How does Agriculture play a key role in the fight against climate change?
Policy measures must be put in place to:
- Reduce deforestation
- Help regenerate natural ecosystems
- Encourage agro-ecological practices to improve soil health through carbon sequestration.
This includes, for example:
- Not leaving soil bare, and working the soil less, to limit carbon losses. The more the soil is covered, the richer it is in organic matter, and therefore in carbon
- Feed the soil with manure and compost
- Restore degraded crops, pastures, forests, arid and semi-arid areas of our planet
- Promote crop biodiversity (mixed planting and crop rotation)
- Planting trees and legumes for example (which also fix atmospheric nitrogen in the soil, promoting plant leaf growth)
- Or collect water at the foot of the plants…
Who is concerned?
There are 570 million farms in the world and over 3 billion people living in rural areas who could implement these practices [Source FAO 2019]. [Source FAO 2019].
At which cost?
Restoring and regenerating agricultural soils would require a few dozen dollars per hectare…
Agroforestry and forest restoration would require larger investments.
And for how long?
Carbon storage in soils will continue for several decades after the implementation of good practices if they are maintained.
Concrete solutionsdo exist
The “4 per 1000” Initiative shows that agriculture can provide concrete solutions to the challenge posed by climate change while meeting the challenge of food security through the implementation of agricultural practices adapted to local conditions: agro-ecology, agro-forestry, conservation agriculture, landscape management, etc.
