Is carbon farming the most economically viable way to keep climate catastrophe at bay?
A year ago, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez worked as a bartender in Queens. Now the 29-year old is the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, the Democrats’ biggest rising star since Barack Obama. She has pushed a decade-old idea called the Green New Deal to the political fore, which has major implications for the food system.
Carbon Farming
The overarching goal of the Green New Deal is to develop a carbon-neutral economy. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not coal-fired power plants and automobile tailpipes that emit the majority of greenhouse gases; it’s food production. Tillage, synthetic fertilizer and the manure lagoons of industrial livestock operations emit copious quantities of carbon into the atmosphere. However, agriculture also holds great potential to pull carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it in soil and plants, just as natural forests and grasslands do. There are proven techniques to do this, collectively known as carbon farming, though it would take massive government incentives to redesign our agricultural system to become a net absorber of carbon. But there is a growing consensus that, compared to the investments required to transition to 100 percent renewable energy, electric vehicles and the like, an agricultural approach might actually be the fastest, cheapest and most practical way to dial down carbon emissions before it’s too late.
More Farmers
Another goal of the Green New Deal is to create millions of green-collar jobs by incentivizing the sort of economic activity that will put less carbon into the atmosphere instead of more. This means a lot more people working in agriculture. Carbon-friendly farming is, by nature, more labor intensive. It looks less like one guy managing 1,000 acres of corn and soybean on a tractor and more like a patchwork of small, diverse farms where a tightly managed integration of livestock, perennial forages and tree crops is maintained. One possible scenario is a green youth corps that subsidizes young people to spend time working in agriculture after graduation before moving into the broader workforce.
Food Justice
A third tenet of the Green New Deal is social equity. The idea is to not only create a carbon-neutral economy but also address issues of economic and racial justice in the process. In the food arena, this means devising a system where it’s not just the Whole Foods set who has access to low-carbon food. To a large extent, carbon farming practices overlap with other aspects of sustainable agriculture, which generally produces food that is more nutritious but also more expensive. The vision of the Green New Deal is to scale up those forms of agriculture and let carbon-spewing forms of agriculture fall by the wayside so that healthy, responsibly produced food isn’t just a niche trend but standard fare in every grocery store and restaurant, thereby eliminating the price differential.
wow, IMHO, the entire idea is taken right out of communist writtings on collectivism and was used as early forms of control, amoung many others, to localize people and utilize them for government projects, none of which have been successful, communist organizations struggled for years, with many millions starving or dying under these kinds of concepts to eventually move, at least to measurable degress, away from them and utilized more western techniques,
As part of a long line of family farmers; crops, cattle, timber I am in favor of all the interest that sustainability and agriculture reform discussions always raise. However I am always discouraged because so often it is lead by idealists (AOC) that are so quick to point to others responsibilities and to invite more government oversite into a problem that they are so often the supporters of. For example the latest most “tweetable” activist AOC. They will point out all the benefits and gains of sustainability and responsible farming as they drive to the big box grocery store to… Read more »
If we don’t do something about the dwindling Bee population then all of this is for nothing.
I’m sorry…this is lunacy, as are most of the stunningly ill-formed utterances issued by Ms. Ocasio-Cortez (and her Socialist/Utopian ilk). She’s the one who claimed the earth will be destroyed in 12 years on the current path…? Right? Please people, try to objectively assess some of the proposals addressed in this article–perhaps reason and logic may still prevail. While you’re contemplating…have fun with these doomsday prophecies from the “leading thinkers” of the 70’s: 1. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” 2. “We are… Read more »
We farm using less herbicides and insectisides every year. We rotate crops, use ground cover, and use some of our cow manure to feritilize our gardens. We live in central Nebraska and have a small farm (less than 1000 acres) and a small cow/calf herd (28) that graze our virgin pasture. We do what we can but we are no longer farmers but agribusiness workers. We want to be farmers and nurture our earth but our crops have to be profitable.
We all need to be growing food. If you have a yard then some of it should be veggie garden and fruit trees/shrubs. If you don’t have a yard then potted plants on your balcony. And those who do have land, grow lots and lots of food items to share with relatives and neighbors. We could all eat very well, if we all GREW SOMETHING!!!
Amazing!!! I am a tiny little frog in a very big pond pushing for a return to sustainable farm practices. It’s great to see others out there, pushing for the same way to live, sustain and thrive
So what are some examples of the incentives that would be required?
According to the EPA, transportation and power generation are still the largest sources of greenhouse gasses. but there’s another gorilla in the room: soil health. I read Dr. David Montgomery’s Book, Growing a Revolution and it’s message that we need to transition to a majority no-till system as fast as we can go. The restoration of our soils is critical if we are going to feed an ever growing population while maintaining biodiversity and getting off of agricultural chemicals.
some are wondering about a community of like minded people. There is a new Facebook group called ‘Climate Victory Gardeners’ started by the ‘www.greenamerica.org’ which also has a page on Facebook. They definitely would welcome more members, since they are just getting started. Check it out.
Green America has a climate victory garden map you can add your garden to and has information on how to climate garden