2010 Pesek colloquium connects climate change, agriculture

By LAURA MILLER, Newsletter editor

The year was 1989. A young environmental journalist, Bill McKibben, had finished his first book about climate change, a concept rarely discussed by non-scientists. Another new book published that year also would shake up the soil science world, thanks to its robust discussion of profitable farming systems that used fewer inputs.

Although worlds apart, the people behind these two books came together this year on October 14, when McKibben presented the 10th Annual Pesek Colloquium on Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University in Ames. The event honors Iowa State Emeritus Professor of Agronomy John Pesek, who chaired the landmark National Research Council study that published Alternative Agriculture in 1989.

McKibben said climate change was an appropriate topic for Iowa and the agriculture event because global warming will alter crop production systems everywhere. “Agriculture -- i.e., what’s for dinner -- is the most basic human need, which is called into question by what we’re doing to the planet,” he said.

“The only thing we didn’t know 20 years ago about climate change was how fast this was going to come about, which has been much faster than anyone predicted,” McKibben told an audience of more than 700 people. “The summer of 2010 was the most brutal summer the northern hemisphere has ever known, with 19 nations setting new high temperature records. It gave us the first, real widespread taste of what climate change can bring about in its early stages – namely, deluge, downpour and floods throughout the world.”

Since writing The End of Nature in 1989, McKibben has authored numerous books, including his latest, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, released in April 2010. Much of his Iowa presentation focused on efforts to organize 350.org, a global movement to increase awareness and activism about reducing carbon dioxide levels to 350 parts per million to limit affects of global warming. During a question-and-answer session he was asked how agriculture could help meet that goal.

“The current row-crop system is a recipe for pouring water off fields and into creeks,” he said. But Iowa could send a “profound message” around the globe by making changes in what he called a “risky system” that relies on fossil fuels.

McKibben said he favors localized food production, crop diversity, scaled-down operations where “manure is a useful thing on the farm,” and using low-input agricultural systems that concentrate on soil quality. Biofuel production could be desirable, he added, if it used feedstock such as switchgrass that is grown on marginal land and does not compete with food.

Pesek had a long and distinguished career at Iowa State, with contributions in the areas of soil fertility, crop production and the economics of soil fertilizer. The Leopold Center has been a co-sponsor of the colloquium since it was created in 2001.