The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy is initiating a list-serve
on agriculture and climate change.
Climate change and actions to mitigate climate change may have tremendous
impacts on agriculture, both in the United States and worldwide. Most
agricultural organizations and commodity groups oppose the Kyoto Agreement,
believing that implementation of the Agreement will put U.S. agriculture at
a comparative disadvantage to less-developed countries that are not
required to achieve the same greenhouse gas reductions. We believe,
however, that U.S. agriculture, and particularly sustainable agriculture,
could benefit from the Agreement by receiving credits for sequestering
carbon. A recently published book, "The Potential of U.S. Cropland to
Sequester Carbon and Mitigate the Greenhouse Effect", estimates that U.S.
cropland could potentially sequester 120-270 million metric tons of
carbon/year.
Receiving credit for carbon sequestration would serve multiple benefits
because the same C-sequestering BMPs also protect soil and water:
conservation buffers, pasture, cover crops, improved nutrient management,
etc. The Kyoto Agreement may serve as a great springboard for the type of
agriculture that we want to promote.
We invite those of you on Sanet who are interested in this issue to join
our newly created list-serve on climate change. This list is a place to
exchange ideas and information regarding both the potential impacts and the
role that agriculture can play in efforts to address climate change.
To subscribe
In the body of a message addressed to listserv@iatp.org type:
subscribe ag_climate
Any questions or comments can be sent to me at the contact information below.
Thanks,
Mark
Mark Muller
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
2105 First Avenue South
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55404
phone: (612) 870-3420
fax: (612) 870-4846
email: mmuller@iatp.org
website: http://www.iatp.org/
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