How do farmers make climate change worse?

Negative impacts of farming: 1. Factory farming highly increases the amount of air pollution. Over 37% of methane emissions come from factory farming. Methane has a global warming potential 20 times higher than carbon dioxide. 2. Deforestation is a big problem. In just the United States, over 260 million acres of forests have been diminished in order to have crop fields. Forests help as a carbon sink so to have them taken away is a big problem. - Henry
http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/factory-farming-is-killing-the-environment/



One reason farmers are making climate change worse is that when farmers till the soil for their crops, it will and does release carbon into the atmosphere. An example of this is when big harvesting and farming companies, go to the fields with their big tractors, they began to till massive amounts of soil, therefore releasing large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. The tilling is also depleting the amount of organic matter. This past year, we reached the 400ppm milestone in atmospheric carbon.

https://climate.nasa.gov/400ppmquotes/
A second reason why is that agriculture has a huge carbon footprint. The US contributes 12 percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions from farming. Another thing is the factory farming that is contributing to the emissions of carbon dioxide and methane from animal waste and fuel use.
http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/6-ways-agriculture-impacts-global-warming.html
The third reason comes from the uncontrolled grazing. These cows are just roaming around eating whenever they want. They destroy organic matter and pollute the air with their flatulence. - Emily

 1.Tilling depletes key nutrients from the soil, exposes bare soil to the sun, and releases carbon from the soil by aerating the soil and speeding up decomposition of organic matter.
2.The use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers pollutes soil with harmful chemicals and kills animals and plants not immune to the chemicals. Factories that make these harmful chemicals release a concoction of deadly gases into our atmosphere.
3. The practice of stationary grazing adds carbon to the atmosphere. This is when animals are not moved around to graze places in rotation. Instead they live in feedlots, feed on inorganic pastures, and have crowded housing, and they continually graze at the same place. This doesn’t give the plants and the soil time to regrow and recover from previous grazing, which usually results in the death of the plants and the soil, which releases carbon into the atmosphere. - Aidan


There are three main ways farming adds carbon to the atmosphere: tilling, grain-fed cattle, and monoculture farming. Tilling is terrible for the environment because it adds so much carbon to it, because the aeration of the soil pulls carbon out of the ground. One of the ways that cattle add carbon to the environment is through cow farts, which add methane. Methane is 24 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Grain-fed cattle, condensed into feed-lots are not able to graze the soil and promote soil carbon storage. Monoculture farming is also an issue because of all of the tillage and fossil fuels needed to maintain the crops. - Josh
Here are three examples of how farming is putting carbon into the atmosphere:
First, tilling: tilling can cause carbon to be released right into the atmosphere by turning the soil right over. Also the soil is now at risk of becoming very dry and then it won’t absorb any water and will cause flooding. And finally by tilling the soil you cause the plants or cover crops that were above the soil to turn underground and this causes the carbon from the plants to decompose more quickly, releasing the carbon that was stored in the living tissues.
Second, using carbon to grow and process our food. This one is more wide scale than the tilling I mentioned before. There are HUGE amounts of carbon used in everything we do to grow our food, fertilizers, pesticides and the oil for the tractors, trucks, planes etc.
Third, raising cattle in feedlots. Nowadays people have mostly left behind the idea of mob grazing and have put their cattle in very small enclosed places. This causes the soil and air to get filled with carbon and methane, way to much. Cattlemen now leave their cows in very enclosed areas and the grass and soil gets destroyed, because there needs to be a cycle of rest for the land in order to regenerate grass and soil. - Piper

When tilling ground, it breaks up the soil and can release carbon into the atmosphere. When we use chemical fertilizer, it releases carbon into the atmosphere because the production of nitrogen fertilizer requires natural gas as a source of energy. We are using a large amount of natural resources just to produce a relatively small amount of food. - CJ

 Farming can make the soil a carbon source by tilling the soil, using fertilizers and pesticides that kill all the microorganisms (and the production of fertilizers and pesticides adds carbon to the atmosphere), and when farmers cut down trees to make room for crops, they take away a tree that breathes in carbon dioxide and exhales oxygen.  - Alan
One way that farming can make climate change worse is by tillage. When farmers till the soil, the carbon in the topsoil is replenished with oxygen and this speeds up decomposition, which causes more carbon dioxide and methane to go into the atmosphere. Another way that farmers can make climate change worse is through synthetic chemical fertilizers. They greatly encourage climate change because they are made by burning methane. Also, big farm machines such as combines and tractors give off a lot off carbon dioxide. - Owen
Farmers make climate change worse when they reduce the amount of organic matter in the soil. For example when you are farming at a large scale, you’re often reducing the amount of topsoil through erosion. When you till the soil, you aerate the soil and release much of the carbon into the atmosphere. - Hudson

In some cases farming can relieve the amounts of extra carbon in the atmosphere, but in most cases farming actually make climate change worse. Farming makes climate change worse because it is one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gases by natural gases produced in the soil (CO2 and CH4) being released through tilling soil. A second way farming makes climate change worse is when people cut down forests to create land for farming. A third way farming make climate change worse is when things that can be composted and help the soil are just thrown out. - Ryan

 When farmers till the soil, it releases carbon into the atmosphere. There are also greenhouse gas emissions that come from the production of pesticides and fertilizers. - Leo



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