There’s a Homegrown Way to Address Climate Change
Seattle Tilth has a lot of things to celebrate this year. Thirty years of nurturing the region’s communities and environment through organic gardening is certainly one. The organization can also celebrate its place in the ranks of climate change heroes.
Now, you might ask, what does Seattle Tilth’s work promoting organic gardening and local foods have to do with global warming?
After all, when most of us think about food and farming, we tend not to think of climate change. Mention global warming and most conjure up images of industrial smokestacks or oil-thirsty planes, trains and automobiles.
Asked to name climate-change bad guys, most would tag Shell and ExxonMobile before Sara Lee or General Mills.
That the food industry has avoided the hot seat is no surprise when you consider the mainstream media’s lack of coverage of the food system’s role in the crisis. Even major environmental NGOs and films such as “An Inconvenient Truth” have mostly ignored the connection.
We’ve been missing a huge part of the story.
The global industrial food system — from how we grow crops to the way we raise livestock and what we do with the waste — accounts for at least 33 percent of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, according to analysis of data from the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. The livestock sector alone is responsible for nearly one-fifth of the world’s total emissions — more than the entire transportation sector.
Industrial farming is particularly problematic because it is a key emitter of methane and nitrous oxide, which have, respectively, 23 and 296 times the global warming effect of carbon dioxide. In the United States, widespread use of nitrogen fertilizer, roughly half of which is wasted in leaching and runoff, contributes to approximately three-quarters of the country’s nitrous oxide emissions. Globally, agriculture is responsible for nearly two-thirds of methane emissions.
With climate scientists warning we need an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 to avert planetary catastrophe, it’s clear we need bold action — and that bold action must include re-thinking food.
Here’s the good news: We already know how to build a climate-friendly food system. Indeed, organizations such as Seattle Tilth have been showing the way going on three decades. We now have long-term evidence of the wisdom of their work.
Research is showing that organic farms can decrease emissions by eliminating fossil-fuel based agricultural chemicals, for instance, and working with nature to foster soil fertility, promote animal health and handle pests and weeds. Organic farms can also be effective “carbon sinks,” removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and fixing it in soil.
In addition, sustainability initiatives, such as composting, can lower emissions by decreasing food waste that ends up in landfills. Promoting local foods and edible gardens also lower emissions by decreasing the distance from field to plate.
Despite what we know about a sustainable food system’s role in addressing climate change, nearly 100 percent of our nation’s cropland is devoted to industrial agriculture. And while we know climate-friendly farming will require more farmers, we hemorrhage family farms every year. We now have more prisoners behind bars than farmers in the fields.
An organization such as Seattle Tilth may seem like a tiny drop in the climate-change bucket, but its impact should not be measured in isolation. Dozens of sister efforts are flourishing — from Austin, Texas, to Ypsilanti, Mich. — encouraging people to reconnect with their food and giving people the opportunity to get their hands in the dirt.
Yes, the specter of climate chaos is daunting, but day-by-day and garden-by-garden organizations such as Seattle Tilth are showing a homegrown way to address the crisis.
Anna Lappé is the co-author of “Hope’s Edge” (Tarcher 2002) and “Grub” (Tarcher 2006).
©1996-2008 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
I grew up on a farm, and have had a longtime interest in organic community farming and community-supported agriculture. I heartily applaud Anna Lappé’s article. Those of us who can should grow organic vegetables in our yards or in community gardens. Those of us who do not have access to those things need to help by making the political system more fertile for local organic agriculture. This is an immensely important issue.
I’m a member of a CSA in eastern washington and was considering dropping out until they offered an organic option. YEAH!
The real problem is that Global Warming still is not a proven hypothesis. Before you guys start shooting….just remember there are scientific rules about scientific proofs and facts.
So far the hypothesis is still falling short of those requirements. Till its met, till its an accepted, proven scientific fact, talking as if it is simply gives ammunition to the other side.
Dear Anna,
Thanks for beating the drum. Readers may want to check out Roger Doiron’s Kitchen Gardeners International site to see how vibrant the local, home grown food movement can be.
John
Although I disagree with Thomas More (above) about the scientific validity of the anthropogenic climate change hypothesis, there are even better reasons to support sustainable, small-scale organic agriculture. Peak oil is one. The global depletion of freshwater supplies and the destruction of the hydrological cycle, particularly in the United States, is the most serious.
Even if climate change were not a problem, sustainability would be. Or to rephrase, climate change is just one aspect of the crisis being brought about by the unsustainability of the developed world’s failed economic model.
Thomas More,
Do we have to wait for definitive proof about carcinogens and cluster groups from cancer rates before we start telling local industry to stop spewing asbestos or polluting ground water?
Or is “Let’s make sure we’re all about to die before we change what we’re doing” your suggestion?
Thomas More,
There is no such thing as a “proven scientific fact.” There is only evidence supporting hypotheses. All hypotheses must remain open to the possibility of new evidence emerging that would change the particular hypothesis or theory. However, when the overwhelming weight of the evidence supports a given hypothesis, such as is the case with global warming, it would be foolish in the extreme not to take action. That would be about as intelligent as saying that since gravity is not a “proven scientific fact” (and it is not, by the way) then you will not worry about stepping off of an 80 foot precipice because you may not fall to your death.
And to add to the question of whether or not Global Warming is caused by our industrialied society, vegetables grown in your own garden simply taste much better than anything I have eaten from a supermarket.
I’ve tasted the best tomatoes and potatoes in my life when I lived on a farm. The excess tomatoes were either given away or stored in jars. After a few months the potatoes don’t taste as good as the ones collected in August, but they would last until about March, which got us through the winter. The same goes for fruit trees. And the olive oil could be used for anything like cooking, to salad dressing, and getting squeaky doors quiet.
First of all, I cringe every time I hear the phrase “global warming”, since some of us will actually experience “global cooling” or floods or,or, or…a much more accurate phrase, for which there is serious scientific evidence, is “catastrophic climate change.” Secondly, Anna Lappe’s mother, Frances Moore Lappe, has been preaching the social responsiblity Gospel of we-need-to-make-some-serious-changes-in-what-we-eat-and-
how-what-we-eat-is-produced since her revolutionary 1971
book Diet For A Small Planet. I am so happy that Anna is
following in her mother’s footsteps. When I first read her book in 1985, it had such a profound impact on me and
my husband that we became first vegetarians and eventually
committed vegans for about the last five years. We also began growing organic produce and composting. I do not indulge in “please excuse me while I adjust my halo” judgments…but each of us face serious challenges which are going to demand seriousdecisions about how we live.
Another thought on the subject of “scientific proof.” Americans’ perceptions of risk are flawed (I would argue, fatally) by their bedrock legal and regulatory principle that a public health danger must be proven beyond doubt before action can be forced on a private (that is, corporate) interest to cease an activity or correct a problem. This is a peculiarly American approach to the law, and one that puts us increasingly at odds with most of the rest of the world, particularly Europe.
The Europeans operate on the basis of the “precautionary principle,” whereby a preponderance of evidence is enough to enable national governments and the EU to regulate in the public interest, whether on climate change or product safety, air and water quality or chemical use. Because of this regulatory framework, they are way ahead of us in the development of safe and sustainable products and technologies (in spite of what George Bush says).
This regulatory principle has been forced on the American chemical industry, which has been forced to reformulate hundreds of products for sale to EU markets by reducing the presence of carcinogens and endocrine disruptors. The products they sell in the US, however, are based on older, more dangerous, formulations.
The most outrageous example of this difference in approach is in the use of phthalates in childrens’ toys. Most of these toys are made in China, with phthalates for the more permissive American market, with a safer substitute for the more careful Europeans. Phthalates are compounds that make your kids’ plastic toys soft and chewable, and have been proven, to the satisfaction of all but the US Consumer Products Safety Commission, to be endocrine disruptors, or “gender benders.”
Are you scared now? You should be.
To my mind, this is just one indication that EU members enjoy a much more effective democracy than we do here in America (in spite of what George Bush says).
We joined an organic CSA this year and will enjoy our boxes of produce! Insurance providers in our area will even rebate back half the cost of the subscription which makes the cost a steal! Add to that our garden and berry bushes and we’ll be meat free most of the growing season.
I’d highly recommend a turn to vegetarian and/or Vegan
diets which would benefit us all — and the planet.
And, in every regard, we have to reign in corporations and capitalism — indeed, we need to move to economic democracy in order to have real democracy.
The deadly pollution of the planet and over population are issues which corporations mainly want ignored but we must return to.
The trapped HEAT of Global Warming is something that must be understood — when you heat the atmosphere you get chaotic weather — floods, droughts, cyclones, tornadoes, eathquakes, more intense hurricanes, etal.
Let’s get on with NATIONALIZING our natural resources —
including the oil industry.
Let’s get on with raising a corporation to build ELECTRIC CARS — and we can subsidize both the manufacture and the purchase of them and replace every gas-guzzler on our highways in short time.
As far as I can see, GM/Detroit are more concerned about producing gas guzzlers for the oil industry than about producing products the consumer wants and needs.
Mention global warming and most conjure up images of industrial smokestacks or oil-thirsty planes, trains and automobiles.
Trains can be made very oil unthirsty. So can planes and automobiles. And all three can be made completely oil unthirsty, and very solar electric unthirsty. Especially trains. And fast, and fun. So why are we reading another article from the US corporate media based on false assumptions? Can we get over this in America? If so, when? When can we start with true assumptions and work from there? Could we do that in 1920? Nope. 1940? 1960, 1980, 2000? Nope. 2006, 2007, 2008? Nope Nope Nope. When? Do we have to WRECK THE CORPORATE MEDIA first?
It’s not the planes, trains and automobiles that are oil thirsty. It’s not the biofuels wrecking the rainforests, starving the children. It’s the goddamned capitalists who are oil thirsty, pursuing their goddamned power/control over the planet, and until the goddamned oil thirsty capitalist media starts calling a spade a spade, I’m going to spoil the fun here on CD with my unpleasant language.
Are the shareholders of Hostess destroying the biosphere! Of course not, because they are MY family and friends! Instead, the evil culprit is The Twinkie!!!
We have to have a change of values in America starting with this change of value: They aren’t capitalists. They are gaddamned capitalists. Are you a goddamned capitalist? Why are you? Why don’t you stop being a goddamned capitalist? Until we start having these conversations, and put the social and economic and political pressure on the capitalists, the blame will continue to be thrown on the tool rather than the person abusing the tool, in good ol capitalist enabling leftist america, and it will be “sweet ol business as usual” for another century as we destroy the biosphere.
Thomas More, thanks for raising the topic of climate change hypotheses in the face of the relentless capitalist assault on knowledge and fact gathering/exchange here under the capitalist thumb, the “good ol USA”.
What do you think about the capitalist suppression of knowledge and facts? What do you think about the government’s role? What do you think about Jefferson’s “enlighten the people, generally” quote? Do you want to debate the question of hypotheses in the “good ol knowledge-suppressed USA”?
I think the main point of this article is that there are many things we can do on an individual and local level. One person can’t solve the problem by doing this, but one person can lead through example to motivate and instruct other people how to live a sustainable lifestyle.
rtdrury March 13th, 2008 1:51 pm
“If so, when? When can we start with true assumptions and work from there? Could we do that in 1920? Nope. 1940? 1960, 1980, 2000? Nope. 2006, 2007, 2008? Nope Nope Nope. When?”
The 1890s, of course. There were many good rail and tram systems at that time. But only a few gasoline-powered carriages.
conscience, that’s a good choice for a summary of what is relevant and important today. The idea of a democratic economy is interesting but we don’t even need to develop it because what was so useful about markets as explained in the “capitalist’s bible” back in 1776 is the simplicity of it - but contemporary capitalists destroyed the main condition for a market to be functional - that market demand serve the better interests of the society. In the hereafter, Adam Smith is kicking Milton Friedman’s butt all over the place. We should be doing the same right here, right now, in the land of the living.
About nationalizing. Sure we see the evidence of benefits. But why aren’t leftists feeding me the info I want - the explanation? We’re not listening to any more TV commercials showing us the solutions to all our problems, while suppressing the explanation why/how. Listen, we progressives are changing several paradigms at once here. We’re saving the biosphere simultaneous with changing the culture of info flow. We need explanations, enlightenment. We’re not asking for books. We want one-liners.
How does nationalization work and what prevents its corruption? Lots of governments are doing it. Lots of people are promoting it. Nobody is explaining it. “Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits in the dawn of day.”
What would stop the Pentagon’s notorious corruption and inefficiency from creeping into nationalized industry? The US pork barrel is extreme. Nationalize the oil industry and those idiot right wingers will drill to the center of the earth looking for oil, then they will go to the moon.
Nationalization is against individual and local self-determination. Nationalization is extreme in the sense of centralized planning, hierarchical control. In East Asian cultures this seems less of a problem, but in this wild wild western culture, it’s a recipe for enslavement. Most Americans are Pentagon slaves today. The massive corruption turns us into slaves not serving our own better interests but serving idiotic capitalist impulses. Why expand slavery?
Electric cars can be built in small local shops. Let’s move everything local, ehh? You seem hesitant to chuck Detroit in the rubble heap. Detroit proved that it is hopeless fifteen years ago when it starting pushing SUVs after the 1970s oil crisis. Detroit has to be completely replaced. We don’t want corporate manufacturers. We don’t want corporations. We don’t want capital concetrations. We don’t want elites.
Move from CSA to CSE’s. Support both. More food, more fuel. Produced sustainably.
Reduce CO2, reverse the greenhouse effect.
Go to
biopact.com/2008/03/scientists-discover-genetics-of.html
to see how we can sequester more co2 and improve soil fertility.
Go to alcoholcanbeagas.com to learn about cse’s (community-supported energy)
Form fuel coops! It’s the best way to act on our energy future on the local level.
PS Thanks RT Drury for spoiling the fun, it was worth it
Connecting the dots, a couple at a time. Food - Climate Change - centralization of power - local alternatives. I like it. More of these, please, CD!
Something I would be interested in seeing would be the introduction of food rationing, a la WWII Britain. Everyone had enough food, the level of malnutrition, tooth decay and obesity went down, and people grew a lot more of their own food.
I was recently in Cuba and the guidebooks were all obsessed with the fact that there wasn’t always certain foodstuffs available on the store shelves. But that is exactly waht is required in the west. We are the only set of societies in human history that has a surplus of (useless, processed) food and we are also the only set of societies that are two-thirds of the way to destroying the planet. I think our consumption of products, energy, plastics, construction is a factor of the ability we have been granted to stuff our faces without limit 24 hours a day.
For those of you in apartments or mobile homes on postage stamp sized lots all it takes is some bags of potting soil, several disposible roasting pans, various sized pots, seeds, and some sunlight exposure and you too can be gardening. Fresh spices, fruits, and veggies are great eating and the self-reliance they represent will be a good quality to cultivate in the troubled days ahead.
Long posts, rtdrury, but worth the time.
Since you mentioned Adam Smith, let me point out another of Smith’s postulates for the proper functioning of markets: all parties to a transaction must have the same information. Markets aren’t free if information isn’t freely available.
Or as Mark Twain observed, “All professions are conspiracies against the laity.”
A great article. Question for everyone:
If I was planning/considering to write about how the modern American diet is the most unhealthy in the history of human civilization, would anyone object to that thesis?
I’ve got tons of discussion points and that list is ever-increasing by the day. And if people think that idea has already been written about ad nauseum, please share what you think to be the best books on that general subject.
“Connecting the dots, a couple at a time. Food - Climate Change - centralization of power - local alternatives. I like it. More of these, please, CD!”
I agree. Too many articles about things we have little control over and not enough about what we actually can do as individuals.
Could Common Dreams see their way to injecting some balance and a little hope into the daily fare?
david holmquist says “To my mind, this is just one indication that EU members enjoy a much more effective democracy than we do here in America (in spite of what George Bush says).”
we don’t have a democracy. the states of michigan and florida held elections that the dlc chose to oppose, so the dlc encouraged candidates not to participate under threat of punishment by the dlc. of the two candidates left standing, one did and one didn’t remove their name from the ballot. why does a private club (the democratic party) have more power than the constitutionally legitimate governments of the populous states of michigan and florida?
why does anyone think we have a democracy in the united states of america?
a benevolent administrator is what i would elect. perhaps the country is too large to have a democracy or a republic.
certainly, we consumers (no, i don’t generally think of myself as a consumer, but my national government does) have little to no say in how our regulators work or what happens to the profits generated from us.
one thing the lappes have shown us is that eating a vegetarian diet is a socially responsible thing to do. the fields are planted ditch to ditch with corn to make ethanol
(and to feed livestock).
perhaps the most radical and productive change anyone could make would be to see to it that preschool children are taught to value the group more than the individual. from this one act could flow a number of constructive behaviors.
Has anyone YouTubed Codex Alimentarius or UN Agenda 21?
You should.
Termite: Can’t disagree with most of what you said except that the evidence does not support the hypothesis of man made global warming. No doubt that there is a human contribution, but the cause of global warming has not been established. Human activity does not account for all of it. What does? That is an interesting question being stiffled by people wanting to stop pollution and oil consumption. I sympathize greatly as I do not like pollution. But I also think understanding what is happening to the planet is important. It is just human arrogance to believe that the rise in global temperature must be due to them.
Peace Czar,
When you posit the thesis “the modern American diet is the most unhealthy in the history of human civilization,” you set yourself up for a lot of evidence-gathering. I think it would be impossible to examine EVERY diet in the history of human civilization, and it is entirely possible that there have been worse diets.
You would also need to set up your parameters for “healthy” and “unhealthy,” by no means objective measurements. Americans now may be considered “healthier” than their ancestors because they have access to advanced preventative medical care. Diet, of course, is critical to health, but it cannot combat childhood polio or the ravages of smallpox, both diseases we have been able to prevent in “modern America.”
Consider setting up a thesis that is easier to prove and discuss, and perhaps gets more to the heart of your message. Maybe, “The modern American diet has alienated Americans from traditional diets that provided whole, healthful nutrition, and also connected people to the cycles of growth and harvest and granted an awareness of the interdependence of human beings with the natural world from which they derive their sustenance.” Less wordy, perhaps. Then you could give examples of historical diets that did connect people to the earth and gave them a better understanding between diet and health.
lizard - i agree with you that there are most likely other factors at work with global climate change, but i think the human contribution can’t be ignored or undervalued. reducing and eliminating our contribution will mitigate any changes that may occur due to external factors. it’s equally as arrogant to think that we *can’t* possibly be the cause of the problem. and there are other, non-global climate change related reasons to reduce petroleum consumption. it is, truly, “the devil’s excrement.”
although some people may choose to eat a vegan or vegetarian diet, we won’t be moving away from animal agriculture anytime soon, particularly if we want to farm organic more - we need the, um, organic material the farm animals produce. we just need to reject industrialized animal farming - cafo’s and their pollution, unsafe and inhumane abattoirs, and so on. cows should eat the grass they evolved to eat, chickens should scratch and eat grubs and bugs, and pigs should engage their natural desire to root and dig. then the animal products we respectfully take from them will be healthier and cleaner.
I’ve always been anti-lawn and pro-raised beds.
I bet everyone has some sort of a container that could be used - a couple of dollars still buys a small packet of kale or chard seeds. Start a few at a time in small containers - they transplant easily. The chard can be added chopped to an omelet, just take the outside leaves and the plant continues to grow. The kale leaves, taken the same way to prolong growth, gets dropped into anything cooked in a crockpot. Simple, easy. Keep up the routine to have plants coming on as old ones finish - containers that can be shifted about, even have them inside over the winter. Anyone can do it; everyone should do it.
Look up Terra Preta or biochar.
http://www.biochar-international.org/aboutbiochar.html
When you add powdered charcoal to the soil you permanently improve that soil AND sequester carbon. The charcoal can be from twigs, leaves, corncobs, rice husks, any dry vegetative matter.
Sequesters carbon, improves your garden. Biochar
Have a little problem with a circular argument made in the article. It asserts that:
1. Organic agriculture will fight global warming.
2. Animal production is a huge contributor to global warming.
3. We should replace synthetic fertilizer with animal waste.
Am I the only one who is wondering where all the animal waste is going to come from?
High intensity farming allows more land to remain in “natural” habitats. Reducing meat in our diet will further reduce habitat destruction (and manure = organic fertilizer).
The following link is to a recent peer-reviewed scientific paper on global warming. The researcher was forced out of NASA for jeopardizing climate-change funding at NASA.
http://met.hu/doc/idojaras/vol111001_01.pdf
TO Thomas More March
You are completely MISSING the point.
You are sitting around bickering about a detail.. WHEN.. a solution such as more sustainable food production IS a big solution (for multiple reasons such as rising oil costs) for many reasons.
Why is it that people like you refuse to take any positive approach and just would rather SIT and be stubborn because you want to WAIT it out so you see if YOU will be proven RIGHT.
Local food production IS a positive step forward for many reasons.. ORganic agriculture is a positive step forward for many reasons.
Get your head out of the sand and move in a positive dirction instead of being a stubborn mule and say “wait.. they haven’t PROVEN” Global warming so I am going to sit and wait and do NOTHING until I see facts that prove I am right! or prove DEFINABLY one way or another”
THe problems we face are NOT limited to GLobal Warming.. if you ONLY look at Climate change as being the only problem.. then you have blinders on…
Caelidh - Can you answer the question below?
1. Organic agriculture will fight global warming.
2. Animal production is a huge contributor to global warming.
3. We should replace synthetic fertilizer with animal waste.
Where will all the animal waste come from?