Whats Agriculture Got To Do with Climate Change?
Posted on: Monday, November 30, 2009 Keywords: Economic Justice, Environmental Justice, Climate Change, UN, Food Sovereignty We tend to think of cars as the main culprits in climate change. But industrial agriculture, with its fossil-fuel-based fertilizers and pesticides, monoculture plantations, fuel-guzzling global transport system, and clear-cutting of carbon-absorbing forests is the source of as much as half of the world’s carbon emissions. Moreover, the way we grow our food is now threatening our ability to produce enough food to feed the world. Unless we control global climate change, caused in part by industrial farming, agricultural output across the world is likely to plummet. In Latin America, climate change may bring a 25 percent drop in crop yields within two generations; in Sudan that number is a frightening 50 percent. Isn’t Industrial Agriculture Necessary to Feed the World Population? • Big agribusiness says its goal is to “feed a growing world.” But its actions priorit
