Draft:Climate Actions within Agriculture and Food

Climate Actions within Agriculture and Food
(Proposal to have this a sub-level page linked from Individual action on climate change)

Intro:
Food production and other linked activities, such as deforestation for conversion to agriculture or forestry; packaging, transportation, and food waste are causes of global warming. Agricultural practices across scales, ranging from household and community garden plots through industrialized farms, emit both carbon dioxide (CO2) and non-CO2 greenhouse gasses.

As awareness of the threat of global warming has spread, individuals and communities have begun to take action for both mitigation and adaptation through increasing at-home and community food production, changes in the handling of food waste, and consumption choices regarding how food is grown, transported, and stored. This article primarily discusses mitigation but also touches on some climate actions that may also be climate adaptations.

Individual Actions Related to Climate-friendly Gardening
The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent shortage of food in some places led to an upsurge in at-home vegetable gardening that still continues,  resulting in lower greenhouse gas emissions and a greater likelihood of sustainability. Examples include:
 * Climate-Friendly Gardening (which may include vegetable gardening; see below), gardening with the expressed intent to help mitigate climate change by using methods that reduce emissions through the absorption of carbon-dioxide by soils and plants.
 * Urban agriculture, a global phenomenon which includes kitchen gardens, vegetable roof gardens, vertical gardens on porches and in backyards, straw bale gardening , container gardening, and shared land access through yard-sharing, all of which reduce emissions by reducing soil degradation and food transportation, and can support food resilience as a climate adaptation.
 * Composting, the purposeful decomposition of plant and food waste, other organic materials, and manure, to create a mix of ingredients that can be used as a plant fertilizer for improvement of soil's physical, chemical, and biological properties. Composting is increasing in some areas, according to a 2022 study from the Institute for Local Self Reliance, which found that 82% of the respondents in the study processed compost locally. Composting creates a use for food waste, one of the main drivers of climate change, and returns carbon to the soil. Composting, including vermicomposting, can also reduce food decomposing into methane in landfills, and reduce reliance on synthetic fertilizers.
 * Foraging, the collection of wild grown food, even in urban settings, providing local food sources that need not be transported by vehicles powered by fossil fuels. The practice of foraging has been increasing, partially as a response to food insecurity during the pandemic.
 * Seed-saving, which refers to a practice in which gardeners, farmers, or communities of producers collect, save, and sometimes share seeds. Seed saving is practiced worldwide to maintain access to locally grown food and to reduce dependence on store-bought seeds. The IPCC states that saved seeds often aid in conservation of local varieties, thereby decreasing the use of pesticides or fertilizers, which results in less land degradation.
 * The practice of raising small livestock for home consumption, which is prevalent globally.    Raising rabbits, also referred to as cuniculture, includes harvesting the meat as well as fur (or pelts) for clothing. In some municipal areas, raising small livestock may be illegal, although members of a community can and have worked with local municipalities to change the law or zoning.
 * Solar sharing, which broadly refers to community solar practices that include personal or community investments in solar-energy production systems on land also often used for crop and/or livestock production, also known as agrivoltaic systems. Having both agriculture and solar on the same land requires coordination to develop and maintain both power and agricultural production.
 * Water-conservation techniques, which include designing gardens that reduce the need for watering; installing weather-sensitive irrigation control switches; improving soils for water retention; mulching and other water-saving practices, such as use of rainwater tanks; and other water efficiency techniques. Water conservation techniques reduce energy used needed to pump tap-water and reduce GHG emissions from runoff-driven eutrophication. Reduced rainwater run-off from green infrastructure and reduced demand on water utilities are also recognized as important for climate resilience. Also, households adapt to climate change challenges like drought and municipal restrictions on watering with tap water through water conservation and rainwater retention techniques for home gardens and landscapes.

Community-level food production or rescue:
Community agricultural production and waste reduction practices can reduce greenhouse gasses released in the production, transportation, and decomposition of food. Although some of these activities can be performed individually, they may be more successful if performed as group activities, and group activities have been shown to build trust among community members create social capital, community resilience, and resilience to climate shocks. Community building begins in a number of ways, including community gardening which connects participants to their local environment through planting and harvesting fresh produce and plants (see below). Communities created in these ways often become involved in community organizing, which often has the core goal of generating durable power for an organization representing the community, allowing it to influence key decision-makers on a range of issues over time, and those issues may include mitigating action against global warming. Examples of community action to increase local access to food include the following:
 * Agrihoods, which are neighborhoods organized or planned to include space for growing enough food to feed the community. By growing food locally, participants avoid the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the transportation of food.
 * Community gardening, which mitigates climate change because gardens absorbs carbon and can tie more of it to the soil than lawns, and decreases food transportation. Community gardens can also reduce heat islands in cities and are associated with greater retention of stormwater, which can reduce the impact of increasingly extreme weather. Additionally, the experience of neighbors working together builds social capital which can build community resilience against future climate shocks. Examples of community gardening include:
 * Community Orchards, orchards that are managed by communities for the purpose of having more fresh fruit available locally and to increase community cohesiveness and resiliency.
 * Community roof vegetable gardens, which is also known as community rooftop farming. Roof garden systems generally require a waterproof membrane and other barriers to protect roofs from plant roots and water, as well as systems for drainage and irrigation.
 * Food rescue, which refers to the practice of rescuing food that would otherwise be disposed of from farms, restaurants, and grocery stores (including dumpster diving) and then making it available to the community in a variety of ways, including food pantries or shelves and community fridges. Although some of these actions can be taken by individuals, a 2019 study suggests that community coordination makes it more likely that less food will be wasted, thus reducing food transportation, and resulting in lower local methane emissions associated with rotting produce, and there are examples of communities coordinating their efforts for this purpose.
 * Forest-Gardening, which involves creating a multi-level garden, including most of the mutually supporting layers of plants that would be found in a wild forest. The top layer is food-producing trees; beneath that are small trees and shrubs that either produce food or support the other plants in some way; and the floor includes herbaceous plants, root vegetables, ground cover crops and vines. The forest becomes self-supporting, because either seeds from fruit and vegetables are allowed to fall and take root or perennial plants regrow annually. As such, it is an example of permaculture, which can be defined as “a sustainable and largely self-sufficient agricultural system.”
 * Garden sharing, which is an arrangement where one person who is disinterested in creating a home garden allows someone else to use their property for that purpose. Yard sharing is similar and involves neighbors growing food on each other's property and sharing the harvest. Plants that require more sunlight are grown in sunnier areas, while plants that can do well in shade are grown in shady spots.
 * Permablitzes, which are community events in which neighbors turn a yard or an empty lot into a food garden within one or a few days, depending on the size of the lot and the number of participants. This can include guerrilla gardening, where permission has not been given to farm in that location.
 * In addition to solar-sharing, some communities participate in agrivoltaic initiatives, which may include solar sharing, if the land is part of a cooperative or a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) organization. Community agrivoltaic projects can expand solar access in arrangements beneficial to low-income communities and farmers, with some projects arranging for produce and energy sold to the community at a discount.

Consumer choices
The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service lists many potential climate mitigation techniques for agriculture and forestry producers. To the degree that information about which, if any, of those techniques local producers are using is available to consumers, they have the option to purchase food and other agricultural products from producers based on how climate friendly the approaches are, or from sources likely to have lower climate emissions, including:
 * Farmers who use sustainable agriculture and Climate-smart agriculture techniques as a way to support climate mitigation and enhanced resilience, such as:
 * Agroforestry, in which crops or pastures are integrated with shrubs or trees. This has been found to reduce deforestation and may have other climate-friendly benefits. Shade-grown coffee, for instance, includes agroforestry practices that may build soil biomass, which helps hold moisture in the soil, and reduce land degradation. There are various interpretations of agroforestry; for instance, agroecological agroforestry is an example of a type of agroforestry that avoids deforestation while preserving environmental justice.
 * Aquaponics, a plant-production system that integrates soilless cultivation and recirculating aquaculture. Aquaponics reuses fish waste as fertilizer for plants, thus reducing emissions from production and use of synthetic fertilizers. Aquaponics may also be included in climate adaptations addressing food insecurity and other climate impacts.
 * Carbon farming and carbon capture and storage in agriculture, which include a variety of agricultural methods aimed at sequestering atmospheric carbon into the soil and into crop roots, wood, and leaves, with the goal of creating a net reduction of carbon in the atmosphere. One method of carbon storage involves mixing soil with an amendment called biochar, plant materials that have been thermogenically changed via pyrolysis to make stable high carbon material.
 * Diverse crop rotation, which is the concept of growing a series of different crops in the same area on different schedules and is one of the methods included in organic certification standards. Research shows crop rotation can build soil organic matter, reduce need for tillage, and reduce reliance on fossil-fuel based synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.
 * Forest-Gardening, a low-maintenance, sustainable, plant-based food production and agroforestry system that involves creating a multi-level garden based on woodland ecosystems, incorporating fruit and nut trees, shrubs, herbs, vines and perennial vegetables which have yields directly useful to humans. The top layer is food-producing trees; beneath that are small trees and shrubs that either produce food or support the other plants in some way, and the floor of the forest includes herbaceous plants, root vegatables, ground cover crops and vines. The forest becomes self-supporting because either seeds from fruit and vegetables are allowed to fall and take root or perennial plants regrow annually. As such, it is an example of permaculture, which can be defined as “a sustainable and largely self-sufficient agricultural system.”
 * No-till farming, which is an agricultural technique for growing crops or pasture without disturbing the soil through tillage and may increase soil organic matter and therefore carbon in soils, depending on many factors; it may be improved by combining with other practices such as cover-cropping. In addition to soil carbon-storage and reduced fossil-fuel use for farming equipment, less tillage of croplands increases albedo, where a lighter land surface reflects more solar energy.
 * Organic Farming, which relies on ecosystem management over external, synthetic agricultural inputs and uses many techniques that fall under sustainable agriculture, biointensive agriculture, and permaculture. Organic agricultural methods cover crop and animal production. Well managed organic production reduces GHGs and other emissions into air and water as well as reducing soil loss. Not all sustainable agriculture, biointensive agriculture, or permaculture is organic, and not all organic agriculture has achieved third-party certification. In the United States, organic certification allows a farm or processing facility to represent their products as organic. U.S. organic certification must meet U.S. Department of Agriculture organic standards; other certification organizations have additional requirements.
 * Regenerative agriculture, which includes a variety of techniques within the realm of the conservation biology and the rehabilitation of farming systems, focuses on topsoil regeneration, increasing biodiversity, improving the water cycle, enhancing ecosystem services, supporting carbon sequestration, increasing resilience to climate change, and strengthening the health and vitality of farm soil. Some regenerative agriculture is focused on building topsoil health through intensive and rotational livestock grazing, and there are U.S. Federal programs supporting ranchers implementing some of these techniques. Regenerative agriculture, including those with small or large livestock, can also be part of individual and community climate actions. Certification of regenerative agriculture consists mainly of certification of specific techniques.
 * Seaweed or kelp farming, which is a practice of cultivating or harvesting seaweed that may result in a carbon negative crop, and Both land- and ocean-based seaweed farming are being investigated and promoted by environmental organizations for climate change mitigation as a way to remove carbon from air and water as well as nutrients and pollutants. Cattle may be fed seaweed to reduce enteric methane emissions; many considerations and research questions remain to be addressed before seaweed feed supplements could be widely implemented.  Seaweed can be a carbon-negative food crop that may also reduce fishing pressures.  Many aspects of environmental and climate benefits and impacts of seaweed farms still have significant uncertainty and are being actively investigated. For instance, kelp aquaculture practices can result in afforestation and biodiversity reduction through cutting of mangroves, farming of seaweed in novel areas, or the introduction of potentially invasive species. Ocean farming of large amounts of seaweed would risk marine mammal entanglement.
 * Community-supported agriculture (CSA), which is a system that connects producers and consumers within the food system by allowing the consumer to subscribe to the harvest of specific farms, or groups of farms. The farms are often geographically closer than other food sources, thus reducing transportation impacts. Because CSA farms are supported locally, farmers are often responsive to consumer preferences for climate-impact-mitigating production techniques.
 * Farmers’ markets, which allow a physical place for farmers to sell farm goods directly to consumers, reducing carbon emissions from transportation.
 * Individual consumer sustainable diet choices, which include:
 * Choosing foods and other consumable products that limit the transportation distance as part of the Locavore movement to eat local food and a commitment to eating seasonal food.
 * Climatarian-diets, diets focused on reducing the carbon footprint, or low-carbon diet, which includes eating a plant-based diet, or little or no beef and dairy have been shown, on average, to greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is especially true of plant-based diets. Vegetarianism (no animal meat-based products), environmental veganism (no meat-based, dairy, or other animal-sourced foods), or pescetarianism, a diet that includes fish but no other meat or diary, as well as Meatless Mondays, are all examples of climatarian diets.
 * Purchasing products that meet certification standards for sustainability that have climate-impact components; for instance, organic products, poultry, and livestock in the U.S. must be certified organic, which reduces nitrogen fertilization (which causes nitrous oxide releases). There are also standards for sustainable forestry, and agroforestry (such as Bird-Friendly Coffee for shade-grown coffee).
 * Reducing higher greenhouse gas impacts caused by consuming protein from ruminants and other animal agriculture by replacing those meats with insects as food instead.
 * Eating laboratory grown (cultured) meat instead of consuming protein from ruminants and other animal agriculture. However, there are a few conflicting lifecycle analyses at present, with a new study from University of California, Davis, researchers raising alarms about lab-grown meat having a potentially higher carbon footprint than retail beef.
 * Choosing foods based on whether the packaging is sustainable.

In addition, the publication of reviews of types of consumer choices and of stores, plus the methods of acquiring food stock, may be of strong influence on other consumers and stores.

Behavior Contagion of Consumer Choices
Consumers are also influenced by seeing or hearing about each other's behavior, an example of behavior contagion, which is a form of social contagion involving the spread of behavior through a group. It refers to the propensity for a person to copy a certain behavior of others who are either in the vicinity, or whom they have been exposed to. Behavior contagion passively spreads change across communities, such as from a meat-heavy diet to a plant-based one. If the social contagion is widespread enough, a ripple effect, which is when an initial disturbance to a system propagates outward to disturb an increasingly larger portion of the system, spreads from the original influencer to neighbors, friends, or family, and may reach a tipping point, which is a point in time when a group — or many group members — rapidly and dramatically changes its behavior by widely adopting a previously rare practice, such as a change in diet rapidly adopted over a wide area. This in turn has a mitigating effecton climate change: when fewer people are eating meat, there are lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Food Storage and Waste
Food storage inefficiencies and waste are two of the primary drivers of climate change, and consumers are concerned about food waste for a variety of reasons. In 2022, a report from Capgemini concluded that consumers were interested in increasing food shelf life both because of food shortages during the pandemic and because they were concerned about climate change. Regarding food storage inefficiencies, purchase trends show consumers are making climate-friendly choices:


 * Consumer interest in high efficiency in appliances using refrigerants, the chemicals used in the electrical cycle to cool, from escaping to the atmosphere, is increasing. One example is appliances labeled with the U.S. certification Energy Star. Refrigerants are are extremely potent GHGs, with up to 9000 times more impact than carbon dioxide emissions.
 * Sales of smart refrigerators with sustainability features are increasing.
 * Appliance owners having refrigerants reclaimed through certified reclaimers, licensed through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency or other similar agencies in other nations.

Evidence shows that consumers look for ways to minimize food loss and waste, including:
 * Better methods of Food storage and preserving food to avoid GHG emissions. There is increased interest in:
 * Sustainable food storage containers
 * Food drying
 * Canning
 * Rescuing food  that would otherwise be disposed of from farms, restaurants, and grocery stores (including dumpster diving ) and then making it available to the community in a variety of ways, including via food pantries,    apps, and community fridges. Community coordination helps reduce food waste, thus reducing food transportation and lowering local methane emissions associated with rotting produce.
 * Upcycling food that would otherwise be waste by turning it into new food products, or using it to create fuel. Some upcycled foods may carry a third-party certification that ingredients and products procured and produced are with surplus food or food by-products from manufacturing; that use verifiable supply chains; and that have a positive impact on the environment.

Direct consumer to farmer/agriculturist communication
In addition to local food production, food-sharing, choosing products, and decreasing waste, another method consumers are using to reduce carbon emissions is direct consumer-to-farmer/agriculturists communication, including:


 * Working with a local community group on developing incoming food stores and community-store partnerships to meet community needs, with techniques similar to the practices outlined for the healthy food for communities movement.
 * Becoming master gardeners (U.S. and Canada) and helping advise gardeners in local communities.
 * Investing and divesting via climate finance related to agriculture. Soil carbon offset investment is a controversial but potential way to make an impact; this area is still early and needs to be further researched, especially its potential impact on indigenous peoples. There also has been recent controversy in terms of quality certification and whether or not producers are able to support their claims.

Political advocacy
(Main article: Climate Movement)

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report, although there has been expansion of policies and laws addressing climate governance, there has so far been limited policy coverage regarding emissions from agriculture. Many local, national, and international organizations advocate in support of policies to support sustainable agriculture practices. Two primary areas in which citizens have become involved include:


 * The support of zoning and other land management policies that allow for preservation and equitable access to land for food and fiber production, permaculture, community agriculture, sustainable agriculture, farmland preservation, and Conservation Reserve Programs. Techniques include advocating with local watershed-protection nonprofits, as well as engaging with candidates or running for office in local municipalities and utility districts. Further, support of indigenous people’s land management is more associated with climate-friendly practices.
 * Advocating for policies in support of: equitable access to locally grown food;, urban agriculture; and other aspects of sustainable agriculture.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia articles "Behavioral_contagion", "Ripple_effect", "Ripple_effect", and  "Community_organizing" which are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

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