Switching to organic farming could cut greenhouse gas emiss... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/14/switc...
Switching to organic farming could cut
greenhouse gas emissions, study shows
Study also finds that converting conventionally farmed land would not overly harm
crop yields or require huge amounts of additional land to feed rising populations
Employees work on a salad field on an organic farm in Brodowin, Germany. Photograph: Axel Schmidt/Getty Images
Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent
Tue 14 Nov 2017 17.17 GMT
Converting land from conventional agriculture to organic production could reduce
greenhouse gas emissions, the run-off of excess nitrogen from fertilisers, and cut pesticide
use. It would also, according to a new report, be feasible to convert large amounts of
currently conventionally farmed land without catastrophic harm to crop yields and without
needing huge amounts of new land.
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Switching to organic farming could cut greenhouse gas emiss... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/14/switc...
The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, found that by combining
organic production with an increasingly vegetarian diet, ways of cutting food waste, and a
return to traditional methods of fixing nitrogen in the soil instead of using fertiliser, the
world’s projected 2050 population of more than 9 billion could be fed without vastly
increasing the current amount of land under agricultural production.
This is important, as converting other land such as forests, cerrado or peatlands to
agricultural use would increase greenhouse gas emissions from the land. The authors found
that an increase in organic farming would require big changes in farming systems, such as
growing legumes to replenish nitrogen in the soil.
However, other scientists were cautious over endorsing the report’s findings, pointing out
that the size of the world’s agricultural systems and their variability, as well as assumptions
about future nutritional needs, made generalisations about converting to organic farming
difficult to make.
Sir Colin Berry, emeritus professor of pathology at Queen Mary, University of London, said:
“As for all models, assumptions have to be made and what weight you attach to which item
can greatly change outcomes. The assumption that grassland areas will remain constant is a
large one. The wastage issue is important but solutions, not addressed here, to post-
harvest- pre-market losses will be difficult without fungicides for grains. Some populations
could do with more protein to grow and develop normally, despite the models here
requiring less animal protein.”
Les Firbank, professor of sustainable agriculture at Leeds University, said: “One of the
question marks about organic farming is that it can’t feed the world. [This paper] concludes
organic farming does require more land than conventional methods, but if we manage the
demand for food by reducing waste and reducing the amount of crops grown as animal
feed, organic farming can feed the world.”
He warned: “[These] models can only be viewed as a guide: there are many assumptions
that may not turn out to be true and all these scenario exercises are restricted by limited
knowledge [and] are fairly simplistic compared to real life, but realistic enough to help
formulate policy. The core message is valuable and timely: we need to seriously consider
how we manage the global demand for food.”
Even without converting to organic production, however, the US, India, China and Russia –
four of the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters – could turn into some of the biggest
absorbers of carbon, through better management of their agricultural land.
A separate new study shows that these countries have the greatest potential for the
sequestration of carbon dioxide through changing the way soils are protected, through
better farming methods that can also help to preserve declining soil fertility.
Scientists said the potential of using soil as a carbon sink was equivalent to taking between
215m and 400m cars off the road, even if only small changes are made, of a kind which
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Switching to organic farming could cut greenhouse gas emiss... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/14/switc...
should be achievable on all farms. The study, published on Tuesday in the Nature journal
Scientific Reports, and conducted by experts from the Chinese Academy of Science, the
Nature Conservancy NGO, and the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture, found that
farming crops differently could make a big contribution to achieving the goals of the Paris
agreement on climate change.
Today’s intensive agricultural methods, involving frequent tilling of soils and the excessive
use of chemical fertilisers, could be replaced with the revival of older methods such as the
increased use of manure, cover cropping, mulching and growing trees next to cropland.
However, the role of land management in preventing dangerous levels of climate change has
often been overlooked at the talks, where discussions over the burning of fossil fuels have
dominated. This is partly because of the urgency of switching away from fossil fuels, and
partly because land management is a diffuse and diverse problem spread across the globe
from small farmers to agri-industrialists, whereas fossil fuel sources tend to be larger and
more monolithic, such as coal-fired power plants.
The results will be presented to delegates at the UN COP23 climate talks in Bonn on
Wednesday. Nations at the talks are discussing ways to increase the commitments on
emissions reductions made alongside the Paris agreement, and which scientists say are
currently inadequate to hold the world to no more than 2C of warming, the binding target
under the landmark 2015 accord.
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