GRAIN: Food and Climate Change

http://www.grain.org/article/entries/4357-food-and-climate-change-the-forgotten-link

Food and climate change: The forgotten link

GRAIN | 28 September 2011 | Against the grain

Climate change endangers food security in Himalayan communities such as Dunche, in Nepal’s Rasuwa District. In this photo Tamang women pound and sift wheat. (Photo credit: Minority Rights Group/Jared Ferrie)

Food is a key driver of climate change. How our food gets produced and how it ends up on our tables accounts for around half of all human-generated greenhouse gas emissions. Chemical fertilizers, heavy machinery and other petroleum-dependant farm technologies contribute significantly. The impact of the food industry as a whole is even greater: destroying forests and savannahs to produce animal feed and generating climate-damaging waste through excess packaging, processing, refrigeration and the transport of food over long distances, despite leaving millions of people hungry.

A new food system could be a key driver of solutions to climate change. People around the world are involved in struggles to defend or create ways of growing and sharing food that are healthier for their communities and for the planet. If measures are taken to restructure agriculture and the larger food system around food sovereignty, small scale farming, agro-ecology and local markets, we could cut global emissions in half within a few decades. We don’t need carbon markets or techno-fixes. We need the right policies and programmes to dump the current industrial food system and create a sustainable, equitable and truly productive one instead.

The industrial food system is responsible for 44 to 57% of all global GHG emissions