14 DAY TRIAL // According to a new study carried out by the CGIAR (the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research), the business of feeding today's world population must be held responsible for releasing a whopping 17,000 megatonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere on a yearly basis.
To cut a long story short, 29% of the greenhouse gas emissions now impacting on our planet's ecosystems are due to various agricultural practices and the food industry.
Given the predicted population growth, the specialists who carried out this study fear that, as ever more people will have to be fed, these already troubling figures will only increase, and that this will translate into significantly more strain being placed on the environment.
Apparently, these stunning CO2 emissions come as a direct result of the fact that agriculture and food production presently mean more than simply growing crops and raising livestock.
Thus, the business of making fertilizers, together with that of storing, transporting and refrigerating food, adds to the ecological footprint of the global food industry.
Not to mention the fact that current waste management practices also play their part in harming the environment even further.
Eurek! Alert quotes Frank Rijsberman, the CEO of the CGIAR Consortium, who made a case of how, “We are coming to terms with the fact that agriculture is a critical player in climate change.”
Furthermore, “Not only are emissions from agriculture much larger than previously estimated, but with weather records being set every month as regional climates adjust and reset, there is an urgent need for research that helps smallholder farmers adapt to the new normal.”
This study has also looked into how climate change is affecting harvests worldwide, an issue which an Oxfam report tackled not very long ago.
The CGIAR warns that, if the world population is indeed to reach ten billion individuals by the year 2050, these problems must be dealt with as soon as possible.