Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Small Organic Farmers Can Cool the World That Chemical Farming Has Overheated
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_19283.cfm
      GRAIN, Oct 7, 2009

A new report [1], published today by GRAIN [2], shows that agriculture can 
put much of the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere back into the soil.

Soils contain enormous amounts of carbon, mostly in the form of organic 
matter. Evidence provided in the report shows that industrial agriculture, 
and the global food system of which it is part, has sent large amounts of 
this carbon into the atmosphere. Calculations in the report show that 
policies oriented towards an agriculture in the hands of small farmers and 
focused on restoring soil fertility would make a huge contribution to 
resolving the rapidly escalating climate crisis. The report makes it clear 
that, through a coordinated global programme, the organic matter that has 
been lost over the past decades can be gradually rebuilt. In 50 years the 
soils could capture about 450 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, which is more 
than two thirds of the current excess in the atmosphere [3].

The report shows that the role of the global industrial food system in 
creating the climate crisis has been seriously underestimated. Calculations 
reveal that the global food system is the most important single factor behind 
global warming, responsible for almost half of the world's greenhouse gas 
emissions. This includes oil-dependent industrial farming, together with the 
expansion of the meat industry, the destruction of world's savannahs and 
forests to grow agricultural commodities, the use of fossil-fuel energy to 
transport and process food, and the extensive use of chemical fertilisers.

To transform the world's food system so that it cools the planet rather than 
heats it up would require fundamental changes in how we produce food. The 
current trends towards increased land concentration and the expansion of 
industrial farming would have to be reversed. [4] Only if millions of small 
farmers and farming communities have access to land and can count on policies 
to support their livelihoods, can we restore the billions of tonnes of 
organic matter that the world's soils have lost.

"The evidence is irrefutable. If we can change the way we farm and the way we 
produce and distribute food, then we have a powerful solution for combating 
the climate crisis. There are no technical hurdles to achieving these 
results, it is only a matter of political will." said Henk Hobbelink, 
coordinator of GRAIN.

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Contact:

For all media enquiries, please contact Alexis Vaughan: Tel: +44 79 74 39 34 
87, Email: alexis@grain.org.

You can also contact GRAIN staff members directly, details of which can be 
found here: http://www.grain.org/about/?staff

Notes:

[1] GRAIN, Earth matters - tackling the climate crisis from the ground up, 
Seedling, October 2009,  http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=643

[2] GRAIN is a small international non-profit organisation that works to 
support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for 
community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems. For more 
information, see: http://www.grain.org/about/?org

[3] For a detailed explanation of GRAIN's calculations, see the report at 
http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=643

[4] GRAIN, The international food system and the climate crisis, Seedling, 
October 2009, http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=642