The Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting the increase in global temperature to 1.5° or 2°C above preindustrial levels requires rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Although reducing emissions from fossil fuels is essential for meeting this goal, other sources of emissions may also preclude its attainment. We show that even if fossil fuel emissions were immediately halted, current trends in global food systems would prevent the achievement of the 1.5°C target and, by the end of the century, threaten the achievement of the 2°C target. Meeting the 1.5°C target requires rapid and ambitious changes to food systems as well as to all nonfood sectors. The 2°C target could be achieved with less-ambitious changes to food systems, but only if fossil fuel and other nonfood emissions are eliminated soon.
I read a couple of years ago that farmers in American deserts raise hay to ship to Middle Eastern livestock operations. True or not, our global food system is so convoluted for maximal monetization that it will probably be just as difficult to manage appropriately as the fossil fuels industry.
monetization
the better word is commodification.
Here’s something about reversing that:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-022-00933-5
https://one-handed-economist.com/?p=3781
Domestic animals are among the first commodities. The world “capital” comes from head, as in head of, as in head of large animal, or what’s called “living stock”, livestock. It shares the same root with “cattle” and “chattel”. It’s about creating and selling commodities and reproducing capital. It’s also part of the primitive drive towards familial wealth or inheritance with accumulation, along with the generation of unimaginable inequality… before the modern industrial era.
How very true. I was too focused on alliteration but climaxing commodification would have worked even better!
I’m not sure how easy it will be to get current family farmers involved, but the nature article talked about community and communally held things. At least in my area, these concepts are valued in some way by folks working in agriculture (who also generally own the land as a family) so perhaps the connections are already there. And many of them already do the Japanese ‘half farming, half x’ whether they want to or not.
