Michigan State University: Global Warming
Besides food farming can provide wildlife habitat and reduce global warming - 02/18/06
When people hear the word "agriculture," most think of food. But the benefits of agriculture are much more than farm fresh corn or dairy products. Now scientists are investigating how farmers can manage their land to offer everyone more environmental benefits, and whether farmers could be paid for providing these benefits.
"Agriculture, which includes planted forests, is the world's largest human-managed ecosystem," said Scott Swinton, professor of agricultural economics at MichiganStateUniversity. "There is a huge area of land that people manage for food, fiber and fuel - these are all marketed products with a value attached to them. What we want to know is if we can also manage agriculture for things that people like and appreciate, but don't have markets, such as cleaner air, cleaner water, less global warming, wildlife habitat and aesthetics - many people enjoy seeing the green, open space of farmland in their communities."
Swinton speaks at a symposium entitled "Harvesting Ecosystem Services from Agriculture" today at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting. The symposium will be moderated by Frank Lupi, associate professor of agricultural economics and fisheries and wildlife at MSU.
They and the other participants will discuss the concept of ecosystem services - the services provided to humans by the biological processes in the ecosystem, in this case, agriculture.
"It's pretty exciting to be involved in this," Swinton said. "For many years, the focus of sustainable agriculture has been on avoiding negatives: water pollution, soil erosion, pesticide residues, etc. In the ecosystems services concept, we're focusing on services that people appreciate and enjoy. Since the amount of land involved in agriculture is so large, we have a strong motivation to provide farmers incentives to support the ecosystem."
