With Super Typhoon-Spawning Climate Change, Let’s Give Ourselves Greener Hope Doing Less Chemical Agriculture!

In 1968, I taught Organic Farming at Xavier U College of Agriculture in Cagayan De Oro City, that which Nicanor “Nicky” Perlas acknowledges he owes me. He went on to embrace Biodynamic Farming and win the International Right Livelihood Award. He proceeded to proselytize for Sustainable Development and I owed him in turn.

Whatever agriculture you do belongs to sustainable development if (1) technically feasible, (2) economically viable, (3), environmentally sound, and (4) socially acceptable. Sorry, but today, 53 years later, I am proselytizing against Sustainable Development – because I have realized that it is a humanitarian concept but in fact it is in favor of climate change without our knowledge!

I am a diehard Roman Catholic; the image you see above is from the website cbcp.org of the Christian Bible Church of the Philippines (CBCP). The initials “CBCP” had belonged to the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines as early as 1945 – nonetheless, this Catholic salutes those CBCP Bible Christians for coming out with “Give Hope Odette” before Christmas 2021.

I too wish to give hope to fellow Filipinos, not only the victims of super typhoon Odette but to all islanders of the Philippines, by pointing out that we can all give hope to ourselves by directly confronting climate change. No, you’re never neither too small nor too ignorant to do what you can do.
(“You’re never too small” image[1] from Pinterest.ph)

I am on record as co-authoring with UPLB Professor Teodoro C Mendoza the technical paper “Rice As Food For Peace: Major Debate Points In The Philippine Context” published in the Philippine Journal of Crop Science vol26 #1 released March 2003 with me as Editor In Chief. We noted that “climate change” is otherwise known as “global warming.” Among other things, we said, “We must change our energy use, the way we cultivate the soil and feed the plants.”

On my own, my earliest writing about what we can do about climate change dates back to 14 years ago (see my essay, “Climate Change In UK, Then In UP, Then In US[2]?” (19 Nov 2007, UP Beloved).

The US EPA tells us that as of 2019, transportation contributed 29% of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), electricity production 25%, industry 23%, commercial & residential 13%, land use & forestry 12%, and agriculture 10%[3] (website entry undated).

I declare, sustainable or not, current chemical agriculture contributes very much more to GHGs, because you need:
much electricity/gas to mine inputs for farm chemicals;
much energy to manufacture chemical fertilizers & pesticides;
much gasoline to transport chemicals from factories to farms;
much energy to plant & cultivate & weed out & irrigate & harvest & dry farm produce & store & process & transport products to differently located markets.

I see that Sustainable Agriculture is at least 4 times more guilty of climate change than we have ever thought!

Now, to fight climate change within probabilities? We must practice Regenerative Agriculture! We can do much to fight climate change simply practicing organic farming!@517

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[1]https://www.pinterest.ph/pin/767371223996732845/

[2]https://upbeloved.wordpress.com/

[3]https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions