Global Climate Solutions

By Ryan D. Hottle

“Great problems call for many small solutions.”  Wendell Berry

The intersection between food and energy in the 21st century inscribes one of the most critical crosshatches in American history.  It’s framed within the circumstance peaking world oil and gas supplies, and completely surrounded by the juggernaut of all global problems: irrefutable, worsening and potentially catastrophic global climate change. 

President Elect Barack Obama would do well to appoint secretaries and advisers who knew what the hell they were talking about when it came to agriculture.  The time for change is ripe.  It’s time to compost the usual corporate food conglomerate cronies who weasel their way into positions of power.  They’ve been creating a terrible stench now for quite some time–best we toss them out so they can decompose on the pile.  It’s time to appoint some real people.  It’s time to appoint some folks who give a damn about our communities and about the land and about our precious Earth.

If we did indeed elect Obama on the ticket of change and hope then let’s change this unsustainable food paradigm into one that can breathe hope and nourishment into our countryside.  There’s no better way to prepare for a declining economy or peak oil or climate change than by investing in a sustainable food system and that’s a fact.

To this end, may I formally recommend that Mr. Michael Pollan, Knight Professor of Journalism at University of California, Berkley, be appointed to Secretary of Agriculture.  And seeing that we’re on the right track with this formal recommendation, let me make one more: Mr. Wendell Berry for senior adviser.  Old Mr. Berry’s been around the block a few times and knows a thing or two about culture and agriculture in America.

Some might ask why I focus so heavily on agriculture on a climate blog.  As Michael Pollan says it, agriculture in the US has “transformed a system that in 1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil-fuel energy it used into one that now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food. Put another way, when we eat from the industrial-food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases.”

Emissions associated with the present agricultural system are highlighted in green (this leaves out shipping and processing.) Notice in particular the nitrous oxide and methane emission associated with agriculture.

Unsustainable agriculture likely affects the Earth’s ecosystem and climate more than any other human activity.  It affects the climate through deforestation which contributes around 2.5 Gigatons carbon to the atmosphere each year, around 20% of anthropogenic sources.  Industrial agriculture is wholly dependent on the use of natural gas based anhydrous ammonia fertilizer which releases nitrous oxide (N2O) gases some 296 times more potent than CO2.  And livestock farming (ruminants in particular) and rice paddies make up the bulk of anthropogenic methane gases in the atmosphere.  Like nitrous oxide, methane is also a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, some 23 times more powerful per molecule.  

Hence agriculture and climate are inherently interconnected and require synergistic solutions.  

A funny thing happened as I was working on this article.  I received an email with an identical title as this blog posting: “Michael Pollan for Secretary of Agriculture.”  The email led to an online petition which I quickly signed up for.  Apparently some 540 signatories had the same thing in mind that I did.  I’d ask you, dear reader, to sign up to if you feel so compelled after reading this article.  Simply follow this link: http://new.petitiononline.com/MPoll4Ag/petition.html. 

In short, the situation is this: quality food and farming is tragically overlooked and under appreciated in our country; the entire contrivance of making food commodities from petro-chemical inputs and shipping it with petro-fuel transport and processing it and refrigerating it via petro-electric generation known as “industrial agriculture” is catastrophically unsustainable, unhealthy, and incapable of lasting more than a decade or two at best.  The era of declining oil and gas production, over-population, and economic instability will likely bring the industrial food system to its knees. The good thing is that there’s a lot of reason for hope as a burgeoning movement to produce healthful, local, sustainable foods in communities around the country has blossomed and continues to grow even brighter like a broccoli head gone to flower. 

Rapid Growth in Number of Farmers' Markets in the U.S.

Most recently, Pollan wrote a lengthy recommendation letter to the future president of the United States (prior the unprecedented and triumphal election of Barak Obama.)  In the article, “Farmer in Chief,” Pollan spelled out a close-to-comprehensive set of priorities for the new president to consider. 

(I say “close-to-comprehensive” because Pollan seems to have left out a pair of incredibly important new developments in the sustainable agriculture: the development of revolutionary organic no-till agricultural methods and the powerful soil amendment “biochar” which is created through a process that called pyrolysis that can also capture significant quantities of carbon while simultaneously producing clean energy from sustainably grown biomass feedstocks.  A combination of no-till and biochar carbon storage techniques could lead to the sequestration of thousands of tons of carbon per acre on an annual basis.)

Pollan got right to the point, imploring the future president to take action, “You will need not simply to address food prices but to make the reform of the entire food system one of the highest priorities of your administration: unless you do, you will not be able to make significant progress on the health care crisis, energy independence or climate change.”

MICHAEL POLLAN’S RECOMMENDATIONS TO OBAMA:

• Retool Farm Bill to reward farmers growing diverse crops and maintaining soil healthy with the use of green manures and cover crops year-roun
• Reconnect animals and crop production
• Metropolitan composting of food waste
• Perennialize grain crops (as Wes Jackson and The Land Institute have been promoting for the past several decades)
• Ban routine use of antibiotics in animal production operations
• Encourage greater numbers of people to pursue agriculture
• Require developers to provide “food-impact statements”
• Rebuild the infrastructure of the regional food economy by decentralizing food production and processing
• Provide grants for creation of four season farmers’ markets
• Rebuild local food distribution and transportation services
• Create local zoning, regulations, and policies that make sense for small growers within “Agriculture Enterprise Zones”
• Local-Meats Inspection Corps to inspect meat processing
• Fleet of local Meat Slaughtering
• Establish a Strategic Grain Reserve
• Regionalize Federal Food Procurement
• Redefine Food for Tax Policy and Food Stamps
• Setup Electronic Benefit Transfer Card readers at Farmers’ Markets such that people with Food Stamps can use their cards 
• Increase the WIC program that gives women with children  vouchers for food purchases at farmers’ markets
• Federal programs for elderly food assistance should purchase CSA memberships for program participants from local farms
• Make importance of growing and eating healthful food part of primary education curriculum
• The F.D.A. should mandate that a fossil fuel calorie count goes onto every food label
• A second barcode on label of food should allow consumers access to history of how food was produced with pictures and descriptions of processes and locations where food was grown, processed etc.
• Grow a victory garden on the White House lawn to support local food banks and let the president and his family pull some weeds
• Support hunting as a local foods initiative

See Michael Pollan on “Serious Sustainability” (approximately 24 minutes):

“We need better government, no doubt about it.  But we also need better minds, better friendships, better marriages, better communities.”

Wendell Berry