You don’t need to tell farmers about the whims of Mother Nature. They face it every day, and climate change is making it worse. Farmers have always had skin in the game, which is why the need for sustainability is in their DNA. They also know that their land provides a major tool for offsetting the world’s carbon emissions. This infographic provides more details on how sustaining California’s farmland also helps sustain a healthy planet.
Farmland, and the trees and plants grown on it, naturally protect the environment. Farms passively consume harmful carbon in the atmosphere and convert it into oxygen. In California, this means farmland removes thousands of tons carbon from the air every year, significantly reducing greenhouse gases (GHG).
But farms need support to survive. The State of California recognizes this. “If we are to depend on agricultural lands for food and fiber benefits as well as carbon sequestration and storage, it is important that farming and ranching remain robust and that rates of conversion (to urbanization and other uses) diminish,”according to the draft California 2030 Natural + Working Lands Climate Change Implementation Plan created by the state’s policymakers.
This is especially urgent because farmland is endangered and disappearing at the alarming rate of 50,000 acres a year. That’s equivalent to 78 square miles, 12 Yosemite Valleys or 38,000 football fields.
To survive, healthy farms require the ongoing relief offered by advanced nutrition for plants and innovative and environmentally friendlier protections against harmful weeds, insects, worms and bacteria that destroy crops.
We can help reverse climate change if we can reverse the problem of disappearing farmland. Remember this simple equation:
- Advanced Crop Nutrition & Protection = Hardy Plants
- Hardy Plants = Healthy Farms
- Healthy Farms = More Green Space
- More Green Space = Carbon Reduction
- Carbon Reduction = Healthier Planet
Clearly, Californians should protect farmland as a precious environmental resource if we as a society are going to reverse climate change in a meaningful way.
By Renee Pinel
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