Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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

"John Beddington, chief science adviser to the British government, warned
in March that climate change and population growth together could produce a
"perfect storm" of devastating food, water and energy shortages by 2030.
Days later, Nina Fedoroff, chief science adviser to Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton, said that if nothing were done, a billion people could
face famine in the twenty-first century and even wealthy countries like the
United States and Britain would struggle to feed their people."

(I think they're too optimistic ...)

Fresh Food Revolution
Tuesday, April 21, 2009 by The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090504/hertsgaard?rel=hp_picks
by Mark Hertsgaard

When Michelle Obama began planting an organic garden on the South Lawn of
the White House recently, there was no doubt she was sending a message, but
the message was more subversive and far-reaching than most American media
coverage recognized. On March 20, joined by a class of local fifth graders,
the first lady lifted the first shovels of dirt onto a 1,100-square-foot
plot that will feature fifty-five kinds of vegetables, including spinach,
peppers, arugula, kale, collards and tomatoes (but no beets--the president
reportedly does not like beets). Various herbs and berries will also be
grown in the garden, which is fully visible to the thousands of tourists
and other pedestrians that pass by the White House daily. (There will also
be two boxes of bees for pollination.)

Michelle Obama's stated message was simple and was clearly aimed at her
fellow Americans: fresh food tastes better and is better for you, so kids
and grown-ups alike should eat lots more of it. "A real, delicious heirloom
tomato is one of the sweetest things you'll ever eat," she told the
10-year-olds, adding that freshly picked vegetables were what prompted her
daughters to try new kinds of foods.

What made Obama's message so subversive was something she left unsaid: the
food most Americans eat nowadays is not fresh, tasty or healthy. The
superiority of fresh ingredients may be obvious to Italians, but it is a
truth most Americans long ago forgot, if they ever knew it in the first
place. Over the past fifty years, the United States has been transformed
into a fast food nation, in author Eric Schlosser's phrase. What the
typical American eats is not so much food as it is highly processed food
derivatives that have traveled thousands of miles since leaving the farm,
losing along the way most of the flavor and nutritional value they once
possessed. To disguise such losses, food manufacturers overload products
with fats, salts and sweeteners, especially corn syrup--additives that,
along with the massive portions typically served in the United States, help
explain why nearly one in three Americans is obese.

Now, by publicly championing fresh local food, Michelle Obama clearly hopes
to entice Americans away from their junk food past to a healthier, more
delicious future. And that is what makes her message so far-reaching.
Change America's eating habits and you can change the world.

Shifting to a greener diet would be good not only for the health of
America's children and families but the health of the planet. The American
diet, and the food production and distribution system that supports it, is
one of the main drivers of global warming and a host of related hazards,
from deforestation to air, soil and water pollution. Most people know by
now that our civilization must fundamentally change the way it produces and
consumes energy if we are to stop global warming. Far fewer people realize
that it is equally important to change the way we produce and consume food.

As currently constituted, the global food system is a climate killer.
Coal-fired power plants and gas-guzzling vehicles get more criticism, but
farms, restaurants and supermarkets are bigger culprits. Globally, the
agricultural sector releases more greenhouse gases than any activity on
earth except for constructing, heating and cooling buildings. Agriculture's
large greenhouse footprint is due mainly to its heavy reliance on fossil
fuels to grow and transport food to market, as well as the increasing
popularity of the meat-rich American diet. Meat production accounts for 18
percent of global emissions, according to the UN Food and Agricultural
Organization, in part because livestock emit large amounts of methane, an
exceptionally potent greenhouse gas.

Humanity cannot hope to halt global warming unless emissions from the food
sector are cut dramatically. This suggests that food should be high on the
agenda during the discussions leading up to the crucial meeting in December
in Copenhagen, where the world's governments will negotiate the next round
of emissions cuts. Yet so far food has gotten little attention, with one
notable exception. In September, Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, attracted a brief spasm of media
coverage when he urged people to consider eating less meat as a way to
combat climate change.

"Given that industrial agriculture is one of the major contributors of
greenhouse gas emissions, it's astonishing that international climate
negotiations overlook both its impact and its potential contribution toward
mitigation, as well as adaptation," says Debi Barker, international program
director of the Center for Food Safety, an NGO in Washington. Barker argues
that many NGOs are also overlooking the links between agriculture and
climate change, a shortcoming her organization is trying to rectify by
launching a "Cool Food" campaign to build a global food and climate network
of NGOs.

What has gotten attention recently in some government circles is the other
half of the food-climate change equation--that is, how climate change
threatens food production. As global warming intensifies in the years
ahead, scientists say, temperatures will rise, droughts will deepen and
pests will become more pervasive. In China, recent studies have concluded
that yields of wheat, corn and rice could decrease by 37 percent in the
latter half of the century if adaptation measures are not implemented.
Since China is the world's leading producer of wheat and rice, such
shortfalls could drive up prices on the world market, with the result that
poor people worldwide, especially mothers and children, will be unable to
afford enough to eat. The best response is a shift to more organic farming
and so-called ecological agriculture, says a new report issued by
Greenpeace China and lead author Lin Erda, one of China's most eminent
climate scientists. Reducing the use of chemical fertilizers, shifting to
no- or low-till forms of cultivation and combing duck ponds with rice
paddies not only reduces the greenhouse gas emissions associated with
agriculture, the report points out, it also makes the agricultural system
more resilient against drought, pests and other inevitable impacts of
climate change. John Beddington, chief science adviser to the British
government, warned in March that climate change and population growth
together could produce a "perfect storm" of devastating food, water and
energy shortages by 2030. Days later, Nina Fedoroff, chief science adviser
to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said that if nothing were done, a
billion people could face famine in the twenty-first century and even
wealthy countries like the United States and Britain would struggle to feed
their people.

But there are solutions, even for the poorest of places. Some of the most
encouraging stories come from Africa, the continent climate change will hit
hardest. In Niger, villagers have invested in rejuvenating parched soils
and ravaged forests with remarkable results: despite recurring drought,
greenery has returned to the villages, bringing with it water supplies,
food production and higher incomes. In China, the United States and other
big producing nations, boosting the efficiency of notoriously wasteful
irrigation systems could save more water than climate change threatens to
disperse. Vaclav Smil, a professor at the University of Manitoba and a
leading expert on China's environmental challenges, predicts the Chinese
"will be able to feed themselves for many years to come," in part because
their wastefulness offers so much scope for making technological
improvements.

And of course there is Michelle Obama's idea of planting a garden, which
history shows can have powerful effects. During World War II, Eleanor
Roosevelt urged Americans to join her in planting backyard "victory
gardens" so that US farmers could concentrate on supplying food to allied
forces. Despite initial opposition from the Department of Agriculture, her
idea struck a chord with the public; by the end of the war, victory gardens
were producing nearly half of the fruit and vegetables eaten by Americans.
If Obama's organic garden proves equally inspiring, she could spark a new
green revolution--and not a moment too soon.
© 2009 The Nation

Mark Hertsgaard (markhertsgaard.com), a fellow of The Nation Institute and
The Nation's environment correspondent, is the author of five books, which
have been translated into sixteen languages. His next book, Living Through
the Storm: How We Survive the Next 50 Years of Climate Change, is
forthcoming from Houghton-Mifflin.