Organic Consumers Association

The United States spends $1.1 trillion a year on food. But when the impacts of the food system on different parts of our society — including rising health care costs, climate change and biodiversity loss — are factored in, the bill is around three times that, according to a report by the Rockefeller Foundation, a private charity that funds medical and agricultural research.

Emissions from food production, already considered one of the biggest contributors to climate change, have been underestimated for decades, potentially skewing the pledges that countries have made under the Paris climate agreement to cut their greenhouse gas emissions, according to new research.

There are proven and profitable agricultural practices that have the power to draw excess carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

But, before agriculture can be a climate change solution, it has to deal with its own greenhouse gas pollution.

Synthetic fertilizers and factory farms must be phased out, while regenerative organic practices that sequester carbon are ramped up.

There’s certainly a lot of potential, especially on grasslands where ruminant animals can forage for the entirety of their lives instead of being fattened on synthetic-fertilizer-grown grains in greenhouse-gas-polluting factory farm feedlots.

We can get grazing animals off grain and phase out of factory farms by increasing on-farm and farmer-owned processing capacity, so that farmers can act independently of the meat and grain monopolies.

The global, industrialized food system faces increasing scrutiny for its environmental impact, given its voracious appetite for land is linked to mass deforestation, water pollution and a sizable chunk of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.