KEY FINDINGS

wheatSoil carbon sequestration is a win-win strategy. It mitigates climate change by offsetting anthropogenic emissions; improves the environment, especially the quality of natural waters; enhances soil quality; improves agronomic productivity; and advances food security. It is the low-hanging fruit and a bridge to the future, until carbon-neutral fuel sources and low-carbon economy take effect 144

field“Agriculture is recognized as a sector with such potential and farmers, ranchers, herders and other land users around the world can and should be part of the solution to climate change.” 146

  • HANDThe full mitigation potential of agriculture was not considered during the negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol because of scientific uncertainty at the time. Yet since then, science has caught up, and monitoring the CO2 sequestration into soils can be monitored with much greater accuracy 145

 

 

PRESS RELEASE

 

Agriculture and Climate Change

An agenda for negotiations in Copenhagen.

 

Important findings in bio-agricultural research offer a solution to the impasse between developed and developing nations on climate change.

 

What is Bio-agriculture and how does it fight Climate Change?

  • Bio-agriculture is an inclusive term for organic and biodynamic farming methods.
  • Bio-agricultural farming methods have been shown to increase soil carbon, by taking CO2 from the atmosphere and storing it in the soil. This occurs at over 3 metric tonnes of CO2-e per hectare per year. (1 t of sequestered carbon = 3.7t of CO2-e)
  • The world has 5,000 million hectares of agricultural land. If bio-agricultural practices were used on this farmland, the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced by 50%.
  • Long term field trials have shown continual increases of soil carbon sequestration, each year, over a 40 year period. These results have been verified in more than thirty long-term comparative field trials between bio-agriculture and conventional farming methods.

-The Swiss DOK trial, running since 1978  found 15% higher soil organic carbon in soils of   organic systems corresponding to a sequestration rate of 2.6 t/ha/yr CO2-e (Fliessbach et al., 2007)
-The Rodale Institute has found rates of up to 11 t/ha/yr (Plimentel, et al., 2006; Hepperly,   et al., 2006)

  • It was found that while bio-agricultural farming methods continuously increased soil carbon, conventional farming systems reduced it over the long term.
  • The same research also shows that increased soil carbon has the effect of reversing land degradation. 2,000 million hectares, or 40% of the earth’s agricultural land, has been degraded through unsustainable cultivation, overgrazing, deforestation, chemical pollution and aquifer degradation. Land degradation combined together with the rapidly growing world population is a crisis in waiting.
  • New technology has now made measuring soil carbon, not only extremely accurate, but simple and cost effective, thus overcoming one of the major hurdles of  agriculture as a solution to climate change.The technology developed by Kansas University and Veris Technologies has been tested to a confidence interval level of 90%.
  • Bio-agriculture is an extremely cost effective way of cutting emissions. It can remove the same amount of carbon from the atmosphere for less than 1% of the cost of existing emission reduction methods. (Based on world average emission reduction costs of 0.9% of GNP per capita)

 

The Solution 

  • Our proposal is based on converting a small amount of agricultural land(2%) each year to bio-agriculture. If this gradual conversion is combined with at least 15% government emission reduction offers, the world could be carbon neutral by 2061.
  • Professor Rattan Lal one of the worlds leading soil scholars has said; ; "Soil carbon sequestration is a win-win strategy. It mitigates climate change by offsetting anthropogenic emissions; improves the environment, especially the quality of natural waters; enhances soil quality; improves agronomic productivity; and advances food security. It is the low-hanging fruit and a bridge to the future, until carbon-neutral fuel sources and low-carbon economy take effect."  
  • We have developed an interactive calculator that enables the user to see the great impact that bio-agriculture can have in the fight against climate change, land degradation and the related problems of water and food shortages. The calculator can be downloaded from the Bio-agriculture web site.                                         
  • The calculator has another important use as a tool for negotiators involved in creating a world agreement on climate change. It enables them to quickly see the mitigation and financial effects of their proposals; on individual countries as well as on the world as a whole. This supports the process of coming to an agreement that sufficiently reduces emissions and is economically equitable for all members of the global community.
  • Bio-agriculture also fulfils the main aim of farming - to produce healthy food.

 

For more information  see the website - http://bio-agriculture.org
Interviews – Erwin Berney:   contact via contact page on this website