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Food, Climate & Policy

by Community Food Security Coalition on Oct 28, 2010

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Presentation by Eliav Bitan during the workshop titled "Food, Climate and Policy: Creating Connections"

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Presentation by Eliav Bitan during the workshop titled "Food, Climate and Policy: Creating Connections"

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Excited to be here. Passionate about food and climate. Raise your hand if you are. Raise your hand if you are looking for a way to bring climate into the work you do on a day to day level. How does that look for you? What kind of information would help you bring climate into your work?
These are imagines from the CFSC-- sound excited-- farm to school report. Aren’t they cute? Cute kids eating great food. I want to ensure that we can keep producing that food in the face of a climate crisis that is going to last the rest of their-- and our, lives. So I want to bring us to our farms and our soil, to be able to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Mitigation means slowing climate change down, by actually puling greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. Adaptation means finding ways to produce food even as our climate changes radically. We’re going to have to both.
My talk will make three points. I’ll start by talking about climate crisis, and how our food system is currently is supporting climate change. But soil is also the way we are going to be able to adapt to climate change. I’ll be focusing on how we can manage water to adapt to climate change. And then I’ll talk about how we can mitigate climate change with our food soils. Soil can provide climate mitigation by pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. And that will be necessary to have a sustainable source of food. First, lets look at the scale of the challenge.
Of the people that work on climate change, here, who has talked to farmers about it? What have they said? What was that conversation like? Some have argued that ¾ of farmers don’t believe in man-made climate change. I’ll try to share one story to really drive home the climate crisis.
This summer I was talking to a farmer from North Dakota. He told me “Climate change isn’t a bad thing for us up here. We’ll be able to grow less wheat, but more corn. And some acres in canada too cold to grow now will be able to grow food. “
He was assuming a linear response of yield to temperature. If this was true, climate change wouldn’t be that bad. I agree. But if we actually measure what happens to crops as temperatures increase we see a very different pattern.
When you look at corn soy and and wheat. They said, what is the yield of different crops as you increase temperature? Does it go down in a line? Or does it change quickly? What if it crossed some kind of threshhold, and plummeted? Some kind of tipping point. This is what happens as temperatures increase to our crops.
This pattern is exactly what we expect from our global climate. It will get hotter, and hotter, until we start seeing new things. Like burning wheat fields, emitting carbon into the atmosphere. What might be an example of this?
This summer, the wheat fields of russia were so hot and dry, they burst into flame after a lightning strike. The fields burnt, and so did the peat soil underneath the crops. The peat soil and crops have huge amounts of carbon dioxide. So these emissions are going to cause even more warming. So as it gets warmer, we get whole new sources of emissions, pushing us to a dramatic change. 300 miles south of moscow 1/5 of crop, third largest, July 31 2010.
One consequence of this warming is that our atmsphere holds more water than it has since there have been humans. So increased temperatures and atmospheric water, means more
Flooding. This has been the experience here in New Orleans. You would see the same in cedar rapids or Pakistan this summer, where 1/5 of the country was underwater. These are signs of climate crisis.
Our food system is supporting climate change. This is a huge challenge. To really understand the challenge, I want to tell a second story, about a scientist at the University of Illinois named Richard Mulvaney.
Richard studies the morrow plots. There they are, right in the middle of the campus. They are the oldest side by farm research station in the United States. There are three fields, and they get high, medium and low levels of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer every year. Richard has done some research that has revealed for the first time how much agriculture contributes to climate change. He asked a simple question. Where does synthetic nitrogen go when its applied to these fields? Only about 1/4 goes into the crops.
Only 1/4 goes into the crops themselves. The rest of it goes two places. Some of it goes into the atmosphere. Nitrogen fertilizer from agricultural fields is responsible for 67% of the USA’s nitrous oxide emissions. Nitrous oxide is 310 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. A woman sprays fertilizer on her field Nakornsawan, Thailand.
And the rest of it wound up in the gulf of Mexico. Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer runs down the Mississippi river and into the gulf. The fertilizer feeds algal blooms that suck up all the oxygen, leaving no way for fish to leave. Where there is a dead zone this year that is the size of new jersey. These low oxygen regions kill any fish that try to live in them. And these dead zones have recently been found to be huge sources of nitrous oxide.
Ok, said Richard. So I’ve followed my nitrogen. What affect is this nitrogen having on the soil? Lets go back to the morrow plots for just a minute. The researchers there had one more interesting finding. As I said, there are three levels of N application, high medium and low.
Less oil carbon. You may not know this, but carbon exists in the soil, and is in a direct relationship with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. So less carbon in the soil, means more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. So ag is a source of carbon dioxide from the soil. This is a new finding, still working out what this means. And folks said to Richard, oh that’s just a result from that one farm in illinois. Well here’s the great thing about science.
He checked this result around the world. So the evidence shows that synthetic nitrogen fertilizers causes nitrous oxide emissions, dead zones, and carbon dioxide emissions. Well this is a great place to pivot to solutions.
Raise hand if you’ve composted. Raise hand if you’ve felt rich soil of a garden. That’s soil carbon. Compare that to a sandbox. Lets keep that comparison for the rest of the talk.
Here’s my third story. Its about another farmer, named Andre. And this is his farm. All his soil used to be this pale color and now its that dark soil. How did he change the soil so radically? I will come back to that. But first I’m gonna share some results that andre found on his farm.
He says…. What he means is.
So in heavy rainfall events, that rich dark soil soaks up water and doesn’t wash away. Well that sure is useful, because decreased rainfall and increased flooding are effects we are sure to see more of in climate change. So how does andre do it?
This is how. He’s the messiest farmer around. The cover crops on his tree farm grow ten feet tall. He lets his cover crops grow up nice and tall around his trees. And then when he mows, them, all that root matter just builds more carbon into his soil.
And here’s how it works. Plants use photosynthesis to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. That carbon winds up in the leaves, stem and roots of the plant. The leaves and stem will be harvested, but the roots are safe under the soil. And the plant roots actually share that carbon with microbes living in the soil. And in return the microbes give the plant nutrients. More soil microbes means more carbon in the soil. And more carbon in the soil means better management of droughts and floods.
I worked at the Rodale farm in Pennsylvania. This was during a drought in 1998. The organic system with more microbes, more soil carbon is on the left. The system with synthetic nitrogen fertilizer is on the right.
This is an image from my friend Norman. The synthetic fertilizers are on the left this time, and the soil microbes-- on the right. This was a drought in Sri Lanka.
And this is a farm I visited in Switzerland, at the European research center, FiBL. So improved performance in droughts and floods-- which is exactly what we are expecting to see more of as our climate changes.
That’s continuing to grow food for kids like these in a changing climate.
Well I used to work at the Rodale Institute Farm with Tim LaSalle and we measured sequestration of about 8 metric tons per hectare in a farming system of using cover crops and compost and no synthetic fertilizer. How much is that? Well its enough that is every hectare in the world achieved that, we could get to,
40% mitigation of annual emissions. We thought this was pretty impressive. And Tim and I went to copenhagen to share this result. While we were there we met some farmers who said, 8 tons per hectare? That’s not that great, we can do even better.
How much better? Composting in egypt’s sandy soils-- 10 tons. Growing trees on a farm, that’s andre’s farm--14 tons per hectare. And then, brining animals onto a farm for intense grazing. Like in the American west, where we grow so much corn to feed to cows.
Instead of corn, here are some native american perrenial grasses. We have, from left to right, wheatgrass, switchgrass, and big bluestem. These are native grasses that grow not too far from here, in Kansas, at the Land Insitute.
When we let these plants grow tall and the roots grow deep, they provide carbon sequestration, and..
And that makes tasty food for these cows! What if every acre acheiveed this kind of carbon sequestration, with roots 10 feet deept?
I hope so.
Find a partner, and explain what you do and how it relates to climate change.

Food, Climate & Policy — Presentation Transcript

Climate, Food and Policy: Making Connections
Jim Richardson, National Geographic 2. Carbon Dioxide-Mitigate 1. Water- Adapt 3. Food
The Current Crisis
Yield Temperature Linear Response
Schlenker and Roberts, 2008, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science Non- Linear Response
Non- Linear Response
Burning Crops
Our atmosphere holds more water than it has in the history of humanity.
Flooding
Our Food System Supports Climate Crisis
University of Illinois
Photo: Reuters
University of Illinois
University of Illinois More N Fertilizer
University of Illinois Less Soil Carbon
Jim Richardson Khan, S.A., R.L. Mulvaney, T.R. Ellsworth, and C.W. Boast. 2007. The myth of nitrogen fertilization for soil carbon sequestration. J. Environ. Qual. 36:1821– 1832 120 Farms 18 Countries
Our Food System Can Adapt to Climate Crisis
Andre Leu
It rains more on my farm.
We don’t have floods, though.
Can you see Andre?
Root Biology Makes Soil Andre Leu
Drought Resistance Drought Resistance
Drought Resistance
Flood Resistance
Our Food System Can Stop Climate Crisis
Carbon Dioxide Stored Metric Tons Per Hectare Plow − . 1 ton No-Till 1 ton Organic Cover Crops 4 tons Organic Cover Crops + Compost 8 tons
40% Mitigation Carbon Dioxide Stored X 3.5 billion acres =
Carbon Dioxide Stored Metric Tons Per Hectare Organic No-Input Organic Compost 8 tons Egyptian Compost AgroForestry 14 tons Mob Grazing ?? No-Till
Where’s The Carbon? Photos: Jim Richardson
Ten Feet Deep Source: Jim Richardson National Geographic, Jerry Glover Land Institute
Carbon Dioxide Stored 100% Mitigation ?? X 3.5 billion acres =
Carbon Dioxide Stored Today: 387 ppm 350 ppm Carbon Dioxide Parts Per Million 270 ppm
Our Food System Can Stop Climate Crisis
- Find a partner!
- I do….
- Climate change matters to my work because…
- I can help our food system adapt to climate change by…
- I can help our food system stop climate change by…
- What policies can drive our food system towards climate sustainability?
- Get in touch!:
- [email_address]

Food, Climate & Policy

by Community Food Security Coalition on Oct 28, 2010

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Food, Climate & Policy — Presentation Transcript