Andrew Kimbrell: Sustainable Agriculture: The Unrecognized Key to Reversing Climate Change

By Andrew Kimbrell, Huffington Post

World leaders who met last month at the United Nations climate summit took stock of the sobering reality that a global pact on climate change very likely will not be achieved in Copenhagen this December. At the heart of this looming failure is money. Most of the proposed solutions to curb greenhouse gas emissions are costly, and funds are scarce. However, there is a solution being overlooked in climate negotiations that could result in rapid greenhouse gas reductions with comparatively low financial investment and little technology transfer -- a transition toward ecological, organic agriculture.

Even though research concludes that industrial agriculture is one of the major contributors to global warming, neither international nor U.S. domestic policies are adequately addressing this sector. The figures are stunning -- at least 60 percent of all nitrous oxide (NO2) emissions, the most potent greenhouse gas, are caused by industrial agriculture, primarily from the use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. Nearly 40 percent of methane (CH4), the second strongest greenhouse gas, is due to industrial farming practices, much of this from intensive industrialized livestock operations.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) conservatively tells us that industrial agriculture methods contribute at least 14 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Many scientists say this figure could as high as 25-30 percent of emissions when the total energy backpack of...

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