Subscribe to RSS FeedSMALL FARMERS CAN COOL THE WORLD
New from GRAIN
October 2009
http://www.grain.org/seedling/?type=78&l=1
The October issue of Seedling, now available online, is devoted to the climate crisis. It looks at the role of industrial agriculture in creating the climate crisis and examines how this contribution has been seriously underestimated. The global food system is, in fact, the most important single factor behind global warming, responsible for almost half of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, as this issue of Seedling also documents, agriculture can in the future become a powerful tool for mitigating the crisis.
Kildara Farm - one of our own small farms!
Soils contain enormous amounts of carbon, mostly in the form of organic matter. Evidence provided in this issue of Seedling shows that industrial agriculture over the last half century has led to the leaching out into the atmosphere of large amounts of this carbon. A coordinated global programme, based on simple farming principles, could gradually put back into the soil the organic matter lost over past decades. Available data shows that within 50 years we could capture at least 450 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, more than two thirds of the current excess CO2 in the atmosphere.
To transform the world’s food system so that it cools the planet rather than heats it up would require fundamental changes in how we produce food. The current trends towards increased land concentration and the expansion of industrial farming would have to be reversed. Only if millions of small farmers and farming communities have access to land and can count on policies to support their livelihoods can we restore the billions of tonnes of organic matter that the world’s soils have lost.
Such a programme is also the only way to resolve another equally urgent crisis – global hunger. At present, over one billion people suffer from hunger and, with falling yields, widespread drought and more forest fires, the climate crisis is going to make the situation a lot worse.
The report states:
“We are moving into an era of severe disruption of food production. There has never been a more pressing need for a system that can ensure that food is distributed to everyone, according to need. Yet never has the world’s food supply been more tightly controlled by a small group, whose decisions are based solely on how much money they can extract for their shareholders.”
It is high time to turn this situation around. In this issue of Seedling we show that it can be done. And the result would be a healthier planet, improved soils, more and better food, and vigorous rural communities.
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SEEDLING OCTOBER 2009 ISSUE
DOWNLOAD THE ENTIRE ISSUE FROM HERE:
http://www.grain.org/seedling/?type=78&l=1
High resolution PDF (6.7 MB): http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=657&pdf
Low resolution PDF (2.6 MB): http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=657&pdf2
EARTH MATTERS – TACKLING THE CLIMATE CRISIS FROM THE GROUND up by GRAIN
http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=643
The way that industrial agriculture has treated soils has been a key factor in provoking the current climate crisis. But soils can also be a part of the solution, to a much greater extent than is commonly acknowledged. If we could manage to put back into the world’s agricultural soils the organic matter that we have been losing because of industrial agriculture, we would capture at least one third of the current excessive CO2 in the atmosphere.
THE INTERNATIONAL FOOD SYSTEM AND THE CLIMATE CRISIS by GRAIN
http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=642
Today’s global food system, with all its high-tech seeds and fancy packaging, cannot fulfil its most basic function of feeding people. Despite this monumental failure, there is no talk in the corridors of power of changing direction. Large and growing movements of people clamour for change, but the world’s governments and international agencies keep pushing more of the same: more agribusiness, more industrial agriculture, more globalisation. As the planet moves into an accelerating period of climate change, driven, in large part, by this very model of agriculture, such failure to take meaningful action will rapidly worsen FARMERS’ RIGHTS OR FOOLS’ BARGAIN? by Guy Kastler
http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=653
The Governing Body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture held its third session on 1-5 June 2009 in Tunis. Guy Kastler, the European delegate to La Via Campesina’s Biodiversity Commission, and representative of the Réseau Semences Paysannes of France, explains what he sees as the failures of the Treaty and the opportunities and spaces for action emerging from Tunis. A longer version of this article is also available from here: http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=637
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http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=654
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