Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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The Organic Revolution: How We Can Stop Global Warming
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/10/22-11
by Ronnie Cummins
Published on Thursday, October 22, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

"Let us not talk falsely now, for the hour is getting late."
Bob Dylan, "All Along the Watchtower"

*  *   *

Beyond the gloom and doom of the climate crisis, there lies a powerful and 
regenerative grassroots solution: organic food, farming, and ranching. Even 
as politicians and the powerful fossil fuel lobby drag their heels and refuse 
to acknowledge that we have about ten years left of "business as usual" 
before we irreversibly destroy the climate and ourselves, there is a 
powerful, though largely unrecognized, life-force spreading its roots 
underground.

Millions of organic farmers, ranchers, conservationists, and backyard 
gardeners (supported by millions of organic consumers) are demonstrating that 
we can build a healthy alternative to industrial agriculture and Food Inc. 
Our growing organic movement is proving that we can not only feed the world 
with healthy food, but also reverse global warming, by capturing and 
sequestering billions of tons of climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases in 
the soil, through plant photosynthesis, composting, cover crops, rotational 
grazing, wetlands preservation, and reforestation.

The heretofore unpublicized "good news" on climate change, according to the 
Rodale Institute and other soil scientists, is that transitioning from 
chemical, water, and energy-intensive industrial agriculture practices to 
organic farming and ranching on the world's 3.5 billion acres of farmland and 
8.2 billion acres of pasture or rangeland can sequester 7,000 pounds per acre 
of climate-destabilizing CO2 every year, while nurturing healthy soils, 
plants, grasses, and trees that are resistant to drought, heavy rain, pests, 
and disease. And of course organic farms and ranches can provide us with food 
that is much more nutritious than industrial farms and ranches-food filled 
with vitamins, anti-oxidants, and essential trace minerals, free from 
Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), pesticides, antibiotics, and sewage 
sludge.

In 2006, U.S. carbon dioxide pollution from fossil fuels (approximately 25% 
of the world's total) was estimated at nearly 6.5 billion tons. If a 7,000 
lb/CO2/ac/year sequestration rate were achieved on all 434 million acres of 
cropland in the United States, nearly 1.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide 
would be sequestered per year, mitigating close to one quarter of the 
country's total fossil fuel emissions. If pastures and rangelands were 
similarly converted to organic practices, we would literally be well on our 
way to reversing global warming.

But we need an organic revolution in ranching and livestock production, as 
well as farming and forestry. We need to drastically reduce meat 
overproduction (77% of all U.S. agriculture resources are devoted to raising 
animals or animal feed), and over-consumption (a leading cause of obesity, 
heart disease and cancer) and ban methane-belching factory farms. As the 
Rodale Institute points out, organic livestock raising practices, including 
rotational grazing, manure management, methane capture for biogas production, 
and improved feeds and feed additives, can drastically reduce 
livestock-related emissions and, because of the massive acreage currently 
devoted to livestock production (nearly 2.5 times greater than croplands), 
can safely sequester approximately 60% of the total greenhouse gases that 
humans, animals, cars, and industry are pumping out every year.

This Organic Revolution, or "Great Sequestering," made possible by a global 
grassroots movement with the power to transform the marketplace and public 
policy, is perhaps the only short-term strategy or solution at hand that can 
buy us the precious time we need to radically reduce energy use and 
greenhouse pollution and build a green economy. Although politicians and the 
coal and utilities industry claim that sequestration of massive carbon 
dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants is on the horizon, there is 
little or no scientific evidence to back this up. Sequestration of CO2 in the 
soils of organic farms and ranches, on the other hand, is a proven fact.

Before carbon sequestering forests and grasslands were ravaged by 
chemical-intensive industrial agriculture (and industrial forestry), soil 
organic matter generally composed 6-10% of the soil volume, three to six 
times the 1-3% levels typical of today's industrial agriculture soils. In 
other words, taxpayer subsidized, chemical-based industrial agriculture, 
factory farms, and unrestricted grazing (along with industrial forestry) have 
turned the earth's soil (which still contains three times as much carbon as 
the entire amount of CO2 in the atmosphere) from being a climate-stabilizing 
carbon sink into a massive and dangerous source of global warming.

Given our escalating climate emergency, the burning question is how do we 
move organics in the U.S. from being the 4% alternative in the marketplace to 
being the norm, and organic acreage from being 1% of total cultivated land to 
the majority of farmland, pasture, and rangeland? The answer of course is 
that we must sound the alert, offer up our practical solutions and rapidly 
transform public consciousness and policy. But the Via Organica, the road to 
get there, will be long and arduous. The majority of Americans must not only 
stop buying chemical, GMO, globally sourced and so-called "natural" food, and 
switch to organic and more locally and regionally produced products, but we 
must also rise up as a political movement and change public policy. We must 
literally force the politicians and the corporations to put a halt to our 
"business as usual" destruction of the climate and public health, and instead 
move to an ethical and scientifically grounded policy and practice that 
promotes health, conservation, greenhouse gas reduction, and organic 
sequestration. Please join and support the Organic Consumers Association and 
the climate change movement http://www.350.org as we carry out this life or 
death campaign.

Ronnie Cummins is co-founder and director of the Organic Consumers 
Association.
http://organicconsumers.org/