Food, Farming and Climate Change
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Modern agricultural methods are responsible for a large amount of the world’s green house gas. But in a different kind of food system, ecologically sensitive agricultural practices can provide a great carbon sink and can play a significant role in both mitigating the effects of climate change and adapting to it. Paradoxically, millions of small scale farmers in Africa, Asia and Latin America who are most adversely affected by climate change also hold the keys to address it.
To help you get a better understanding, we have compiled a list of resources for you to explore:
Key issues related to Climate Crisis:
Feeding the Planet: Food: our ability to feed the planet will be in serious danger – but peasant farmers hold the answer.
- IAASTD: The International Assessment of Agricultural Science, Knowledge, and Technology for Development, involving more than 400 scientists, issued a groundbreaking report in 2008 that concludes that our current global food system is in serious trouble and needs a major rethink.
- Pathways to Resilience: A 2008 research paper that examines the role of resilient agriculture systems, and their importance in feeding the world as well as responding to climate change.
- Who Will Feed Us? Released at the Rome Food Summit by ETC Group, this report explores the 2 dominant models of agricultural production and consumption – the industrial food chain and the peasant farmer food web, and concludes that the peasant food web is a far more ecologically and climate friendly, socially just, and resilient system – but it needs more support.
Adaptation and Mitigation: Small farmers with their access to diversity, can help us minimize risks – and provide insurance against climate extremes and unpredictable growing conditions.
The Worldwatch Institute’s Farming and Land Use to Cool the Planet by Sara J. Scherr and Sajal Sthapit argues that small holder farmers, by managing soils, create natures greatest carbon sinks, and can actually cool the planet.
The Seed Map : Food, Farmers, and Climate Chaos – a teaching tool that that shows the state of global agro-biodiversity today. It identifies key threats to the world’s seed and biodiversity systems, particularly the impact of climate change, and highlights regions where institutions and peoples’ movements are working to preserve agricultural biodiversity.
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USC Canada
was founded by
Dr Lotta Hitschmanova in 1945. Our award-winning Seeds of Survival program promotes vibrant family farms, strong rural communities, and healthy ecosystems around the world.
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This is an excellent site. I taught Holistic Nutrition at George Brown for a couple of years and had to develop all my resources by reading widely…your site addresses many of the issues of the problems with industrial food production. Wonderful!
I would like to have help in finding more resources which I can use in my Grade One classroom. I already will be bringing in day-old chicks, planting seeds with the children, and we have baked bread. I need some more materials/ideas/resources.
For adult educational purposes, a great many excellent books have been written about our endangered food supply the last few years…I would be happy to send the book list which I recommended to my college students if you can find a spot for it on your site or in Jottings.(For example,. Michael Pollan’s books and Jane Goodall’s harvest of Hope. harvest fro Hope.)
I also would be interested in contacting my nearest Unitarian Church.This is a truly worthwhile project.