Green Food: Author says return to small farms would help environment

Most people who accept global warming think of the oil industry and coal-fired factories as the biggest producers of greenhouse gases.

But Anna Lappé wants people to consider another culprit: the food system.

Lappé, an author and activist, said that the entire food system -- from planting to processing to landfill con-

tributions -- accounts for about 31 percent of greenhouse gases. That's according to data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an organization formed by the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization.

Lappé will give a talk about food and greenhouse gases called "Eat the Sky: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork" at 7 p.m. Monday in the Salem College Fine Arts Center. Admission is free.

Lappé is the daughter of Frances Moore Lappé, who wrote Diet for a Small Planet in 1971. This best-selling book argued that world hunger does not result from a lack of natural resources but by a man-made industrial food system. It also served as a kind of manifesto for vegetarians.

In 2001, Frances and Anna founded the Small Planet Institute to help further what they call "living democracies," in which people's daily choices can help foster social change. They also established the Small Planet Fund in 2002 to support grass-roots movements to fight hunger and poverty.

In 2003, Frances and Anna published Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet. They collected testimonials from people on five continents who have challenged the large-scale agribusiness model and found environmentally sustainable alternatives for producing food.

In 2006, Anna Lappé co-wrote a book with Bryan Terry, a New York chef, called Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen. The book is partly a cookbook, but it also serves as a practical guide for eating more local and organic food.

Lappé's talk at Salem dovetails with a new book she is writing tentatively titled Eat the Sky, to spread the word about the connection between industrial agriculture and climate change.

The food system contributes to global warming in several ways, producing the three major types of greenhouse gases, Lappé said.

Carbon dioxide is released when wetlands and forests are destroyed to plant crops, by burning fossil fuels to power machinery and through erosion.

Methane is produced from the waste of ruminant animals, such as cattle, sheep and goats.

Nitrous oxide gets into the atmosphere from the use of man-made fertilizers.

Lappé is writing the book in part because that connection has not received much media coverage, she said in a recent telephone interview from her office in the San Francisco area. "I think there has been an emphasis on carbon emissions (from car exhaust, factory smokestacks and similar sources). But methane has 23 times the effect of carbon dioxide (on global warming) and nitrous oxide has 296 times the effect," she said.

Livestock production is the biggest offender, accounting for 18 percent of the global-warming effect, according to Livestock's Long Shadow, a report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. That's more than all of the gases from the transportation sector, Lappé said.

The feedlot system that's used by many beef producers requires the production of grain, which entails the use of petroleum-based pesticides and chemical fertilizers that require a lot of energy to create. The shipping of that grain to feedlots creates carbon dioxide. Also, unlike the waste of pastured animals that becomes fertilizer, the waste of animals in feedlots tends to accumulate, giving off methane gases.

"It's not because animals are inherently going to have this effect on climate. It's the way we've chosen to raise animals," Lappé said, adding that the world produces more livestock than ever before.

"I think we need more research," she said. "I do think there is a way for animals to be part of a sustainable farm, with animals providing manure for fertilizer. And in developing countries providing muscle instead of machines."

Lappé advocates small, organic, sustainable farms in general as a way to reduce the greenhouse gases emitted by the food system.

Small farms tend to rely more on manpower and less on machines. "On a big farm, it's not just machines for planting and harvesting, but also for processing foods once they come off the farm," she said.

Lappé said that industrial farms tend to disrupt nature's cycles with chemical fertilizers and pesticides, whereas sustainable farms tend to work with nature.

"On a natural farm, you are really tapping nature's abundance," she said. "You're getting soil fertility from (planting) legumes that produce nitrogen fixing (a natural process that makes nitrogen available to help plants grow). Instead of chemical pesticides, you're doing intercropping. Strawberries are notorious for needing heavy pesticides, but a natural farm places flowering plants around the strawberries that pests love even more."

She said that industrial farms also use more water than sustainable farms. Chemical fertilizers and pesticides degrade soil so that it doesn't retain water. It requires more water to hydrate crops than a sustainable farm with healthy soils.

"Soil is not just dirt," she said. "What makes soil healthy are microorganisms. What organic farmers do is feed the soil. Microorganisms create tunnels in soil, and that helps bring nutrients to plants. On industrial farms, the use of chemicals is the death of those microorganisms."

The degradation of the soil also leads to more carbon emissions from the soil, so industrial farms tend to release carbon, while organic farms store carbon. The more carbon stored, the fewer carbon-dioxide emissions.

Here are some of Lappé's suggestions for fighting climate change with our forks:

□ Choose real food. Choosing whole, unprocessed foods is more energy efficient because they have less processing and usually less packaging.

□ Clean your plate and compost food scraps. The decomposition in huge landfills is anaerobic and that leads to methane emissions. In contrast, a home compost pile that is regularly turned and exposed to air doesn't produce those emissions.

□ Eat less meat. Livestock production causes more greenhouse gases than any other sector of the food system, and Americans typically eat more protein than they need. If you can't eat less, at least choose organic or sustainably produced meats from small farms that don't produce as many emissions.

□ Buy local. It means less fuel burned to transport the food. Also, to have a sustainable food system, we need farms and we need communities that support farms.

□ Buy organic. Organic farms build healthy soil (that retains carbons) and typically use less fossil fuel than industrial farms. Organic farms can release as little as half the carbon dioxide as conventional farms.

□ Grow it yourself. "This is a direct and immediate way to feed yourself healthy foods, and to really understand the principles of sustainability. That is hugely valuable," she said.

Other suggestions include more cooking at home, vacations on working farms, making your yard organic and supporting forest-saving campaigns.

Lappé says she realizes that these are small steps. But she believes that people should do what they can to reduce climate change, she says.

"People say, ‘That's never going to happen,' and I just think that's self-defeating," she said.

"I don't get my hope from naively believing the world is going to change overnight. But I certainly think we can move in the right direction. And moving in that direction would be healthiest for us and for our planet."

Lappé also has a Web site, www.takeabite.cc, where people can learn more about food and climate change.