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Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
From seafood to steak and potatoes, the core of American food has been pretty well established over the years. But we are now truly examining the climate impact of bringing these staples to our tables. In his compelling and deeply researched book, The Blue Plate: A Food Lover’s Guide to Climate Chaos, ecologist and greenhouse gas accountant Mark Easter passionately analyzes the ecological impacts of these ingredients and more.
Easter is a research associate at Colorado State University and an ecological consultant with Farm, Table & Sky Consulting. In his well-researched book, he examines the environmental impacts of the soil needed to grow certain crops and how the problems posed by fish farms can overshadow the financial benefits they provide among the many concerns currently on the minds of consumers. do.
blue plate It addresses the challenge of managing carbon emissions embedded in our food system and highlights innovative pioneers working in the United States, including regenerative agriculture farmers, researchers studying changing ocean conditions driven by the climate crisis, and entrepreneurs focused on strengthening composting programs across cities. Introducing. In places like Boulder, Colorado.
food dive We spoke with Easter to find out more about what surprises him as he researches and writes. blue plateWhy he included an entire chapter on reservoir systems and whether we can truly get out of this crisis.
Food Dive: Why did you write a book about the carbon footprint of our food system? Is there something that motivated you to compile all this data into a book?
mark easter: I and other scientists who study climate change realized some time ago that we were not doing a good job of explaining the science to the public in a meaningful way. The public is our greatest stakeholder, so we must inform them of our findings and their implications.
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Permission granted by Mark Easter.
I wanted to show that agriculture produces a lot of emissions. What I find interesting is that most of these emissions do not come from burning things, but from microorganisms in the soil, animal guts, the depths of landfills, lagoons filled with dairy manure, and the depths of irrigation reservoirs. And I thought it was an important and potentially compelling story.
There is a lot to take away from . blue plate. How would you summarize the key messages you would like to convey to readers working in food systems or policy?
One of the most interesting and potentially important connections I make in the book is that farmers respond to incentives. Specifically, it is an agricultural program that aims to help growers transition to practices that not only benefit their bottom lines, but also help them overcome the increasingly severe ups and downs of climate volatility.
Whether it’s cash or technical assistance, farmers can be given the opportunity to transition to approaches like cover crops. We continually see that when funding is provided with good technical support, uptake is high. Cover crops have the greatest potential to reverse climate emissions from soil and actually sequester and pull carbon from the atmosphere back into the soil.
Your chapter on regenerative agriculture focuses on practices that have been around for decades, but you uncover some interesting innovators in the field. Please tell us more about your impressions of the regenerative farmers you interviewed.
What I’ve found is that when livestock are reintegrated into a cover crop system and they graze, those cover crops provide nutrients to the crops that follow and help solve weed problems and other kinds of problems that we see. It will. Additionally, organic matter increases more rapidly than if livestock were not integrated into the system.
Additionally, we have found that growers do not need to rely as much on synthetic fertilizers or other forms of amendments to support their crops. I think this is one of the most interesting and exciting areas of research currently. Because it involves an opportunity to potentially improve a grower’s bottom line.
If you look at our water system, you see it as “a series of reservoirs that destroy rivers and release methane behind towering dams…their use releases carbon and nitrogen into the sky at a rate that exceeds that of most other lands.” “It triggers an event,” he calls it bluntly. I use it. And this adds to the carbon burden on fruits and vegetables from the lower Colorado River Basin…” What drew you to writing about reservoirs?
Writing this book was still a journal of discovery for me. The fact that reservoir systems emit a lot of greenhouse gases, especially methane, is only just beginning to receive attention, even though researchers have been studying it for the past 30 years.
Previously, the problem was primarily identified in tropical regions. But what we’ve actually discovered is that as more data comes in, problems arise virtually everywhere. This is especially true in reservoirs where toxic algae blooms. Emissions there can be 10 to 100 times higher than those from unpolluted lakes or rivers. However, when hydropower is integrated into these systems, it is described as a climate solution. In the end, what they are really doing is adding a significant climate burden that will continue for decades, if not centuries, to come.
You’ve been interviewed on a podcast. blue plate Some hosts are surprised to learn about the low-carbon footprint of shellfish takeout food. Why do you think this study surprised so many people?
Even I was surprised! As oysters, clams, mussels, and scallops grow, they actually pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and lock it in their shells. They are, in a way, turning this greenhouse gas into rock, and unless we drop this shell into a vat of boiling hot acid, it will still remain rock.
It shocked me that they absorb CO2 and turn it into carbonate in these shells. Even though I always knew the process was happening. But I never really connected it to climate solutions until I had a chance to talk to researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Molluscs, which I describe in the book, have one of the lowest carbon footprints of all animal protein sources. That means, per pound, the carbon dioxide equivalent is less than 1 pound. And I think that’s special.
Your book asks the question, “Can we escape the climate crisis?” But I think your answer is partially yes. But we need to reframe that question. How?
If you do research like I do, you may become optimistic or overly hopeful about what agricultural change can do for us. You can do many things, but you can’t do them all.
What is clear is that we are currently burning fossil fuels at extremely high levels, and there is only so much the Earth’s ecosystem can do to overcome these emissions. If we stop burning fossil fuels, the benefits of regenerative agriculture can continue for decades to come.
