Healthy Soils are the Basis for Healthy Food Production

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[ Italiano ]

Healthy soils are the basis for healthy food production. The most widely recognized function of soil is its support for food production. It is the foundation for agriculture and the medium in which nearly all food-producing plants grow. In fact, it is estimated that 95% of our food is directly or indirectly produced on our soils. Healthy soils supply the essential nutrients, water, oxygen and root support that our food-producing plants need to grow and flourish. Soils also serve as a buffer to protect delicate plant roots from drastic fluctuations in temperature.

What is a Healthy Soil?

Soil health has been defined as the capacity of soil to function as a living system. Healthy soils maintain a diverse community of soil organisms that help to control plant disease, insect and weed pests, form beneficial symbiotic associations with plant roots, recycle essential plant nutrients, improve soil structure with positive effects for soil water and nutrient holding capacity, and ultimately improve crop production. A healthy soil also contributes to mitigating climate change by maintaining or increasing its carbon content.

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Unlock the Secrets in the Soil

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Believe it or not, there are a lot of interesting facts about healthy soil. These informative graphics provide a glimpse of just some of those secrets.

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Hornbill Hunting Impacts Spread of Forests

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Author: PTI

NEW DELHI: Hunting down hornbills has a direct impact on the spread of forests as the bird is known for its seed dispersal abilities, a study has found.

The study was conducted by the Indian Institute of Science and Mysore-based Nature Conservation Foundation in Namdapha Tiger Reserve and Miao reserve forest in Arunachal Pradesh. The Namdapha Tiger Reserve is the third largest national park in the country in terms of area. The Miao reserve forest is located to the west of Namdapha National park. Both are known for hornbill sightings. The former is a known to be a well-protected area, while the latter is hugely disturbed.

The Namdapha Tiger Reserve is the third largest national park in the country in terms of area. The Miao reserve forest is located to the west of Namdapha Tiger Reserve.

The study indicated steep decline in both fruiting plants and hornbills, and very low rates of seed dispersal in the disturbed Miao reserve forest, as compared to the Namdapha Tiger Reserve.

Keep Reading in The Economic Times

Soil as Carbon Storehouse: New Weapon in Climate Fight?

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Author: Judith D. Schwartz

The degradation of soils from unsustainable agriculture and other development has released billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere. But new research shows how effective land restoration could play a major role in sequestering CO2 and slowing climate change.

In the 19th century, as land-hungry pioneers steered their wagon trains westward across the United States, they encountered a vast landscape of towering grasses that nurtured deep, fertile soils.

Today, just three percent of North America’s tall grass prairie remains. Its disappearance has had a dramatic impact on the landscape and ecology of the U.S., but a key consequence of that transformation has largely been overlooked: a massive loss of soil carbon into the atmosphere. The importance of soil carbon — how it is leached from the earth and how that process can be reversed — is the subject of intensifying scientific investigation, with important implications for the effort to slow the rapid rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The world’s cultivated soils have lost 50 to 70 percent of their original carbon stock.

According to Rattan Lal, director of Ohio State University’s Carbon Management and Sequestration Center, the world’s cultivated soils have lost between 50 and 70 percent of their original carbon stock, much of which has oxidized upon exposure to air to become CO2. Now, armed with rapidly expanding knowledge about carbon sequestration in soils, researchers are studying how land restoration programs in places like the former North American prairie, the North China Plain, and even the parched interior of Australia might help put carbon back into the soil.

Absent carbon and critical microbes, soil becomes mere dirt, a process of deterioration that’s been rampant around the globe. Many scientists say that regenerative agricultural practices can turn back the carbon clock, reducing atmospheric CO2 while also boosting soil productivity and increasing resilience to floods and drought. Such regenerative techniques include planting fields year-round in crops or other cover, and agroforestry that combines crops, trees, and animal husbandry.

“CO2 cannot be reduced to safe levels in time to avoid serious long-term impacts unless the other side of atmospheric CO2 balance is included,” says Thomas J. Goreau, a biogeochemist and expert on carbon and nitrogen cycles who now serves as president of the Global Coral Reef Alliance.

Keep Reading on Yale Environment 360

The Potential for Regenerative Agriculture in the Developing World

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Authors: Charles A. Francisa, Richard R. Harwooda and James F. Parra

Abstract

Increased food production and greater income for farm families are primary goals of agricultural development in the Third World. Most strategies to achieve these goals are unrealistic in assuming that limited resource farmers can move out of basic food production in multiple cropping systems to high-technology monocropping for export. These strategies are based on petroleum-based inputs that demand scarce foreign exchange. They may include excessive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which adds unnecessary production costs, endangers the farm family, and degrades the rural environment. Dependence on export crops and world markets is economically tenuous, especially for the small farmer. Future agricultural production systems can be designed to take better advantage of production resources found on the farm. Enhanced nitrogen fixation, greater total organic matter production, integrated pest management, genetic tolerance to pests and to stress conditions, and higher levels of biological activity all contribute to resource use efficiency. Appropriate information and management skills substituted for expensive inputs can further improve resource use efficiency. On the whole farm level, appropriate cropping on each field can be integrated with animal enterprises, leading to a highly structured and efficient system. Such systems can serve the needs of national agricultural sector planners, who in many countries are concerned with increased self-reliance in farming inputs and in production of basic food commodities. This includes a realistic focus on training of local development specialists, increased research on food crops under limited resource conditions, and providing information, incentives, and appropriate technologies for operators of both large and small farms. Well-conceived national plans include varied food production strategies and options for farmers with different resource levels.

Download the Report from the American Journal of Alternative Agriculture

What Do We Really Know About the Number and Distribution of Farms and Family Farms in the World?

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Authors: Sarah K. Lowder, Jakob Skoet and Saumya Singh

Abstract

The agricultural economics literature provides various estimates of the number of farms and small farms in the world. This paper is an effort to provide a more complete and up to date as well as carefully documented estimate of the total number of farms in the world, as well as by region and level of income. It uses data from numerous rounds of the World Census of Agriculture, the only dataset available which allows the user to gain a complete picture of the total number of farms globally and at the country level. The paper provides estimates of the number of family farms, the number of farms by size as well as the distibution of farmland by farm size. These estimates find that: there are at least 570 million farms worldwide, of which more than 500 million can be considered family farms. Most of the world’s farms are very small, with more than 475 million farms being less than 2 hectares in size. Although the vast majority of the world’s farms are smaller than 2 hectares, they operate only a small share of the world’s farmland. Farmland distribution would seem quite unequal at the global level, but it is less so in low- and lower-middle-income countries as well as in some regional groups. These estimates have serious limitations and the collection of more up-to-date agricultural census data, including data on farmland distribution is essential to our having a more representative picture of the number of farms, the number of family farms and farm size as well as farmland distribution worldwide.

Download the Report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Carbon Farming Gets A Nod At Paris Climate Conference

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Author: Alastair Bland

This week, world leaders are hashing out a binding agreement in Paris at the 2015 U.N. Climate Change Conference for curbing greenhouse gas emissions. And for the first time, they’ve made the capture of carbon in soil a formal part of the global response to the climate crisis.

“This is a game changer because soil carbon is now central to how the world manages climate change. I am stunned,” says André Leu, president of IFOAM — Organics International, an organization that promotes organic agriculture and carbon farming worldwide.

Leu is referring to the United Nations Lima-Paris Action Agenda, a sort of side deal aimed at “robust global action towards low carbon and resilient societies.” On Dec. 1, countries, businesses and NGOs signed on to a series of new commitments under the agenda, including several on agriculture.

Currently, the Earth’s atmosphere contains about 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide. Eric Toensmeier, a lecturer at Yale and the author of The Carbon Farming Solution, a book due out in February, says the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide levels must be cut to 350 parts per million or lower to curb climate change.

Toensmeier and Leu are among a growing number of environmental advocates who say one of the best opportunities for drawing carbon back to Earth is for farmers and other land managers to try to sequester more carbon in the soil.

Keep Reading on NPR

If We’re Going to Eat Cattle, Let Them Eat Grass

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Author: Jared Stone

Stories about impending environmental apocalypse circulate almost daily, especially in drought-ravaged California. Many of these stories tend to blame agriculture — and specifically, beef — for gobbling up our resources. Though numbers vary widely and are hotly contested, some researchers estimate that it takes 1,800 gallons of water to produce each pound of beef.

The real problem, however, isn’t cattle. It’s industrial feedlots, where more than 70% of U.S. cattle eventually live.

In an industrial feedlot, potentially thousands of animals are packed together in an enclosure of bare, unproductive dirt. Nothing grows there. Operators have to bring in water for the cattle to drink, and for the enormous manure ponds that contain the cattle’s waste. But the majority of the water used in raising industrial cattle goes into growing their feed. These operations are tremendously resource-intensive.

Grass-fed cattle can graze on marginal land that doesn’t have any other agricultural worth.

If you eat beef, grass-fed cattle are a better option. Those cattle are a healthy part of a larger ecosystem.

Raised where grass grows, these cattle don’t need manure ponds. While they do need a source of drinking water, a rain-fed pond suffices in most cases. In turn, the animals’ grazing improves the health of the grassland, often dramatically, and increases the ecosystem’s water retention.

Keep Reading in the Los Angeles Times

Soil Carbon – Can it Save Agriculture’s Bacon?

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Author: Dr. Christine Jones

The number of farmers in Australia has fallen 30 per cent in the last 20 years, with more than 10,000 farming families leaving the agricultural sector in the last five years alone. This decline is ongoing. There is also a reluctance on the part of young people to return to the land, indicative of the poor image and low income-earning potential of current farming practices.

Agricultural debt in Australia has increased from just over $10 billion in 1994 to close to $60 billion in 2009 (Fig.1). The increased debt is not linked to interest rates, which have generally declined over the same period (Burgess 2010).


Fig. 1. Increase in agricultural debt (AUD millions)
1994-2009 vs interest rates (%pa)

The financial viability of the agricultural sector, as well as the health and social wellbeing of individuals, families and businesses in both rural and urban communities, is inexorably linked to the functioning of the land.

There is widespread agreement that the integrity and function of soils, vegetation and waterways in many parts of the Australian landscape have become seriously impaired, resulting in reduced resilience in the face of increasingly challenging climate variability.

Agriculture is the sector most strongly impacted by these changes. It is also the sector with the greatest potential for fundamental redesign.

The most meaningful indicator for the health of the land, and the long-term wealth of a nation, is whether soil is being formed or lost. If soil is being lost, so too is the economic and ecological foundation on which production and conservation are based.

Keep Reading on Permaculture Research Institute

Cover Crops: Long-term Benefit

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Author: Reed Fujii

LOCKEFORD — Farmers and ranchers primarily focus on growing plants that produce food or fiber — something of value they can sell and get cash to pay their bills for seed, farm labor, fuel and fertilizer and, hopefully, keep something for themselves.

But researchers at the Lockeford Plant Materials Center are encouraging growers to think differently — to cultivate cover crops, noncommercial plants that can improve the soil and more.

“They have so many benefits,” said Margaret Smither-Kopperl, manager of the U.S. Department of Agriculture research facility. “What we’re trying to do here is useful for all of us.”

Cover crops can help break up soil, improving water infiltration. and add organic material, which boosts the soil’s ability to retain water. They also can inhibit weed growth, provide nutrients for commercial crops and sustain beneficial insects.

During a field day attended by about two dozen farmers at the center last week, Smither-Kopperl acknowledged that water use by cover crops is a concern, especially with California entering a fourth year of drought.

But by helping soil retain moisture, she said, “They can actually store water in the soil.”

Cover crops are no panacea, the experts said. Plants or seed mixtures commonly used in other parts of the country may falter or fail in California’s Mediterranean climate, with its variable amounts of winter-months rain.

Keep Reading on Recordnet.com