Organic farming mitigates counteracts climate change

Sakina Mohamad in Bernama (Malaysia): It is a tricky situation. The world's population is rising, so the pressure is on to produce more food. Developing countries scramble to ensure food security by prioritising agriculture in their economic agenda. Yet many agricultural practices contribute much to climate change, which in turn affects agriculture adversely and compromises food security.

…For example, in India, the use of hybrid varieties, chemicals and pesticides had increased agricultural output rapidly. Between 1965 and 1996, production had increased by 100 metric tonnes per decade. "However, those who have been practicing conventional agriculture one day found that they were facing all sorts of problems," says Manoj Kumar Menon, the Executive Director at the International Competence Centre for Organic Agriculture in Bangalore, India. He said this when speaking at the two-day International Conference on Climate Change, Agriculture and Related Trade Standards earlier this month.

Menon says conventional farmers found that the cost of cultivation kept rising because the price of chemicals and fertilisers were increasing. Yet food prices remained more or less the same, only shooting up over the last few years. However, it is still not commensurate with cultivation costs. "Farmers are also faced with the continual reduction in efficiency of their resources such as soil, water and labour," says Menon, adding that most of it was a result of the usage of chemicals in farming.

Another problem contributing to the farmers' dissolution is the unpredictable monsoon, rain and other weather patterns that are the result of climate change, which affects yield and undo months of hard labour. "As a result, farmers are no longer interested in farming as the activity is not sustainable. So how can we motivate them to get back into farming again?"

The answer, Menon believes, lies in organic agriculture. "But organic agriculture, in fact, reduces carbon emissions and there is a good market for organic products overseas. This is good news for farmers and the country," says Menon.

….For farmers who are uninitiated to venture into the sector of organic farming, Menon says there are three key benefits to going organic. The first is soil health. … Menon says organic agriculture mitigates [the ill effects of industrial agriculture] by restoring the ecosystem to a healthy one, improving soil condition.

…In India, 70 per cent of organic farmers are smallholders, largely because organic agriculture is less capital-intensive than traditional agriculture which requires expensive chemical fertilizer and equipment. In addition to that , organic farming ensures better return to smallholders, says Menon….

Organic combined growing, in which one species protects another from parasites, shot by Airelle, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Organic farming for adaptation and mitigation

The Soil Association (UK): New research from the Soil Association reveals that if all UK farmland was converted to organic farming, at least 3.2 million tonnes of carbon would be taken up by the soil each year - the equivalent of taking nearly 1 million cars off the road. Patrick Holden, Soil Association Director, said: “Unless we are successful in tackling climate change, we won’t be able to feed the world’s growing population, however we farm. This report shows that agriculture can reduce greenhouse gas emissions while producing food sustainably.

“Our findings add fresh evidence to the strong case for agri-environmental farming made in the IAASTD Report, produced by 400 international scientists and endorsed by the UK Government.” According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 89% of agriculture’s global greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation potential is from carbon sequestration – a fact that Governments seem to be ignoring in the critical run-up to climate change talks in Copenhagen (COP 15) in December.

The research’s key findings are:

• On average organic farming produces 28% higher levels of soil carbon compared to non-organic farming in Northern Europe, and 20% higher for all countries studied (in Europe, North America and Australasia).
• In the UK, grasslands and mixed farming systems also have a vital role to play, and soil carbon may go a long way to offsetting the methane emissions from grass-fed cattle and sheep.
• The widespread adoption of organic farming practices in the UK would offset 23% of UK agricultural emissions through soil carbon sequestration alone, more than doubling the UK Government’s pathetically low target of a 6-11% reduction by 2020.
• A worldwide switch to organic farming could offset 11% of all global greenhouse gas emissions. Raising soil carbon levels would also make farming worldwide more resilient to extremes of climate like droughts and floods, leading to greater food security….

An organic farm in Germany, shot by EwigLernender, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License