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What’s the connection
between food production and
climate?
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Energy costs of agriculture
• Traditional
• Exists within natural energy and nutrient cycles
• Crop rotations
• Green manures
• Draft animals
• Conventional
• 10 calories of fossil fuel needed to produce 1 calorie of food
• 1500 litres of oil to feed each American per year
• 10% More energy used each year due to soil depletion
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GM technology to the rescue?
• Yields – about the same with GM crops but GM soy yields 5-10% less
• Pesticide use grown 15-fold since introduction of GM crops (herbicide resistance)
• Roundup prevents nutrient uptake and increases Fusarium (soil borne fungus that causes disease)
• Bt GM plants produce their own pesticide – damages aquatic organisms
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Biotech promises
• No GM crops are more nutritious, salt and drought tolerant etc
• Genes work in complex networks and are more difficult to manipulate than expected
• Biotechs are patenting genes linked to useful traits as climate changes
• If their patents succeed access to these traits could be severely limited
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Non-GM successes
• Victoria has bred drought tolerant canola. It had a limited release this year
• there are other non-GM successes ie salt resistant wheat and virus resistant cassava
• The SRI (System of Rice Intensification) developed for subsistence Asian farmers has doubled yields and halved costs
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Effects on farmers
• Farmers sued when crops polluted by GM i.e. Percy Schmeiser case
• Monsanto now controls 20% of world seed market. Price increase of 35% for bag of corn
• N. American farmers forming groups to fight this• Crop failure, bankruptcy and suicide reported in
Indian farmers who grew GM cotton
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Soil and carbon
• Agricultural soils used to be 20% organic matter. Now 1%.
• Pesticides and fertilisers kill soil life and cause carbon to be released
• If carbon content of soils was raised to 5%, 150 billion tonnes of CO2 would be sequestered
• In 2002-2003 the world generated 18 billion tonnes of CO2
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Ideas and inspirations
• Bio char – by product of slow pyrolysis. Stores carbon in soil for 100’s of years and increases fertility
• Soil food web – Dr Elaine Ingham
• Permaculture
• Organic and bio-dynamic systems
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Why is there a world food crisis?
• Biofuels instead of food
• Refusal of countries to grow GM crops
• Drought
• Flood
• Changed diets in China and India
• Global free trade pushed by IMF and World Bank
• Food and farmer subsidies removed
• Farmers forced off land
• Self sufficiency replaced by investor speculation in crops and farmland
• Poverty
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Big Food profits
• Monsanto’s profits increased 296% from 2005-2007. Exxon Mobil’s increased 12% over same period
• Cargill – biggest grain trader – 86% profit increase in 1st quarter 2008
• Bunge – food trader – 77% profit increase in 2007• ADM – 2nd largest grain trader – 67% profit
increase in 2007
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David Holmgren on energy use
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Where to from here?
• IAASTD – suggests shift from Industrial to Sustainable agriculture
• Via Campesina• Cuba – surviving after
industrial agriculture collapsed
• Local heroes• David Holmgren –
looks at growing food in Melbourne
• Farmers markets• CSA• Home gardening and
food swaps• Permablitzes