Future farms

While many experts point fingers at automobiles as the major problem behind greenhouse gas emissions, they would be well advised to spread some of the blame on contemporary industrial farming methods, according to Dennis Garrity, director of the International Council for Research in Agro-Forestry (ICRAF) in Nairobi.

"The agriculturists and their farming systems are emitting more carbon," he said. "All the trucks, all the cars don't measure up to what agriculture is contributing to carbon loss to the atmosphere. We have to turn that around."

Garrity and his colleagues focus on developing sustainable agricultural systems for small-scale farmers. The council's plans involve farming systems that absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and provide both income and nourishment to more people.

Planting trees to protect the climate

Planting more trees is one of Garrity's common recommendations.

"When we put the trees into the system, we start to get quite substantial increases in carbon absorption," he said. "In agro-forestry - a system of both trees and crops - that could be, on the average, one to five tons per hectare per year, which is very favorable compared to the normal situation, which is that the soil may lose 0.1 to 0.4 tons of carbon per hectare per year."

That's good news for the climate, but bad news for large-scale, industrial farmers. The monocultures typical to such farms are among the worst climate offenders as they generate more CO2 than they absorb. Such plants are also especially susceptible to climate change.

"So many square kilometers - as far as the eye can see - of just one plant, such as soya," said Benedikt Haerlin, of the Zukunftsstiftung Landwirtschaft, or Future Foundation for Agriculture. "It's a plague." And with it, a huge section of land becomes completely unproductive."

Haerlin contributed to the global "Agriculture at a Crossroads" report published in 2008, and drew attention when he called for sustainable agricultural methods that have only low environmental impacts.

Globalized farming

But globalization has also long taken hold of the world's agricultural economy. In Europe, dairy cows are fed with soya, 70 percent of which comes from overseas - mainly from Argentina. The animals themselves no longer graze out in fields but are fed and milked in halls by the hundreds where their care requires less effort.

This form of industrialized livestock husbandry is cultivated not only at the expense of the animals, but also at the expense of the environment and the climate, said Susanne Gura, an animal husbandry expert.

"When we begin talking about ruminant animals grazing, rather than having to be fed with grains, then one also has to remember that these pastures are also very important for the climate because they absorb CO2 and therefore considerably reduce the carbon impact on the atmosphere," she said.

Current farming methods not future-oriented

However, in industrialized countries, where less than three percent of the population makes a living by farming, the focus has been on increasing production and decreasing the number of people involved in it to save money. Labor is the biggest cost factor in industrialized farming.

This has resulted in a few, large enterprises being able to survive with the help of pesticides, special seeds, machines and massive tracts of land. This type of cultivation will not be able to feed the population that is to increase to 9 billion people, nor help the fight off the climate crisis, said Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program.

Large-scale, industrial farming will lead to additional problems as climate change dries up available water reserves and soil quality declines, he added.

"Modern agriculture often works against nature, rather than with it," Steiner said. "It is depleting the resources we need to feed these 9 billion people. In other words, ecological, sustainable farming is going to become increasingly important."

Helle Jeppesen (als)

Editor: Sean Sinico