"Let us not talk falsely
now, for the hour is getting late."
Bob Dylan,
"All Along the Watchtower"
* *
*
Beyond the gloom and doom of
the climate crisis, there lies a powerful and regenerative grassroots
solution: organic food, farming, and ranching. Even as politicians and
the powerful fossil fuel lobby drag their heels and refuse to acknowledge
that we have about ten years left of "business as usual" before
we irreversibly destroy the climate and ourselves, there is a powerful,
though largely unrecognized, life-force spreading its roots underground.
Millions of organic farmers,
ranchers, conservationists, and backyard gardeners (supported
by millions of organic consumers)
are demonstrating that we can build a healthy alternative to industrial
agriculture and Food Inc. Our growing organic movement is proving that
we can not only feed the world with healthy food, but also reverse global
warming, by capturing and sequestering billions of tons of climate-destabilizing
greenhouse gases in the soil, through plant photosynthesis, composting,
cover crops, rotational grazing, wetlands preservation, and reforestation.
The heretofore
unpublicized "good news" on climate change, according to the Rodale
Institute and
other soil scientists, is that transitioning
from chemical, water, and energy-intensive industrial agriculture practices
to organic farming and ranching on the world's 3.5 billion acres of
farmland and 8.2 billion acres of pasture or rangeland can
sequester 7,000 pounds per acre of climate-destabilizing CO2 every year,
while nurturing healthy soils, plants, grasses, and trees that are resistant
to drought, heavy rain, pests, and disease. And
of course organic
farms and ranches can provide us with food that is much more nutritious
than industrial farms and ranches-food filled with vitamins, anti-oxidants,
and essential trace minerals, free from Genetically Modified Organisms
(GMOs), pesticides, antibiotics, and sewage sludge.
In 2006, U.S.
carbon dioxide pollution from fossil fuels (approximately 25% of the
world's total) was estimated at nearly 6.5 billion tons. If a 7,000
lb/CO2/ac/year sequestration rate were achieved on all 434 million acres
of cropland in the United States, nearly 1.6 billion tons of carbon
dioxide would be sequestered per year, mitigating close to one quarter
of the country's total fossil fuel emissions. If pastures and rangelands
were similarly converted to organic practices, we would literally be
well on our way to reversing global warming.
But we need an organic revolution
in ranching and livestock production, as well as farming and forestry.
We need to drastically reduce meat overproduction (77% of all U.S. agriculture
resources are devoted to raising animals or animal feed), and over-consumption
(a leading cause of obesity, heart disease and cancer) and ban methane-belching
factory farms. As the Rodale Institute points out, organic livestock
raising practices, including rotational grazing, manure management,
methane capture for biogas production, and improved feeds and feed additives,
can drastically reduce livestock-related emissions and, because of the
massive acreage currently devoted to livestock production (nearly 2.5
times greater than croplands), can safely sequester approximately 60%
of the total greenhouse gases that humans, animals, cars, and industry
are pumping out every year.
This Organic Revolution, or
"Great Sequestering," made possible by a global grassroots movement
with the power to transform the marketplace and public policy, is perhaps
the only short-term strategy or solution at hand that can buy us the
precious time we need to radically reduce energy use and greenhouse
pollution and build a green economy. Although politicians and the coal
and utilities industry claim that sequestration of massive carbon dioxide
emissions from coal-fired power plants is on the horizon, there is little
or no scientific evidence to back this up. Sequestration of CO2 in the
soils of organic farms and ranches, on the other hand, is a proven fact.
Before carbon
sequestering forests and grasslands were ravaged by chemical-intensive
industrial agriculture (and industrial forestry), soil organic matter
generally composed 6-10% of the soil volume, three to six times the
1-3% levels typical of today's industrial agriculture soils. In other
words, taxpayer subsidized, chemical-based industrial agriculture, factory
farms, and unrestricted grazing (along with industrial forestry) have
turned the earth's soil (which still contains three times as much
carbon as the entire amount of CO2 in the atmosphere) from being a climate-stabilizing
carbon sink into a massive and dangerous source of global warming.
Given our escalating climate
emergency, the burning question is how do we move organics in the U.S.
from being the 4% alternative in the marketplace to being the norm,
and organic acreage from being 1% of total cultivated land to the majority
of farmland, pasture, and rangeland? The answer of course is that we
must sound the alert, offer up our practical solutions and rapidly transform
public consciousness and policy. But the Via Organica, the road
to get there, will be long and arduous. The majority of Americans must
not only stop buying chemical, GMO, globally sourced and so-called "natural"
food, and switch to organic and more locally and regionally produced
products, but we must also rise up as a political movement and change
public policy. We must literally force the politicians and the corporations
to put a halt to our "business as usual" destruction of the climate
and public health, and instead move to an ethical and scientifically
grounded policy and practice that promotes health, conservation, greenhouse
gas reduction, and organic sequestration. Please join and support the
Organic Consumers Association and the climate change movement https://www.350.org as we carry out this life or death
campaign.
