The Need to Overturn Damaging Agricultural Practices
A global shift to sustainable farming will not only help create a stable climate, it will also improve food and water security and safety, sustainable rural livelihoods, and environmental health. But industrial agriculture requires the production and use of toxic chemicals; converts forests, marshes, and other lands to agricultural uses; and encourages excessive tillage, unhealthy livestock-rearing conditions, and long-distance food transport—all climate-changing practices responsible for inefficiencies, inequities, and conflict the world over.
Massive use of agricultural chemicals has degraded the health of our soils so significantly that crop yields have plateaued or collapsed in some regions. Scientists estimate that 50 to 70 percent of carbon has been lost in industrially farmed soils. That carbon escapes into the atmosphere, causing increased levels of CO2. It also dissolves into our oceans, causing raised acidity levels that threaten marine life and critical food systems. Additionally, after decades of intensive over-use, pest and plant diseases are becoming resistant to fossil fuel-based chemicals.
On the climate and agriculture front, there is reason to hope. While agriculture is currently a big part of the climate change problem, it has the potential to be a big part of the solution. We can reduce or eliminate our food system’s chemical dependency—which will lower GHG emissions, rebuild healthy soils and fertility, and restore watersheds, among other benefits.
We must ditch our massive monoculture approach and build resilience to extreme, unpredictable weather by bringing back crop diversity. We need to smartly reintegrate livestock into farming systems, rather than into animal factories. We need to provide economic assistance to farmers and rural communities to generate viable incomes from ecological agricultural practices.
J. Gallán