Today the Backyard, Tomorrow the Farm!
As temperatures start to drop around the nation, the time has come to
wrap up your home garden and prepare for next year. Most gardeners will
be planting bulbs for next spring and taking steps to protect perennials
from harsh winter weather over the next few weeks. But did you know that
actions you take now can also help in the fight against global warming?
The following advice from a gardening expert offers a simple
step you can take this fall to be a climate-friendly gardener by
increasing your soil’s ability to store carbon—a key component
in the leading cause of global warming. After you read the tip, take
action to call for the same kind of actions on our nation’s farms.
In Your Garden...
Tracey Payton, a horticulture educator from Norman, Oklahoma, offers
this tip on how to be a climate-friendly gardener.
"Mulch is a great way to protect bare
soil, and most importantly for the climate-friendly gardener, it can
help prevent carbon loss. Uncovered soil is vulnerable to releasing more
carbon than it stores. Mulch also has other benefits, such as protecting
against temperature fluctuations that can damage plants, suppressing
weeds, and reducing moisture loss and soil erosion. Using mulch can be
as easy as an additional 2-3 inch layer of compost or straw in the
garden; in the flower bed, cotton seed hulls, bark mulch, or wood mulch
can be used. Do only keep mulch about 2-3" deep and away from perennial
plant stems to prevent rot and other moisture problems."
More information about how healthy soil can lock up carbon may be
found in
The
Climate-Friendly Gardener. This guide also contains
more valuable tips and information on how to fight global warming in
your own backyard.
On the Farm…
If gardeners can adopt practices to combat global warming on a small
scale, think what could be accomplished if similar steps were taken on
the millions of acres of farmland across the country!
Similar to mulching, one of the most effective farm practices to
store carbon in the soil on a large scale—while building soil health and
preventing erosion—is widespread planting of "cover crops" in the
winter. A sort of living mulch, cover crops protect farm fields
when other crops aren’t growing. They also have the benefit of releasing
nitrogen—one of the main ingredients in fertilizers into the soil just
in time for spring-planted crops, which can reduce the need for added
fertilizer (another source of global warming emissions).
We can help expand the adoption of this practice by making sure that the
next Farm Bill rewards farmers who plant cover crops. Voted on every
five years, the Farm Bill helps determines what food farmers will grow
and what practices they will employ. This bill includes programs to help
farmers successfully adopt a wide array of sustainable agriculture
practices, including the planting of cover crops.
Write to your members of Congress and demand farm policies that
help farmers protect our water, air, and land while producing the food
we need!
Take
Action Today!
Sincerely,
Jenn Yates
National Field Organizer
UCS Food & Environment Program
The Union of Concerned Scientists is the leading U.S. science-based nonprofit organization working for a healthy environment and a safer world. Founded in 1969, UCS is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and also has offices in Berkeley, Chicago and Washington, D.C. To subscribe or visit go to: http://www.ucsusa.org