I do not want to overwhelm you, with more information yet I feel that this information is some of what we need to know, so we will have the knowledge to be motivated to do everything possible to secure a future on earth not just for humans but for the whole biodiversity that helps us to be a live and to enjoy the world.
Safe and Just Earth system boundaries
In this article from Nature.com, please spend the time understanding what is the Safe area and what is Just (just been fair) area on the circle graph. I want to draw your attention to two pieces of the graph first Phosphorus (P), and if you look at where they have placed the little earth it is out side of the graph! (Not good.) Then Nitrogen (N), and the earth is just under the out side of the graph! (Better but still not good.) Next look at the ground water. Agriculture around the world has used ground water for irrigation and is using it faster than it is been replaced and for years now, to the point that they have had to drill deeper and deeper. That is also draining the water table of wells that some towns and settlements depend on! The little earth is out side the safe and Just boundaries! Then look at surface water, we have been polluting it more and more every year with the N & P from conventional farming of both field crops and animals in confinement. Also human sewage along with other pollutants that are water soluble, they run in to our surface and underground water supplies. These pollutants are causing dead zones in our waters that are deprived of oxygen and any thing that swims in to that area die! One of the reasons for declining species in out water systems!
Now look at the Climate section the little earth is out of the of the Just blue line but not out side of the safe line yet. But as the world continues to warm up faster and faster we are moving to the unsafe line by our continuous polluting of Green House Gases (GHGs) and by what are called Positive Climate Change feed back loops! If we and these feed back loops push us over the safe zone for climate, a lot more area will fast become uninhabitable on earth and more species will die off! So we are told.
I feel this graph is worth studying, and in the supporting site Earth is really quite sick it explains as Drawdown does that we have 6 years to fix this!
If you have read the above articles you will see that there are many problems besides just Global Warming that are causing damage to life on our earth. GHG’s are what causes the global warming Positive Feedback Loops that are the most time urgent item that needs to be fixed first. We cannot let the earth go over the safe zone. Conventional modern Agriculture causes around 1/4 of the GHGs in the atmosphere as well as causing the Dead zones in the Oceans and lakes.
I would like to draw your attention to listen to the Drawdown Webinars and I would like you to start with: Food Matters: Why Climate change may hinge on what we eat and how we grow it Dr. Johnathan Foley and Accelerating Climate Solutions with Project Drawdown presented by Dr Jonathan Foley. These two videos are included in this playlist with a variety of other material from Drawdown.
Regenerative Agriculture
(which includes organic, no tillage, involves animal free range grazing and more.)
Start with the Regeneration Project Nexus and read through all the topics on growing food. The following topics in Nexus are all about growing food not just for now, also to be resilient for the future. I feel we all should have an understanding about how much is involved. To maintain our soils and climate of the world that grows food for us. (If you only look at one topic, look at Regenerative Agriculture) Agrivoltaics, Agroecology, Agroforestry, Animal integration, Biochar, Compost, Fungi, Freshwater, Insects, Localization, Perennial Crops, Plant Diversity, Regenerative Agriculture, Rice Cultivation, Silvopasture, Urban Farming, Vermiculture, Women and Food. The rest of the topics in Nexus, we should also understand in particulate the 15 min Cities concept.
Also these sites are supporting information about agriculture:
https://www.canadaaction.ca/regenerative-agriculture-canada-facts
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2400140-we-can-now-only-stay-under-1-5c-target-if-we-achieve-net-zero-by-2034/
https://www.youtube.com/@SoilsforLife
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08TI1RKj54g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2j7DHDoaNvQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSEtiixgRJI
https://www.eco-business.com/news/food-reform-cant-distract-from-fossil-fuels-at-cop28/
Eat Local and in Season
We have gotten very comfortable with letting others in the world grow our food and have it shipped here by air, water or trucks, using their climate and low wages to keep our food prices low! Meanwhile by doing this we have pushed our local resilience of food out of our reach. We need to support our local farms to grow using Regenerative practices that include Organic, but is more then Organic.
Regenerative Practices can be more labour intensive and time demanding and that will make them more expensive. Regenerative Practices has Organic, Permaculture , and animal husbandry in it as well as no or little tillage of the ground. Regenerative Practices is utilizing nature by using animals to nourish the ground and cover crops to nourish and hold that nourishment in the soil for the next years growing season.
This practice also helps to keep the carbon that the plants have taken out of the atmosphere and hold it in the soil. We need to support our farmer and farm worker so they can grow nutritious food for our families as well as make a living like the rest of the population in your area. Farmland, Farm Buildings, (and now electric) Machinery are all very expensive along with the labour force to produce our food in our area so we can be Food Resilient. Support them by voting with you dollar and not sending your money to other countries. Also do not support the conventional farming practices that has proven to not be sustainable and is very polluting to our world.
We need to help the local conventional farmers to get educated and feel supported by us the consumers to make the huge switch from what they have been forced to become or stop farming. We have less privately owned commercial farms today then ever before. Children that have grown up on farms have been moving away from the farms around the world for years for a better way of life. A huge number of farmers around the world live at poverty levels, even though they my have a lot of food.
Our local farmers in north America have trouble getting enough workers locally so they bring workers in from other countries. Often their living accommodations would not be except-able for most of us to live in! But we feel it is alright for them to travel away from home and live in these conditions to grow food for us. Yet we complain that is it too expensive!
I recommend that you try to know your farmer that produces your food that keeps your family healthy. (We are what we eat!) If that is not possible for you, then know the produce manager in your grocery stores and ask them were your food comes from and if it is grown through Regenerative Practices and local!
Look at page 34-36 from Fifty Ways to Bring Urgency to BC’s Climate Action Plans.
Eat Wild
GHG increases form 2022-2023 for meat industry
1 https://davidsuzuki.org/living-green/food-climate-change/
2 https://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/197623/icode/
3 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-07/rising-livestock-emissions-undermine-world-s-climate-fight#xj4y7vzkg
Freight by Land, Air or Water or better yet not at all?
https://8billiontrees.com/carbon-offsets-credits/carbon-ecological-footprint-calculators/air-freight-vs-sea-freight-carbon-footprint/
https://www.vox.com/recode/22973218/container-shipping-industry-climate-change-emissions-maersk
Other farming practices, Bio-dynamic farming (Bio-dynamic farming has been around since the 1920’s before chemical fertilizers)
https://www.biodynamics.com/what-is-biodynamics
Permaculture (permaculture is also part of Regenerative) (edible forests)
https://www.tenthacrefarm.com/what-is-permaculture/
Insects of the world are very important for our survival and they are on the decline. Besides polluting the world and causing Climate Warming problems. The pesticides and herbicides that are used in conventional agriculture are declining the insect and bird populations of the world. The use of chemicals and antibiotic, in conventional agriculture have cause the decline of wild life and plants since the early usages in the 1950-60 up to today when we are applying more in one growing season then ever before!
Insect declining, Pledge to save insects (many birds are in the decline also for similar reasons!)
https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/earth-systems/the-insect-effect/#:~:text=In%20fact%2C%20insects%20account%20for,within%20the%20next%20few%20decades.
Also https://icarusfilms.com/if-insect
Food Resilience in eating local, in season and Regeneratively grown or at lease Organic.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/14/health/seasonal-food-produce-lbg-wellness/index.html
And More to learn!
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=soils+for+life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08TI1RKj54g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2j7DHDoaNvQ
https://www.waterbear.com/watch
https://join.waterbear.com/racing-extinction
https://www.waterbear.com/watch/eating-our-way-to-extinction
Kiss The Ground
https://kisstheground.com/regenerative-agriculture/
Kiss The Ground movie
https://www.netflix.com/watch/81321999
Information about Anhydrous Ammonia use on farm land
https://www.no-tillfarmer.com/blogs/1-covering-no-till/post/5012-should-you-quit-using-anhydrous-ammonia
Seeds the untold story a must watch!
https://play.google.com/video/lava/web/player/yt:movie:9H63-gWFifc?autoplay=1&authuser=0
One thing I would like to point out, that is if you do choose to not eat meat and just eat vegetable and fruits and nuts, please make sure they are grown using Regenerative or at lease Organically that includes local and in season! (If they are not in season then they should be processed by you or local workers for you to eat during the off season times.) This is so there is no or little transport of the food during the off season times. (My wife and I are lucky that we can grow our own food using Regenerative practices as best as we can and we store and process our own food for the off season.
If you are eating a vegetarian diet, I ask that you make sure that you also eat locally, Regenerative and in Season also.
And if you do eat fish please consider how much trouble our Oceans are in and the pollutants that are in the fish from toxins and plastic in the oceans and lakes.
This next site is about contaminants in fish!
https://doh.wa.gov/community-and-environment/food/fish/contaminants-fish#:~:text=Fish%20absorb%20contaminants%20such%20as,bottom%20where%20the%20fish%20feed.
This one is about the GHGs of wild fish industry.
https://foodprint.org/blog/climate-friendly-seafood-is-there-such-a-thing/
I have tried to supply supporting information for you to read or watch that will take a lot of homework on your part and then you will have to make your own mind up as to where you get your food and how much you pay for it. I am only trying to give you more information to make your own decisions and this topic of food production that we have left up to big business to make the decisions for us. But keep in mind they are making a lot of their decisions on economics of producing, supplying that food to you and what you tell them, you want, by what you buy! There are a lot of people that work in the food industry that are trying to produce local and low GHGs food available for you but we have a long way to go to lower the GHG foot print from 1/4 of the worlds GHGs produced.
There are a lot of people that cannot afford to buy even low cost food. If you are one that can afford to spend more money on food to help lower GHGs. This was some info that will hopefully help you to make good decisions for you and your family to help to lower GHGs for future generations to come.
We need to look at our GHG foot print on our Buildings and Transport also and I have mentioned the 15 minute city that we should look at also! Look at the Nexus for info about these.
Thank you for your time I hope this has not stressed you out to much, it does me! Game On!!