Episode description

Cities, money, roads, beef burgers and telephones, in fact pretty much all of human civilisation as we know it, would probably not exist were it not for one simple invention. The plough. This humble yet revolutionary tool enabled us to cultivate vastly greater amounts of food than our hunter gatherer forefathers giving rise to villages, cities and empires. But it has come at a cost. Nearly 10,000 years of cultivated agriculture have released billions of tonnes of carbon from the soil into the atmosphere. Just within the EU, it’s estimated 5% of current greenhouse gas emissions come from agricultural soils. That’s more than aviation and shipping combined. Around the world an increasing number of farmers are adopting new methods without the plough to restore soil health and lock more carbon into the ground. But some scientists are questioning whether the potential for carbon sequestration into the soil is being over hyped. What’s more, for millennia the plough has been a crucial ally in boosting yields and in the coming decades we are going have to produce lots more food to feed the growing global population So the Climate Question is; Is it time for us to ditch the plough?