What’s the connection between food production and climate?

What’s the connection

between food production and

climate?

Energy costs of agriculture

• Traditional

• Exists within natural energy and nutrient cycles

• Crop rotations

• Green manures

• Draft animals

• Conventional

• 10 calories of fossil fuel needed to produce 1 calorie of food

• 1500 litres of oil to feed each American per year

• 10% More energy used each year due to soil depletion

GM technology to the rescue?

• Yields – about the same with GM crops but GM soy yields 5-10% less

• Pesticide use grown 15-fold since introduction of GM crops (herbicide resistance)

• Roundup prevents nutrient uptake and increases Fusarium (soil borne fungus that causes disease)

• Bt GM plants produce their own pesticide – damages aquatic organisms

Biotech promises

• No GM crops are more nutritious, salt and drought tolerant etc

• Genes work in complex networks and are more difficult to manipulate than expected

• Biotechs are patenting genes linked to useful traits as climate changes

• If their patents succeed access to these traits could be severely limited

Non-GM successes

• Victoria has bred drought tolerant canola. It had a limited release this year

• there are other non-GM successes ie salt resistant wheat and virus resistant cassava

• The SRI (System of Rice Intensification) developed for subsistence Asian farmers has doubled yields and halved costs

Effects on farmers

• Farmers sued when crops polluted by GM i.e. Percy Schmeiser case

• Monsanto now controls 20% of world seed market. Price increase of 35% for bag of corn

• N. American farmers forming groups to fight this• Crop failure, bankruptcy and suicide reported in

Indian farmers who grew GM cotton

Soil and carbon

• Agricultural soils used to be 20% organic matter. Now 1%.

• Pesticides and fertilisers kill soil life and cause carbon to be released

• If carbon content of soils was raised to 5%, 150 billion tonnes of CO2 would be sequestered

• In 2002-2003 the world generated 18 billion tonnes of CO2

Ideas and inspirations

• Bio char – by product of slow pyrolysis. Stores carbon in soil for 100’s of years and increases fertility

• Soil food web – Dr Elaine Ingham

• Permaculture

• Organic and bio-dynamic systems

Why is there a world food crisis?

• Biofuels instead of food

• Refusal of countries to grow GM crops

• Drought

• Flood

• Changed diets in China and India

• Global free trade pushed by IMF and World Bank

• Food and farmer subsidies removed

• Farmers forced off land

• Self sufficiency replaced by investor speculation in crops and farmland

• Poverty

Big Food profits

• Monsanto’s profits increased 296% from 2005-2007. Exxon Mobil’s increased 12% over same period

• Cargill – biggest grain trader – 86% profit increase in 1st quarter 2008

• Bunge – food trader – 77% profit increase in 2007• ADM – 2nd largest grain trader – 67% profit

increase in 2007

David Holmgren on energy use

Where to from here?

• IAASTD – suggests shift from Industrial to Sustainable agriculture

• Via Campesina• Cuba – surviving after

industrial agriculture collapsed

• Local heroes• David Holmgren –

looks at growing food in Melbourne

• Farmers markets• CSA• Home gardening and

food swaps• Permablitzes