Excellemt presentation, Jon. I'll be sharing with my Climate Realiry colleagues, SLO Climate Coalition, and more on Earth Day and our county Small Farms Conference this Spring. Your approach and data gives such HOPE because it's factual and not afraid of change! KUDOS! Heather Howell Central Coast CA
amazing presentation covering a wide range of topics related to food related emissions. I knew individual pieces, but it was really helpful to see a whole story weaving together all the concepts into a coherent pathway.
Enjoyed how you managed to present such a complex topic in 45 minutes. I think what's critically missing from this is our impact on the water cycle and how degrading the water cycle has reduced heat transfer and reduced methane oxidation (contributing to the higher methane levels as part of the methane cycle has been impacted). When you factor these into potential solutions, things like regenerative grassfed livestock production and agroforestry become much more powerful climate solutions on paper, and are also superior soil, water and biodiversity restoration methods compared with large scale cropping for plant-based food production. Be great to see Project Drawdown include the water cycle in it's work!
I very much agree and support much of what you are saying, Jon, however, I think that a webinar of this nature should be detailing some of the enormous successes that are happening on the planet with permaculture (designing systems that benefit both the Earth and People) which you touch on by mentioning regenerative agriculture and different grazing practices. I don’t like the term regenerative agriculture as its meaning will likely be reconfigured into greenwashing methods that touch on some aspects but generally promote the status quo. Also, it seems that your cattle and other animal statistics rely heavily on grain-fed feedlot math from big ag’s corn/soy world, and not on a truly regenerative sequence of combined techniques. Imagine, for instance, an agroforestry/silvopastoral system of multiple hedgerows and parkland/savannah many on the contour, some of these revegetation patches coppiced for biochar production and mulch, or growing tall for fruit and nut production and habitat zones. Chisel plowing and innoculated char introductions in the field spaces between doesn’t turn the soil but allows deep penetration of oxygen and pasture roots, massively increasing carbon sequestration through topsoil formation, while breaking up the spread of field-consuming roots from the perennial hedgerows. Cattle, cell-grazed and moved on, and then followed in a few days by chicken tractors which breaks pest cycles, and spreads the manure so that it easily breaks down into the grassland ecosystem are very possibly much more beneficial than what you calculated. Highlighting specific projects or youtube channels, like the work of Richard Perkins, Charles Dowding, Huw Richards, or Andrew Millison would go a long way to show what can be done. FMNR (farmer managed natural regeneration) is another great initiative that you could look into promoting. There is much being done that you could show people. They need hope. They need examples. They don’t need to be told that the cattle math you looked at is greenwashing. We need to be told that the math being used is based on a select type of work being done (nothing more), but we can and will do much better as we proceed with raising cattle and other animals better with combined systems that can draw down much more carbon than they release. While reducing our meat eating is a good idea as we tend to overconsume in this regard, when we remove feedlots from the issue and then look at getting our protein from annual plant agriculture which is the promoted vegan idea, we see a lot of problems with land use exascerbated by a lack of good techniques for those foods too. Monocrops, tillage and irrigation are the norm. The latter two you pointed out. Agroforestry/silvipastoral systems can be integrated with vegetable and grain/legume production, for instance, to provide rewilded habitat spaces within horticultural/agricultural systems, with animal fertilizers provided into the system as nature intended and as grasslands and smaller plants have evolved to grow with, as well as tree and shrub based perennial fruits and nuts which, properly placed, will require no irrigation and be much more resilient food sources in a changing climate. If people can see examples of this, they can see a realistic target that can be aimed for in their future world. While you seem to see the possibilities and allude to them being present, you do not showcase them. I think you should. Another thing that you touch on , the forestry issue, needs to be addressed and researched further, not just in terms of what is done to create space for agriculture and animal husbandry zones. Biomass energy production, for instance, is a major deforestation issue and greenwashing solution being promoted by the U.N.. and subsidized by governments which is a major source of atmospheric carbon. I think you need to put some of that info into these talks. Issues, such as deforestation for the lumber industry, pre and post fire logging, logging for 'forest health' in response to native insects which are part of the natural life cycle of forests, are all being promoted by governmental agencies while they exascerbate fire risk, remove carbon from it's natural place, destroy future carbon sequestration potential, destroy the water cycle, and destroy native habitat. Waste 'slash' is burned in huge piles. The transport, the processing, the waste of wood products in disposable housing... The carbon loss math on this so called renewable industry is not properly accounted for. A tree farm is not a forest, and it is far more prone to wildfire and disease as are any thinning and selective logging practices. Also, it would be timely to do a true ecological and carbon accounting and comparison of forest fires and logging, and a suggestion to rethink fire management and think about managing people who promote logging instead. Blessings on this path, and all the strength in achieving it. You are doing great work. Very commendable. Thank you.
Great job, many people is doing restoration projects around the world, like Yin Yuzhen, but they are not famous as they should, for me they are heroes.
Nice presentation - but you danced around the need to shift to a Plant Based diet! Shame... You need to stop worrying about offending and call out the urgency of shifting to Plant Based!!!
Urgency rhetoric creates much more opposition than support among laypeople, according to communication research report 'Talk Like A Human' from Potential Energy Coalition
