Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

 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).