What Connects Your Carrot to the Climate Crisis?

A new online film from WhyHunger, “The Food and Climate Connection: From Heating the Planet to Healing It,” highlights the impact of today’s global food system on the climate and how a community-based food movement around the world is bringing to life a way of farming and eating that’s better for our bodies and the planet. Featuring interviews with farmers, community leaders, and sustainability advocates, the film highlights how the industrial food system is among the greatest contributors to global warming and how sustainable farming practices can pose a powerful solution to the crisis.

“Industrial crop and livestock production is wreaking havoc on our planet and our health,” says Anna Lappé, author of Diet for a Hot Planet and featured in the film. “But the good news is sustainable farming methods can help cool the planet, foster food system resiliency, and promote biodiversity and healthy eating—all at the same time.”

Sustainable farming practices build soils rich in carbon and organic matter, creating more robust crops and land that is better able to withstand floods and droughts. Sustainable farming methods also reduce dependence on fossil fuels and petrochemicals and stores more carbon in the soil, helping reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

“Our leaders rarely discuss the food system and the climate crisis, yet food and agriculture directly and indirectly contribute to as much as one-third of total global emissions,” says Christina Schiavoni, director of the Global Movements Program at WhyHunger. “We cannot address climate change without addressing the food system.”

The film’s producers, including Schiavoni, Siena Chrisman and Monica Gagnon, and director Sara Grady, hope it will be a useful educational tool for communities and policy makers and inspire policies that will phase out fossil-fuel dependent agriculture and incentivize community-based and agroecological farming.

After a private screening for funders, media, and non-profit leaders in New York City last week, the film is now available online at WhyHunger’s Food Security Learning Center along with educational resources. The film will be shown as part of Lincoln Center’s “Green Screens” program on Thursday, July 29, 2010.