Along the back of this field of sugar snap peas, sunflowers and bachelor buttons at Oxbow Farm & Conservation Center is a buffer of maturing big-leaf maples and red-osier dogwoods. It’s a combination of forest and thicket that the farm has left standing to help protect water quality in the river and aquifer. (Oxbow Farm and Conservation Center)
Paul Chisholm
Farmers face a growing dilemma. Specifically, a food-growing dilemma.
How do you feed an increasing number of people without harming the environment?
As it turns out, growing as much food as possible in a small area may be our best bet for sustainably feeding the world’s population, according to new research.
It all comes down to how we manage greenhouse gases and climate change.
People often associate greenhouse emissions with burning fossil fuels, but farming makes a lot of them, too. That’s because farms usually replace natural vegetation, like trees, which store carbon.
Farmers who wish to minimize their carbon footprint have traditionally held two philosophies, says David Williams, the lead author of a paper published last week in the journal Current Biology.
The first philosophy, known as “land-sharing,” involves maximizing the amount of carbon stored on farmland. “This can mean things like planting trees in a field, or maintaining little patches of non-crop habitat on your farm,” explains Williams.
Grass strips alongside streams, like this one in the Lac qui Parle River watershed of Minnesota, can help to reduce fertilizer runoff from fields. MN Pollution Control Agency/Flickr
by Dan Charles NPR – March 7, 2017 The way environmentalist Craig Cox sees it, streams and rivers across much the country are suffering from the side effects of growing our food. Yet the people responsible for that pollution, America’s farmers, are fighting any hint of regulation to prevent it. “The leading problems are driven by fertilizer and manure runoff from farm operations,” says Cox, who is the Environmental Working Group’s top expert on agriculture. Across the Midwest, he says, nitrate-filled water from farm fields is making drinking water less safe. Phosphorus runoff is feeding toxic algae blooms in rivers and lakes, “interfering with people’s vacations. [They’re] taking their kids to the beach and the beach is closed. There’s stories about people getting sick.” This is preventable, Cox says. There are simple things that farmers can do to reduce the problems dramatically.
