Szlovak, Luis Quentin (2022) Agriculture as a major driver of climate change. Comparing the impact of biodynamic and conventional farming practices on soil organic carbon levels in agricultural soils. Bachelor thesis, Global Responsibility & Leadership (GRL).
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Abstract
Global mitigation strategies must be found rapidly in order to effectively combat climate change and ensure a sustainable future for human societies. Notably, agriculture has been described as one of the most important anthropogenic activities contributing to climate change. Nonetheless, widespread academic literature has suggested that agricultural soils have an immense mitigation potential through functioning as carbon sinks rather than sources. However, using this potential strongly depends on the applied farming methods, with biodynamic and organic farming practices suggested to be beneficial for carbon sequestration when compared to conventional counterparts. Therefore, this case study in the county of Lower Saxony in Northern Germany aimed to validate this claim through (1) the collection of quantitative soil samples of adjacent biodynamic and conventional farmlands, (2) the collection of qualitative data through a questionnaire sent to local farmers and (3) the statistical analysis of the gathered data. Results showed significantly higher soil organic carbon levels for farmlands under biodynamic management in comparison to adjacent conventional farmlands. Consequently, this paper further explored existing barriers, policy requirements and effective leverage points for upscaling the implementation of biodynamic and organic agriculture in order to achieve the inevitable transformation to a more sustainable future food system that enables future human societies to thrive.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Bachelor) |
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| Name supervisor: | Schulz, K.A. |
| Date Deposited: | 09 Sep 2022 14:15 |
| Last Modified: | 09 Sep 2022 14:15 |
| URI: | https://campus-fryslan.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/122 |
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