by L.B. Woodgate

Created on: August 12, 2010

As more and more dramatic shifts in extreme weather conditions become the norm, it will be incumbent on the agricultural brain trust of this world to rethink how they go about providing sufficient food supplies for the world’s growing population under such changing conditions.  The severe climate changes we are experiencing are believed to be directly related to the rapid increase of global warming brought on by excessive levels of green house gases (GHGs), especially that CO2 which comes from anthropogenic (man-made) developments.  A level of 350 ppm of CO 2 is considered sustainable by climate scientist.  Anything higher poses grave threats over time.  Currently

CO2 levels are at 390 ppm and growing about 2 ppm each year. 

Temperature increase recordings are running concurrent with this CO2 increase and as this happens, mountain glacier ice and polar ice caps melt, raising sea levels around the world and cooling waters in tropical areas that over-activate a hydrological cycle.   As the earth’s temperature gradually increases it will create global climate changes where some areas experience more rainfall than they have historically (i.e. Pakistan and Tennessee River valley) while other areas will experience dryer periods, creating extended droughts and increasing opportunities for massive fires, such as what the people outside Moscow are experiencing now.  Until we take appropriate action to reduce our use of fossil fuels that are creating the atmospheric growth of CO2, farmers will have to contend with the adverse effects that threaten their crops and ultimately food supplies for the world’s 7 billion people.

To reduce fossil fuels and their contribution to the effects of global warming, all nations and their governments need to start taking actions now that convert their dependency on energy sources from oil and coal to cleaner, renewable energy sources like wind, solar, geothermal and bio-fuels.  Many 20th century agricultural practices have contributed in large part to the burning of fossil fuels and generating high levels of other GHGs, like methane from factory farms where tons of cattle, pig and chicken excrement lay open and exposed, assimilating into the air we breathe and the ecosystem that is not set up to adjust to rapid increases created by non-natural occurrences.

The reliance of farmers on manufactured fertilizers has also become a source of contamination.  Instead of relying

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>