Organic Farming Can Cool the World that Chemical Farming Overheated
A report from GRAIN discusses how agriculture can put back much of the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere into the soil. Soils contain enormous amounts of carbon, mostly in the form of organic matter. The report shows that industrial agriculture, and thus the global food system, has spewed large amounts of this carbon into the atmosphere. Policies focused on restoring soil fertility – restoring the organic matter in the soil which has been lost – would make a huge contribution to resolving the rapidly escalating climate crisis. In 50 years, soils could capture about 450 billion tons of carbon dioxide – more than two thirds of the current excess in the atmosphere. The role of the global industrial food system in creating the climate crisis has been seriously underestimated, says the report. Calculations reveal 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 fertilizers. To […]