Global Warming's Evil Twin: Agricultural Land Use

by Katherine Gustafson

categories: Distribution, Farm Economics, Hunger, International, Policy, Pollution, Rural Affairs

Published November 06, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT

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The world is stuck on the tracks and there are trains coming in both directions. One headlight represents climate change. The other light is us, a booming global population that needs more and more food every year. One train demands that we preserve our forests, the other that we slash and burn them. One demands that we decrease pollution, the other that we add more and more fossil fuels to our soil.

At least unless we change things -- a lot of things -- very drastically. We are already yanking on the brake of the climate train, though not nearly hard enough. The other train, though, is barreling forward unfettered. Few of us realize the train is being driven by a madman. Few of us realize the massive crisis our global society's inattention to agricultural priorities promises to become unless something is done.

The problem, according to a new essay by Jonathan Foley, professor and director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, is that we will need to double or even triple our agricultural output over the next several decades unless we want a whole heck of a lot of starving people on our hands. But we have to do that without completely destroying our environment.

Alarmingly, Foley writes in Yale Environment 360, "we now face a global crisis in land use and agriculture that could undermine the health, security, and sustainability of our civilization" (italics his).

Our current methods of agriculture are not only insufficient but unsustainable. Foley lists problems: ecosystem degradation, freshwater decline, widespread pollution and carbon emissions. Our future, he writes, depends on whether we can address climate change and land use at the same time, since feeding 9 billion-plus people without destroying our planet in the process "will be one of the greatest challenges our species has ever faced."

The first step in transforming our agricultural systems into something that can agree with our future is to acknowledge that the way we use land is problematic. And the next step is getting serious about finding pragmatic solutions.

We cannot increase agricultural production at the expense of the environment, but we must also not prioritize preserving all ecosystems over fulfilling the most basic needs of the ever-more enormous global population. If we do simply choose one or the other, the neglected priority will eventually destabilize the system so badly as to make any progress in the other area moot.

We need to solve both problems to survive, and it is useful to remember that it's our own survival that we're ultimately fighting for. As union organizer and environmentalist Chico Mendez once said, "at first I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees, then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realise I am fighting for humanity."

Photo courtesy of benketaro via flickr