One of the most interesting, and hopeful, talks at last week’s New York Time’s Food for Tomorrow conference, held at the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Tarrytown, New York, came from Michael Pollan, who echoed many farmers and speakers in exalting the value of healthy soils.
But he set up his talk with some sobering news: climate change is going to hit agriculture early and hard, reducing both yields and the nutritional quality of food; and agriculture as usual (that is, fossil-fuel dependent) is going to considerably worsen the impacts of climate change.
The good news is that soil sequesters carbon–mitigating climate change–and it can be conditioned through very specific agricultural practices to sequester even more. That will benefit the crops we’ll need to grow, because healthy soil is more fertile and more resilient in both drought and deluge, even as it reduces levels of atmospheric carbon.
Now, what is this secret ingredient that anyone can use? Compost. Just one application of a half-inch of compost, spread on degraded Marin County range land, sequestered increasing amounts of carbon for six years running. The experiment has been so successful, Pollan said, that the city of San Francisco is contemplating spreading compost on all city land–from roadside verges to range land. (The city has plenty of food waste to play with, thanks to a city requirement that residents and commercial establishments source-separate their food and yard waste for curbside collection.) Just a half inch of compost, it’s estimated, will mitigate all of the city’s carbon emissions. Making and spreading compost, Pollan said, “should be at the center of any national food policy.”
You can see all the Food for Tomorrow talks on You Tube, including an interesting moment when Jack Sinclair, who’s in charge of buying groceries for Walmart, defends himself against the charge that his workers can’t afford to buy healthy food without government help. (Pollan’s talk is here.)
It’s always lovely being at Stone Barns, but a question continues to nag: why was the venue, which is so committed to principles of sustainable living, serving Mountain Valley Spring Water imported from Arkansas in green glass bottles, in the restaurant at Stone Barns? And why were single servings of the same elixir available throughout the two-day conference? Like a leaky faucet, the bottled water tugged at the sustainability themes of the two-day conference.