Climate Change Is One Of The Major Issues Affecting All Of Us On Our Planet

For the first time in recorded history the glacier on Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro is melting and the ice at the North Pole had melted. Another first was recorded in North America - Lake Erie did not freeze over this winter. 2005 recorded the hottest average temperatures on record and produced the most destructive hurricane season ever. In Greenland the ice is melting three times faster than the early 1990s.

Experts from NASA are predicting that the intensity of major storms will increase even more as a result of rising ocean temperatures. Experts expect that climate change will have a negative effect on our food supply due to more frequent adverse weather events leading to increasing crop failures. The security of our food supply concerns all of us.

So what has organic agriculture to do with climate change?

Published studies show that organic farming systems are more resilient to the predicted weather extremes. Organic systems have higher yields than conventional farming systems in weather extremes such as floods and droughts.

Very importantly organic agriculture can help reverse climate change. Published peer review scientific studies in North America and Europe show that best practice organic agriculture, not only emits less greenhouse gases than conventional agriculture, the carbon sequestration from increasing soil organic matter leads to a net reduction in greenhouse gases.

According to the Rodale Institute: "US agriculture, as currently practiced, emits a total of 1.5 trillion pounds of CO2 annually into the atmosphere. Converting all US cropland to organic would not only wipe out agriculture's massive emission problem, by eliminating energy-costly chemical fertilizers, it would actually give us a net increase in soil carbon of 734 billion pounds."

On a worldwide scale, if we had hundreds of millions of hectares of organic farming it would equate to removing billions of tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere.

And just to show that we CAN make a difference if we think globally and act locally...