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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] There’s a Homegrown Way to Address Climate Change
  • Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2008 14:22:31 -0600

Published on Thursday, March 13, 2008 by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
There’s a Homegrown Way to Address Climate Change
by Anna Lappé
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/354753_tilth13.html
Seattle Tilth has a lot of things to celebrate this year. Thirty years of
nurturing the region’s communities and environment through organic gardening
is certainly one. The organization can also celebrate its place in the ranks
of climate change heroes.

Now, you might ask, what does Seattle Tilth’s work promoting organic
gardening and local foods have to do with global warming?

After all, when most of us think about food and farming, we tend not to think
of climate change. Mention global warming and most conjure up images of
industrial smokestacks or oil-thirsty planes, trains and automobiles.

Asked to name climate-change bad guys, most would tag Shell and ExxonMobile
before Sara Lee or General Mills.

That the food industry has avoided the hot seat is no surprise when you
consider the mainstream media’s lack of coverage of the food system’s role in
the crisis. Even major environmental NGOs and films such as “An Inconvenient
Truth” have mostly ignored the connection.

We’ve been missing a huge part of the story.

The global industrial food system — from how we grow crops to the way we
raise livestock and what we do with the waste — accounts for at least 33
percent of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, according to analysis of
data from the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. The livestock sector alone
is responsible for nearly one-fifth of the world’s total emissions — more
than the entire transportation sector.

Industrial farming is particularly problematic because it is a key emitter of
methane and nitrous oxide, which have, respectively, 23 and 296 times the
global warming effect of carbon dioxide. In the United States, widespread use
of nitrogen fertilizer, roughly half of which is wasted in leaching and
runoff, contributes to approximately three-quarters of the country’s nitrous
oxide emissions. Globally, agriculture is responsible for nearly two-thirds
of methane emissions.

With climate scientists warning we need an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse
gas emissions by 2050 to avert planetary catastrophe, it’s clear we need bold
action — and that bold action must include re-thinking food.

Here’s the good news: We already know how to build a climate-friendly food
system. Indeed, organizations such as Seattle Tilth have been showing the way
going on three decades. We now have long-term evidence of the wisdom of their
work.

Research is showing that organic farms can decrease emissions by eliminating
fossil-fuel based agricultural chemicals, for instance, and working with
nature to foster soil fertility, promote animal health and handle pests and
weeds. Organic farms can also be effective “carbon sinks,” removing carbon
dioxide from the atmosphere and fixing it in soil.

In addition, sustainability initiatives, such as composting, can lower
emissions by decreasing food waste that ends up in landfills. Promoting local
foods and edible gardens also lower emissions by decreasing the distance from
field to plate.

Despite what we know about a sustainable food system’s role in addressing
climate change, nearly 100 percent of our nation’s cropland is devoted to
industrial agriculture. And while we know climate-friendly farming will
require more farmers, we hemorrhage family farms every year. We now have more
prisoners behind bars than farmers in the fields.

An organization such as Seattle Tilth may seem like a tiny drop in the
climate-change bucket, but its impact should not be measured in isolation.
Dozens of sister efforts are flourishing — from Austin, Texas, to Ypsilanti,
Mich. — encouraging people to reconnect with their food and giving people the
opportunity to get their hands in the dirt.

Yes, the specter of climate chaos is daunting, but day-by-day and
garden-by-garden organizations such as Seattle Tilth are showing a homegrown
way to address the crisis.

Anna Lappé is the co-author of “Hope’s Edge” (Tarcher 2002) and “Grub”
(Tarcher 2006).




  • [Livingontheland] There’s a Homegrown Way to Address Climate Change, Tradingpost, 03/13/2008

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