Written by cpm
Farming captures vast amounts of carbon every year in the crops, grassland and livestock that produce the world’s food, but their contribution to net emissions are entirely ignored. CPM explores how to farm carbon. Agriculture is so often accused for its negative climate effect, but doesn’t get praise for its positive carbon-binding. By Tom Allen-Stevens Imagine if we mined food from depleting resources, in the same way as we source raw materials for our manufactured goods and much of our energy requirements. The world would turn to dust in no time at all. So thank goodness that food is a basic resource that comes from truly renewable material – perhaps the only one that does. But why is the industry responsible for its production – farming – treated as though it isn’t? There’s now a growing body of opinion that questions the very basis on which agriculture’s carbon cost has been calculated. This makes the assumption, laid down by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that the net flux from agriculture is estimated to be approximately balanced. So carbon sequestered during food production is assumed to be released during the same year when the food is consumed and…
The post Sustainable Gain – The biggest carbon store on earth? appeared first on cpm magazine.
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