Tag Archive for: Drought

The King of Cover Cropping

Author: Brian DeVore

An Indiana initiative has made the state a national leader in getting continuous living cover established on crop acres. Can it change the way farmers view soil?

Michael Werling is, literally, a card-carrying connoisseur of soil health.

“I call it, ‘My ticket to a farm tour,’ ” says the northeastern Indiana crop producer, showing off his business card. The words on the “ticket” leave little doubt what is in store for the lucky holder who chooses to redeem it. Headings at the top say, “My soil is not dirt” and, “My residue is not trash.” A third bold line of script across the middle reads, “For Healthier Soil and Cleaner Water Cover Crop Your Assets and ‘NEVER TILL.’ ” Buried at the bottom as a bit of an afterthought is Werling’s contact information. Given his excitement over the world beneath his feet and how to protect and improve it, maybe it makes sense the farmer’s card relegates his address and phone number to footnote status—soil is his identity.

Spend enough time on a soil health tour in Indiana these days and one is likely to run into a lot of farmers like Werling. Perhaps that’s no surprise, given that events like this tend to attract true believers in the power of healthy humus to do everything from create more resilient fields to clean up water.

But what sets Indiana apart is that it’s home to an initiative that has found a way to take the passion of farmers like Werling and use it as an engine for driving change on a whole lot of farms whose owners may not be card-carrying soil sophisticates—they’re just looking for ways to cut fertilizer costs and keep regulators off their backs, all the while remaining financially viable.

Werling is one of a dozen “Hub Farmers” located across Indiana who are at the core of one of the most successful soil health initiatives in the country. In just a few short years, a public-private partnership called the Conservation Cropping Systems Initiative (CCSI) has helped get around 8 percent of the Hoosier State’s crop fields blanketed in rye and other soil-friendly plants throughout the fall, winter and early spring—times when corn and soybean fields are normally bare. No other Corn Belt state is even close to having that high a percentage of its land protected with continuous living cover. Indiana’s success has farmers, soil scientists and environmentalists across the country excited about the potential CCSI holds as a national model. But first, one key questions needs to be addressed: can a state parlay all of this interest in one conservation farming technique—in this case cover cropping—into a holistic embrace of a larger soil health system?

KEEP READING ON LAND STEWARDSHIP PROJECT

Food Tank: Polyfaces

Author: Lani Furbank

The Australian-based nonprofit Regrarians recently released a documentary about Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farm, titled “Polyfaces.” The film showcases the unique and sustainable farming style pioneered by the Salatin family in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. It examines how these holistic practices regenerate landscapes, communities, local economies, human health, and soil.

Regrarians works with farmers, communities, and government organizations internationally to teach and implement regenerative agriculture.

The film was produced over four years by Lisa Heenan, Isabella Doherty, and Darren Doherty, a family from Australia who was inspired by Polyface Farm and wanted to share the farm’s work with the world.

Polyfaces premiered in New York and Los Angeles earlier this year and qualified for the Academy Awards. It also won several awards, including Best Documentary at the Silver Springs International Film Festival in Florida, the Minister of Agriculture Award at the Life Sciences Film Festival in Prague, a Gold Remi at the WorldFest Film Festival in Houston, and the Festival Spirit Award at Weyauwega International Film Festival in Wisconsin.

KEEP READING ON FOOD TANK

Wildfires Are Getting Worse: Time to Rehydrate Our Landscapes

Author: Judith Schwartz

The west is still in the thick of wildfire season and 2016 is already one to leave Smoky the Bear in tears. California is seeing a 20 percent uptick in fires compared to 2015—itself a rough fire year—while a fast-moving blaze has virtually destroyed the California town of Lower Lake. A story in today’s Washington Post grimly begins: “California is burning.”

While fire is always part of nature, many attribute its increased frequency and intensity to climate change. Certainly, that makes sense: longer stretches of warm weather and earlier snowmelt create a fire-friendly scenario. But what does this connection do for us, beyond providing another reason to rue the continued assaults on our climate? For the terms “climate change” and “global warming” elide the dynamics that create the constellation of factors that, collectively, we call climate. However, by zeroing in on the ecology of fire-prone regions, we can find ways to minimize the risk and severity of the fires that threaten homes and wilderness areas—not to mention the lives of firefighters.

For example, since arid conditions beckon fire, we can ask how healthy environments maintain moisture. Plentiful rain is one obvious answer, but equally important is what happens to rain once it falls. Enter “green water”, or water held in soils. We generally think of freshwater in terms of lakes and rivers, but two-thirds of rainfall becomes green water. When rain falls on living soil that’s rich in organic matter, it stays in the system and sustains plant and microbial life. Rain that falls on soil depleted by tillage or chemicals streams away, as does all the rainwater that strikes concrete or asphalt. Dry, degraded soil (read: dirt) doesn’t absorb water, thirsty though it may be. For every one percent increase in soil organic matter, soil stores 20,000 gallons of water per acre.

Historically, our western landscapes were kept hydrated in part by beavers. According to Brock Dolman of The WATER Institute’s Bring Back the Beaver Campaign, the winsome rodents act as “water engineers”. By building dams they harvest water and direct its flow, and the moist soil that surrounds the pools yields lush vegetation. Beavers, he says, serve as ecological “shock absorbers” so that land is less susceptible to drought and fire. Beavers are native to much of California, and were numerous prior to the early nineteenth century, when they were mostly wiped out. (Water-wise, California’s “fur rush” was a bigger deal than the Gold Rush.) Nationwide, today beavers number around 10 million, down from an estimated 200 million when Europeans arrived on our shores.

KEEP READING ON COMMON DREAMS

The Drought Solution That’s Under Our Feet

Author: Padma Nagappan

Now in the fifth year of an epic drought, Californians have explored ways to save water and wring it out of typical and atypical sources. The search has spanned the gamut from funding research, investing in expensive solutions like desalination plants, toying with the idea of recycling wastewater, imposing water-use restrictions, letting lawns go dry and experimenting with irrigation efficiency techniques for the crops that feed the country.

Thirsty crops, a burgeoning population and below-average precipitation have also led to seriously overdrawn groundwater sources that took a very long time to fill up. The state’s agricultural industry, which grows more than 250 crops, has also been vilified for its heavy water use.

But is the Golden State missing a solution that could offer a high payout – a solution that’s right under its feet?

Healthy soil that’s rich in organic matter has an ability to retain water that surpasses much more expensive solutions to the drought, yet not many people are aware of its potential to reduce farm water use.

“Name something that doesn’t come from the soil?” asked Tony Rolfe, a California state soil scientist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), a U.S. Department of Agriculture agency. “It’s not just food, but also your clothes that come from cotton, construction and homes that rely on wood, even oxygen because you need soil to grow the plants that take in carbon dioxide and give out oxygen.”

KEEP READING ON NEWS DEEPLY

Ethiopia’s farmers fight devastating drought with land restoration

Author: Duncan Gromko

Ethiopia is in the midst of the worst drought in 50 years, affecting over half of the country’s 750 districts. Earlier this month, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), called Ethiopia’s condition “a deteriorated humanitarian situation”.

Environmental degradation has played a big role. Ethiopia has long been a victim of land degradation, driven by increased human use of land and unsustainable agricultural practices. Grazing of animals and collection of firewood haven’t helped – with less cover and protection against erosion, soil is more easily washed away.

Now, Ethiopia is drawing on its business community and public sector to do something about it. Earlier this year, the country agreed to join the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100), a country-led effort to bring 100m hectares of land in Africa into restoration by 2030. The initiative was launched formally at COP21 in Paris.

AFR100 will see governments working together with regional institutions, public and private sector partners and international development programs to restore productivity to deforested and degraded landscapes, mostly through restoring forests and planting trees on agricultural land. “AFR100 seeks to realize the benefits that trees can provide in African landscapes, thereby contributing to improved soil fertility and food security, improved availability and quality of water resources, reduced desertification, increased biodiversity, the creation of green jobs, economic growth, and increased capacity for climate change resilience, adaptation and mitigation,” the group’s mission states.

KEEP READING ON THE GUARDIAN

Justice for All Filipino Farmers: A Statement on the Kidapawan Massacre and the State’s Abandonment of Agriculture

The National Movement for Food Sovereignty, a local affiliate of the Asia-Pacific Network for Food Sovereignty, and an alliance of small holder farmers, artisanal fishers, rural women, rural youth and other anti-neoliberal individuals and organizations, stand in solidarity with the victims of the Kidapawan Massacre. We strongly condemn the Philippine Government’s abhorrent actions last April 1, 2016. We are calling for immediate and long-term justice for all protesters, whose rights were blatantly violated and whose tragic situations were ignored.

We demand accountability from the government armed forces whose responsibility in the first place is to ensure that people’s rights are protected. At the same time, we are calling for a food production system wherein small producers are not left on society’s fringes to die of hunger.

A Tragic History

The Philippine agriculture has been made backward by a landed elite dominated government, which systematically neglects and abandons it, resulting to the peasantry’s further desolation. As if economic violence were not enough, Filipino farmers have also time and time again encountered state-perpetrated violent suppression and reaction.

Year Name Location Fatalities
1950 Maliwalu Massacre Maliwalu, Bacolor, Pampanga 21
1966 Culatingan Massacre Culatingan, Concepcion, Tarlac 7
1985 Escalante Massacre Escalante City, Negros Occidental 30
1987 Mendiola Massacre Manila City 13
1987 Lupao Massacre Lupao, Nueva Ecija 17
2004 Hacienda Luisita Massacre Hacienda Luisita, Tarlac 7

The table above illustrates the tragic history of the Filipino farmer’s struggle for land, food, and justice. Time and time again, the poor Filipino farmers have put forward their legitimate demands to the Philippine government. Yet instead of meting out social justice, the state has chosen to respond with armed violence – with the Mendiola and the Hacienda Luisita Massacres perhaps being the most prominent examples in recent history. By no means is the list complete, as there are surely more cases of such atrocities inflicted upon the peasantry that have been effectively kept under wraps or hidden in the guise of the government’s anti-insurgency programs.

Rampant Hunger and Protests

It is at this juncture that we found ourselves in when, once again, the state has turned its guns against its own citizens. As combined elements of the Philippine National Police and the Armed Forces of the Philippines shot at a crowd of poor and hungry farmers conducting a peaceful protest in Kidapawan City, we are again reminded of the degree of marginalization and oppression being imposed upon our small food producers.

In January 2016, a State of Calamity has been declared in the provinces of Mindanao due to the drought caused by the El Nino weather phenomenon. Damages to crops are estimated at around P3.6 million. Expectedly, most affected by this crisis have been poor farmers. According to DA estimates, 17,000 hectares of rice and corn land have been damaged by the drought and more than 20,000 farmers have been affected in Maguindanao alone. The damage to their crops is beyond repair, resulting to too much hunger and poverty.

Reports from the ground have revealed cases of farmers having to eat pig feed because they have nothing else, and of a farmer having committed suicide because of no yield. The drought has virtually taken away their source of livelihood, if not their source of subsistence. In the face of this crisis, the Philippine government has done nothing to genuinely address the needs of its primary food producers.

With the El Niño crisis having become a matter of life and death to farmers and their families, it is not surprising then that Mindanao farmers were moved into collective action. No less than 6,000 farmers rose up and blockaded the Cotabato-Davao Highway, denouncing state neglect, and demanding the local government to release 15,000 sacks of rice as calamity aid.

The blockade was already on its third day when the police and armed forces intervened. Instead of government assistance, what the hungry farmers received was a hail of gunfire. The ensuing chaos left at least 3 farmers dead, 87 missing, and 116 hurt – 18 of which are hospitalized, most of whom due to gunshot wounds. The remaining protesters are now held up in a nearby church that has granted them refuge, yet security forces still continue to harass them and have even resorted to cutting off the building’s electricity in the middle of the night. Of course, the military is defending its action by accusing protesters of instigating the chaos. Yet, nothing can justify such violent act against an unarmed group of protesters with a very legitimate demand.

Hunger, Rural Poverty, and State Abandonment

The marginalization of the peasantry is a natural product of the neoliberal economic order to which the Philippine economy is being fully integrated. Under this economic system, policies of deregulation, liberalization, and privatization were designed to shift away from government subsidy in order to freely facilitate profit extraction by corporate business and financial institutions. These neoliberal policies have proven devastating to the Philippine economy, specifically agriculture and rural development. Philippine agriculture has been dramatically spiraling downward over the past decades with its GDP share steadily contracting. At the same time, its technological advancement has stagnated, with most of the farmlands still dependent on manual labor. Rural poverty continues to rise. Environmental degradation continues to worsen. Yet, the government has instead further pursued the same neoliberal policies causing rural poverty.

State abandonment of agriculture and rural development also manifests itself in terms of the government’s lack of emergency assistance and comprehensive rehabilitation program for agriculture, which is the first victim of climate change. Until today, farmer victims of Typhoons Lando and Nona in Luzon remain unassisted and unsupported. As if this is not enough, farmlands in Nueva Ecija are now being plagued by army worms – commonly classified as climate change pests – resulting in widespread damage to crops and loss of capital. Despite the government’s claims that we are climate change ready, the government’s lack of action on the issue only proves otherwise. More importantly, however, this serves as another proof of the government’s insensitivity towards the needs of our food producers.

The neoliberal policy direction is made even more apparent in the development aggression projects being pursued by the Philippine government. Development aggression occurs when the state imposes ‘development’ projects on unwilling communities. The mining projects in the province of Zambales fit this description perfectly. Zambaleños have strongly opposed mining operations in the province citing their harmful impacts on the environment. For one, the mining operations have exacerbated the impacts of Typhoon Lando in the area – resulting in severe flooding of homes and rice fields. This has led to community’s resolve to barricade the mining area and demand the ouster of these mining firms. As usual, the people’s legitmate protest was also violently suppressed by the PNP resulting to injuries and illegal arrests of protesters.

This shooting in Kidapawan and the other examples mentioned here are clear manifestations of the generalized forms of state-violence currently being perpetrated against farmers and other small food producers. Bogus land reform programs, coupled with development aggression, as well as the lack of subsidy and support services make up the government’s policy of abandoning its peasantry and agriculture. It pushes the peasant class to the brink of existence. It is not simplistic to say then, that this whole situation was created solely by the Philippine government and its fixation with the neoliberal dogma.

Justice and Food Sovereignty

The Philippine government’s response to the legitimate demands of its farmers is beyond abhorrent. However, the general condition of Philippine agriculture is even more detestable as it perpetuates the cycle of violence being imposed upon the impoverished Filipino small food producers. We are living in a society with an agricultural sector that is so backward that our farmers remain in the quagmire of hunger and poverty.

Hence, we are calling for a food system that is just and sovereign. We call on everyone to join us in our fight for justice and food sovereignty.

We demand the Philippine government to:

  1. Free all protesters who were unjustly detained.
  2. Immediately investigate and prosecute all police units/forces and government officials involved in the Kidapawan Massacre.
  3. Immediately provide food assistance to El Niño farmer families at least one sack of rice per farmer-family until they recovered from the El Niño crisis.
  4. Stop withholding food and aid to farmers and hold local government accountable for this crime against the farmers.
  5. Indemnify all victims of the Kidapawan Massacre and their families.
  6. Provide financial assistance to farmers for the recovery of their livelihood and rehabilitation of their farmlands.
  7. Implement genuine agrarian reform; stop resource grabbing.
  8. Stop the unabated plunder and excessive exploitation of the ecosystems in the Philippines.

 

Initial Signatories:

South Asian Network for Social & Agricultural Development (SANSAD)

Comité catholique contre la faim et pour le développement (CCFD) -Terre Solidaire

Mokatil-Movimentu Kamponezes Timor Leste (Timor Leste Farmers movement)

North South Initiative (NSI)

Jagrata Juba Shangha (JJS)

Progresibong Alyansa ng Mangingisda sa Pilipinas (PANGISDA)

Katipunan ng Bagong Pilipina (KABAPA)

Pambansang Kilusan ng Makabayang Magbubukid (PKMM)

Pagkakaisa Labab sa Liberalisasyon sa Agrikultura (PALLAG)

Nagkakakaisang Samahan ng Kababaihan sa Kanayunan (NAGSAKKA)

MAKABAYAN-Pilipinas

Center for Grassroots Studies and Social Action

SEAFISH for Justice

Koalisi Rakyat untuk Keadilan Perikanan (KIARA)

Damayan ng mga Manggagawa,Mangingisda at Magsasaka (DAMMMBA)

Pambansang Kaisahan ng mga Magbubukid sa Pilipinas (PKMP)

Dunong at Dangal ng Makabagong Dumagat (DUMAGAT)

Regeneration International

 

Climate and Desertification

Carbon sinks mean lower atmospheric CO2, more fertile land

For decades now mankind has been at the fore in creating a vicious cycle with critical environmental consequences as a result. By degrading the atmosphere with greenhouse gas emissions, land degradation has risen. This in turn is worsening the degradation of the atmosphere. Atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations have been increasing for some two centuries, mostly a result of human activities, spearheaded primarily by the rapid rise of industrialization. The degradation of land, however, through unviable agricultural practices also has resulted in emissions of greenhouse gases. As governments, NGOs and corporations around the globe set limits on the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by automobiles, factories and power plants into the atmosphere, a way to “recycle” CO2 into the ground, carbon sequestration, has received less attention and international support. Little recognized is the fact that the world’s soils hold more organic carbon than that held by the atmosphere as CO2 and vegetation combined (see Fig. 1). Carbon sequestration is the process by which CO2 sinks (both natural and artificial) remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, primarily as plant organic matter in soils. Soil carbon sequestration is an important and immediate sink for removing atmospheric carbon dioxide and mitigating global warming and climate change. Organically managed soils can convert carbon dioxide from a greenhouse gas into a food-producing asset. Combined with sequestration in non-agricultural soil, the potential for land to hold carbon and act as a sink for greenhouse gases is unparalleled. This should help put a new value on land, the value of its capability to sequester and to literally “breathe in” the excess blanket of CO2 and help cool the planet. And when mixed with water and sun, CO2 enriches the soil, giving life to trees and vegetation, which then can generate more carbon sinks.

Download the Fact Sheet from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification

Special Report: Cows Save the World

Author: Allan Savory

I write to offer a constructive way forward in the tragic cultural genocide unfolding in America’s
wonderful western ranching culture that is embedded in the nation’s culture.
I do so knowing the risks of trying to help a lion by operating on a back molar in its jaw.

The recent RANGE article featuring Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy (whose cattle were taken from his southern Nevada range by the BLM backed up by SWAT teams) typifies the western ranching cultural genocide taking place. It is a tragedy based on deeply held myths and assumptions rather than on any known science.

No publication has done more than RANGE, valiantly fighting for fairness and the rights of ranchers in the protracted rancher-federal agency war over western public lands. When decent human beings—including ranchers, environmentalists and government land managers who are doing the best they can—all want healthy land with abundant wildlife, flowing rivers, stable rural families and communities in a healthy thriving nation, solutions and collaboration are needed instead of conflict.

How easy it is to draw our swords and yet how difficult it is to re-sheath them. So let me start with a point that I believe all parties can agree upon: management including policy should be based on science rather than on emotion, belief and assumption. With that in mind, let’s look at the current situation. Because the ultimate form of land degradation is man-made desert, I will use the official jargon and call the process rangeland desertification.

Desertification typically does not occur where precipitation and humidity are fairly well spread throughout the year, as in many coastal areas like Florida and Washington. However, most western rangelands experience long dry periods whether rainfall is high or low and here desertification occurs on both private and public lands. The symptoms of desertification are: increasingly frequent and severe droughts and floods, poverty, social breakdown, mass emigration to cities or across borders, decreasing wildlife, pastoral culture genocide, and violence and conflict. Most of these are being experienced in America today despite the good intentions of both ranchers and policy-makers.

Download the Report from Range Magazine