From the comment streams and emails I’ve been getting about recent posts, it is clear that many people believe things that are not actually true about the environmental profile of organic fertilizers. I don’t mean to minimize the challenge we face when it comes to fertilizers, particularly nitrogen fertilizers. They take energy to make, have the potential to generate the potent greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide, and can lead to the pollution of ground and surface waters. With a “rap-sheet” like that I understand why people are concerned, but there is a catch - without fertilizers we don’t eat much.
Still, there is a widespread belief that “Organic” fertilizers are the solution. I’ve already blogged about why organic fertilizers are dramatically worse from a greenhouse gas point of view. Today I want to talk about the water pollution issues and why “Organic” fertilizers are actually a much worse problem from that perspective as well.
Why Nitrogen Fertilizers Can Pollute
The reason that ALL nitrogen fertilizers (synthetic and Organic) are a water pollution threat is that they at some point convert to the nitrate ion (NO3-). That particular form of nitrogen is very water soluble so the nitrate can move down into ground water or sideways into surface water. The “Dead Zone” or “Hypoxia zone” in the Gulf of Mexico is driven in some large part by nitrate coming from farms. There are ways to manage this issue, but first I need to talk about the fundemental challenge of crop fertilization.
I’m probably going to irritate some people with this post. I apologize in advance because that is not at all my intention. For those readers that don’t think climate change is a real problem, I respect the fact that there is uncertainty in that science, but if the majority position of climate scientists is true, the stakes in terms of human suffering among the poor are too high not to act. For those who think Organic farming is the answer, I’m not trying to argue the whole issue here - I just want to talk about the science associated with climate change and farming. I have spent months reading the scientific literature on this topic. That science points to some very specific changes in how we need to farm. If those changes were compatible with Organic I’d be a big promoter. The short answer is “Organic farming is not the best option from a climate change point of view.”
I know this sounds like heresy in the “Green Blogosphere,” but before you react, please read on. I agree in advance that the Organic/non-Organic discussion is much broader than climate change. In fairness, climate change was never something that “Organic” was designed to address either during its origins in the early 20th century or during the development of the USDA Organic rules between 1990 and 2000. I have no desire to get in the way of Organic growers making a living (including my good friends who grow Organic of the old school category) or get in the way of Organic customers getting what they want. I simply believe that it is critical that we, the declining subset of people who take climate change seriously, be accurately informed about this issue. If we believe we “have the answer” for farming when that answer is wrong, that keeps us from continuing to find the real answer.
Focusing on the Major Crops
Because it would be far too complex to discuss this question for all crops, I’ll only be talking about the “carbon footprint” of the major row crops (see the pie chart above) - the wheat, corn, hay, barley, oats, corn, soybeans, hay, oats, dry beans, lentils… that make up the bulk of our calorie intake, our vegetable protein intake, and our animal feeds for meat and dairy. Those crops also make up the vast majority of farmed land, so they are what matters for climate change. Fruit and vegetable crops are extremely important for health and food enjoyment, but not much for climate change. Organic today is heavily weighted to the fruit and vegetable segment and beyond that, it is extremely small. Actually, all of Organic only represents 2.6MM acres ( ~0.7% of US cropland), so it has almost no effect on climate either way. This is only a discussion about the widely held opinion that Organic would help in a climate change sense.
The United States must deliver concrete mid-term greenhouse gas reduction targets by next month or it will destroy efforts to achieve a framework for a global climate change deal in Copenhagen, United Nations climate chief Yvo de Boer said Monday as a week of international talks on global warming began in Barcelona.
“I do not think the international community will accept an agreement that lacks clarity from the U.S. on targets,” de Boer said.
The Barcelona talks are the final five days of two years of global negotiations leading up to the crucial UN Climate Change Conference, from Dec. 7-18, in Copenhagen. De Boer’s worst fear now is that the Copenhagen conference will end with a lack of clarity on key issues and lead to a protracted political standoff.
“Negotiations must stop at Copenhagen. Otherwise negotiations will drag on when only the technical work should be going on,” he said.
A decision by the Obama administration to put a concrete 2020 target on the table could be the game changer for the world, he suggested.
In Chapter 7 of the recently released Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, Lester Brown lays out the Plan B goals for eradicating poverty and stabilizing population. Behind the scenes are a number of datasets and graphs that delve deeper into the trends discussed in the chapter. Here are some highlights from the Chapter 7 data: World population has grown steadily over the past half century, increasing from 2.5 billion in 1950 to a projected 6.8 billion in 2009. The United Nations medium fertility level scenario projects that world population will grow to 9.2 billion in 2050. Their high projection takes the world to 10.5 billion in 2050. Under their low projection, which assumes rapid reductions in fertility rates, population peaks at just over 8 billion in 2042, then begins to decline.
Though life expectancies around the world have increased in the past half century, large discrepancies remain among different regions. Overall, world life expectancy increased from an average of 47 years in the mid-twentieth century to 68 years today. While life expectancy in 1950 hovered around 40 years in both Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, it has since increased far more rapidly in Asia, reaching 69 years, compared to 51 years in Sub-Saharan Africa. On a regional basis, the United States and Canada top the world with an average life expectancy of 79 years.
A resilient city has 1) a green action plan and 2) a green economic plan. He sees cities as a productive point of convergence, “In cities, people can talk common sense to each other,” said Miller.
Pollution from industrial facilities like this one at East Harbor in Indiana up to the 1970s left a legacy of contamination still in need of cleanup from new Great Lakes restoration funding.
Giving President Obama a major victory, Congress on Thursday sent him a spending bill containing $475 million in new funding to help restore the Great Lakes. During his 2008 campaign, candidate Obama committed to a multi-year effort to combat Great Lakes invasive species, habitat loss, climate change impacts and threats to water quality. The Great Lakes contain almost one-fifth of the world’s available surface freshwater.
Our early twenty-first century civilization is being squeezed between advancing deserts and rising seas. Measured by the biologically productive land area that can support human habitation, the earth is shrinking. Mounting population densities, once generated solely by population growth, are now also fueled by the relentless advance of deserts and may soon be affected by the projected rise in sea level. As overpumping depletes aquifers, millions more are forced to relocate in search of water.
Desert expansion in sub-Saharan Africa, principally in the Sahelian countries, is displacing millions of people—forcing them to either move southward or migrate to North Africa. A 2006 U.N. conference on desertification in Tunisia projected that by 2020 up to 60 million people could migrate from sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa and Europe. This flow of migrants has been under way for many years.
For years now, many members of Congress have insisted that cutting carbon emissions was difficult, if not impossible. It is not. During the two years since 2007, carbon emissions have dropped 9 percent. While part of this drop is from the recession, part of it is also from efficiency gains and from replacing coal with natural gas, wind, solar, and geothermal energy.
The United States has ended a century of rising carbon emissions and has now entered a new energy era, one of declining emissions. Peak carbon is now history. What had appeared to be hopelessly difficult is happening at amazing speed.
The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press released results of a major survey tracking what people believe about “Global Warming.” It is not encouraging! Across age, gender, race, political affiliation, and religion there have been declines in the number of people who believe that human activity is involved and increases in the number of people who don’t think it is happening. My own demographic (white, male, 54 years old, political Independent, Evangelical Christian) is among the most skeptical, though the Baby Boom slightly bucks the trend for age. Some friends and I are working on a strategy to challenge the Church on this issue.
Industrial hemp may be one of the most versatile and environmentally benign crops out there, but because of its relationship to marijuana, the cultivation of this crop has been banned in the United States since the late thirties. Last week, a group of farmers, along with David Bronner, president of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, staged a protest in front of the Drug Enforcement Agency in Washington, DC, and were promptly arrested for planting hemp seeds on the agency’s front lawn.
Although images of giant coal-fired smokestacks and automobile tailpipes characterize greenhouse gas scenarios, a new report proposes a different way of thinking about it – product policy. Products and packaging contribute 44% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and reduction plans are more likely to succeed if extended producer responsibility (EPR) is made a cornerstone of commerce and environmental policy, the report says.
