Food & Climate
Did you know that buying a kilogram of nuts products such as hazelnuts and walnuts helps reduce carbon emissions by about 1.3 kilograms? And that planting trees on agricultural land stores carbon?
Over the last 20 years the global area of tree nuts has doubled, and much of this expansion has occurred on croplands.
While eating low-carbon foods helps reduce emissions, some foods actually suck up carbon from the atmosphere, leaving the climate in a better place, according a report seen by “Food & Climate” platform.
Most foods create greenhouse gas emissions, driving climate change. These emissions come from hundreds of different sources, including tractors burning fuel, manufacturing fertiliser and the bacteria in cow’s guts. Overall, food production contributes a quarter of human caused greenhouse gas emissions.
However, there are some foods that remove more greenhouse gases than they emit, often referred to as “carbon negative” foods.
When plants grow, they take carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air, but when we (or animals) metabolise these plants, this CO2 usually gets released straight back into the air.
Due to ongoing emissions, however, we need to permanently remove carbon from the atmosphere, storing it deep in the sea, rocks, soil or in trees. There are a few food products and production practices that do this.
Nuts products
Nuts products are of the plants that can remove CO2 from air. Many regenerative practices, such as not tilling the soil or planting hedgerows, can increase the amount of carbon stored in soil or in vegetation.
For example, British regenerative farming firm Wildfarmed reports removals of 1.5kg of CO2 for each kg of wheat produced by the growers it works with. Some companies with carbon-efficient supply chains already say they have turned their products carbon negative. Gipsy Hill Brewery in London, for example, claims to produce carbon-negative beer, and has done a robust life cycle assessment which backs this up.
In wetted peatlands, organic carbon also can accumulate faster than it decomposes. A few products can be grown on wetted peatlands, including blueberries, cranberries and celery. Foods grown like this therefore have the potential to be carbon negative, if their supply chains are also made very carbon efficient.
This is not normally the case for fresh blueberries, which are often packaged in plastic and flown around the world from countries like Peru, making them an extremely high-carbon food. While carbon negative peatland products exist, they are very rare and hard to identify in the shops at the moment, but this is another space to watch, according to “BBC”.
Some experts think that stop farming land, it will likely revert back to forest or natural grassland. So, if you can produce the same amount of food with less land, the land that is freed up will likely absorb carbon.
Recent study
Around the world, planting crops and grazing livestock often means cutting down trees — with disastrous impacts on the climate. But are forests and farms really at odds?
A groundbreaking new study from the American nonprofit Conservation International says no — instead it points to ways for forests and farms to co-exist and fight climate change without cutting into food production.
The world’s agricultural lands, researchers write, hold vast, previously untapped potential for storing potentially climate-warming carbon — in fact, they could trap as much carbon as the global emissions of all cars combined.
The study’s lead author, Starry Sprenkle-Hyppolite, who heads Conservation International’s Forest restoration science, said: “Even adding just a few trees per hectare could have a massive impact when applied across the 2.6 billion hectares identified in our study”.
Sprenkle-Hyppolite explained: “The thinking in modern agriculture is that crops need sun and water, and trees compete for both — so let’s cut them down. But this has devastating impacts on nature and climate. In fact, agriculture is responsible for 90% of all tropical deforestation, a major cause of climate-warming greenhouse gasses.
For example, in Spain you have the dehesa system, where pigs and cattle forage freely in oak savannas and ancient olive groves are sown with wheat and other crops. And of course, there are many examples in the tropics, where coffee is often grown alongside cocoa, Brazil nut or acai.
It makes sense. The trees improve soil health and water quality while also attracting bees, birds and other pollinators. At the same time, they protect crops and livestock against extreme heat and drought by providing shade and increasing moisture in the soil. As climate change accelerates, we need trees more than ever.
And while we can’t go back and prevent trees from being cleared for agriculture, that doesn’t mean we’re stuck. There is enormous untapped potential to incorporate trees on existing farms. So, we decided to map the maximum number of trees that farmlands can sustain without hurting crop yields.
She added: “We found that 54% of agricultural lands — an area equivalent to the total land area of North America — could plant more trees, without sacrificing food security. That could translate to stashing away 3.3 billion tons of carbon per year — an amount greater than the global annual emissions from cars.
And we’re not asking farmers to give up a huge chunk of their land to do this. We’re talking about working in the margins — planting a relatively small number of trees over large areas of land, such as the outer edges of farms. The United States, China and India have the highest potential because of their expansive industrial farmland and the temperate and tropical climates that are ideal for tree growth.
Of course, this is not a one-size-fits all situation. The number and types of trees must be tailored to individual farms’ specific climate and situation. We’re not talking about putting trees in deserts. We’re not talking about planting trees that farmers would need to water. These trees should be able to survive on their own and suit the climate they’re in. We took these factors into consideration and created a framework to help landowners, conservationists and policymakers understand what’s possible.