Food and Farm

350 Food and Farm

Photo Credit: Ricky HaasFood, and how we produce and consume it, presents both a challenge and a solution to climate change. “After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy – 19 percent.” This makes a lot of sense, considering how food is a basic part of human existence, and because climate change is so linked to the normal way in which we humans have become accustomed to live. But food can also be a solution: food actions are fun, they bring people together and they show everyone that eating right is a real, personal, everyday way to fight global warming.

We are really excited about an action idea around this theme. A few days after we announced October 24, an organizer in New Jersey registered a great action in her town: a harvest festival! This idea is already catching on. So, join in on the fun and host a 350 event on your farm, at your local community garden, with your neighbors in your backyard garden. Or, host an eat-in: a public potluck to bring people in your community together to share local food. All you need to do is take your 350 photo!

Register your October 24 event now!

Other action ideas:

  • Local pumpkin pie baking contest (bake 350 pies!)
  • Vegetarian cook-off
  • Herd your livestock to spell out 350 (!)
  • At your Eat-In, spell out 350 with the tables and take a picture
  • Break ground on a community garden; transplant 350 seedlings
  • Distribute 350 pounds of compost
  • Serve a low-carbon meal to 350 students at the school cafeteria

For more information about the links between climate change and food and farming, read on:

Food shortages and climate impacts
There is a growing movement around the world centered around the way food is grown and distributed.. In many places, access to food is still a severe problem, and food costs are rising. Overall, the aggregate global price of food has doubled in real terms over the past eight years, while in many places, the workers with the lowest incomes are seeing those incomes fall. As if this weren't enough, climate change impacts weather patterns, leading to increased rainfall in some places, and decreased rainfall in others. The African continent is especially harmed, and as drought impacts growing regions, farming and grazing for cattle and other animals compromises yet more peoples' access to food.

Locally produced food as a solution
The concept of "food miles" and the carbon footprint of food is becoming more widely known. The basic concept is: as we have increasingly globalized our food supply, we use more petroleum flying food all over the world. Locally produced food doesn't bring this problem, and it also provides many additional benefits. So what is local food, and why is it so great? Instead of going to the supermarket and buying food that comes from another country, your money helps support your local community, where it stays within the local tax base, and provides local jobs. All while helping to stop climate change.

Livestock
Factory farms require huge carbon inputs and produce huge carbon outputs in the form of methane. It takes more than a calorie of fuel to produce every calorie we eat and, in industrial meat production, the ratio of calories-in to calories-out can be as high as 58:1. Eating livestock from your local community lessens this problem, but it still has a higher carbon output than a vegetarian diet.

Industrial agriculture
Growing commodity food on an industrial scale requires huge carbon inputs in the form of pesticides and fertilizers. Many fertilizers are petroleum-based. Small- and mid-scale diversified farms are actually carbon-negative: they store carbon in the soil.

Production of Corn-based ethanol
Photo Credit: Ricky HaasTo quote food justice advocate Raj Patel, "It should hardly be surprising that the decision to burn rather than eat a large share of the US corn harvest would push up food prices. Estimates of the impact on global food prices vary from a high of 30 per cent to a low of around 5 per cent." While it's impossible to single out one cause for the global food crisis, taking corn out of the food supply and into the fuel supply had a very quick impact on global hunger. People rioted in protest in many countries, especially in India. While this issue is quite complicated, and this is a simplification, one key take-away is that climate solutions that rely on agriculture are not cut-and-dry fixes to the problem, and they bring with them consequences just like any other alternative.

More 350 Art--with a Scythe!

27 May, 2009 - 09:07 — May

If you're like me, you have a difficult time pronouncing the word "Scythe." But when Bill McKibben sent this to me yesterday, it didn't matter--now I'm amazed at the possibilities for Scythe Art on October 24!

 This is one of the best pictures we've gotten since the 350 campaign began--in part because it was created not with a machine but with a scythe, on Peter Vido's farm in New Brunswick, Canada. Peter isan internationally renowned scythe activist, keeping alive an important part of our farming heritage. Read more about it here.

We wrote to ask him if he'd coordinate some scythe actions for Oct. 24--rounding up some of his blade-wielding friends to carve big 350s out of fields still unmown at that late date in the (northern hemisphere) harvest season. He said sure--and then within a few hours he'd gone out and created this work of art as a kind of appetizer. 

The speed with which this intricate image was created proves one of his points: that the scythe, far from being a relic of our agricultural past, is an essential and beautiful tool for our post-carbon future. We can't wait to see what happens on Oct. 24--our appetite is whetted!