Agriculture: an Answer to Global Warming?
A recent report by the Worldwatch Institute covering climate change through food and land use, suggests that agriculture can play a big part in any solution to global warming.
In a summary of the report, the authors describe:
More than 30 percent of all greenhouse gas emission arise from the land use sector. Thus, no strategy for mitigating global climate change can be complete or successful without reducing emissions from agriculture, forestry, and other land uses.
According to the report, land-based sequestration offers through plant photosynthesis the possibility of large-scale removal of greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere. Such food productions and land innovations are also ready to be put into use, in contrast to carbon capture technology, which tehy estimate would take a decade to put into operation, even if determined to be effective.
The report outlines five major strategies to reduce and sequester carbon. These are:
- Enriching soil carbon
- Farming with perennials
- Climate-friendly livestock production
- Protecting natural habitat, and
- Restoring degraded watersheds and range lands.
Tags: climate change, greenhouse gas, principle1
Dec 16, 2009
Yes I belief that Agriculture can play a big role in any solution to global warming. It is only agriculture that can strike the real balance between the release of green house gasses and the prompt removal of these gasses from the atmosphere.This calls for a pragmatic approach to agricultural production right from the grassroot level.
Resource poor farmers at the the grassroot level should be encouraged and mobilised to produce,this will not only enhance the growth of trees and food but also green vegetation in abundance to reduce the greenhouse effect. the excess food crops will also cussion the effect of high cost of food witnessed recently all over the world due to biofuel production with consumer grains.
Agriculture has a vital role to play in the sure and lasting solution to global warming.