Tag Archive for: Landscape Restoration

How the Loss of Soil Is Sacrificing America’s Natural Heritage

Geologically speaking, I grew up in a small farm town on the Des Moines lobe, a huge tongue-shaped remnant of glacial activity that reaches south across central Iowa. All around us were mollisols with a deep A-horizon — a type of rich black topsoil visible in farm fields for miles in every direction. In school we were taught only one thing about that soil: to be proud of it. It was a given, a blessing, a moral fact. In a sense, it seemed to have no history. Yet when I was very young, I surely must have met old people — relatives from northwest Iowa — whose elders had helped break the prairie in the late 19th century, using heavy sod-plows and the great teams of animals needed to pull those plows through tenacious tallgrass. The way I was taught, it felt, somehow, as though the prairie’s providential job had been to keep the soil ready for a time when we would need it. By the time I was in school it was hard to find living prairie anywhere in Iowa. It had nearly all been turned.

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Regenerative Food and Farming: Survival and Revival

“Regenerative agriculture provides answers to the soil crisis, the food crisis, the climate crisis, and the crisis of democracy.” Dr. Vandana Shiva, Co-Founder Regeneration International

Regenerative agriculture and holistic livestock management represent the next, crucial stage of organic food and farming, not only avoiding toxic pesticides, fertilizers, sewage sludge, GMO seeds, and excessive greenhouse gas emissions, but regenerating soil fertility, water retention, carbon sequestration, and rural livelihoods as well.

Regeneration has now become the hottest topic in the natural and organic food sector. At the same time, climate activists regularly discuss the role of organic and regenerative practices in reducing agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and sequestering excess atmospheric carbon dioxide in soils and agricultural landscapes.

Inside Regeneration International, which now includes 400 affiliates in more than 60 countries, our primary focus is  moving beyond the basics of Regeneration to identifying regenerative and organic “best practices” around the globe and figuring out how to utilize farmer innovation, marketplace demand, policy reform, and public and private investing to qualitatively spread and scale these best practices up so that organic and regenerative becomes the norm, rather than just the alternative, for the planet’s now degenerative multitrillion-dollar food, farming and land use system.

Either we move beyond merely treating the symptoms of our planetary degeneration and build instead a new system based upon regenerative food, farming and land use, coupled with renewable energy practices and global cooperation instead of superpower competition and belligerence, or we will soon pass the point of no return.

In 2010 Olaf Christen stated, “Regenerative agriculture is an approach in agriculture that rejects pesticides and synthetic fertilizers and is intended to improve the regeneration of the topsoil, biodiversity and the water cycle.”

This corresponds almost exactly with the stated principles of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) or Organics International.

Since 2014, the Rodale Institute, IFOAM, Dr. Bronner’s, Dr. Mercola, Patagonia, the Real Organic Project, the Biodynamic Movement, the Organic Consumers Association, Regeneration International, Navdanya and others have also been discussing and implementing organic standards, practices and certification, which incorporate regenerative principles.

Changing the Conversation: Regenerative Food and Farming

In September 2014 a group of food, natural health and climate activists, including Vandana Shiva, Andre Leu, Will Allen, Steve Rye, Alexis Baden-Meyer and staff from Dr. Bronner’s, Dr. Mercola, Organic Consumers Association and the Rodale Institute, organized a press conference at the massive climate march in New York City to announce the formation of Regeneration International and to set for ourselves a simple, but what seemed like then ambitious, goal.

We all pledged to change the conversation on the climate crisis in the U.S. and around the world — then narrowly focused on renewable energy and energy conservation — so as to incorporate regenerative and organic food, farming and land use as a major solution to global warming, given its proven ability to drawdown and sequester massive amounts of excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in the soil, trees, and plants.

Now, seven years later, it appears that our growing Regeneration Movement has achieved this goal. Regeneration is now the hottest topic in the natural and organic food and farming sector, while climate activists including the Sunrise Movement and Extinction Rebellion regularly talk about the role of organic and regenerative practices in reducing agricultural greenhouse gas emissions.

More and more people now understand that we can achieve, through enhanced photosynthesis and drawdown, “Net Zero” emissions by 2030, a figure will be necessary if we are to avoid runaway global warming and climate catastrophe.

Identifying Regenerative and Organic ‘Best Practices’

Inside Regeneration International, which now includes 400 affiliates in more than 60 countries, our conversation has shifted from promoting a basic discussion about organic and regenerative food, farming, and land-use to identifying regenerative and organic “best practices” around the globe.

Our discussions and strategizing are not just an academic exercise. As most of us now realize, our very survival as a civilization and a species is threatened by a systemic crisis that has degraded climate stability, our food and our environment, along with every major aspect of modern life.

This mega-crisis cannot be resolved by piecemeal reforms or minor adjustments such as slightly cutting our current levels of fossil fuel use, reducing global deforestation, soil degradation and military spending.

Either we move beyond merely treating the symptoms of our planetary degeneration and build instead a new system based upon regenerative food, farming and land use, coupled with renewable energy practices and global cooperation instead of belligerence, or we will soon (likely within 25 years) pass the point of no return.

A big challenge is how do we describe the crisis of global warming and severe climate change in such a way that everyday people understand the problem and grasp the solution that we’re proposing, i.e., renewable energy and regenerative food, farming and land use?

Enhanced Photosynthesis Is All-Important

The bottom line is that humans have put too much CO2 and other greenhouse gases (especially methane and nitrous oxide) into the atmosphere (from burning fossil fuels and destructive land use), trapping the sun’s heat from radiating back into space and heating up the planet.

And, unfortunately, because of the destructive food, farming and forestry practices that have degraded a major portion of the Earth’s landscape, we’re not drawing down enough of these CO2 emissions through plant photosynthesis, soil carbon sequestration, and perennial above ground carbon storage in biomass (forest, grass, and plants) to cool things off.

In a word, there’s too much CO2 and greenhouse gas pollution blanketing the sky (and saturating the oceans) and not enough life-giving carbon in the ground and in our living plants, trees, pastures, and rangelands.

Increasing plant and forest photosynthesis (accomplished via enhanced soil fertility and biological life, as well as an adequate amount of water and minerals) is the only practical way that we can draw down a significant amount of the excess CO2 and greenhouse gases in our atmosphere that are heating up the Earth and disrupting our climate.

Through photosynthesis, plants and trees utilize solar energy to break down CO2 from the atmosphere, release oxygen, and transform the remaining carbon into plant biomass and liquid carbon.

Photosynthesis basically enables plants to grow above ground and produce biomass, but also stimulates growth below ground as plants transfer a portion of the liquid carbon they produce through photosynthesis into their root systems to feed the soil microorganisms that in turn feed the plant.

From the standpoint of drawing down enough CO2 and greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and sequestering them in our soils and biota to reverse global warming, qualitatively enhanced photosynthesis is all-important.

Agave Power: Greening the Desert

As RI, OCA, and our Mexico affiliate Via Organica’s contribution to the global expansion of regenerative and organic food and farming practices, we have spent the last several years working with Mexican farmers and ranchers, the Hudson Carbon Project, consumer organizations, elected political officials (mainly at the local and state level), and socially and environmentally-concerned “impact investors.”

Our goal is to develop a native agave agroforestry and livestock management system that we believe can be a game-changer for much of the 40% of the world’s pasturelands and rangelands that are arid and semi-arid, areas where it is now nearly impossible to grow food crops without irrigation, and where the land is too overgrazed and degraded for proper livestock grazing.

We call this Mexico-based agave and agroforestry/livestock management system Agave Power: Greening the Desert, and are happy to report that its ideas and practices are now starting to spread from the high desert plateau of Guanajuato across much of arid and semi-arid Mexico.

We now are receiving inquiries and requests for information about this agave-based, polyculture/perennial system from desert and semi-desert areas all over the world, including Central America, the Southwestern U.S., Argentina, Chile, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Australia, Lebanon, and Oman.

You can learn more about this Agave Power system on the websites of Regeneration International and the Organic Consumers Association.

Primary Drivers of Regeneration and Degeneration

What I and others have learned “on the ground” trying to expand and scale-up regenerative and organic best practices is that there are four basic drivers of regenerative (or conversely degenerative) food, farming and land use.

The first driver is consumer awareness and market demand. Without an army of conscious consumers and widespread market demand, regenerative practices are unlikely to reach critical mass. The second driver is farmer, rancher and land stewardship innovation, including the development of value-added products and ecosystem restoration services.

The third driver is policy change, starting at the local and regional level. And last, but not least is regenerative finance — large-scale investing on the part of the public and private sector, what is now commonly known as “impact investing.”

In order to qualitatively expand organic and regenerative best practices and achieve critical mass sufficient to transform our currently degenerative systems, we need all four of these drivers to be activated and working in synergy.

Let’s look now at four contemporary drivers of degeneration, degenerative food, farming and land use, in order to understand what the forces or drivers are that are holding us back from moving forward to regeneration.

 

1-Degenerated grassroots consciousness and morale — When literally billions of people, a critical mass of the 99%, are hungry, malnourished, and/or stuffed and supersized with ultraprocessed foods and empty calories, revolution is all but impossible. When billions are scared and divided, struggling to survive with justice and dignity… when the majority of the global body politic are threatened and assaulted by a toxic environment and food system; when hundreds of millions are overwhelmed by economic stress due to low wages and the high cost of living; when hundreds of millions are weakened by chronic health problems, or battered by floods, droughts and weather extremes, regenerative change — Big Change — will not come easily.

Neither will it happen if we continue to allow endless wars and land grabs for water, land and strategic resources to spiral out of control, or fail to organize and resist on a mass scale while indentured politicians, corporations, Big Tech, and the mass media manipulate crises such as COVID-19 to stamp out freedom of expression and participatory democracy in order to force a “Business-as-Usual” or “Great Reset” paradigm down our throats.

Disempowered, exploited people, overwhelmed by the challenges of everyday survival, usually don’t have the luxury of connecting the dots between the issues that are pressing down on them and focusing on the Big Picture.

It’s the job of regenerators to connect the dots between the climate crisis, COVID-19, elite control and people’s everyday concerns including food, natural health, jobs, and economic justice, to globalize awareness, political mobilization and, most of all, to globalize hope.

It’s the job of regenerators to make the connections between personal and public health and planetary health, to expose the truth about the origins, nature, prevention and treatment of COVID-19 and chronic disease, and to mobilize the public to reject a so-called Great Reset disguised as fundamental reform, but actually a Trojan Horse for a 21st Century Technocracy that is profoundly antidemocratic and authoritarian.

Regenerators have to be able to make the connections between different issues and concerns, identify and support best practitioners and policies and build synergy between social forces, effectively lobby governments (starting at the local level), businesses and investors for change, all the while educating and organizing grassroots alliances and campaigns across communities, constituencies and even national borders.

But of course this long-overdue Regeneration Revolution will not be easy, nor will it take place overnight. Our profoundly destructive, degenerative, climate-destabilizing food and farming system, primarily based upon industrial agriculture inputs and practices, is held together by a multibillion-dollar system of marketing and advertising that has misled or literally brainwashed a global army of consumers into believing that cheap, ultra-processed, artificially flavored, “fast food” is not only acceptable, but “normal” and “natural.”

After decades of consuming sugar, salt, carbohydrate-rich and “bad fat”-laden foods from industrial farms, animal factories and chemical manufacturing plants, many consumers have literally become addicted to the artificial flavors and aromas that make super-processed foods and “food-like substances” so popular.

2-Degenerate “conventional” farms, farming and livestock management  

Compounding the lack of nutritional education, choice, poverty, inertia and apathy of a large segment of consumers, other major factors driving our degenerative food and farming system include the routine and deeply institutionalized practices of industrial and chemical-intensive farming and land use (mono-cropping, heavy plowing, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, GMOs, factory farms, deforestation, wetlands destruction) today.

These soil-, climate-, health- and environmentally-destructive practices are especially prevalent on the world’s 50 million large farms, which, in part, are kept in place by global government subsidies totaling $500 billion a year.

Meanwhile, there are few or no subsidies for organic or regenerative farmers, especially small farmers (80% of the world’s farmers are small farmers), nor for farmers and ranchers who seek to make this transition.

Reinforcing these multibillion-dollar subsidies for bad farming practices are a global network of chemical- and agribusiness-controlled agricultural research and teaching institutions, focused on producing cheap food and beverages (no matter what the cost to the environment, climate and public health) and agro-export agricultural commodities (often pesticide-intensive GMO grains).

What we need instead are subsidies for organic and regenerative practices, research and technical assistance for farmers and ranchers to produce healthy, organic and regenerative food for local, regional and domestic markets, rewarding farmers with a fair price for producing healthy food and being a steward, rather than a destroyer, of the environment.

3-Monopoly Control — Another driver of degeneration, holding back farmer adoption of regenerative practices and determining the type of food and crops that are produced, is the monopoly or near-monopoly control by giant agribusiness corporations over much of the food system, especially in industrialized countries, as well as the monopoly or near-monopoly control by giant retail chains such as Walmart and internet giants like Amazon.

The out-of-control “Foodopoly” that dominates our food system is designed to maximize short-term profits and exports for the large transnational corporations, preserve patents and monopoly control over seeds, and uphold international trade agreements (NAFTA, WTO) that favor corporate agribusiness and large farms over small farms; factory farms over traditional grazing and animal husbandry; and agro- exports instead of production for local and regional markets.

Food and farming is the largest industry in the world with consumers spending an estimated $7.5 trillion a year on food. In addition, the largely unacknowledged social, environmental and health costs (i.e., collateral damage) of the industrial food chain amounts to an additional $4.8 trillion a year.

4-Degenerate public policy and public and private investments  

Agriculture is the largest employer in the world with 570 million farmers and farm laborers supporting 3.5 billion people in rural households and communities. In addition to workers on the farm, food chain workers in processing, distribution and retail make up hundreds of millions of other jobs in the world, with over 20 million food chain workers in the U.S. alone (17.5% of the total workforce).

This makes public policy relating to food, farming and land use very important. Unfortunately, thousands of laws and regulations are passed every year, in every country and locality, that basically prop up conventional (i.e., industrial, factory farm, export-oriented, GMO) food and farming, while there is very little legislation passed or resources geared toward promoting organic and regenerative food and farming.

Trillions of dollars have been, and continue to be, invested in the so-called “conventional” food and farming sector, including trillions from the savings and pension funds of many conscious consumers, who would no doubt prefer their savings to be invested in a different manner, if they knew how to do this.

Unfortunately, only a tiny percentage of public or private investment is currently going toward organic, grass fed, free-range and other healthy foods produced by small and medium-sized farms and ranches for local and regional consumption.

Healthy soil, healthy plants, healthy animals, healthy people, healthy climate, healthy societies — our physical and economic health, our very survival as a species, are directly connected to the soil, biodiversity and the health and fertility of our food and farming systems. Regenerative organic farming and land use can move us back into balance, back to a stable climate and a life-supporting environment.

It’s time to move beyond degenerate ethics, farming, land use, energy policies, politics and economics. It’s time to move beyond “too little, too late” mitigation and sustainability strategies. It’s time to inspire and mobilize a mighty global army of Regenerators, before it’s too late.

 

Ronnie Cummins is co-founder of the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) and Regeneration International. To keep up with RI’s news and alerts, sign up here.

México diseña un método revolucionario para revertir la degradación de las tierras semiáridas

  • La degradación de la tierra está afectando a las tierras agrícolas de todo el mundo, afectando a casi el 40% de la población mundial. Revertir ese proceso y restaurar estas tierras de cultivo y pastos para que alcancen un nivel de productividad máximo es un gran desafío al que se enfrenta la humanidad, especialmente a medida que la sequía inducida por el cambio climático se apodera de más tierras áridas y semiáridas.
  • En México, un agricultor ideó una solución innovadora nunca antes probada que no sólo restablece la productividad de la tierra degradada, sino que también mejora en gran medida el almacenamiento de carbono en el suelo, da visibilidad a un cultivo muy valioso e incluso ofrece una esperanzadora opción de alimento para diabéticos.
  • El proceso utiliza dos plantas muy comunes en estas tierras semiáridas y que crecen bien en condiciones de sequía, el agave y el mezquite. Ambos se siembran de manera intercalada y luego el agave se fermenta y se mezcla con el mezquite para producir un forraje excelente, económico y muy comercializable para los animales de pastoreo.
  • Esta nueva técnica está teniendo éxito en México y podría aplicarse a todas las tierras degradadas del mundo. Es, dice un experto, “uno de los programas de regeneración de suelos más grandes de la Tierra … implementado en tierras degradadas, básicamente sobre pastoreadas e inadecuadas para el cultivo, sin necesidad de irrigación o insumos químicos”.

 

La degradación de la tierra es reconocida como uno de los problemas ambientales más devastadores del mundo, con aproximadamente una cuarta parte de la superficie terrestre total del mundo ya degradada, según el Fondo para el Medio Ambiente Mundial (FMAM). Este cambio adverso en el uso de la tierra ha dañado seriamente los medios de vida de más de 3.000 millones de personas, casi el 40% de la población mundial, al mismo tiempo que exacerba el cambio climático debido a la liberación de carbono secuestrado en el suelo por mucho tiempo y óxido nitroso, un poderoso gas de efecto invernadero, a la atmósfera.

El futuro pinta aún peor. Los científicos advierten que cada año se pierden 24.000 millones de toneladas de suelo fértil, en gran parte debido a las prácticas agrícolas insostenibles. Si esta tendencia continúa, dicen, el 95% de la superficie terrestre de la Tierra podría degradarse para 2050, una situación peligrosamente insostenible.

Sin embargo, existen soluciones prácticas, según Gary Nabhan, profesor de la Universidad de Arizona y uno de los principales expertos mundiales en agricultura en tierras áridas. “Durante los últimos 50 años, la mayoría de los proyectos de desarrollo rural verticalistas han fracasado terriblemente”, explica. “Pero hay personas que están probando nuevas ideas al margen de la agricultura convencional y es de allí donde provienen todas las innovaciones duraderas en la agricultura. Tenemos que escucharlos ”.

Una mujer cuidando una planta de agave en las tierras degradadas de México. Cuando el agave alcanza este tamaño, las plantas requieren mantenimiento. La mujer está podando pencas viejas y dañadas, quitando la “descendencia”, para que la planta madre conserve energía. Luego planta los hijuelos en otro lugar. Imagen cortesía de Alejandro Vasconcelos.

 

La necesidad es la madre de la invención

Una de esas soluciones está surgiendo en el estado de Guanajuato, en el centro de México. Ciertamente se necesitan nuevas ideas en esta nación latinoamericana que enfrenta una severa sequía inducida por el cambio climático, que actualmente afecta al 85% del país. En las últimas semanas, las lluvias trajeron algo de alivio a Guanajuato, aunque muchas otras partes del país siguen resecas.

Pero incluso cuando las precipitaciones finalmente se extienden al resto de México, las perspectivas para los agricultores no son buenas. Según Rafael Sánchez, experto en agua de la Universidad Autónoma de Chapingo, los acuíferos están completamente agotados. “No tengo ninguna duda de que en 2022 habrá una crisis, una gran crisis”, advirtió, anticipándose al malestar social.

Los más afectados por las sequías en México son las familias campesinas, muchas de las cuales trabajan en tierras comunales, conocidas como ejidos. La mayoría de los ejidos ya son económicamente inviables y, para algunos, una mayor sequía podría ser, paradójicamente, la gota que haga colmar el vaso.

Cada vez más agricultores podrían verse obligados a abandonar sus tierras, y los hombres emprenderán el peligroso viaje hacia el norte hasta la frontera estadounidense ahora cerrada con la esperanza de ganar dinero en efectivo para enviar a casa, mientras que las mujeres, los ancianos y los niños sobreviven en granjas arruinadas. Sin las remesas de la familia en los EE. UU., muchas de estas granjas habrían desaparecido hace mucho tiempo.

A principios de este año, miembros de la comunidad del Ejido Los Toriles pasaron un día en La Huizachada, el ejido de Doña Juana (vestida de rosa), para asistir a un taller sobre “La prevención, detección y tratamiento de plagas y enfermedades del agave”. El evento fue organizado por un grupo comunitario, Somos Mezcaleros, y dirigido por el agricultor y agrónomo Alejandro Vasconcelos. Imagen cortesía de Alejandro Vasconcelos.

Ahora, una nueva iniciativa ofrece una solución para estas familias. Es una iniciativa no de una empresa de alta tecnología o del gobierno, sino de un agricultor local, José Flores González, quien, con sus dos hermanos, maneja una finca en el municipio de Luis de La Paz, que limita con San Miguel de Allende. Su finca una vez cubrió 1.000 hectáreas (alrededor de 2.500 acres), pero poco a poco la familia se vio obligada a vender parcelas, hasta que se quedaron con una décima parte de su tamaño original.

Como tantos otros, los tres hermanos buscaron empleo fuera de su granja. Flores González estudió ingeniería mecánica y se convirtió en profesor en una universidad local.

Con el paso de los años, la situación de degradación de la tierra y sequía en la vasta región semiárida empeoró. Con pocas opciones, las familias pastorearon en exceso sus pastos, tratando de exprimir el sustento de subsistencia que podían, agotando aún más la tierra. Francisco Peyret, director de medio ambiente y sustentabilidad del municipio de San Miguel de Allende, dice que la magnitud del desastre es evidente para todos: “Algunas de las áreas por aquí parecen ser de Marte. Realmente no tienen suelo “.

Creciendo por todas partes: “el forraje más barato del mundo”

Flores González era consciente de  los apremios económicos en los  que se encontraba no solo su familia sino también sus vecinos. Pero no se desesperó. En cambio, trabajó para sacar provecho de su formación académica y aprovechar los peculiares hábitos de crecimiento de las pocas plantas resistentes que florecen en las tierras secas y degradadas de la región. Finalmente, encontró una manera de restaurar el ecosistema y potencialmente reactivar la economía de la comunidad agrícola campesina.

Ronnie Cummins, fundador de la Asociación de Consumidores Orgánicos, que  vive parte del año en San Miguel de Allende trabajando con Vía Orgánica, integrante de la ONG Regeneration International, recuerda su repentina emoción cuando se dio cuenta de lo que Flores González había imaginado.

“Estábamos impartiendo un taller sobre composta” en 2019, recuerda Cummins. “Se me acercó un científico, Juan Frías, y me dijo que tres hermanos habían desarrollado un nuevo y revolucionario sistema de cultivo intercalado de agave con árboles de mezquite para producir “el forraje más barato del mundo’, que también era capaz de secuestrar “carbono del aire.” Parecía casi demasiado bueno para ser verdad, pero Flores González había descubierto algo bastante nuevo.

Ronnie Cummins frente a las plantas de agave que su organización, Vía Orgánica, parte de Regeneration International, está animando a los campesinos a cultivar. Imagen cortesía de Vía Orgánica.

 

El agave y el mezquite son plantas nativas muy comunes en las tierras semiáridas de México. Las poblaciones indígenas han usado el agave tal vez durante milenios, convirtiéndolo en bebidas alcohólicas como el tequila, el pulque y el mezcal. Las vainas de mezquite se han utilizado tradicionalmente para hacer atole, una bebida popular durante las festividades del Día de Muertos en México.

Las dos plantas sobreviven en el desierto de formas muy diferentes. Los agaves, conocidos como maguey en México, tienen sistemas radiculares poco profundos y extraen la humedad directamente del aire, almacenándola en sus hojas gruesas y espinosas, conocidas como pencas. A diferencia de muchas plantas, absorben la mayor parte del dióxido de carbono por la noche. Esto significa que se evapora mucha menos agua de las hojas a través de la transpiración, lo que permite que la planta produzca cantidades significativas de biomasa, incluso en condiciones donde la disponibilidad de agua es severamente restringida y de sequía prolongada.

Por el contrario, los mezquites, el nombre común de varias plantas del género Prosopis, tienen raíces extremadamente largas y buscan agua en las profundidades del subsuelo. Como leguminosa, son una de las pocas plantas en el desierto que capturan nitrógeno del aire y, como resultado, mejoran la fertilidad del suelo.

Los agaves contienen saponinas y lectinas altamente indigeribles, un recurso de la naturaleza para proteger las plantas de los depredadores, por lo que los agricultores nunca han podido lograr que sus animales se coman fácilmente las pencas. En el mejor de los casos, las secan, de manera que pierden todos los valiosos nutrientes que se encuentran en el líquido de sus hojas, y luego mezclan la materia vegetal restante con otros forrajes.

Murales de temática agrícola en la pared  de Vía Orgánica en San Miguel de Allende, México. Imágenes cortesía de Vía Orgánica.

 

Una semana después de conocer a Frías, Cummins y otras personas de Vía Orgánica vieron a un grupo de ovejas y cabras devorar pencas y vainas de mezquite en la finca de Flores González. “Se lo comían como si fuera un caramelo. ¡Fue increíble!” exclama.

Cuando más tarde visitó la granja, Nabhan estaba igualmente asombrado. Recuerda: “antes de que pudieran abrir las puertas, los perros pastores entraron corriendo e [incluso ellos] empezaron a comer el agave fermentado y el mezquite y, una vez que las puertas se abrieron, hubo un frenesí alimenticio. ¡Al ganado le encantó! “

La explicación del extraordinario cambio en la conducta alimentaria es el uso, de nuevo, de un proceso casi tan antiguo como la agricultura. Flores González había descubierto que la fermentación podía convertir las pencas de agave en un forraje digerible. “Pican finamente las pencas y las ponen en recipientes herméticos durante un mes o mes y medio. Las pencas fermentan y se vuelven digeribles ”, explica Cummins. “Estos agricultores habían descubierto algo que nadie más había hecho, ni siquiera los indígenas”.

El método de Flores González, que él llama Sistema Agroforestal Zamarripa, intercala agave con mezquite. Cummins dice que las dos plantas crecen bien juntas: “El mezquite, u otros árboles fijadores de nitrógeno como el huizache o la acacia, fijan el nitrógeno y los nutrientes en el suelo y el agave los utiliza para crecer y producir cantidades significativas de forraje animal.”

Las plantas ni siquiera necesitan riego, y esto es una enorme ventaja. Guanajuato solo recibe 500 milímetros (20 pulgadas) de precipitación en una “temporada de lluvias” promedio de julio a octubre. A eso le siguen ocho meses con poca o ninguna lluvia. La mayoría de los agricultores se las arreglan con la lluvia que pueden recolectar y almacenar.

El abundante suministro de ingredientes básicos y la simplicidad del nuevo proceso hacen que el forraje sea extremadamente barato, con un costo de producción de solo 5 centavos de dólar por kilogramo (alrededor de 2 centavos por libra), mucho más barato que la alfalfa o el heno que los agricultores suelen utilizar como forraje. Es importante destacar que el proceso de agave-mezquite es un gran paso para hacer viable nuevamente la agricultura campesina a pequeña escala en el México semiárido. Y como beneficio adicional, podría reducir el éxodo de refugiados climáticos que llegan a Estados Unidos.

José Flores González y su familia junto a una planta de agave. Imagen cortesía de José Flores González

En 2019 y 2020, miembros de la comunidad del Ejido Los Toriles, con la ayuda de un especialista en comunidades, manejo, recuperación de suelos y reforestación, construyeron barreras de piedra, conocidas como gaviones. Estas barreras detendrán la escorrentía de la cuenca después de las fuertes lluvias, lo que permitirá que la tierra y la vegetación comiencen a acumularse en el gavión, lo que resultará en la recuperación del suelo. Como muestra la foto, los agaves también se plantan en lugares estratégicos para fijar el suelo en su lugar con mayor firmeza. Imagen cortesía de Alejandro Vasconcelos.

 

Resistencia local a lo nuevo, luego aceptación lenta

Aún así, a Flores González no le ha resultado fácil lograr que los agricultores tradicionales acepten su innovación. “Hemos estado promoviendo enérgicamente la idea durante cuatro años pero, lamentablemente, sin mucho éxito”, lamenta.

Ercila Sahores, directora para América Latina de Regeneration International , admite que es difícil superar actitudes arraigadas: “Los campesinos han creído durante siglos que el agave no es digerible”.

Además, el control comunitario de la tierra hace que este proceso deva hacerse con tiempo: “Muchos campesinos trabajan en tierras colectivas, donde el cambio tiene que introducirse por consenso y esto lleva tiempo”, dice Sahores.

Quizás el mayor problema de todos es que gran parte de la tierra local está ahora tan degradada que la reforestación, incluso con agave y mezquite, es un proceso lento y tedioso.

Sin embargo, en los últimos dos años, gracias a la creciente participación de Vía Orgánica, otras ONG y el gobierno municipal de San Miguel de Allende, la implementación de este sistema ya es una realidad.

Campesinos, principalmente mujeres, cuidando el agave. Con la escalada de la crisis económica rural en pleno apogeo, muchos hombres no tienen más remedio que emigrar a los Estados Unidos, donde esperan poder encontrar trabajo y enviar dinero a sus familias. Muchas mujeres se quedan a cargo de las granjas, con la ayuda de ancianos y niños. Imagen cortesía de Alejandro Vasconcelos.

 

“Nosotros, el gobierno municipal, trabajamos con las comunidades”, explica Peyret. “Vamos a los ejidos y ellos deciden lo que quieren restaurar. Hace mucho que son conscientes de la urgente necesidad de restaurar la tierra, pero por sí solos no han tenido los recursos para llevar a cabo este trabajo “.

Una vez que los campesinos deciden en comunidad en qué área trabajar, se comprometen a no pastorear a sus animales allí durante varios años. Peyret continúa: “El agave es una de las primeras cosas que plantamos. Se siente cómodo en los peores lugares y en las peores condiciones, incluso en una fuerte sequía, como hemos tenido este año. Incluso si lo plantas sobre una roca donde casi no hay suelo, crecerá con mucha más fuerza que en una tierra cultivable en un área plana. De hecho, la gente dice ‘haz sufrir al agave’ porque tendrás un mejor resultado “.

El gobierno brinda incentivos a los campesinos: trabajos temporales, la posibilidad de reconstruir sus huertas, la donación de plantas y árboles nativos, incluido el agave, y la construcción de sistemas de captación de agua.

Los campesinos también están interesados ​​en cultivar agave, aunque muchos de ellos aún se muestren escépticos sobre el nuevo proceso de fermentación, porque saben que, después de una década más o menos de cultivarlo, podrán producir pulque, una bebida fermentada tradicional elaborada fermentando la savia de agave, conocida como aguamiel. Mucho antes de eso, pueden comenzar a experimentar con el proceso de fermentación. La aceptación ahora se está extendiendo.

Recipientes utilizados para fermentar el agave en la finca ecológica Cañada de la Virgen. Imagen cortesía de Alejandro Vasconcelos.

Expansión de la producción de forraje de agave y mezquite

Una red de ONGs, coordinada por el gobierno municipal, ha organizado el Plan de Acción Climática. Juntos, están combatiendo la erosión del suelo y promoviendo el Sistema Agroforestal Zamarripa. Peyret estima que los agricultores comunitarios ya han restaurado unas 1.500 hectáreas (3.700 acres). Pero eso es solo el comienzo.

Alejandro Vasconcelos, agricultor recibido en agricultura sostenible y ecológica, se ha convertido en capacitador del programa. “He capacitado a más de 400 agricultores del estado de Guanajuato y otros 100 de otros estados. La gran mayoría son muy pobres y no tienen acceso al riego”. Está muy entusiasmado: “La fermentación produce forrajes que cuestan solo 1 peso mexicano el kilo. Y, una vez que los agricultores se dan cuenta de que pueden engordar su ganado de una manera tan barata, aceptan totalmente la tecnología”.

Cummins está de acuerdo. “Nuestro centro recibió la visita de 30 agricultores de Tlaxcala [otro estado del centro de México]. Tan pronto como vieron a los animales comerse las pencas picadas, fue como si se hubiera encendido una bombilla. Al día siguiente ordenaron cinco máquinas [de fermentación] [de Flores González]. Cuando se dieron cuenta de que iba a haber un retraso, encargaron otra máquina a la industria del tequila y le modificaron las cuchillas [para usarla con el agave]. Luego comenzaron a darles forraje a sus burros, ovejas y cabras, y tuvieron mucho éxito”.

Alejandro Vasconcelos con sus hijos. Vasconcelos ha jugado un papel clave en la promoción del sistema de fermentación del agave. Imagen vía Facebook.

Participantes de un curso de “Introducción al Agave” realizado en el estado de Guanajuato, y que incluye a la comunidad de San Miguel de Allende. Solo tres o cuatro participantes provienen de la misma comunidad, por lo que los agricultores pueden regresar a casa y enseñar a sus vecinos. Los agricultores escuchan sobre los orígenes del agave y son capacitados para aumentar sus ingresos provenientes del cultivo del agave, con todas las técnicas basadas en una forma de policultivo ecológico. Imagen cortesía de Alejandro Vasconcelos.

 

Vía Orgánica espera que los agricultores puedan diversificarse a largo plazo. “La carne de animales alimentados con las pencas puede certificarse como orgánica y biodinámica”, explica Cummins. “El cordero orgánico puede alcanzar un precio elevado. Y luego está el colágeno, el caldo de huesos, etc. ” Un futuro brillante se avecina, si la iniciativa puede establecerse en esta tierra completamente seca.

Este esfuerzo trae otros beneficios significativos a los agricultores, aunque no conlleven rendimientos económicos inmediatos. Una ventaja es la capacidad del agave para secuestrar carbono. Según Cummins, la agrosilvicultura basada en agave, con 2.000 agaves por hectárea, puede almacenar alrededor de 73,6 toneladas de carbono en la superficie del suelo durante un período de 10 años, sin contar el carbono almacenado por árboles o arbustos acompañantes como mezquites y acacias.

Ha hecho otros cálculos interesantes y de gran alcance: “Este sistema tiene la capacidad de secuestrar el 100% de las emisiones actuales [anuales] de gases de efecto invernadero de México (590 millones de toneladas de CO2) si se implementa en aproximadamente 1,1% o 2,2 millones de hectáreas (5,4 millones acres) de la masa terrestre total de la nación”. Es, dice, “uno de los programas de suelo más regenerativos en la Tierra, especialmente considerando el hecho de que se puede implementar en tierras degradadas, básicamente sobrepastoreadas e inadecuadas para cultivos, sin necesidad de irrigación o insumos químicos”.

Nabhan señala otro beneficio. “México tiene ahora la tasa más alta de diabetes de aparición tardía de todos los países del mundo, y la obesidad infantil alcanzará tasas aún más altas en el futuro”, dice. El agave y el mezquite podrían ser parte de la solución. Contienen una sustancia química llamada inulina, que promueve la salud digestiva al tratarse de un prebiótico que ayuda a las bacterias intestinales buenas, dice.

“No solo tiene un alimento para animales barato y nutritivo, sino también una forma de combatir la diabetes”, concluye Nabhan. Esto podría ahorrarle millones de dólares al servicio de salud de México, dice.

Nabhan señala que la agricultura campesina en México ha estado en declive durante más de medio siglo. “Ver la posibilidad de renovación es casi como un milagro”, exclama.

El potencial es tan grande para el proceso de fermentación de agave-mezquite que ya se está implementando en otra región y nación azotada por la sequía: justo al norte de la frontera entre México y los EE. UU., en el estado de Arizona. Pero Nabhan piensa que el proyecto avanzará más rápidamente en México: “Si la necesidad y el hambre agudizan el ingenio, la presión sobre Ronnie y el Sistema Agroforestal de Agave Zamarripa rema a su favor. Las personas necesitan una alternativa porque no pueden cultivar o criar ganado como lo hacían en el pasado. Lo que proponen es realmente una de las únicas formas de salir de esta encrucijada”.

Cummins cree que el Sistema Agroforestal Zamarripa de Flores González podría aplicarse en muchas otras partes del mundo. “Creemos que la agrosilvicultura está a la vanguardia de la regeneración agrícola. Aproximadamente el 40% del terreno del mundo es árido o semiárido y en la mitad de estas áreas ya están creciendo diferentes variedades de agave y árboles nativos fijadores de nitrógeno. Las posibilidades son inmensas “. Las opciones para combatir la degradación del suelo son escasas, así que muchos agricultores y naciones seguirán el experimento de Guanajuato con gran interés.

Cummins cree que el Sistema Agroforestal Zamarripa de Flores González podría aplicarse en otras partes del mundo y que la agrosilvicultura está a la vanguardia de la regeneración agrícola.

Publicado y traducido con permiso de Mongabay

“La agricultura regenerativa es el futuro, hay que sanar el suelo”

Hasta hace treinta años, los agricultores cultivaban un poco de todo en sus campos. Sin embargo, las últimas décadas ha habido una tendencia hacia la especialización, que no es buena. Quien así se pronuncia es Orkatz Pagola, uno de los formadores de los cursos sobre agricultura regenerativa que imparte el organismo EIT Food.

La agricultura regenerativa viene a ser el eslabón superior a la ecológica. Como su nombre indica, se trata de regenerar el suelo, sanarlo para hacerlo más fértil. Su aplicación supone una mejora en el medio ambiente y se traduce en alimentos de más calidad. No obstante, “hay que tener siempre presente que lo primero es no perder la cosecha“, puntualiza Pagola.

Y, al mismo tiempo, no olvidar que el suelo es el capital del agricultor. “Si lo labra, se va la capa fértil, pierde materia orgánica. Hay que darle vida. La agricultura ecológica es de mayor calidad que la normal, eso sí, pero la regenerativa es más sana. Ya ha habido muchos agricultores que han pasado de la convencional a la ecológica. Ahora tenemos que dar el siguiente paso y lo más lógico es que quienes ya practican ecológica evolucionen a regenerativa.

CONTINUE LEYENDO EN NOTICIAS DE ÁLVA

8 Steps to Get Started with Regen Grassland Management

A shift towards regenerative and more holistic grazing systems is enabling farmers to build greater resilience to fluctuations in weather patterns and market prices by working more closely with nature and reducing interventions.

Regenerative grazing involves higher-intensity, short grazing periods with long resting times in-between, using a system of paddocks.

It keeps the sward height high and encourages regrowth and development of plant and root systems, which also improves soil microbiology and function.

This type of management helps to improve soil condition, biodiversity and livestock health, and maintain steadier financial margins against the backdrop of a reduction in subsidy payments and increasing input costs.

We spoke to four farmers, including one with a consultancy role, to get advice on how to get started with regenerative grassland management.

Expert panel

  1. Rob Havard farms at Phepson Farm and is an ecology consultant managing 404ha (1,000 acres) of rented or contract-farmed land in Worcestershire, with about 150 pedigree cattle plus followers
  2. Russ Carrington is manager of Knepp Regenerative Farms, and former general manager of the Pasture-fed Livestock Association. He is in the first year of regenerative grazing on 63ha (156 acres), initially with 25 traditional Sussex cattle and calves, plus 50 Longhorn heifers on a B&B arrangement during the summer. Grazed area and livestock numbers are planned to increase towards full stocking potential
  3. Wojtek Behnke manages Aqualate Estate in Shropshire. Lleyn sheep and Northern Dairy Shorthorn cattle are mob-grazed on 80ha (200 acres) with horses, occasionally.
  4. Richard Tustian has been a shepherd in Oxfordshire managing 1,500 breeding ewes, about to return to family partnership on mixed arable, beef and sheep farm totalling 200ha (494 acres) on the Northamptonshire border. Of this, 40ha (99 acres) is permanent pasture and 10ha (25 acres) is herbal leys, currently running 250 breeding ewes and 25 suckler cows

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Mexico Devises Revolutionary Method to Reverse Semiarid Land Degradation

  • Land degradation is impacting farmlands worldwide, affecting almost 40% of the world’s population. Reversing that process and restoring these croplands and pastures to full productivity is a huge challenge facing humanity — especially as climate change-induced drought takes greater hold on arid and semiarid lands.
  • In Mexico, a university-educated, small-scale peasant farmer came up with an untried innovative solution that not only restores degraded land to productivity, but also greatly enhances soil carbon storage, provides a valuable new crop, and even offers a hopeful diet for diabetics.
  • The process utilizes two plants commonly found on semiarid lands that grow well under drought conditions: agave and mesquite. The two are intercropped and then the agave is fermented and mixed with the mesquite to produce an excellent, inexpensive, and very marketable fodder for grazing animals.
  • The new technique is achieving success in Mexico and could be applied to global degraded lands. It is, says one expert “among the most soil regenerative schemes on Earth … deployed on degraded land, basically overgrazed and unsuitable for growing crops, with no irrigation or chemical inputs required whatsoever.”

Land degradation is recognized as one of the world’s most pressing environmental problems, with about a quarter of the world’s total land area already degraded, according to the Global Environment Facility (GEF). This adverse land use change has seriously harmed the livelihoods of more than 3 billion people, almost 40% of the world’s population, while exacerbating climate change due to the release of long-sequestered soil carbon and nitrous oxide — a powerful greenhouse gas — into the atmosphere.

Worse may lie ahead. Scientists warn that 24 billion tons of fertile soil are being lost each year, largely due to unsustainable agriculture practices. If this trend continues, they say, 95% of Earth’s land area could be degraded by 2050 — a dangerously unsustainable situation.

However, practical solutions exist, according to Gary Nabhan, a professor at the University of Arizona and one of the world’s leading experts on farming on arid land. “Over the last 50 years, most top-down rural development projects, have failed terribly,” he explains. “But there are guys trying out new ideas at the margins of conventional agriculture, which is where all lasting innovations in agriculture come from. We have to listen to them.”

A woman tending to an agave plant on Mexico’s degraded lands. When agave grows to this size, the plants require maintenance. The woman is pruning old and damaged pencas, removing “offspring,” so that the mother plant will conserve energy. she then plants the seedlings elsewhere. Image courtesy of Alejandro Vasconcelos.

Troubled times are the mother of invention

One such solution is emerging in Guanajuato state in central Mexico. New ideas are certainly needed in this Latin American nation as it faces climate change-induced severe drought, which is currently affecting 85% of the country. In recent weeks, the rains brought some relief to Guanajuato, though many other parts of the country remain parched.

But even when precipitation eventually does spread to the rest of Mexico, prospects for small-scale farmers are not good. According to Rafael Sánchez, a water expert at the Autonomous University of Chapingo, aquifers are completely depleted. “I have no doubt that in 2022 there will be a crisis, a great crisis,” he warned, anticipating social unrest.

Worst hit by Mexico’s deepening droughts are peasant farm families, many of them working on communal land, known as ejidos. Most ejidos are already economically unviable, and for some, further drought could be the final straw.

More and more farmers could be forced to leave their land, with the men undertaking the dangerous journey north to the now-closed U.S. border in the hopes of earning cash to send home, while women, old people and children struggle on with failing farms. Without remittances from family in the U.S., many of these farms would have gone bankrupt long ago.

Earlier this year, Ejido Los Toriles community members spent a day in La Huizachada, the ejido belonging to Doña Juana (dressed in pink), to attend a workshop on “The prevention, detection and treatment of agave pests and diseases.” The event was set up by a community group, Somos Mezcaleros, and led by farmer and agronomist Alejandro Vasconcelos. Image courtesy of Alejandro Vasconcelos.

Now a new initiative offers a way forward to these families. It is the brainchild not of a high-tech company or government, but of a local farmer, José Flores Gonzalez, who, with his two brothers, runs a farm in the municipality of Luis de La Paz, which borders San Miguel de Allende. Their farm once covered 1,000 hectares (about 2,500 acres), but little by little the family was forced to sell parcels, until they were left with a tenth of its original size.

Like so many others, the three brothers sought employment away from their farm. Flores Gonzalez studied mechanical engineering and became a lecturer at a local university.

As the years passed, the land degradation and drought situation in the vast semiarid region worsened. With few options, families overgrazed their pastures, trying to squeeze out what subsistence livelihood they could — wearing out the land even more. Francisco Peyret, the San Miguel de Allende municipality environment and sustainability director, says the scale of the calamity is evident to everyone: “Some of the areas around here look as if they’re on Mars. They really have no soil.”

Growing all around: ‘The world’s cheapest fodder’

Flores Gonzalez lamented a predicament that had become desperate not only for his family but his neighbors. But he didn’t despair. Instead, he worked to take advantage of his academic training and harness the peculiar growing habits of the few hardy plants that flourish on the region’s dry, degraded lands. Eventually he found a way to restore the ecosystem and potentially revive the peasant farm community economy.

Ronnie Cummins, founder of the Organic Consumers Association — who today spends most of the year in San Miguel de Allende working with Via Orgânica, the Mexican branch of the NGO Regeneration International — remembers his sudden excitement when he realized what Flores Gonzalez had envisioned.

“We were teaching a workshop on compost” in 2019, Cummins recalls. “Afterwards a scientist, Juan Frias, came up to me and told me that three brothers had developed a revolutionary new system of intercropping agave with mesquite trees to produce ‘the world’s cheapest fodder,’” which was also able to sequester “carbon from the air.” It seemed almost too good to be true, but Flores Gonzalez had discovered something quite new.

Ronnie Cummins standing in front of agave plants that his organization, Via Orgânica, the Mexican branch of Regeneration International, is encouraging peasant farmers to grow. Image courtesy of Via Orgânica.

Agave and mesquite are both common native plants to Mexico’s semiarid lands. Indigenous populations have used agave maybe for millennia, making alcoholic beverages out of it, such as tequila, pulque and mescal. Mesquite pods have traditionally been used to make atole, a beverage popular during Mexico’s Day of the Dead festivities.

The two plants survive in the desert in very different ways. Agaves, known as maguey in Mexico, have shallow root systems and draw moisture directly from the air, storing it in their thick, thorny leaves, known as pencas. Unlike a lot of plants, they absorb most of their carbon dioxide at night. This means that far less water evaporates off the leaves through transpiration, allowing the plant to produce significant amounts of biomass, even under conditions of severely restricted water availability and prolonged drought.

In contrast, mesquites, the common name for several plants in the genus Prosopis, have extremely long roots and seek water deep underground. As a legume, they are one of the few plants in the desert to capture nitrogen from the air, and are able as a result to replenish soil fertility.

Agaves contain highly indigestible saponins and lectins, developed by nature to protect the plants from predators, so farmers have never been able to get their animals to readily eat the pencas. At best, they have dried them, thus losing all the precious nutrients contained in the liquid in their leaves, and then mixed the remaining plant matter with other fodder.

Agricultural murals on the wall in Via Orgânica’s headquarters in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Images courtesy of Via Orgânica.

A week after meeting Frias, Cummins and others from Via Orgânica watched a group of sheep and goats gobbling down pencas and mesquite pods at Flores Gonzalez’ farm. “They were eating it like it was candy. It was amazing!” he exclaims.

When he later visited the farm, Nabhan was just as stunned. He remembers: “Before they could even open the gates, the sheep dogs ran in and [even they] started eating the fermented agave and mesquite and, once the gates were open, there was a feeding frenzy. The livestock loved it so much!”

The explanation for the extraordinary change in eating behavior is a new use for a process nearly as ancient as agriculture. Flores Gonzalez had discovered that fermentation could turn the agave pencas into a digestible fodder. “They chop up the pencas finely and put them in sealed-up containers for a month or a month and a half. The pencas ferment and become digestible,” Cummins explains. “These farmers had figured out something that no one else had ever done, including the Indigenous.”

Flores Gonzalez’ method, which he calls the Agroforestry Zamarripa System, intercrops agave with mesquite. Cummins says the two plants grow well together: “The mesquite, or other nitrogen-fixing trees such as huizache or acacia, fix the nitrogen and nutrients into the soil and the agave draws upon them in order to grow and produce significant amounts of animal forage.”

The plants don’t even need to be irrigated, an enormous advantage. Guanajuato only gets 500 millimeters (20 inches) of precipitation in an average July-October “rainy season.” That’s followed by eight months with little or no rain. Most farmers make do with the rain they can collect and store.

The plentiful supply of basic ingredients and the simplicity of the new process makes the fodder extremely cheap, costing just 5 U.S. cents per kilogram to produce (about 2 cents per pound), far cheaper than the alfalfa or hay farmers often use for forage. Importantly, the agave-mesquite process is a big step toward making small-scale peasant farming viable again in semiarid Mexico. And as a bonus, it could reduce the exodus of climate refugees streaming to the U.S.

José Flores González next to an agave plant with his family. Image courtesy of José Flores González.
In 2019 and 2020, members of the Ejido Los Toriles community — aided by a community, management, soil recovery and reforestation specialist — built stone barriers, known as gaviones. These barriers will stem runoff from the watershed after heavy rain, allowing earth and vegetation to start accumulating in the gavion, resulting in soil recuperation. As the photo shows, agaves are also planted in strategic places to fix the soil in place more firmly. Image courtesy of Alejandro Vasconcelos.

Local resistance to the new, then slow acceptance

Still, Flores Gonzalez has not found it easy to get traditional farmers to accept his innovation. “We’ve been energetically promoting the idea for four years but, unfortunately, without great success,” he laments.

Ercila Sahores, Latin American director for Via Orgánica, admits it’s hard to overcome entrenched attitudes: “Peasant farmers have believed for centuries that agave isn’t digestible.”

Also, the local pattern of land ownership doesn’t facilitate change: “Many peasants work on collective lands, where change has to be introduced through consensus and this takes time,” Sahores says.

Perhaps the biggest problem of all is that much of the local land is now so degraded that reforestation, even with agave and mesquite, is a slow, tortuous process.

However, over the last two years, with the growing involvement of Via Orgânica, other NGOs, and the San Miguel de Allende municipal government, implementation is happening.#

Peasant farmers, mainly women, tending the agave. With the escalating rural economic crisis in full swing, many men have little choice but to migrate to the U.S. where they hope they can find work and send money to their families. Many women are left to run the farms, with the aid of old people and children. Image courtesy of Alejandro Vasconcelos.

“We, the municipal government, work with communities,” Peyret explains. “We go into the ejidos, and they decide what they want to restore. They have long been aware of the urgent need to restore the land, but alone they haven’t had the resources to attempt this work.”

Once the peasant farmers communally decide which area to work on, they then commit to not grazing their animals there for several years. Peyret continues: “Agave is one of the first things we plant. It feels comfortable in the worst places and in the worst conditions, even in a bad drought, as we have had this year. If you place it on a rock where there is almost no soil, it will grow much more strongly than on arable land in a flat area. Indeed, people say ‘Make agave suffer’ for you will have a better outcome.”

The government provides the peasant farmers with enticements: temporary jobs, the chance to rebuild their vegetable gardens, the donation of native plants and trees, including agave, and the construction of water catchment systems.

The peasant farmers are also keen to grow agave, even if many of them remain skeptical of the new fermentation process, because they know that, after a decade or so of growing it, they’ll be able to produce pulque, a traditional fermented drink made by fermenting agave sap, known as aguamiel. Well before that, they can begin to experiment with the fermentation process. Acceptance is now growing.

Containers used to ferment the agave at the Cañada de la Virgen organic farm. Image courtesy of Alejandro Vasconcelos.

Expanding agave–mesquite fodder production

A network of NGOs, coordinated by the municipal government, has now organized the Climate Action Plan. Together, they’re combating soil erosion and promoting the Agroforestry Zamarripa System. Peyret estimates that community farmers have already restored some 1,500 hectares (3,700 acres). But that’s just a start.

One small-scale farmer, Alejandro Vasconcelos, who holds a degree in sustainable and ecological agriculture, has become a program trainer. “I have trained over 400 farmers from Guanajuato state and another 100 from other states. The vast majority are very poor with no access to irrigation.” He is very enthusiastic: “The fermentation produces fodder that costs just 1 Mexican peso per kilo. And, once the farmers realize that they can fatten their cattle in such a cheap way, they totally accept the technology.”

Cummins agrees. “Our center received the visit of 30 farmers from Tlaxcala [another central Mexican state]. As soon as they saw animals eating the chopped-up pencas, it was as if a lightbulb had been turned on. The next day they ordered five [fermentation] machines [from Flores Gonzalez]. When they realized there was going to be a delay, they ordered another machine from the tequila industry and modified the blades [for use with agave]. Then they started giving the fodder to their donkeys, sheep and goats. With great success.”

Alejandro Vasconcelos with his children. Vasconcelos has played a key role in promoting the agave fermentation system. Image via Facebook.
Participants in an “Introduction to Agave” course carried out in Guanajuato state, and including the community of San Miguel de Allende. Only three or four participants come from the same community, so the famers can go back home and teach their neighbors. The farmers hear about the origins of agave and are trained in ways they can increase their income from agave farming, with all the techniques based on an eco-friendly, polyculture way of organic farming. Image courtesy of Alejandro Vasconcelos.

Via Orgânica expects that farmers can branch out over the long term. “Meat from animals reared on the pencas can be certified as organic and biodynamic,” Cummins explains. “Organic lamb can command a high price. And then there’s collagen, bone broth, and so on.” A bright future beckons, if the initiative can become established in this bone-dry land.

The effort brings other significant benefits, though not ones that bring such quick returns to farmers. One bonus is agave’s capacity to sequester carbon. According to Cummins, agave-based agroforestry, with 2,000 agaves per hectare, can store about 73.6 tons of carbon aboveground over a 10-year period, not counting the carbon stored by companion trees or shrubs such as mesquites and acacias.

He has made other exciting, far-reaching calculations: “This system has the capacity to sequester 100% of Mexico’s current [annual] greenhouse gas emissions (590 million tons of CO2) if deployed on approximately 1.1% or 2.2 million hectares (5.4 million acres) of the nation’s total land mass.” It is, he says, “among the most soil regenerative schemes on Earth, especially considering the fact that it can be deployed on degraded land, basically overgrazed and unsuitable for growing crops, with no irrigation or chemical inputs required whatsoever.”

Nabhan points up another benefit. “Mexico now has the highest rate of late onset diabetes of any country in the world, and childhood obesity will mean even higher rates in the future,” he says. Agave and mesquite could be part of the solution. They contain a chemical called inulin, which promotes digestive health by serving as a prebiotic that aids good gut bacteria, he says.

“You not only have a cheap and nutritious animal food, but also a way of tackling diabetes,” concludes Nabhan. This could save Mexico’s health service millions of dollars, he says.

Nabhan notes that peasant farming in Mexico has been in decline for more than a half century. “To see the chance of renewal is almost like a miracle,” he exclaims.

The potential is so great for the agave-mesquite fermentation process that it is already being transplanted into another region and nation wracked by drought: just north of the Mexico-U.S. border, in the state of Arizona. But Nabhan guesses that the scheme will advance more quickly in Mexico: “If necessity and hunger are the mother of invention, Ronnie and the Zamarippa Agave Agroforestry System have pressures working on their side. People need an alternative because they can’t farm or ranch as they did in the past. What they are proposing is really one of the only ways out of this dilemma.”

Cummins believes that Flores Gonzalez’ Agroforestry Zamarripa System could be applied in many other parts of the world. “We think agroforestry is at the cutting edge for agriculture regeneration. About 40% of the world’s terrain is arid or semiarid and different varieties of agave and nitrogen-fixing native trees are already growing in half of these areas. The possibilities are immense.” With options for combating soil degradation in short supply, many farmers and nations will be following the Guanajuato experiment with great interest.

Cummins believes that Flores Gonzalez’ Agroforestry Zamarripa System could be applied in other parts of the world, and that agroforestry is at the cutting edge for agriculture regeneration. Image courtesy of José Flores González.

Reposted with permission from Mongabay

Regenerando el suelo de Isla Mocha

Por fin terminamos de ejecutar nuestro proyecto “Programa de Traspasos de Capacidades de Mejoramiento de Suelo y Adaptación al Cambio Climático para los Habitantes de Isla Mocha” (¡nombre largo para un proyecto largo!). Fue toda una aventura marcada por la pandemia, que nos obligó a extender este proyecto 8 meses, y un cruce épico por mar desde Tirúa con 500 árboles nativos para reforestar la Isla.

Isla Mocha es una isla mágica que queda a 30 km de la costa de Tirúa en la Región del Bio-Bio. La Isla es un ecosistema insular privilegiado, tiene en su centro a la Reserva Nacional Isla Mocha, uno de los bosques de selva valdiviana más bellos y mejor conservados del país. Olivillos, Arrayanes y Boldos abuelos son los protagonistas de este bosque encantado. Antes, el bosque cubría toda la Isla hasta el mar, sin embargo, hace aproximadamente 100 años se generaron praderas en las zonas planas de la Isla, reduciendo el bosque al “monte”, como le llaman los mochanos. Actualmente estas praderas son 32 parcelas, cuyos suelos se encuentran altamente degradados principalmente a causa de malas prácticas de deforestación y ganadería extensiva.

Los mochanos ya se han percatado que los veranos son cada vez más secos, el agua escasea y es cada día más difícil vivir del campo. Esto es en gran parte por la condición actual de los suelos de la isla, su degradación implica pérdida de fertilidad, riesgo de inundaciones o incendios, incapacidad de retener agua y además es lamentable desde el punto de vista climático por el impedimento del suelo de cumplir su rol en el ciclo del carbono. De esto se desprenden riesgos asociados a la seguridad alimentaria de la población, y vulnerabilidad ante los crecientes efectos del cambio climático en la Isla.

En el 2020, postulamos y ganamos con este proyecto (con mucho orgullo) el “Primer Concurso Comunidad Energética Acción Contra el Cambio Climático” impulsado por la Agencia de Sostenibilidad Energética. Este proyecto se convierte entonces en nuestra primera aproximación a trabajar en la regeneración de la isla de una manera comunitaria, conociendo a las organizaciones y actores involucrados en el cuidado del ecosistema de la isla, y a los agricultores/as que tienen en su poder la posibilidad de regenerar el suelo.

Lo desarrollamos junto a nuestros aliados Efecto Manada y ONG Costa Sur, expertos en pastoreo holístico y agricultura regenerativa respectivamente y con el apoyo fundamental de PRODESAL, CONAF, Fundación Reforestemos, Oikonos y Regeneration International. Junto a ellos, desarrollamos un programa de capacitación en temáticas de biodiversidad, cambio climático y agricultura y ganadería regenerativa. El programa tenía módulos teóricos y prácticos, sesiones de intercambio de conocimiento y finalizaba con una experiencia de reforestación comunitaria con especies nativas.

La situación sanitaria producto del COVID-19 y la imposibilidad de cruzar a la isla nos golpeó justo en el periodo de ejecución por lo que nos vimos obligados a adaptar nuestro programa presencial a un manual impreso, apoyado de cápsulas audiovisuales, y reforestación en formato bosquete en el predio de cada beneficiario. Los mochanos estaban particularmente entusiasmados con recibir árboles nativos (Arrayán, Maqui, Canelo y Boldo) para plantar en sus predios. Plantar nativos fue novedoso para la Isla, ya que en general solo habían plantado especies exóticas. Esto nos permitió tener buenas conversaciones sobre el valor del bosque y por qué hace sentido reforestar y sus beneficios. Agradecemos a nuestros aliados Fundación Reforestemos quienes nos apoyaron con la entrega de árboles y coordinación con los viveros.

Algo bueno que trajo la pandemia es que nos obligó a reforzar nuestros vínculos con las organizaciones locales de la Isla que trabajan en temas ambientales, así fue como nos aliamos con Oikonos, fundación dedicada a temas de conservación en la isla y armamos un equipo de trabajo mixto con miembros de CONAF, PRODESAL, Oikonos y Regenerativa. ¡Todos unos capos!
Estamos en especial felices por el resultado de nuestro Manual de Agricultura y Ganadería Regenerativa para Isla Mocha, un documento que resume información valiosa, co-escrito con Efecto Manada, Costa Sur y que cuenta con ilustraciones y diseño de Paula Herrera.

Fue una gran experiencia conocer a los 28 beneficiarios, usuarios de PRODESAL. En solo dos generaciones, el ecosistema de la Isla cambió por completo y elles lo saben bien. De contar con una clara abundancia de recursos marinos, un bosque extenso y una tierra fértil, hoy es más difícil generar buenas cosechas, el pasto para el ganado escasea y los frutos del mar son más esquivos. Los mochanos aún recuerdan tiempos en que la tierra y el mar eran generosos y por lo mismo, la regeneración del ecosistema les hace sentido, pero requiere de un cambio profundo en cómo entendemos nuestra relación con la naturaleza. A ellos les agradecemos la acogida, buena onda y buenas conversaciones y esperamos poder seguir trabajando para continuar con acciones regenerativas en la Isla.

Día Mundial del Medio Ambiente: Si te importa tu salud, te importan los ecosistemas

Este año, el Día Mundial del Medio Ambiente tiene como protagonistas a los ecosistemas y su restauración.

La disponibilidad de agua y alimentos suficientes, la regulación de los vectores de enfermedades, las plagas y los agentes patógenos, la salud y el bienestar humano está supeditados a los servicios y condiciones del medio ambiente natural.

Tanto la OMS como Naciones Unidas explican que disponer de ecosistemas más saludables, con una biodiversidad más rica, aporta mayores beneficios como suelos más fértiles, mayor disponibilidad de recursos como la madera o el pescado.

Y de manera indirecta los cambios en los servicios de los ecosistemas afectan a los medios de ganarse el sustento, los ingresos y la migración local; en ocasiones, pueden incluso ocasionar conflictos políticos.

También repercuten sobre la seguridad económica y física, la libertad, el derecho a elegir y las relaciones sociales, y tienen efectos muy amplios en el bienestar y la salud, así como en la disponibilidad y el acceso a los servicios de salud y los medicamentos.

CONTINUE LEYENDO EN EFESALUD

 

Nature Funding Must Triple by 2030 to Protect Land, Wildlife and Climate

(Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Global annual spending to protect and restore nature needs to triple this decade to about $350 billion by 2030 and rise to $536 billion by 2050, a U.N. report said on Thursday, urging a shift in mindset among financiers, businesses and governments.

The inaugural State of Finance for Nature report looked at how to tackle the planet’s climate, biodiversity and land degradation crises, estimating about $8 trillion in investment would be needed by mid-century to safeguard natural systems.

Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), told the report launch the amounts required may sound large but “it’s peanuts when we are frankly talking about securing the planet and our very own future”.

“Our health, the quality of our lives, our jobs, temperature regulation, the housing we build and of course the food we eat, the water we drink” all depend on well-functioning natural systems, she said.

Report co-author Ivo Mulder, who heads UNEP’s climate finance unit, said financial flows should work with nature rather than against it.

KEEP READING ON REUTERS

We Need to Regenerate our Whole Planet on Earth Day

Leer en español aquí

In this era of the Anthropocene, in which human activities are the dominant forces that negatively affect the environment, the world is facing multiple environmental, social, and economic crises. These include the climate crisis, food insecurity, an epidemic of non-contagious chronic diseases, new pandemics of contagious diseases, wars, migration crises, ocean acidification, the collapse of whole ecosystems, the unsustainable extraction of resources, and the greatest extinction event in geological history.

Are we prepared to sustain a world where nearly a billion people do not have enough food to eat, a billion more are deficient in key nutrients and more than two billion are overweight because they have too much food? A world where the majority of people do not have access to adequate healthcare and education? A world where half the population face multiple forms of discrimination such as violence, land ownership, personal finances, education, control over their fertility, job promotions, representation on boards, government and leadership because of their gender? A world where persistent toxic chemicals are damaging all life on the planet including ours and our children? A world where the very basis of life, DNA, is being uncontrollably altered based on flawed science for the sake of the profits of billionaire poison cartels? Where there are continuous wars and conflicts. Where 1% control 99% of the world’s wealth and unfairly influences the political, social, health and environmental agendas to increase their power and wealth?

Simply being sustainable is not enough. Do we want to sustain the current status quo or do we want to improve and rejuvenate it? Regeneration improves systems.

We need to regenerate our societies so we must be proactive in ensuring that others have access to land, education, healthcare, income, the commons, participation, inclusion and empowerment. This must include women, men and youths across all ethnic and racial groups.

On Earth Day, Regeneration International, with our 360 partner organizations in almost 70 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Oceania, North America and Europe, will continue to promote, facilitate and accelerate the global transition to regenerative food, farming and land management for the purpose of restoring climate stability, ending world hunger and rebuilding deteriorated social, ecological and economic systems.

Our vision to is to achieve a healthy global ecosystem in which practitioners of regenerative agriculture and land use, in concert with consumers, educators, business leaders and policymakers, cool the planet, nourish the world and restore public health, prosperity and peace on a global scale.

 

Andre Leu is the International Director for Regeneration International. To sign up for RI’s email newsletter, click here.