CLIMATE CHANGE
Climate Change Is Affecting The Food We Eat
And vice versa.
The food we eat shares a close relationship with the quality of the land on which it is grown and the air around it. This results in the climate impacting all of our food, and currently, the relationship is not a desirable one.
With agriculture, the impact of climate change becomes personal as our food starts to change.
How Agriculture Affects Climate Change
- Land use — Soil removes about one-fourth of all carbon on the Earth. As plants and trees grow, they use up carbon dioxide. When they die, the decay process releases all that they contain back into nature. If the land is bare, carbon gets released into the atmosphere. But if it is covered or allowed to regrow, the carbon stays in the ground. Practices like rotational grazing, crop rotation, organic manure, etc. minimize the amount of carbon that is escaped.
- Depleting soil quality — Related to the point above, overusing land for farming and cattle grazing depletes its minerals, and without giving it a chance to recover it becomes harder and harder to sustain healthy soil quality and plant growth. This impacts not only the soil's capability to hold carbon but also lowers how much carbon will be pulled out of the atmosphere by the growing greens.
- Increasing use of fertilizers — As soil health changes and food demand grows, we are seeing increasing use of fertilizers. A primary ingredient in fertilizers is ammonia (a nitrogen-based compound). Soil microbes react with ammonia in the presence of oxygen and convert it to nitrates. Since the conversion process is not 100% efficient, nitrous oxide, a gas almost 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide in its warming potential, is released in the process. With the overuse of fertilizers, more nitrogen is available for microbes to play with, resulting in more nitrous oxide.
- Livestock — not only is a lot of land cleared out for grazing (26% of the ice-free land on Earth) but many farm animals because of their digestive systems are also a big source of methane — a gas almost 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide in its warming potential. We currently have a livestock population at around 21 billion, 3 times the human population, resulting in about 38% of all methane emissions. A further 33% of the land is cleared out to feed this livestock.
- Reduction in forest cover — with more land being allotted for agriculture and increasing incidences of fires, forests are being cleared out at an alarming rate across the world. So much so, that in 2019 we lost a football pitch worth of forest every second, and it wasn’t even the worst year of this century so far.
The topsoil contains about 3 times as much carbon as in the atmosphere, making it a major carbon sink.
How Agriculture Is Affected By Climate Change
- Changing climate — As temperatures rise, rainfall patterns change, incidents of droughts and floods increase, farmers will have to adapt to the changing climate factors as they decide which crops to grow. This can disrupt the existing supply chains, or cause farmers to use more unsustainable ways of farming as they look to achieve the same result as before in a changing surrounding.
- Reduction in food nutrition — As CO2 concentration increases, the plants will grow at a faster rate. But if this growth is not met by a favorable change in soil moisture or nutrient levels, the growth can be reversed. More CO2 has been found to decrease the concentration of proteins and many essential minerals in food.
- New pests and pathogens — With changing local temperatures, pests of one climate will find a home in new regions and farmers will have to adapt. Moreover, with warmer winters, pests may survive longer and thrive with increasing moisture levels. This unfortunately could mean increased use of pesticides.
Agriculture is a culture, that like all others simaltaneously needs to be grown and carefully preserved.
Therefore, it is important for everyone to realize that climate change is not a far-off or a distant future thing where all glaciers will someday melt. While they have already started melting, climate change for most people will come in the form of these changes in life where our food and lifestyle will be impacted and we will be forced to pay a premium to retain it as before.
The choice we make with our food and lifestyle will, in turn, impact the climate.
Priya Aggarwal works in cleantech and writes about climate change and the environment. She can also be found on Twitter.
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