Organic Farming: Remedy to Global Warming
For the last few years we have been searching for a way to fight global warming by reducing CO2 in the air. We have come up with many ideas: making our homes, cars and activities more fuel efficient; and using nuclear energy, solar energy, wind power, hydro-power, geothermal energy, batteries, hydrogen, etc. But we have paid no attention to what may be the best approach of all: organic farming.
Organic farming has many virtues. One of these is preventing large-scale crop epidemics. Instead of planting long rows of the same crop, organic farmers mix crops together. So if a crop is diseased it may not affect the others. Another virtue is the stemming of erosion. Natural fertilizers build the soil in a way that absorbs the rain whereas chemical fertilizers increases runoff that leads to erosion. And of course, chemical fertilizers pollute streams and rivers and are responsible for such things as the so-called "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico.
We hear about these positive factors. But we hear almost nothing about what arguably is the most important advantage of organic farming: preventing global warming by reducing CO2 in the air. Here's an eye-popping paragraph about organic farming:
When the soil is nurtured through organic methods, it allows plants to naturally pull so much carbon dioxide from the air and store it in the soil that global warming can actually be reversed. Farms using conventional, chemical fertilizer release soil carbon into the atmosphere. Switching to organic methods turns a major global-warming contributor into the single largest remedy of the climate crisis, while eliminating toxic farm chemical drainage into our streams, rivers and aquifers.
The effect is huge: "global warming can actually be reversed"!
Of course, we're not sure of this. But organic farming must definitely be added to our available tools for fighting global warming. Not just available, but one of the best tools.
By the way, organic farming requires more labor than conventional farming. This means more jobs - something we need today more than ever.
So why don't we hear about this wonderful way to fight global warming? How come there is nothing about this in newspapers, magazines and TV? Why is it being suppressed and by whom?
Obviously by the oil companies that sell the oil used for developing fertilizers, and the chemical companies that produce the fertilizers. They naturally are interested in making sales and they spread ads - propaganda - accordingly. They make money and all the rest of us suffer.
Discouraging the use of oil and chemical fertilizers, and encouraging renewable-fuel development, conservation and organic farming may be enough to stem the global-warming tide and save us from catastrophe. I hope that Obama's green team will add the advance of organic farming to its to-do list. More, the team should place it on top of the list.
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