Moving to Large Scale Sustainable Agriculture And Carbon Management
Among the tools we have to counter global warming, the change back to sustainable agriculture is one of the best.
Today, agriculture can be roughly divided into 2 broad categories; industrial scale, and “other”.
Industrial scale agricultural depends on scale across land preparation, planting, maintenance, harvesting and processing. Doing this drives us to monoculture. Using agriculture as a tool against climate requires us to change the massive infrastructural and societal investments we have made into industrial farming practices. Lets take a brief look at what that could mean.
In the US, we are really good at industrial farming, and the USDA helps with a price floor limit. (My highlights below)
“ARC provides income support payments on historical base acres when actual crop revenue declines below a specified guaranteed level. PLC provides income support payments on historical base acres when the effective price for a covered commodity falls below its reference price.
Covered commodities include barley, canola, large and small chickpeas, corn, crambe, flaxseed, grain sorghum, lentils, mustard seed, oats, peanuts, dry peas, rapeseed, long grain rice, medium and short grain rice, safflower seed, seed cotton, sesame, soybeans, sunflower seed and wheat.”
This price-floor protection is key; this allows large food commodity companies like Cargill, Bunge and others to invest in the supply chain of these commodities. Along with them come ChemChina (AKA Syngenta), BASF (FKA Monsanto), Corteva (FKA Dow DuPont, Pioneer) who supply seeds and chemicals. Equipment makers also benefit from scale — John Deere (green side) is dominant in Agriculture, along with AgCo and CNH.
While a lot of headlines are about glyphosate (“Round Up”), it might be interesting to take a look at Chlorpyrifos and Dicamba; as potent as glyphosate and also widely used.
Wikipedia provides a comprehensive review of this pesticide, and here is the USGS data for 2017. (In November 2016, the resulting US general election and directives resulted in a stop to the publication of USGS data on farm chemical use. So, the last publication available today is from 2017. (One hopes for renewed data transparency with the new administration.)
The existing USGS data (link below) shows the extent of farm-chemical use, in terms of geographical spread (note the overlap with key water resources and basins) and application density, as well as chemical variety.
And here’s further peek at Dicamba:
These data points show the extent to which industry, regulators and producers are invested in monoculture. Turning this around will take effort.
Lets take look at some other challenges that result from the business of industrial farming.
- Scale requires monoculture for planting, maintenance, harvesting and processing.
- Since mono-culture is by definition less resilient to disease, more chemicals are needed for pests and fungi, etc. See the USGS list above for details. This then invites GMO seeds that are designed to result in chemical resistant plants, as opposed to general fertility improvements.
- Successful monoculture results in silos full of commodity product. That means farmers need to find buyers for the commodities. The MidWest region of the US is the pre-eminent producer of these commodities.
- A significant part of soybean and corn production goes as feedstock for livestock, and some to ethanol production as a form of renewable energy.
- The USDA runs the the Farm Bill and SNAP “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program” AKA Food Stamps and School Lunches. This subsidy results in the delivery of subsidized processed foods for school lunches and products that are eligible for purchase with the low-income benefit funds. The classic being pizza, as that carries the grain, dairy and meat industries all on one plate, with a few toppings for the veggie folks.
Returning to Sustainable Agriculture
No-till practices can be successful, as described in this interesting study:
No-till methods *combined* with cover crops are the best way of moving fast on carbon sequestration. The key is to this is through healthy soils teeming with microbes, which by definition means reduced chemical loads.
In the US, there has been tons of talk and little action. However that is finally changing with companies like CarbonBridge.io (in which I’m involved), Indigo Ag, Cargill and Land O’Lakes amongst others.
However, this implies a change from chemical-anchored industrial agriculture. And that brings interesting dilemmas:
- Farmers needs farm insurance, and insurers demand best practices, that include application of expected “inputs” like NPK fertilizers and pesticides in exhange for coverage. (Remember the USDA provides commodity *price* protection, not yield loss compensation) We are not yet at the point where most farm insurance policies support no-till at scale.
The link below gives a quick overview; individual insurers come with additional terms as you would expect.
- As of today, mainstream livestock feed does not come with a requirement to be grown sustainably. That makes the market for sustainable grains and other products to be directed to *food* and not animal *feed* or renewable *fuel*. Which is a really small market in terms of volume.
- Cover cropping is also key; both to help the soil, and to provide beneficial insects to cut down on pesticide use. However, if you are working on this thesis, and your neighbour is not, this gets interesting. Wind-drift chemicals could negatively impact your stock of beneficial insects. And see the note from the USDA (above) on insurance implications.
This provides a more detailed explanation behind 80% of the US beef production.
Going back to carbon sequestration:
Industrial scale farming of commodity crops is well established in the US, Canada, Australia, Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and more. The acreage in these countries provides a basis for “easy” conversion to no-till and sustainable agriculture, assuming crop insurance providers adjust their policies and the market for sustainably produced food — and feed — increases to create the tipping point needed.
Many farmers in Africa, India, and large parts of Mexico and S. America have not yet moved fully to industrial farming, and present tempting “market opportunities” for the chemical firms and their follow on suppliers. Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and South Africa are all high on target lists.
It is important to help these farmers — many of whom are small scale operators with over-tilled plots ranging from 0.1 acres upward — to achieve financial security, without falling prey to chemically-induced monoculture. Perhaps the chemical companies could move to bio-active nutrients systems that help replenish soils for their next act — something both profitable and useful.
For the industrial farmers, each acre of well-tended land could pull in 2~4 CO2e tons per year should they make the changes needed. That is substantial, and needs to happen as soon as possible. (There is research pointing to a potential for higher sequestration numbers in well maintained land, which gives even more hope for the future. )
With carbon credits forecasted to top $80, there should be additional business models where the cost of transition to sustainable farming and soil replenishment can be mitigated. However, this leaves non-commodity, non-US farmers out of the financial rewards as currently structured, as there is no USDA protected pricing floor for them, even assuming crop-insurance can be addressed.
This curtails the amount of farmland that would convert as part of “Business as Usual”, and results in the need to accelerate these processes where possible. Ironically, these are the farmers who produce vast quantities of our food, as opposed to livestock feed — and who we could do well to help.
The reader may ask why the focus is on US farmers in this statement; that is a topic for a later post.
Some Indian states have already taken action on pesticides, as a precursor to needed sustainable farming without waiting for climate charity:
Sikkim:
Other states like Kerala and Arunachal Pradesh are also taking action, with action at the Indian federal level also happeening.
Taking action now is better than later. Please seek sustainably grown produce wherever and whenever you can.
You can make a difference, one plate at a time.
