Organic Agriculture: The Overlooked
Answer to Climate Change
In 1997, when the United Nations’
(UN) Kyoto Protocol was launched to
address the growing problem of climate
change, agriculture was viewed as part
of the problem and virtually ignored as
a solution. According to data from the
U.S. government, conventional chemical-based agriculture contributes nearly
20 percent of the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions. On a global scale, figures
from the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) say that agricultural land use is responsible for 13. 5
percent of global greenhouse gas
(GHG) emissions. A problem indeed.
Furthermore, without action to improve soil carbon levels, depleted soil
carbon (organic matter) will exacerbate the most serious impacts of climate change that facesocieties and
threaten future food security: flooding,
drought and water shortages.
When agriculture fails to respect nature, it can truly be a detriment to the
planet. However, when agriculture is
based on organic methods, it can turn
agriculture from a problem into a solution. According to the IPCC, almost 90
percent of the GHG mitigation potential of global agriculture now resides in
improving soil carbon levels. Organic
farming is by far the most effective way
to do this.
When compared to other major
land use operations that mitigate car-
bon, soil sequestration has tremen-
dous potential. According to UK’s Soil
Association, it has been estimated that
a global forestation program would
take over 20 years just to offset the
emissions from the establishment of
the plantations before positive carbon
sequestration starts. On the other
hand, the Association says, “Soil car-
bon sequestration provides a rapid and
timely GHG mitigation ‘win’ for cli-
mate policy targets since carbon se-
questration starts as soon as the
positive practices are adopted and
about half of the total amount that will
be sequestered occurs within the first
20 years. This is critical as drastic GHG
reductions are required within the
next two decades. Soil carbon seques-
tration still continues thereafter for a
hundred years or more.”
While organic agriculture was not
considered as an option to mitigate car-
bon when the Kyoto Protocol was writ-
ten, many studies have come out since
of RTOACC’s goal is to develop meas-
urement and verification systems that
would enable organic farmers to earn
carbon credits for GHGs sequestered.
At the very least, the group hopes to
have organic farming recognized by
governments as an official carbon miti-
gation method so that organic farmers
can have access to subsidies that other
“green” businesses are garnering.
Depleted, chemically-farmed soil
Nutrient-rich organic-farmed soil
Soil contains twice as much carbon as terrestrial vegetation,
three times as much carbon as the atmosphere itself and five
times as much as forests.
then demonstrating that it’s an essential step in dealing with climate change.
In November 2009, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in
Copenhagen, the Round Table on Organic Agriculture and Climate Change
(RTOACC) was formed to bring together the evidence needed to prove to
the UN that organic farming should be
considered a viable way to diminish
global warming and help farmers
around the globe adapt to climate
change. Members of this group include
the Rodale Institute, the Soil Association, the Research Institute of Organic
Agriculture (FiBL), and many others.
Already, four European countries, including the United Kingdom, the
Netherlands, Germany and Denmark,
are considering changing their emis-sion-reduction targets for the Kyoto
Protocol to include contributions from
organic agriculture policy based on the
Rodale Institute’s research alone. But,
there is still much work to be done. Part
Organic Soil: The Foundation of
Sustainability. While those in the organic movement have always had a reverence for the soil, its true power is
just now starting to be fully understood. Soil is a major store of carbon,
containing twice as much carbon as
terrestrial vegetation, three times as
much carbon as the atmosphere itself
and five times as much as forests.
About 60 percent of this is in the form
of organic matter in the soil.
Many studies now indicate that integrated organic practices can dramatically alter the carbon storage of arable
lands by building soil organic matter,
which contains stable carbon-holding
compounds. Because soil organic matter is made of carbon, increases in
these levels will be directly correlated
with carbon sequestration. While conventional farming practices that use
synthetic inputs typically deplete soil
organic matter, organic farming practices work to build it.
