How Climate Change Affects Agriculture #3

Farmers worldwide are facing setbacks due to climate change and unsustainable farming practices. They need to change their practices to make agriculture more sustainable and reduce their carbon footprint. Increasing biodiversity, implementing crop rotations, and using cover crops can improve soil health and deter pests. Farmers can also create carbon sinks by adopting no-tilling or minimal-tilling strategies and using biochar to sequester carbon in the soil. These practices will require time and money but are necessary to meet global demands and mitigate the effects of climate change. This is your host, Samantha Williams. The date is April 29th, 2023. I'm recording in my dorm room at UA Little Rock's campus. In last week's episode, we learned that global warming would affect Arkansas's hardiness zones, water supplies, and public health. The week before, we learned about the large-scale repercussions of global warming, like drought and intensified weather events, which all lead to a reduction in crop yields, both globally and within Arkansas. In today's episode, we will be switching our focus to sustainable agriculture practices. Farmers all over the world are facing many setbacks due to climate change, top that with the fact that modern farming practices exacerbate these issues, you have a perfect storm. To make their agricultural processes sustainable, farmers must change their practices. Furthermore, modern practices also have a large carbon footprint. The agri-industry releases about 12% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Meaning that not only do they need to change their practices to ones that are more resilient to climate change, but they must also lower their carbon footprint in the same go. To do this, farmers can adopt climate smart agriculture practices, which include increasing biodiversity, decreasing soil erosion, and implementing crop rotations. First, we will focus on biodiversity and the positive impact it can have on crops. Then we will examine how farmers can use these crops as carbon sinks to reduce agriculture's carbon footprint. The leading cause of biodiversity loss, overexploitation of the land, is used widely in the agriculture industry. Farms are often managed in ways that significantly change the way water and nutrients cycle, which in turn negatively affects surrounding ecosystems. One way to increase biodiversity and negate these negative effects would be to establish farm edge habitats, such as shrubs or grasses. These can be seen as buffer zones, separating crops from each other and or the surrounding environment. The added habitat allows for added cover and food for animals. In a study done at the University of Missouri, they found that it may be economical as well as environmentally friendly for farmers to develop field borders around crop fields, than to just plant crops on the edges of fields. To further utilize biodiversity, farmers can plant cover crops when not actively using the field. Since there would be roots holding the soil in place, soil erosion would decrease. It would also replenish soil nutrients, creating a healthier soil, in turn increasing crop yields. Furthermore, introducing crop diversity within fields can also create a healthier soil while deterring pests. Intercropping, one such crop diversity practice, means planting different crops within the same area. It can be done by planting a crop that attracts pests away from another, more important crop, or by planting a crop that repels pests from both. Crop rotations are another sustainable practice that utilizes biodiversity. When the same crop is grown each year in a field, the soil runs out of essential nutrients for this crop type. The crop rotation allows the soil to uptake of the various nutrients from year to year, depending on the crop. A portion of the carbon on Earth right now is being stored in plants and soils. Farmers can utilize this by making their farms into carbon sinks, mainly by continuing to allow the soil to store carbon. This can be done by, again, adopting more sustainable practices. A lot of the practices already discussed contribute to carbon sinks, like crop rotations and cover crops. Now we will take a look at two other ways to allow farms to decrease their carbon footprint by increasing carbon sinks. A huge way farmers can increase carbon storage in the soil is to practice no-tilling or minimal-tilling planting strategies. As crops photosynthesize to produce their food, they remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and create the oxygen we need to breathe. Through this chemical process, carbon is sequestered in the soil. Disturbing soil by plowing or tilling a field can cause the release of stored carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. When farmers don't till their fields, carbon stays stored in the ground. If this practice was adopted, it would save large amounts of carbon from returning to the atmosphere and decrease fuel consumption, reducing the industry's carbon footprint. Biochar is another way that farmers can make a significant impact on their carbon footprint. Biochar is made from heating any organic material at low temperatures with no or limited oxygen. Taking crop residues and using this process reduces a quarter of a pound of carbon that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere for every one pound of organic material. Farmers can then in turn use biochar in their fields, which will help retain water and essential nutrients while sequestering the carbon in the soil. In conclusion, it will be hard for farmers to keep up with growing demands, especially because of the negative effects of climate change. But there are practical ways that farmers can mitigate these effects while also reducing the agricultural industry's carbon footprint. These practices will take time to implement and money as well, but they are needed if we expect the agri-industry to keep up with global demands. Thank you for listening. I hope that I have shared some valuable information with you, and if you could take one thing away from this, I would want it to be that climate change affects us all, in ways we don't always see, but there are things we can do about it. Thank you.