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A Climate Solution is in the Soil
With the worsening crises in public health, biodiversity, and global warming, the future can look bleak. Fortunately, there’s a solution: regenerative food, farming, and land use.
Regenerative agriculture, when scaled up and combined with reforestation and other regenerative land use practices, has the potential to generate a net decrease in atmospheric carbon. How? By allowing photosynthesis to do its job. Carbon drawn from the atmosphere by living plants helps build soil organic matter. When soil organic matter is disturbed or destroyed, the carbon is released back into the atmosphere where it contributes to global warming. Regenerative farming practices help preserve and build soil organic matter, so the carbon drawn down through photosynthesis remains sequestered in the soil.
If regenerative practices are implemented on enough land, we’ll reach zero net emissions by 2030 and begin to reverse global warming. Transitioning to regenerative agriculture will also produce healthier food, build soil fertility, restore depleted groundwater, and build local resilience and food security. Regenerative agriculture is a way forward to restore the health of people and the planet.
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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.
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Emperor Gates has a new decree: “All rich countries should move to 100% synthetic beef.”
Bill Gates has invested in Impossible Foods whose CEO, Pat Brown, says his genetically engineered synthetic meat substitutes will replace the use of animals by 2035.
You’d think the Impossible Foods pitch would be about the horrors of factory farming. Instead, Gates and Brown take aim at regenerative organic agriculture and grass-fed beef. According to Fortune.com: “Gates and Brown believe that genetically modified seeds and chemical herbicides, in the right doses––and not land-intensive organic farming––are crucial to curbing carbon emissions.”
That old lie about organic farming has been thoroughly debunked, and real climate activists know “It’s not the cow, it’s the how.”
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There is a big debate, as you know, about meat production and climate change. The corporate media promotes the Bill Gates/Silicon Valley myth that eating less meat and animal products (not just factory farmed, but climate-friendly/carbon sequestering organic and regenerative meat and animal products as well) and abolishing animal agriculture altogether (small scale grazing and animal husbandry supports a billion small farmers on the planet whose lands are not suitable for growing food crops) will be better for the climate. Fake meats produced on an industrial scale in chemical vats with GMOs are also being promoted as better for the climate by the billionaires such as Bill Gates who have invested in it.
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RECOMMENDED BOOKS
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This book tackles an increasingly crucial question: What can we do about the seemingly intractable challenges confronting all of humanity today, including climate change, global hunger, water scarcity, environmental stress, and economic instability? The quick answers are: Build topsoil. Fix creeks. Eat meat from pasture-raised animals. -
In Soil Not Oil, Vandana Shiva explains that a world beyond dependence on fossil fuels and globalization is both possible and necessary. Condemning industrial agriculture as a recipe for ecological and economic disaster, Shiva champions the small, independent farm: their greater productivity, their greater potential for social justice as they put more resources into the hands of the poor, and the biodiversity that is inherent to the traditional farming practiced in small-scale agriculture. -
In The Soil Will Save Us, journalist and bestselling author Kristin Ohlson makes an elegantly argued, passionate case for "our great green hope"—a way in which we can not only heal the land but also turn atmospheric carbon into beneficial soil carbon—and potentially reverse global warming. -
The climate change challenge is real, and it is here now. To enjoy the sustained production of food, fiber and fuel well into the 21st century, we must begin now to make changes that will enhance the adaptive capacity and resilience of North American agriculture. The rich knowledge base presented in Resilient Agriculture is poised to serve as the cornerstone of an evolving, climate-ready food system. -
Two Percent Solutions for the Planet profiles fifty innovative practices that soak up carbon dioxide in soils, reduce energy use, sustainably intensify food production, and increase water quality. The “two percent” refers to: the amount of new carbon in the soil needed to reap a wide variety of ecological and economic benefits; the percentage of the nation’s population who are farmers and ranchers; and the low financial cost (in terms of GDP) needed to get this work done. -
Around the globe most people get their calories from “annual” agriculture — plants that grow fast for one season, produce lots of seeds, then die. Every single human society that has relied on annual crops for staple foods has collapsed. Restoration Agriculture explains how we can have all of the benefits of natural, perennial ecosystems and create agricultural systems that imitate nature in form and function while still providing for our food, building, fuel and many other needs — in your own backyard, farm or ranch. -
In Cows Save the Planet, journalist Judith D. Schwartz looks at soil as a crucible for our many overlapping environmental, economic, and social crises. Schwartz reveals that for many of these problems—climate change, desertification, biodiversity loss, droughts, floods, wildfires, rural poverty, malnutrition, and obesity—there are positive, alternative scenarios to the degradation and devastation we face. In each case, our ability to turn these crises into opportunities depends on how we treat the soil.
