Changes in Grazing Practices Could Increase Productivity, Fight Climate Change
Posted on: Tuesday, 20 January 2009, 14:36 CST
A scientist with the World Agroforestry Center called for new grazing practices among farmers as an effective way to fight global climate change while improving farm productivity.
Andreas Wilkes told Reuters that simple changes could help soak up millions of tons of carbon each year, adding that they should be adopted by the United Nations as part of a way for farmers to earn carbon credits as incentives to pay for a needed change in practices.
Wilkes said new methods, including replanting one or more different plant species, or sealing off portions of grassland, can boost soil carbon content.
Rangelands hold up to 30 percent of the world's soil carbon and span more than five billion hectares, or about 40 percent of its landmass, said Wilkes’ colleague Timm Tennigkeit.
“Effective interventions focused around bioenergy could help to improve rural livelihoods, further agricultural and forest productivity, enhance energy and timber security, and meet environmental goals,” researchers said.
"It depends on what the problems causing or preventing proper management are," Wilkes told Reuters.
"In some places, it will be there are too many animals, so you simply reduce their number. If the soil has already begun to degrade, then maybe planting grasses is the best option.
"It's a matter of education and often also supporting conditions, such as policies. None of it is rocket science."
Researchers concluded that information should be more widely available to push the new energy efforts.
“For instance, raising awareness among rural households of the dangers of cooking with solid fuels could provide substantial benefits, but there is little understanding of how information might change behavior as incomes rise, and what kind of information campaigns are most effective,” they wrote.
“Information provision could be a relatively simple and extremely cost-effective means of reducing health burdens from indoor air pollution, but it is important that information be accompanied with greater choice in rural energy technologies.”
Wilkes told Reuters that it was crucial that the next phase of the Kyoto Protocol, expected to be agreed by the end of this year, included agriculture and sustainable land management.
Improved management of grazing lands has the potential to lock away between 1.3 billion and 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent worldwide up to 2030, according to the report.
“Rural China is potentially a huge net carbon sink,” researchers concluded.” But more research is needed to determine the technical and economic potential of that sink, how and at what cost it might be achieved, and how sources and sinks — and particularly energy use, greenhouse gases, and land use — interact and might be shaped in rural China.”
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Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports
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