It might come as a surprise to many that our current food system and food choices are largely responsible for exacerbating the global climate crisis. Our friends over at Sustainable Table have recently featured an article by Anna Lappé in which she addresses the multiple facets connecting how our decisions regarding how we farm and what we put on our forks are affecting climate change. In addition to an in-depth examination of the main sources of emissions from agriculture, the article also includes tips on what you can do to help lower your carbon foodprint! Here’s a brief excerpt from the article:
In nature, plants transform the sun’s energy into food that provides a foundation for life. We humans are fueled by this transformation either directly (we eat the food) or indirectly (we eat the animals that have fed on this energy). It’s a clever cycle: it’s inherently abundant. But the industrialization of agriculture, picking up pace in the past generation, has flipped the natural abundance of farming on its head. Instead of producing energy, industrial agriculture consumes it, through the addiction to fossil fuel-powered machinery and petroleum-based agrochemicals. Industrial farms are often considered highly efficient, but only because these wasted inputs and devastating outputs — including the impact on climate change — are not accounted for.
Unlike industrial farms, small-scale organic and sustainable farms rely on people power, not heavy machinery, and depend on nature, not man-made chemicals for soil fertility and to handle pests. As a result, small-scale sustainable farms have been found to emit between one-half and two-thirds less carbon dioxide for every acre of production. 26
New research is documenting that organic farms can emit as much as half the carbon dioxide as chemical farms. Organic farms also use much less fossil fuel energy than their conventional counterparts, in many cases as much as one-third less, and organic agriculture can provide a critical carbon sink, sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. In fact, 10,000 medium-sized organic farms can store as much carbon in the soil as we would save if we took one million cars off the road.27
Yes, the very source of energy the food consumers eat has become one of the planet’s worst contributors to climate instability, but it need not be. There is another way.
To read more visit Sustianable Table to peruse the whole article which was adapted from a forthcoming book on food and climate change by Anna Lappé. To find out more about this book, visit: Take a Bite out of Climate Change.
sustainable table, anna lappe, food issues, food and climate change, organic vs conventional, organic food, organic farms, farming, carbon emissions
3 responses so far ↓
1 TwinToddlersDad // Dec 23, 2008 at 11:10 am
You make an interesting point. Let us extend this a little bit more.
I think we should look at the TOTAL energy consumption during the full cycle of food production and consumption. If you look at it that way, industrial farming may be “efficient” but food storage and distribution is not. Simply increasing the fuel efficiency can have a much bigger impact on the carbon footprint of the food industry.
Organic farming is labor intensive and does not have the scale to feed a growing population. Therefore it cannot be the only solution. We should consider a hybrid approach and try to minimize the energy consumption in the whole value chain.
2 Walter Jeffries // Jan 1, 2009 at 9:38 am
It goes beyond emitting less. My carbon foot print is deeply negative. Our farm absorbs a tremendous amount of carbon in our fields and forests, soaking up about 1,600 tons of carbon per year beyond what our family and farm emit.
Ironically the government is now selling carbon credits to corporations. Those carbon credits they are selling are not theirs to sell. It is farm land and forest land owners who are soaking up the carbon and those are the people who should get paid for those carbon credits. But once again our government is stealing from us.
3 Russell Mayes // May 2, 2009 at 10:09 pm
I am the author of Fear Profits You Nothing and you people are profiting off of simple minded people’s fears … if you can prove without a dought that we are cause global warming global cooling climate change.. what is the next thing you will call it…. prove it to me … and lets also see the otherside
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