What Does A Fossil Fuel-Free Food Production System Look Like?
Why are we still burning our money funding fossil fuels and fertilizers?
By Parm Kaur
(Inspired by CLIMATE WEEK NYC 2023)
As the window of opportunity begins to close on avoiding humanity’s headlong rush into an inhabitable planet one of the HUGE changes that needs to happen immediately is transforming our food systems.
FOSSIL FUEL CULPRITS
Despite over 40 years of global discussions on how to reduce our impact on planetary health, by reducing our carbon emissions, we are only now globally discussing how to reduce the climate impacts of our food.
As drinking water becomes more scarce, we also need to use less water-intensive food systems and become smarter at how we use this finite resource which humans will need MORE of as temperatures increase.
Our hunger for diversity and year-round availability has devasted entire ecosystems, and wildlife, and killed over 60% of our bees and pollinating insects.
Our use of toxic inputs and ingredients has already impacted human global health:
- reducing fertility
- increasing the rate of chronic diseases
- and resulting in a global pandemic of obesity.
(Many are linking the rise of obesity to the drop in nutrition available in processed foods- the body demands nutrients that processed food simply does not have. You must eat 5 bags of spinach to get the same nutrients as 1 bag of organic spinach).
The devastation to whole island ecosystems in our quest for cheap cooking oil, for example, has only recently come to worldwide attention. (palm oil). So here are some of the key culprits that produce high carbon emissions in our food systems which necessitate #systemchange in our food systems.
1. FERTILIZERS
A large percentage of farmers’ annual costs are fertilizers- which are not necessary and ACTIVELY harm the soil, the crop, human health, wildlife, and water safety.
Toxic for farmers, consumers, water systems, and soil microbiology
Over 50% of the carbon footprint of food production is the use of petrol-based fertilizers. Despite decades of science outlining all the ways ammonia-based products kill soil microbiology, poison our water systems, increase chronic diseases in the population by over 50%, and decrease fertility rates we continue to use them.
The rise in the rate of chronic diseases has been scientifically linked to the beginning of the use of glyphosates as fertilizers in the US in the 1960s. Toxic chemicals running off compacted, poor soils are leaching into our water tables and are slowly killing us all.
FACT: Did you know that OVER 40% of children in the USA now suffer from chronic diseases?
We must stop IMMEDIATELY.
Growing food regeneratively not only protects the soil, and prevents poisoning of our water ways it also increases CROP RESILENCE.
Unfortunately, most GM seeds designed to improve yields, not only have less ability to tolerate weather changes due to their decreased ability to use soil microbiology, they are also less nutritious (and in many cases less digestible for humans (rise in food allergies and intolerances worldwide).
But as yet only 6% of farmers in the USA are growing food regeneratively.
Alternatives include the use of local composts, compost teas, fish products, and kelp. Contrary to popular opinion using regenerative agriculture methods such as green manure crops, intercropping, and compost tea application often INCREASES PROFITS, as well as yields.
Immediately ceasing our subsidies to fossil fuel-based production would also free up a lot of tax-payers money that could be better used to provide safe, pesticide-free, food and drinking water to millions.
2. Petrol Truck Transportation Food Costs
Transporting food millions of miles, by ship, road, and air, is a huge carbon cost in current food production and distribution systems that could easily be reduced. If fruit can be grown in Nebraska, using solar-passive greenhouses, why import it from Florida?
We need regions to be FOOD SELF-SUFFICIENT, and this will result in cheaper, healthier, fresher, more nutrient-dense food.
Consumers enjoy eating locally-based food and it’s time for #policymakers, planners, and farmers to supply them.
Cattle are also transported thousands of miles during their short lives, to industrial-sized food lots in places like Idaho. There they are injected with growth hormones and antibodies, and fed primarily a diet of GMO corn.
Many local communities, next to feed lots are deserted. They have seen a spike in cancer to 10% of the population which is x10 the national average. In unhealthy non-maintained lots hormones, cow slurry, etc leak into the local water table.
Although conditions of cattle feed lots vary, and not all are unhealthy — it’s perhaps not surprising that in some regions small towns are abandoned and our industrial-sized feed lots remain.
Because who wants to drink contaminated water?
Cows were designed to eat pasture. Cows raised on pasture produce more nutritious meat, less methane, and reduce the need for more GMO corn and grain. Cows raised on pasture will not poison the local water table, and so the local population.
Pasture-fed meat is more expensive but more sustainable — we will have to pay more for healthy food. But only we can decide whether we will have healthy food, and healthy eco-systems at all.
(FUN FACT: Global carbon emissions from raising beef are MORE than total global emissions from using petrol cars!)
Lower carbon costs from producing food locally will significantly cut down the Food Industry’s impact on climate change.
The new locavore movement, where consumers only eat what is produced in their local area is gaining traction in San Francisco and Southern France. Consumers are amazed at the quality and taste of fresh, naturally ripened, food which has often been picked the same day.
Still tiny, this powerful movement is already impacting how supermarkets, such as Whole Foods, source their food.
Locally produced food will reduce carbon emissions forever AND provide us with healthier, less toxic food.
Wouldn’t you like to support your local growers and food producers and eat fresher, more organic food?
3. PLASTICS
Consumers are now aware that they are consuming on average, a credit card’s worth of plastic each week. Microplastics are everywhere including human breast milk.
Using petrol-based Plastics in food wrapping, growing, and transporting is no longer necessary — we have alternatives.
Plant-based plastic mulches in the small market garden sector are increasingly being used, and plastic wraps made from food production waste such as potato peel is already available. There are thousands of innovations already waiting to be used for everyday things.
We all want a way to live without the use of plastics in everyday items. As concerns grow about the increasing prevalence of microplastics found in humans, there is no excuse to continue producing more fossil fuel-based plastic.
As yet manufacturers and supermarkets are not responding to public concerns. Using brown paper bags, for example, to package foodstuffs instead of plastic is one way that ethical producers are beginning to produce food.
Detoxing our food systems from plastics is not going to happen overnight, but without MORE pressure from consumers, it may never happen.
4. OUTDATED PRACTICES, EQUIPMENT & BUILDINGS
In the Global North farming has predominantly become a dying profession due to the industrialization of Agriculture. As the soil has been denigrated over the last 60 years with the use of ammonia-based fertilizers and pesticides, fungal and viral pathogens are already becoming more prevalent.
Climate extremes have put even more stress on plant life. Farmers have always been at the forefront of dealing with climate change as they see floods and droughts devastate their crops.
Many farmers are becoming more concerned about the impact of pesticides and toxic chemicals on their food, and local water and some are now seeking sustainable alternatives.
However, the majority are resistant to change — as it takes an effort and finance. Some are stuck using outdated petrol-based machinery, inefficient practices, and “chemical inputs are the only way” mentality.
The fact that subsidies available to switch to cover crops have been oversubscribed, demonstrates willingness to change.
However, until farmers, consumers, and policymakers come together to do what is needed to produce locally produced healthy food, produced for nutrition rather than ethanol, or to feed industrial cattle.
Recognizing that low fuel prices are over forever is one thing but adapting to that change is another. For a fossil fuel-free future ALL of our food production, processing, and distribution machinery must have efficient electric alternatives. Including irrigation systems.
In fact, switching to non-irrigation resilient crops as a norm will have to be adopted worldwide, and regenerative agriculture practices enable soils to hold over 50% more moisture REF: Water for every farm)
Petrol-based machinery in farm production is still prevalent, even though electric vehicles are becoming more available. EVERY mechanized system in food production can be run on electricity -which of course, should come from renewable sources.
Sufficient Grants and low-interest loans for the purchase of more efficient, electric-based farming and food production systems would help producers make this transition.
Energy costs will continue to rise, and ensuring farms and food processors are housed in sustainable buildings, which are well insulated and built using low CARBON CONCRETE must be insisted on.
5. FOOD WASTE
Over 30% of food produced is wasted — either because of:
- “perfection rule” supermarket demands,
- spoilage due to lack of sufficient cold, dry storage,
- or by consumers.
Some countries like Hong Kong and the UK have prioritized tackling this — the models are there to be implemented worldwide.
SIGNIFICANTLY this reduction in food wastage will decrease the amount of food needed to meet global needs by 2050 — it’s not useful to say we need to increase food production by 50% per se.
It’s more useful to think about what we are eating, increasing the nutrient density of what we eat, and reducing food wastage at all points of the production, distribution, and supply chain.
CIRCULAR food systems recycle food waste into compost-making facilities or use methane gas for cooking and heating. Reducing the methane produced by waste food rotting is an additional climate benefit.
Clearly reducing food waste will reduce the amount of food we need to grow annually.
(Read about Canadian company recycling local food waste).
There are many opportunities to reduce Carbon Emissions in our food systems — which one can you choose today?
NO MORE INCREMENTAL CHANGES
The bureaucrats and vested interests continue to discuss DATA, and the need for more research.
All of the science, data, and trials have already been done. From Africa, Asia, Europe, and the US the success of regenerative agriculture systems is well documented.
There are no more reasons not to implement change now — COMPLETELY.
There will be glitches and challenges but there certainly are no more excuses — wherever you are in the world.
Locally produced food retains nutrients often lost in transportation
Wouldn’t it be great to access affordable, safe food and water to consume?
There is a lot of talk right now on cutting subsidies to fossil fuel production (yep, the taxpayer is paying for pollution that is killing us and the planet).
We also need to cut subsidies for GMO crops that are primarily used to feed cattle and are mostly indigestible for most of the population. Open pollinated crops have a greater chance to evolve to local, climate change.
Mixed heirloom grains are also more resilient to pests, and as importantly MORE NUTRITIOUS.
(Big Ag’s current campaign to prevent farmers from SHARING SEED MUST be fought!)
Safe, healthy soils INCREASE the protein and essential micronutrients of the food grown in them.
The hard decision has to be made — DO WE WANT TO GROW GRAIN FOR ANIMALS OR GRAINS FOR HUMANS?
We can still have pasture-fed meat and poultry but there is a finite resource of land and workable soil. Cutting down more and more tropical and temperate rainforests to grow grain for cattle is not a sustainable option.
Should African and South American countries lose their precious soils and forests so that we can still eat meat fed on grain produced elsewhere?
Additional benefits of switching to no-till and regenerative agriculture practices will include the creation of new jobs. Low fossil fuel-based systems often require more labor.
Using locally based compost systems will also DECREASE methane gas production from landfills if local businesses allow their food waste to be collected. (Canada has already successfully piloted a small-town business case scenario).
General health will improve, as people consume fewer toxic pesticides in their food and water saving billions in health care costs.
The Second Colonialisation?
China, India, and Russia are increasingly buying land in Latin America and Africa to grow more food.
Unfortunately, exploiting low-cost local labor, who will never be able to purchase the food they grow, they are using outdated, highly toxic methods.
In fact, recent reports have highlighted the use of banned, toxic inputs, banned in the US and Europe, being exported for use in Africa.
We have all seen what Industrial Agriculture has done to the Global North — will we sit by and watch millions of acres be deforested, unsustainably managed to produce cheap, low-nutrition food?
Even more worrying is the rush of countries, like Ethiopia, to offer cheap long-term leases of land to foreign investors, depriving their native populations. Rather than helping their own smallholders grow food for their own country, they are hoping foreign investors will offer employment. (An old story being repeated as local people are over-exploited).
SUMMARY
A low-carbon, food system which produces safe nutritious food and safe drinking water would involve:
· Substituting fossil fuel-based fertilizers and pesticides with regenerative agriculture practices
· Planning and incentivizing farmers to grow all the food their region/state needs, reducing imports
· Reducing imported food reliance through incentives to grow a more diverse range of crops regionally
· Incentivising new, small farms closer to highly dense populations to produce highly perishable crops
· Installing local food waste collection services, for compost or gas processing
· Offering free credit for transition to electric-based systems in food production systems
· Replacing GMO corn and soya crop subsidies for resilient agroforestry systems installation suitable for local food needs
· Banning the use of petrol-based single-use plastics in all food systems
· Prioritizing water for regenerative agriculture farm systems that utilize and save each drop of moisture in their soils (rather than farms with dead soils where there will be huge water and topsoil erosion annually).
· Incentivising proliferation of local and regional food processing systems — i.e., poultry, meat, grain, bread making, etc. in sustainable, insulated, buildings made of low-carbon concrete.
Of course, there is a lot more that can, and needs to be done. However, if we don’t make the BIG CHANGES now, we will face more misery VERY SOON, wherever we are in the world.
In all of the talks on “tipping points” currently in the climate change discussions, there is a tendency towards fatalism. However, it’s not just about whether we will switch to renewable energy systems fast enough, transition to heat pumps and electric cars fast enough, change our diets quickly enough, or stop cutting down our ancient forests now.
Food systems are an area where IF WE ACT NOW, we will be able to create food systems of production, processing, and distribution that will be resilient to future change.
Lack of affordable, safe food is the first trigger to chaos.
Or as one senator recently said at the VACS Rockefeller Talk “When your child’s belly is empty, nothing else matters”.
(All views are my own, and based on scientific studies and UN reports widely available online. Previously published on Linked In.)
#foodsystems #fossilfuelfree #nutrition #microplastics #circulareconomy #soilhealth #agroforestry #COP #climatecrisis
Published by
Inspired by watching NYC Climate Week 23 online — some thoughts about what a healthier, carbon-free food system could look like #nycclimateweek #foodsystemstransformation #cop28
Parm Kaur
Project Manager, Author, Life Coach, Trainer, Content Producer
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Why are we still burning our money funding fossil fuel-based fertilizers?
WHAT DOES A FOSSIL FUEL-FREE FOOD PRODUCTION SYSTEM LOOK LIKE?
Parm Kaur
Project Manager, Author, Life Coach, Trainer, Content Producer
September 20, 2023
Open Immersive Reader
By Parm Kaur
(Inspired by CLIMATE WEEK NYC 2023)
As the window of opportunity begins to close on avoiding humanity’s headlong rush into an inhabitable planet one of the HUGE changes that needs to happen immediately is transforming our food systems.
FOSSIL FUEL CULPRITS
Despite over 40 years of global discussions on how to reduce our impact on planetary health, by reducing our carbon emissions, we are only now globally discussing how to reduce the climate impacts of our food.
As drinking water becomes more scarce, we also need to use less water-intensive food systems and become smarter at how we use this finite resource which humans will need MORE of as temperatures increase.
Our hunger for diversity and year-round availability has devasted entire ecosystems, and wildlife, and killed over 60% of our bees and pollinating insects.
Our use of toxic inputs and ingredients has already impacted human global health:
- reducing fertility
- increasing the rate of chronic diseases
- and resulting in a global pandemic of obesity.
(Many are linking the rise of obesity to the drop in nutrition available in processed foods- the body demands nutrients that processed food simply does not have. You must eat 5 bags of spinach to get the same nutrients as 1 bag of organic spinach).
The devastation to whole island ecosystems in our quest for cheap cooking oil, for example, has only recently come to worldwide attention. (palm oil). So here are some of the key culprits that produce high carbon emissions in our food systems which necessitate #systemchange in our food systems.
1. FERTILIZERS
A large percentage of farmers’ annual costs are fertilizers- which are not necessary and ACTIVELY harm the soil, the crop, human health, wildlife, and water safety.
Toxic for farmers, consumers, water systems and soil microbiology
Over 50% of the carbon footprint of food production is the use of petrol-based fertilizers. Despite decades of science outlining all the ways ammonia-based products kill soil microbiology, poison our water systems, increase chronic diseases in the population by over 50%, and decrease fertility rates we continue to use them.
The rise in the rate of chronic diseases has been scientifically linked to the beginning of the use of glyphosates as fertilizers in the US in the 1960s. Toxic chemicals running off compacted, poor soils are leaching into our water tables and are slowly killing us all.
FACT: Did you know that OVER 40% of children in the USA now suffer from chronic diseases?
We must stop IMMEDIATELY.
Growing food regeneratively not only protects the soil, and prevents poisoning of our water ways it also increases CROP RESILENCE.
Unfortunately, most GM seeds designed to improve yields, not only have less ability to tolerate weather changes due to their decreased ability to use soil microbiology, they are also less nutritious (and in many cases less digestible for humans (rise in food allergies and intolerances worldwide).
But as yet only 6% of farmers in the USA are growing food regeneratively.
Alternatives include the use of local composts, compost teas, fish products, and kelp. Contrary to popular opinion using regenerative agriculture methods such as green manure crops, intercropping, and compost tea application often INCREASES PROFITS, as well as yields.
Immediately ceasing our subsidies to fossil fuel-based production would also free up a lot of tax-payers money that could be better used to provide safe, pesticide-free, food and drinking water to millions.
2. TRANSPORTATION
Transporting food millions of miles is a huge carbon cost in current food production and distribution systems that could easily be reduced. If fruit can be grown in Nebraska, using solar-passive greenhouses, why import it from Florida?
We need regions to be FOOD SELF-SUFFICIENT, and this will result in cheaper, healthier, fresher, more nutrient-dense food.
Consumers enjoy eating locally-based food and it’s time for #policymakers, planners, and farmers to supply them.
Cattle are also transported thousands of miles during their short lives, to industrial-sized food lots in places like Idaho. There they are injected with growth hormones and antibodies, and fed primarily a diet of GMO corn.
Many local communities, next to feed lots are deserted. They have seen a spike in cancer to 10% of the population which is x10 the national average. In unhealthy non-maintained lots hormones, cow slurry, etc leak into the local water table.
Although conditions of cattle feed lots vary, and not all are unhealthy — it’s perhaps not surprising that in some regions small towns are abandoned and our industrial-sized feed lots remain.
Because who wants to drink contaminated water?
Cows were designed to eat pasture. Cows raised on pasture produce more nutritious meat, less methane, and reduce the need for more GMO corn and grain. Cows raised on pasture will not poison the local water table, and so the local population.
Pasture-fed meat is more expensive but more sustainable — we will have to pay more for healthy food. But only we can decide whether we will have healthy food, and healthy eco-systems at all.
(FUN FACT: Global carbon emissions from raising beef are MORE than total global emissions for using petrol cars!)
Lower carbon costs from producing food locally will significantly cut down the Food Industry’s impact on climate change.
The new locavore movement, where consumers only eat what is produced in their local area is gaining traction in San Francisco and Southern France. Consumers are amazed at the quality and taste of fresh, naturally ripened, food which has often been picked the same day.
Still tiny, this powerful movement is already impacting how supermarkets, such as Whole Foods, source their food.
Locally produced food will reduce carbon emissions forever AND provide us with healthier, less toxic food.
Wouldn’t you like to support your local growers and food producers and eat fresher, more organic food?
3. PLASTICS
Average US citizen consumption
Consumers are now aware that they are consuming on average, a credit card’s worth of plastic each week. Microplastics are everywhere including human breast milk.
Using petrol-based Plastics in food wrapping, growing, and transporting is no longer necessary — we have alternatives.
Plant-based plastic mulches in the small market garden sector are increasingly being used, and plastic wraps made from food production waste such as potato peel is already available. There are thousands of innovations already waiting to be used for everyday things.
We all want a way to live without the use of plastics in everyday items. As concerns grow about the increasing prevalence of microplastics found in humans, there is no excuse to continue producing more fossil fuel-based plastic.
As yet manufacturers and supermarkets are not responding to public concerns. Using brown paper bags, for example, to package foodstuffs instead of plastic is one way that ethical producers are beginning to produce food.
Detoxing our food systems from plastics is not going to happen overnight, but without MORE pressure from consumers, it may never happen.
Plastic is challenging to recycle safely
4. OUTDATED PRACTICES, EQUIPMENT & BUILDINGS
In the Global North farming has predominantly become a dying profession due to the industrialization of Agriculture. As the soil has been denigrated over the last 60 years with the use of ammonia-based fertilizers and pesticides, fungal and viral pathogens are already becoming more prevalent.
Climate extremes have put even more stress on plant life. Farmers have always been at the forefront of dealing with climate change as they see floods and droughts devastate their crops.
Many farmers are becoming more concerned about the impact of pesticides and toxic chemicals on their food, and local water and some are now seeking sustainable alternatives.
However, the majority are resistant to change — as it takes an effort and finance. Some are stuck using outdated petrol-based machinery, inefficient practices, and “chemical inputs are the only way” mentality.
The fact that subsidies available to switch to cover crops have been oversubscribed, demonstrates willingness to change.
However, until farmers, consumers, and policymakers come together to do what is needed to produce locally produced healthy food, produced for nutrition rather than ethanol, or to feed industrial cattle.
Recognizing that low fuel prices are over forever is one thing but adapting to that change is another. For a fossil fuel-free future ALL of our food production, processing, and distribution machinery must have efficient electric alternatives. Including irrigation systems.
In fact, switching to non-irrigation resilient crops as a norm will have to be adopted worldwide, and regenerative agriculture practices enable soils to hold over 50% more moisture REF: Water for every farm)
Petrol-based machinery in farm production is still prevalent, even though electric vehicles are becoming more available. EVERY mechanized system in food production can be run on electricity -which of course, should come from renewable sources.
Sufficient Grants and low-interest loans for the purchase of more efficient, electric-based farming and food production systems would help producers make this transition.
Energy costs will continue to rise, and ensuring farms and food processors are housed in sustainable buildings, which are well insulated and built using low CARBON CONCRETE must be insisted on.
5. FOOD WASTE
REF
Over 30% of food produced is wasted — either because of:
- “perfection rule” supermarket demands,
- spoilage due to lack of sufficient cold, dry storage,
- or by consumers.
Some countries like Hong Kong and the UK have prioritized tackling this — the models are there to be implemented worldwide.
SIGNIFICANTLY this reduction in food wastage will decrease the amount of food needed to meet global needs by 2050 — it’s not useful to say we need to increase food production by 50% per se.
It’s more useful to think about what we are eating, increasing the nutrient density of what we eat, and reducing food wastage at all points of the production, distribution, and supply chain.
CIRCULAR food systems recycle food waste into compost-making facilities or use methane gas for cooking and heating. Reducing the methane produced by waste food rotting is an additional climate benefit.
Clearly reducing food waste will reduce the amount of food we need to grow annually.
(Read about Canadian company recycling local food waste).
There are many opportunities to reduce Carbon Emissions in our food systems — which one can you choose today?
NO MORE INCREMENTAL CHANGES
The bureaucrats and vested interests continue to discuss DATA, and the need for more research.
All of the science, data, and trials have already been done. From Africa, Asia, Europe, and the US the success of regenerative agriculture systems is well documented.
There are no more reasons not to implement change now — COMPLETELY.
There will be glitches and challenges but there certainly are no more excuses — wherever you are in the world.
Locally produced food retains nutrients often lost in transportation
Wouldn’t it be great to access affordable, safe food and water to consume?
There is a lot of talk right now on cutting subsidies to fossil fuel production (yep, the taxpayer is paying for pollution that is killing us and the planet).
We also need to cut subsidies for GMO crops that are primarily used to feed cattle and are mostly indigestible for most of the population. Open pollinated crops have a greater chance to evolve to local, climate change.
Mixed heirloom grains are also more resilient to pests, and as importantly MORE NUTRITIOUS.
(Big Ag’s current campaign to prevent farmers from SHARING SEED MUST be fought!)
Safe, healthy soils INCREASE the protein and essential micronutrients of the food grown in them.
The hard decision has to be made — DO WE WANT TO GROW GRAIN FOR ANIMALS OR GRAINS FOR HUMANS?
We can still have pasture-fed meat and poultry but there is a finite resource of land and workable soil. Cutting down more and more tropical and temperate rainforests to grow grain for cattle is not a sustainable option.
Should African and South American countries lose their precious soils and forests so that we can still eat meat fed on grain produced elsewhere?
Additional benefits of switching to no-till and regenerative agriculture practices will include the creation of new jobs. Low fossil fuel-based systems often require more labor.
Using locally based compost systems will also DECREASE methane gas production from landfills if local businesses allow their food waste to be collected. (Canada has already successfully piloted a small-town business case scenario).
General health will improve, as people consume fewer toxic pesticides in their food and water saving billions in health care costs.
The Second Colonialisation?
China, India, and Russia are increasingly buying land in Latin America and Africa to grow more food.
Unfortunately, exploiting low-cost local labor, who will never be able to purchase the food they grow, they are using outdated, highly toxic methods.
In fact, recent reports have highlighted the use of banned, toxic inputs, banned in the US and Europe, being exported for use in Africa.
We have all seen what Industrial Agriculture has done to the Global North — will we sit by and watch millions of acres be deforested, unsustainably managed to produce cheap, low-nutrition food?
Even more worrying is the rush of countries, like Ethiopia, to offer cheap long-term leases of land to foreign investors, depriving their native populations. Rather than helping their own smallholders grow food for their own country, they are hoping foreign investors will offer employment. (An old story being repeated as local people are over-exploited).
SUMMARY
A low-carbon, food system which produces safe nutritious food and safe drinking water would involve:
· Substituting fossil fuel-based fertilizers and pesticides with regenerative agriculture practices
· Planning and incentivizing farmers to grow all the food their region/state needs, reducing imports
· Reducing imported food reliance through incentives to grow a more diverse range of crops regionally
· Incentivising new, small farms closer to highly dense populations to produce highly perishable crops
· Installing local food waste collection services, for compost or gas processing
· Offering free credit for transition to electric-based systems in food production systems
· Replacing GMO corn and soya crop subsidies for resilient agroforestry systems installation suitable for local food needs
· Banning the use of petrol-based single-use plastics in all food systems
· Prioritizing water for regenerative agriculture farm systems that utilize and save each drop of moisture in their soils (rather than farms with dead soils where there will be huge water and topsoil erosion annually).
· Incentivising proliferation of local and regional food processing systems — i.e., poultry, meat, grain, bread making, etc. in sustainable, insulated, buildings made of low-carbon concrete.
Of course, there is a lot more that can, and needs to be done. However, if we don’t make the BIG CHANGES now, we will face more misery VERY SOON, wherever we are in the world.
In all of the talks on “tipping points” currently in the climate change discussions, there is a tendency towards fatalism. However, it’s not just about whether we will switch to renewable energy systems fast enough, transition to heat pumps and electric cars fast enough, change our diets quickly enough, or stop cutting down our ancient forests now.
Food systems are an area where IF WE ACT NOW, we will be able to create food systems of production, processing, and distribution that will be resilient to future change.
Lack of affordable, safe food is the first trigger to chaos.
Or as one senator recently said at the VACS Rockefeller Talk “When your child’s belly is empty, nothing else matters”.
(All views are my own, and based on scientific studies and UN reports widely available online)
#foodsystems #fossilfuelfree #nutrition #microplastics #circulareconomy #soilhealth #agroforestry #COP #climatecrisis
Published by
Project Manager, Author, Life Coach, Trainer, Content Producer
Published • 1w
Inspired by watching NYC Climate week online — here are some thoughts about what a healthier, carbon-free food system could look like #nycclimateweek #foodsystemstransformation #cop28
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