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Industrial Farming Has Already Saved The World From Climate Change!

Posted on 15. Jun, 2010 by Ross in Climate Change, Food Production

Worried about what the climate will be like in twenty years time with the continuing escalation in carbon dioxide emissions? About how much the planet will have warmed by, how high the sea level has risen and how many more storms, droughts and other extreme weather conditions will plague civilisation?

Without industrial farming we’d already be there.

That’s the conclusion of a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal by a group of researchers from Stanford University, based on the impact of the 1960’s Green Revolution upon global carbon emissions. The Green Revolution saw massive strides forward for industrial agriculture, with the use of modern crop strains, techniques, machinery and chemicals leading to higher crop yields and less hunger in areas of the world previously prone to starvation such as India.

The researchers compared the carbon emissions from agriculture since the Green Revolution to emissions from less intensive industrial farming geared to support the same population increases. The researchers found that emissions due to the extra land clearance required to support equivalent volumes of food production far outweighed the emissions increase from more intensive processes.

The difference in carbon emissions between the two farming scenarios was calculated to be around 160 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide: an amount so great it equates to a third of all human emissions since 1850.

That’s equivalent to 20 years of global fossil fuel burning at current consumption rates.

This research flies in the face of general environmental wisdom: most people believe that the damage done to the environment through fertilisers, insecticides and other farming chemicals is unacceptable and should be replaced with more traditional, less intensive farming methods. When viewing the issue through considering carbon emissions in isolation of other environmental considerations, however, this research suggests the total opposite: that industrial agriculture will help us to avoid catastrophic climate change. Additionally, industrial farming may be a better system to gain incremental agricultural energy efficiency gains from, and in measuring farming’s carbon footprint.

However, environmentalists will take serious issue with the central premise of the research: that population growth is a constant which must be fuelled by increased agriculture. The study assumes that the population growth seen in India, China and other areas of the world was predestined, and was to be supported agriculturally one way or another. Unlocking new food supplies has enabled that population growth, and so true carbon footprint of industrial farming should also consider the carbon emissions from populations that would not have existed otherwise - populations whose growth would still have been held back by starvation.

As well as food, these populations also consume energy elsewhere through heating, lighting, transport and other activities, and will increasingly use more as developing countries’ living standards continue to rise. Population growth is one of the key issues surrounding climate change, but debating it is a divisive issue for green campaigners. At Copenhagen, where nearly every facet of combating climate change was examined (albeit with little to show for it), population growth was the only taboo subject, such was the vehement rejection of it by developing countries. Developed nations have little stomach at the moment for dictating birth rates across the world, but it is starting to become a cause for eco-nationalists, who see climate change as a cute fluffy face to put on their right-wing agendas.

To back intensive industrial farming is to back further population growth, and the increased emissions, population movements and tensions that will inevitably arise. However, to reject intensive farming in favour of more traditional agriculture techniques will condemn billions of people to starvation and death. But with climate change likely to increase the incidence of droughts and famines, even modern industrial farming may no longer be the answer. Synthetic foods produced from algae biofuel farms? Holistic land management? The 21st century will see even greater technological shifts in global society than the 20th century, but we’ll just have to wait to see what they are…

Image of a green tractor by Ross Tucknott @ Flickr

Related posts:

1. Climate Change Crop Yields Will Lead To Starvation
2. Carbon Trust Helps Track Dirty Carbon Farming Footprint
3. How Much Does The World’s Temperature Rise By Per Tonne Of CO2?
4. South Korea: Leading The World The Wrong Way In Carbon Emissions
5. Virus Is The Remedy For Industrial Chemistry

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Tags: carbon emissions, food, research