Reducing impact of climate change requires agricultural adjustments | Opinion

To avoid the worst climate outcomes, we won’t just need to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, but also deal with our land problem, which is mostly an agriculture problem. Agriculture generates one-fourth of all climate-warming emissions.

The relentless spread of farms and pastures that already cover two of every five acres on land on Earth is not only wiping out biodiverse habitats but destroying the carbon sinks that can stabilize our warming climate. Agriculture is by far the leading driver of deforestation. We lose a soccer field’s worth of tropical forest every six seconds.

The world population is projected to grow from 8 billion today to 10 billion by 2050, which will make the challenge of feeding the world much more complex. To meet the expected demand for food by midcentury, global agricultural output will have to increase by more than 50%. The World Resources Institute estimated that meeting that level of production would require clearing at least 1.5 billion acres of forest, savannas and wetlands for new farmland, an area nearly twice the size of India. Clearly, that won’t happen, but it gives a sense of the scale of the problem. 

Meanwhile, agricultural output is already in decline due to climate change. A Cornell University-led study found that global crop production today is 21% lower than it would have been without climate change.

To feed a hungry world in 2050 agricultural production will need to expand about 50% by 2050, but at the same time we will need to accomplish this increase with less land so we don’t displace those carbon sinks that help prevent climate mayhem.

Here are two fixes that can help address this:

First, stop using land to grow energy. Farm-grown fuels like corn ethanol are a climate disaster masquerading as climate solutions. Roughly 40% of all corn is now used to make ethanol. The tenfold expansion in ethanol production in the U.S. from 2002 to 2019 was driven by the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), a federal program that since 2005 has required transportation fuel to contain a minimum volume of renewable fuels. So far, that has largely meant corn ethanol. Currently 98% of gasoline in the U.S. contains some ethanol. The RSF caused corn prices to spike and as a result farmers planted corn everywhere they could, replacing pastureland and plowing up land that had previously been reserved for conservation purposes. 

More: Stronger legislation needed to cut use of harmful plastics | Opinion

Using farmland to grow fuel rather than food (and incentivizing this with government subsidies) has significant environmental drawbacks, including increased greenhouse gas emissions due to land-use changes and intensified farming practices, leading to soil erosion and habitat loss. Its production also causes water pollution from fertilizer runoff, contributing to dead zones, and can harm air quality and human health. The intensive farming required for ethanol production often leads to reduced soil health, making the overall process environmentally detrimental despite its biofuel status. 

The situation is summed up well by Timothy Searchinger, a senior researcher at Princeton University’s Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment: “It’s crazy to use this very limited resource—highly productive land—for energy,” he said. “It’s almost spectacularly inefficient.” Corn ethanol converts 0.15% of solar energy into usable energy, while a solar cell today converts 15% to 20% of sunlight to energy. “And the good news is you don’t need to put a solar cell on the best available farmland.”

Second, we need to recognize that meat, is bad for the environment. Nearly 80% of the world’s agricultural land is used to feed livestock, especially cattle. Beef cattle use more than half the world’s agricultural land to produce just 2% of its calories. Pound for pound, beef generates 50 times more emissions than coal. 

Modeling done by World Resources Institute found that chicken and pork used three times more land and produced three times more emissions per calorie or gram of protein than beans. Dairy was worse. But beef and lamb were at least six times worse than dairy.

An encouraging sign is that America’s per capita beef consumption has declined by a third since the 1970s. A shift has been made to chicken which is cheaper and perceived as healthier. That switch inadvertently spared millions of acres of land, probably reducing more U.S. emissions than anything else before the advance of solar. The U.S. still consumes beef four times the global average so obviously there is still room for greater progress. 

Let’s follow the advice of the Chick-fil-A cow mascot and “Eat mor chikin.” And while driving to pick up that chicken dinner, use 100% gasoline with no ethanol (E10) added.

Mike Altshuler is a retired educator and environmental activist who lives in Edmond. He can be reached at okczen@yahoo.com.