Feeding the world under climate change

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6 Oct 2004 13:43:57 -0000

 

Feeding the world under climate change

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ISIS Press Release 06/10/04

 

Why sustainable agriculture

 

The debate over sustainable agriculture has gone beyond the

health and environmental benefits that it could bring in

place of conventional industrial agriculture. For one thing,

conventional industrial agriculture is heavily dependent on

oil, which is running out; it is getting increasingly

unproductive as the soil is eroded and depleted. Climate

change will force us to adopt sustainable, low input

agriculture to ameliorate its worst consequences, and to

genuinely feed the world.

 

But in order to get there, important changes have to be made

in international agencies and institutions, which have

hitherto supported the dominant model of industrial

agriculture and policies that work against poor countries,

where farmers are also desperately in need of secure land

tenure.

 

This mini-series is a continuation of many articles that

have appeared in our magazine, Science in Society since 2002

(http://www.i-sis.org.uk/isisnews.php).

 

Feeding the World under Climate Change

********************************

 

Industrial agriculture contributes enormously to global

warming, it is increasingly unproductive and heavily

dependent on oil that's fast running out. Nor can it feed us

once climate change really gets going. A very different

agriculture is needed, says Edward Goldsmith

 

References for this article are posted on ISIS members'

website http://www.i-sis.org.uk/full/FTWUCCFull.php. Details

here http://www.i-sis.org.uk/membership.php.

 

Climate change is happening

 

Climate change is by far and away the most daunting problem

that the human species has ever encountered. The Inter-

Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its last

assessment report expect a temperature change of up to 5.8

degrees within this century. However, the IPCC did not take

into account a number of critical factors including the

annihilation of our tropical forests and other vegetation.

These contain six hundred billion tons of carbon - almost as

much as is contained in the atmosphere - much of which is

likely to be released into it in the next decades by the

increasingly uncontrolled activities of the giant logging

companies. The Director General of the United Nations

Environment Programme recently stated that only a miracle

could save the world's remaining tropical forests. Nor does

the IPCC take into account the terrible damage perpetrated

on the planet's soils by modern industrial agriculture with

its huge machines and arsenal of toxic chemicals. Our

planet's soils contain one thousand six hundred billion

tonnes of carbon, more than twice as much as is contained in

the atmosphere. Much of this will be released in the coming

decades; unless there is a rapid switch to sustainable,

largely organic, agricultural practices.

 

The Hadley Centre of the British Meteorological

Organisation, by contrast, has taken these and other such

factors into account in its more recent models, and

concluded that the world's average temperature will increase

by up to 8.8 rather than 5.8 degrees this century [1]. Other

climatologists who take into account often largely neglected

factors are even gloomier [2].

 

The IPCC says that we can expect a considerable increase in

heat waves, storms, floods, and the spread of tropical

diseases into temperate areas, impacting on the health of

humans, livestock and crops. It also predicts a rise in sea

levels up to eighty-eight centimetres this century, which

will affect (by seawater intrusion into the soils underlying

croplands and by temporary and also permanent flooding)

something like 30% of the world's agricultural lands [3]. If

the Hadley Centre is right, the implications will be even

more horrifying. Melting of the secondary Antarctic, the

Arctic, and in particular, the Greenland ice-shields is

occurring far more rapidly than was predicted by the IPCC.

This will reduce the salinity of the oceans, which in turn

would weaken if not divert, oceanic currents such as the

Gulf Stream from their present course [4]. And if that

continues, it would eventually freeze up areas that at

present have a temperate climate, such as Northern Europe

(see also " Global warming and then the big freeze " , SiS 20).

 

It is indeed ironic that global warming could lead to local

or regional cooling. If this were not bad enough, we must

realise that even if we stopped burning fossil fuels

tomorrow, our planet would continue to heat up for at least

150 years, on account of the residence time of carbon

dioxide, the most important greenhouse gas in the

atmosphere, while the oceans will continue to warm up for a

thousand years at least. All we can do is take those

measures - and very dramatic ones are required to slow down

the warming process - so that when our climate eventually

stabilises, our planet remains partly, at least, habitable.

 

Climate change is proceeding faster than predicted. This is

becoming apparent, among other things, by the prolonged

droughts in many parts of the world. Four years of drought

in much of Africa have resulted in thirty to forty million

people facing starvation. At the same time, drought in the

main bread-baskets of the world: the American corn belt, the

Canadian plains, and the Australian wheat belt will

seriously reduce cereal exports. The climate in Europe in

2002 was dreadful. Massive floods in Germany are costing at

least 13 billion dollars. Terrible storms in northern Italy,

with hailstones the size of tennis balls, destroyed crops

over a wide area, and drought in southern Europe drastically

reduced harvests.

 

I was driven through endless olive groves in the southern

Italian province of Foggia and did not see a single olive on

any tree. Climate related disaster have been even more

destructive in 2003 and 2004.

 

All this is the result of no more than 0.7 degree rise in

global temperature. What will things be like when we have to

grow our food in a world whose average temperature has

increased by 2 or 3 degrees, let alone by 5 to 8 degrees as

we are told later in this century?

 

Emissions of nitrous oxide and methane

 

It is becoming clear that climate change and its different

manifestations mentioned above will be the most important

constraints on our ability to feed ourselves in the coming

decades. We cannot afford to just sit and wait for things to

get worse. Instead, we must do everything we can to

transform our food production system to help combat global

warming and, at the same time, to feed ourselves, in what

will almost certainly be far less favourable conditions.

 

Modern industrial agriculture by its very nature makes and

must make a very large contribution to greenhouse gases.

Currently it is responsible for 25% of the world's carbon

dioxide emissions, 60% of methane gas emissions and 80% of

nitrous oxide, all powerful greenhouse gases [5].

 

Nitrous oxide is generated through the action of

denitrifying bacteria in the soil when land is converted to

agriculture. When tropical rainforests are converted into a

pasture, nitrous oxide emissions increase three-fold. All in

all, land conversion is leading to the release of around

half a million tonnes a year of nitrogen in the form of

nitrous oxide.

 

Nitrous oxide is up to 310 times more potent than carbon

dioxide as a greenhouse gas, according to the European

Environment Agency, though fortunately atmospheric

concentrations of nitrous oxide are currently less than one-

thousandth that of carbon dioxide - 0.31ppm (parts per

million) compared with 365 ppm. Nitrogenous fertilisers are

another major source of nitrous oxide. Around 70 million

tonnes a year of nitrogen are now applied to crops and

contributing as much as 10% of the total annual nitrous

oxide emissions of 22 million tonnes. With fertiliser

applications increasing substantially, especially in

developing countries, nitrous oxide emissions from

agriculture could double over the next 30 years [6].

 

In the Netherlands, which has the world's most intensive

farming, as much as 580 kilograms per hectare of nitrogen in

the form of nitrates or ammonium salts are applied every

year as fertiliser, and at least 10% of that nitrogen gets

straight back into the atmosphere, either as ammonia or

nitrous oxide [6].

 

The growth of agriculture is also leading to increasing

emissions of methane. In the last few decades, there has

been a substantial increase in livestock numbers - cattle in

particular - largely as the result of converting tropical

forests to pasture. Cattle emit large amounts of methane and

the destruction of forests to raise cattle is therefore

contributing to increased emissions of two of the most

important greenhouse gases.

 

Worldwide, the emissions of methane by livestock amount to

some 70 million tonnes. With modern methods of production,

cattle are increasingly fed on a high-protein diet,

especially when fattened in feedlots. Such cattle emit

considerably more methane gas than grass-fed cattle. Even

the fertilisation of grasslands with nitrogen fertilisers

can both decrease methane uptake by soil bacteria and

increase nitrous oxide production, thereby increasing

atmospheric concentrations of both these gases [7].

 

The expansion of rice paddies has also seriously increased

methane emissions. Rain-fed rice produces far less methane

than inundated rice fertilised with nitrogen fertiliser.

 

Industrial farming is energy intensive

 

The most energy-intensive components of modern industrial

agriculture are the production of nitrogen fertiliser, farm

machinery and pumped irrigation. They account for more than

90% of the total direct and indirect energy used in

agriculture and are all essential to it.

 

Emissions of carbon from burning fossil fuels for

agricultural purposes in England and Germany were as much as

0.046 and 0.053 tonnes per hectare, compared with only 0.007

tonnes in non-mechanised agricultural systems, i.e., more

than seven times lower [8].

 

This ties in with the estimate of Pretty and Ball [9], that

to produce a tonne of cereals or vegetables by means of

modern agriculture requires 6 to 10 times more energy than

by using sustainable agricultural methods.

 

It could be argued that a shift to renewable energy sources

such as wind power, wave-power, solar power and fuel cells

would avoid having to reduce energy consumption to protect

our climate. However, this necessary substitution would take

decades; about 50 years according to some estimates.

 

A radical reduction in gas emissions is needed right now if

we are to take on board Hadley Centre's prediction that

rising temperatures within thirty years will begin to

transform our main sinks for carbon dioxide and methane -

forests, oceans and soils - into sources. If that occurs, we

shall be caught up in a 'runaway' process, i.e. an

unstoppable chain-reaction towards increasing temperatures

and climatic instability.

 

Sustainable agriculture a matter of urgency

 

We must develop an agricultural system that does not cause

these terrible problems, and which on the contrary, helps to

revitalise and hence build-up our soil resources. Such an

agricultural system would have much in common with those

once practiced by our distant ancestors and are still

practiced by those communities in the remoter parts of the

Third World. They may be " uneconomic " within the context of

an aberrant and necessarily short-lived industrial society,

but they are the only ones designed to feed local people in

a really sustainable manner. Significantly, the most

respected authorities on sustainable agriculture, among them

Jules Pretty and Miguel Altieri, and there are many others,

increasingly use the term " sustainable agriculture " as

synonymous with " traditional agriculture " .

 

If traditional agriculture is the solution to feeding people

under climate change, one might ask why are governments and

international agencies so keen to prevent traditional

peoples from practising it anymore and to substitute modern

industrial agriculture in its place. The answer is that

traditional agriculture is not compatible with the

developmental process we are imposing on the people of the

Third World, still less with the global economy, and less

still with the immediate interests of the transnational

corporations that control it all.

 

That this is so is clear from the following quotes from two

World Bank reports. In the first, on the development of

Papua New Guinea, the World Bank admits that, " a

characteristic of Papua New Guinea's subsistence agriculture

is its relative richness " . Indeed " over much of the country

nature's bounty produces enough to eat with relatively

little expenditure of effort " [10]. Why change it then? The

answer is clear, " Until enough subsistence farmers have

their traditional lifestyles changed by the growth of new

consumption wants, this labour constraint may make it

difficult to introduce new crops " , i.e., those required for

large scale production for export.

 

In the World Bank's iniquitous Berg report, it is

nevertheless acknowledged [11] " that smallholders are

outstanding managers of their own resources - their land and

capital, fertiliser and water " . And it is also acknowledged

that the dominance of this type of agriculture or

'subsistence production' " presented obstacles to

agricultural development. The farmers had to be induced to

produce for the market, adopt new crops and undertake new

risks " .

 

Industrial agriculture is on the way out

 

Whether we like it or not, modern industrial agriculture is

on the way out. It is proving ever less effective. We are

now encountering diminishing returns on fertilisers. The

Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations

(FAO) admitted in 1997 that wheat yields in both Mexico and

the USA had shown no increase in 13 years. In 1999, global

wheat production actually fell for the second consecutive

year to about 589 million tons, down 2% from 1998.

Fertilisers are too expensive and as McKenney puts it [12],

" the biological health of soils has been driven into such an

impoverished state in the interests of quick, easy

fertility, that productivity is now compromised, and

fertilisers are less and less effective " .

 

Pesticides too are ever less effective. Weeds, fungi,

insects and other potential pests are amazingly adaptable.

Five hundred species of insects have already developed

genetic resistance to pesticides, as have 150 plant

diseases, 133 kinds of weeds and 70 species of fungus. The

reaction today is to apply evermore powerful and more

expensive poisons, which in the US, cost 8 billion dollars a

year, not counting the cost of spreading them on the land

[13]. The farmers are losing the battle, the pests are

surviving the chemical onslaught but farmers are not. More

and more farmers are leaving the land, and the situation

will get much worse.

 

Today we are witnessing the forced introduction of

genetically modified crops by international agencies in

collusion with national governments, as the result of the

massive lobbying by an increasingly powerful biotechnology

industry. Genetically modified crops, quite contrary to what

we are told, do not increase yields. They require more

inputs including more herbicides, whose use they are

supposed to reduce significantly, as well as irrigation

water. Also, the science on which they are based is

seriously flawed. No one knows for sure what will be the

unexpected consequences of introducing, by a very

rudimentary technique, a specific gene into the genome of a

very different creature. Surprises are in store and some

could cause serious problems of all sorts [14].

 

Oil is running out

 

Another reason why industrial agriculture has had its day,

even without climate change, is that it is far too

vulnerable to increases in the price of oil; and more so, to

shortages in the availability of this fuel.

 

If three million people starved to death in North Korea in

the last few years, it was partly the result of the collapse

of the Russian market which absorbed most of its exports, so

it could no longer afford to import the vast amount of oil

on which its highly mechanised, Soviet inspired,

agricultural system had become so totally dependent. Its

'farmers' had simply forgotten how to wield a hoe or push a

wheelbarrow.

 

The UK could have been in a similar plight if the transport

strike of 2000 had lasted a few more weeks. In an industrial

society, oil is required to transport essential food

imports, to build and operate tractors, to produce and use

fertilisers and pesticides and process, package and

transport food to the supermarkets - a more vulnerable

situation is difficult to imagine at the best of times - but

it is suicidal today.

 

It is not just temporary oil shortages associated with

temporary jumps in the price of oil that we are destined to

face but the steady decline in the availability of this

commodity. Consequently, oil is due to become increasingly

expensive. The truth is that worldwide oil production will

peak within the next four to ten years. Oil discoveries have

been very disappointing and much of the oil we are using

today was discovered some forty years or so ago. The Caspian

Sea area which many people in the oil business expected to

contain as much as 200 billion barrels of oil; but according

to Colin Campbell [15], one of the world's leading

authorities on the oil industry, it is more likely to

contain as little as 25 billion barrels and no more than 40

or 50 billion. The world uses 20 billion barrels a year and

consumption is increasing at an alarming rate.

 

Although the US has tried desperately to reduce its

dependence on the Middle East and succeeded in doing to a

certain extent, alternative sources of oil are drying up

more quickly than expected. Iran for instance is unlikely to

produce more oil than it requires for its own use in ten or

fifteen years. Indeed, in the next twenty years the US will

have become more dependent on the Middle East than it is

today as oil production of countries like Angola, Nigeria,

Venezuela, and Mexico also begin to fall. This explains why

the US oil industry, which is now in effect the government

of the USA, is so fanatically determined to conquer Iraq.

Iraq has 11% of world known reserves, of which only a

fraction is exploited, and whose oil is the cheapest in the

world. The economic consequences of the coming world oil

crisis cannot be over-estimated.

 

Conclusion

 

Industrial agriculture contributes a lot to climate change;

it is increasingly unproductive and heavily dependent on oil

that's fast running out. Our only option is to switch

comprehensively to sustainable, low input agriculture, which

not only feeds the world, but also ameliorate the worst

manifestations of climate change.

 

 

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