate climate change while reducing hunger and poverty.

According to the Stern Report, agriculture accounts for 14% emissions, land
use (referring largely to deforestation) accounts for 18%, and transport
accounts for 14%. The increasing transport of fresh food, which could be
grown locally, is part of these 14% emissions.

Not all agricultural systems however contribute to greenhouse gas
emissions. Industrial chemical agriculture, also called the Green
Revolution when introduced in Third World countries, is the major source of
three greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and methane.

Carbon dioxide is emitted from using fossil fuels for machines and pumping
of ground water, and the production of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
Chemical fertilizers also emit nitrogen oxygen, which is 300 times more
lethal than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. And grain fed factory
farming is a major source of methane.

Studies indicate that a shift from grain fed to predominantly grass fed
organic diet could reduce methane emission from livestock by up to 50%.

Ecological, organic agriculture reduces emissions both by reducing
dependence on fossil fuels, chemical fertilizers and intensive feed, as
well as absorbing more carbon in the soil. Our studies show an increase of
carbon sequestration of up to 200% in biodiverse organic systems.

When ‘ecological and organic’ is combined with ‘direct and local’,
emissions are further reduced by reducing energy use for ‘food miles’,
packaging and refrigeration of food. And local food systems will reduce the
pressure to expand agriculture in the rainforests of Brazil and Indonesia.

We could, with a timely transition reduce emissions, increase food security
and food quality and improve the resilience of rural communities to deal
with the impact of climate change. The transition from the industrial
globalized food system being imposed by WTO, the World Bank and Global
Agribusinesses to ecological and local food systems is both a mitigation
and adaptation strategy. It protects the poor and it protects the planet.

The post-Kyoto framework must include ecological agriculture as a climate
solution.

Vandana Shiva, a writer and ‘ecological scientist’, directs the
Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy in
New Delhi. Her current work centers on biodiversity and sustainable
agriculture. She is a Slow Food international vie-president.