Farming a Warmer Planet

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Author: Zack Colman | Published: February 12, 2017 

Fatima Ait Moussa paces in front of 13 women sitting on the floor of a rectangular room in this village in Morocco’s High Atlas Mountains. She’s shy, avoiding most eye contact, but Ms. Moussa is an accomplished woman. She commands the room with a familial tone and motherly smile.

“Who is your husband?” she shouts out.

“Argan!” they respond in unison. Moussa, dressed in a flowing black djellaba, repeats her question. One person responds, “Argan is my wallet!”

In reality, argan isn’t literally a husband or a wallet. It’s a tree that happens to play a vital role in sustaining the livelihoods of these entrepreneurial farmers. For the 149 women spread across 20 villages in Moussa’s cooperative, the trees and the oils they provide – used in expensive cosmetics, soaps, and food products – are the primary source of income.

Moussa’s actual husband died in the mid-1990s, saddling her with massive debt. Around that time, she witnessed a similarly cash-strapped woman try, unsuccessfully, to convince a grocer to accept argan oil as payment. The encounter sparked the idea for the business venture she now runs.

It’s a success, judging by the women’s enthusiasm and the framed certificates and photographs with leading politicians that decorate her office. Yet the cooperative is also beset by serious challenges, from drought and climate change to deforestation and global competition, that squeeze the women’s $5 daily incomes.

What’s happening here is emblematic of forces that reach far beyond Moussa’s venture in these arid, windswept mountains of southwestern Morocco. Worldwide, 3.4 billion people live in rural areas, often in poverty and with lifestyles that expose them disproportionately to the effects of changes in Earth’s warming climate. From Afghanistan to Bolivia, as well as in large swaths of Africa, many of them cultivate land that’s dry or growing drier.

The challenge for farm communities is to adapt and respond before climate change starts to erode agricultural productivity. For governments and development groups, the challenge is broader: They are recognizing that it’s not just that climate change is affecting farmers, it’s also that farmers are affecting the climate. While plants like argan trees can help store excess carbon that would otherwise add to the world’s emissions, many agricultural practices create greenhouse gases. They, in fact, account for about a quarter of such emissions worldwide.

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Mayans Have Farmed the Same Way for Millennia. Climate Change Means They Can’t

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Author: Gabriel Popkin | Published: February 3, 2017

Dionisio Yam Moo stands about four-and-a-half-feet tall, and his skin is weathered from years in the tropical sun. A “proudly Mayan” farmer, he grows corn, beans and vegetables on a six-hectare farm in Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula. The farm is surrounded by dense tropical forest, and crops grow amid fruit trees in thin soil, with the peninsula’s limestone bedrock protruding in places.

Yam Moo farms using a traditional, rainfed practice called milpa, which has long involved cutting and burning patches of forest, planting crops for a few years, then letting the worn-out land regenerate for up to 30 years, before cultivating it again. Milpa has enabled generations of farmers like Yam Moo overcome the Yucatán’s poor, thin soil and grow a stunningly diverse set of crops — multiple varieties of beans, squash, chili peppers, leafy greens, root vegetables, spices and corn, the plant at the heart of Mayan identity.

In recent years, however, Yam Moo and other Yucatán milperos have struggled to keep their farms alive. Climate change has brought erratic rainfall, making the growing season less predictable. Yam Moo says he has always planted his corn in May. But in 2015 for example, he says the rains didn’t come until August. And then it flooded. He lost most of his crop, he says. Because milpa farming depends entirely on rainfall, which is never fully predictable, “there has always been a level of uncertainty, and the Maya have dealt with that for millennia,” says José Martínez Reyes, an anthropologist at the University of Massachusetts Boston. “But with climate change, I think that uncertainty has grown exponentially.”

Years of unpredictable rainfall and failed crops pushed Yam Moo to find a solution, and it’s one that could in turn help fight climate change. Along with other farmers in the area, he developed a modified milpa called “milpa maya mejorada” or “improved Mayan milpa.” Yam Moo no longer cuts down new forests, but he still grows the same diversity of crops. And he has incorporated into the ancient practice a host of modern techniques that help him farm despite the more unpredictable rains. A recently installed irrigation system, which relies on an above-ground rain water collector (the Yucatán has almost no surface water) ensures that Yam Moo can survive droughts. And he has found that by tilling in compost, chicken manure and other organic additions, he can grow far more crops per hectare. The added nutrients keep the soil healthy and productive, meaning he doesn’t need to clear new ground as often, or perhaps at all.

In 2015, after the rains ended in late summer, he replanted corn in a nearby field, arranging seeds in tight rows with the aid of a small garden tiller, and added organic fertilizers to boost yields. Later that year, he planted beans and vegetables. “As long as you keep feeding the soil, the soil will feed you,” he says.

Today, he’s back on his feet, feeding his family with what he grows on his plot. He hopes that his success can be a model for the more than 70,000 Yucatán milperos who, like him, are facing the punishing effects of climatic changes.

Yam Moo’s efforts have gotten some high-profile attention. As part of a project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and private donors, the environmental group Nature Conservancy (TNC) is providing technical and financial support to get more farmers to adopt improved milpa. By helping farmers like Yam Moo adapt to the changing climate, TNC hopes to fight climate change, by reducing the deforestation traditionally involved in milpa: the practice is estimated to cause up to 16 percent of the deforestation on the peninsula. At a larger scale, the project aims to help Mexico receive payments from private companies and governments of developed countries to combat climate change.

“We’re addressing drivers of deforestation with cutting-edge, science-based practices that are good for the producer, that are good for the ecosystem, and that mitigate climate change risks,” says Mariana Vélez Laris, a local coordinator for TNC. The organic fertilizers and reduced burning help soil microbes thrive, she says, while sparing forests and the many species that thrive in them.

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La Milpa Muere, Tiene Sed

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Autor: Diana Manzo  |  Publicado: 8 de febrero de 2017

La milpa es el sistema agrícola tradicional que los campesinos zapotecas preservan para el cultivo de maíz, tomate, calabaza, melón y sandía en un mismo espacio dinámico de recursos genéticos, forma parte de la economía campesina que no sólo les da para comer sino también para vivir en familia; este modo de vida la han heredado y conservado a través de varias generaciones y desde hace siete años las milpas en el Istmo de Tehuantepec han aprendido a sobrevivir ante el cambio climático, ya no llueve como antes y el agua de riego también se ha escaseado, la presa Benito Juárez y los pozos artesianos están casi secos, las milpas tienen sed y se están muriendo.

Jesús Toledo Pineda, Pedro Carrasco de la Cruz y Silviano Ruíz Vásquez, son tres de los campesinos zapotecas originarios de Juchitán que han aprendido a cosechar con escasa agua y vientos fuertes; su vida es el campo y allí piensan morir. Sus mañanas y sus tardes al inicio de cada ciclo agrícola, las dedican en cuidar que los pájaros no se lleven sus semillas recién sembradas, luego que los borregos y las plagas no se coman la milpa; y todo el tiempo pedirle a la naturaleza que se apiada de ellos.

En esta zona oaxaqueña aproximadamente 25 mil personas se dedican al campo, de ellos cerca de dos mil son campesinos juchitecos, quienes se dedican a la siembra de la milpa, aunque cerca de 500 han migrado al monocultivo como el sorgo y ajonjolí. El sorgo ha sido seriamente afectado por el cambio climático con la aparición de la plaga del pulgón amarillo, en los tres últimos ciclos agrícolas.

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Reversing Climate Change One Step at a Time

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Author: Alex Madison | Published: February 11, 2017

Carbon is the basis of all life. Plants, animals, humans and everything living is made up of the element, but carbon once combined with oxygen becomes carbon dioxide, the excess of which is the primary cause of global warming.

In fact, just recently, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced 2016 as the hottest year on record. As in the hottest year since modern record keeping began in 1880. 2015 and 2014 made the same record in their time.

Although President Trump has previously said global warming is a “hoax” created by China, and the climate change webpage has now been removed from the White House’s website, an overwhelming consensus of scientists disagree.

In California, a large contributor to CO2 emissions is agriculture, accounting for more than 8 percent of the emission in the state, and globally accounting for roughly 16 percent. This is due to a number of factors like tilling and the manure and gas of livestock. California being one of the leading agricultural states in the nation, took action with the passing of a climate law in July 2016 to regulate cow methane, which requires the reduction of methane emission coming from dairy farms by 40 percent by 2030.

So what are farmers doing? Or maybe the better question, who is helping these farmers understand sustainable agriculture practices and how to become part of the solution, not the problem?

This is the ambition of Torri Estrada, environmental scientist and co-founder of the Carbon Cycle Institute in Petaluma. Its mission is to stop and reverse climate change by advancing natural, science-based solutions that remove atmospheric carbon. For the Carbon Cycle Institute, it’s all about the soil.

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Panamá: Cuidado de Humedales para Mitigar los Efectos del Cambio Climático

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Autor: PNUD | Publicado: 8 de febrero 2017

El 90% de los manglares en el mundo se encuentra en países en desarrollo. La mayoría está en peligro debido al desarrollo costero, el cambio climático, la tala y la agricultura. Panamá, por ser un país tropical, abarca 1,744.35 km2 de zona de manglares, la mayor parte en el Pacífico (97%) y sólo un 3% en el Caribe. El país cuenta con 39 humedales, incluyendo 5 de categoría Ramsar (de importancia internacional).

Además de albergar una gran biodiversidad marina, los bosques de mangle protegen el suelo de la erosión y de eventos naturales extremos, y tienen una capacidad hasta cinco veces mayor que los bosques terrestres de absorber carbono. Aunque los humedales (manglares, praderas submarinas y marismas) sólo cubren 0.5% del lecho marino, se estima que capturan y retienen más de 50% de todo el carbono que se almacena en los sedimentos oceánicos (carbono azul).

Cabe destacar que los bosques de mangle almacenan de dos a cinco veces más carbono que los terrestres, devolviéndolo al medio ambiente en forma de oxígeno.

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3 Circular Principles for Healthy Agriculture

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Author: Hunter Lovins | Published: February 11, 2017 

Proponents of the regenerative economy are realizing that it is dependent on the circular economy of soil. The soil is one of the key natural capitals on which we all depend. Its loss is our demise.

This chapter advocates three ways to move towards regenerative agriculture: return farming systems to harmony with nature’s cycles; make and use biochar; and implement holistic management across the world’s grasslands.

The challenge: climate destructive agriculture

Most of the climate crisis results from burning fossil fuels, but almost a quarter of the problem derives from agriculture. After 150 years of unsustainable practices, the earth’s soil has been depleted.

Modern agriculture worsens climate change. Unchecked, climate change will destroy our tenuous ability to feed ourselves. For every 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature above the norm, yields of wheat, rice and corn drop 10 percent. Given that more than a billion people in the world already suffer from malnutrition, this is serious.

Soil that has been de-carbonized (lost its organic matter) requires large amounts of fossil fuel-based fertilizer if it is to grow crops at industrial scale. Petrochemical use in fertilizer releases greenhouse gasses (GHGs), especially nitrous oxide, a gas 300 times more potent per ton in causing global warming than CO2.  Plowing and poor nutrient management release the nitrogen from soils in quantities. When out of place, both carbon and nitrogen, key building blocks of life in nature, are serious threats to the stability of the climate.

Regenerative agriculture: there is a better way

Critics of current agriculture call for a beyond-modern approach, combining the best of traditional agriculture with the finest science, to deliver abundant, sustainable food and high-quality life to all the world’s people. The Rodale Institute, the Soil Association of the U.K., the Agroecology Lab at U.C. Davis, and the Leopold Center at Iowa State University are a few of the early centers of scientific research into organic agriculture. They are building bio-diverse systems to reintegrate us into living systems agriculture. It takes a longer view of production, not maximizing yields in any one year, but ensuring yield over many years and decreasing chances of crop failure in bad ones.

Regenerative farming practices increase soil-held carbon or organic matter. Farms using crop rotations and animal manure deliver better biodiversity than fields farmed with industrial practices. Organic fields reduce nitrogen runoff and the release of nitrous oxide. Systems that integrate livestock with vegetable production, use perennial pastureland and organic production deliver higher profitability while creating the circular economy of the soil. These methods include long crop rotations, leguminous crops and cover crops and manure produced by livestock as fertilizer.

They take carbon from the air and sequester it in soil. These regenerative methods treat the farms as holistic systems. Farmers use only what is produced on site. Such practices restore soil structure, build healthy topsoil, nurture soil microbes and promote biological activity, all of which contributes to long-term productivity and nutritious crops. Water use is optimized and the best practices in irrigation are applied. Farm worker safety and investment in local dollars sustain farming communities.

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Eating Our Way to Collapse

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Despite the fact that we presently produce double the amount of food needed for a population of seven billion, there are still calls from the United Nations and national governments to double global food production in order to avoid future famines. These calls are misguided at best, misleading at worst.

We need to understand that the problem does not lie in the global supply of food, but rather that there is way too much production of mediocre quality commodities. In industrialized countries as well as in some newly industrialized countries like Brazil and China, we notice the prevalence of already major health problems due to over nutrition and mal-nutrition (obesity, diabetes Type 2, while there is still a deficit of production, mostly in industrializing countries where we have the bulk of under-nourished people.

The solution cannot be to simply produce more without specifying where, how and why.

Industrial or conventional agriculture as practiced in most industrialized countries, with heavy inputs of agro-chemicals, could not exist without government subsidies, either direct or indirect. Most commodities, particularly cereals (for consumption, feed and energy), soy and milk, are often subsidized. This is to assure farmers a minimum income, enable them to compete on international markets and foster food security by controlling supplies. The environmental effects created by these agricultural production systems and their connected food systems are equally enormous.

According to a UNCTAD report, traditional industrial agriculture is responsible for about 47 to 52 percent of global greenhouse gases (GHG), not to mention serious soil erosion, loss of biodiversity and heavy use of fossil fuels. Throw that in with the near 50-percent waste from consumers, and you can see there is a serious problem.

The traditional forms of agriculture as practiced in many developing countries has its drawbacks too: from low productivity, to lack of sustainability and low quality produce. The need to transition our agriculture and food systems to an ecologically responsible and self sustaining system is an imperative that can no longer be delayed.

This transformation is not only badly needed, but it can be done immediately and in all regions of the world. Business as usual is not an option — we need to change the way we grow, process and consume food.

We also know how to make this much-needed transformation toward an “agro-ecological” production and sustainable food system. Agro-ecology is the study of interactions between plants, animals, humans and the environment. Organic, bio-dynamic, regenerative and permaculture are all forms of sustainable agriculture which fit under this umbrella with varying degrees of compliance around social and environmental sustainability.

And yet, despite the fact that research and development in the past 60 years has concentrated on synthetic products such as fertilizers, pesticides and mono-crops — where one type of crop is promoted to help speed up production, the science behind agro-ecology has also moved forward; albeit at a much slower pace. There is certainly lots of catch up to do in terms of science and technology, but farmers and practitioners contribute much to the innovations in agro-ecology.

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Food Security, Forests at Risk Under Trump’s USDA

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Author: Bobby Magill | Published: February 7, 2017 

U.S. food security, forest health, and the ability of farmers to respond to climate change are all at risk if President’s Trump’s pick to lead the U.S. Department of Agriculture brings climate change skepticism to the agency, agricultural researchers and environmental law experts say.

That concern takes root not only in Trump’s own statements scoffing at climate policy, but also in the words and actions of his nominee for Agriculture secretary — former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, who in 2007 resorted to prayer as a strategy to deal with a severe drought Georgia was enduring.

“Snowstorms, hurricanes, and tornadoes have been around since the beginning of time, but now they want us to accept that all of it is the result of climate change,” Perdue, whose Senate confirmation hearing has not yet been scheduled, wrote in a 2014 National Review column. “It’s become a running joke among the public, and liberals have lost all credibility when it comes to climate science because their arguments have become so ridiculous and so obviously disconnected from reality.”

In fact, the science of human-caused climate change is far from a running joke.

Established climate science shows that greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels are quickly warming the planet, leading to melting polar ice caps, rising seas and more frequent extreme weather. Sixteen of the world’s 17 hottest years on record have all occurred since 2000 — a level of global warming leading to more frequent, more intense and more deadly heat waves and extreme drought.

Though climate models are less certain about the role of global warming in hurricanes and tornadoes, they suggest that hurricane intensity will increase as the atmosphere warms. Major hurricanes are already becoming more common in the Atlantic, and landfalling typhoons have become more intense in the Pacific, threatening millions of lives in coastal cities.

The agriculture industry is responsible for about 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change. If confirmed, the decisions Perdue will make will influence whether farms shrink their carbon footprint and how farms and forests are managed to respond to climate-related disasters.Responding to climate change is a key mission of the USDA, which is America’s chief supporter of agriculture research, forestry and rural development. The agency funds millions of dollars of research at land grant universities across the country such as Cornell, Clemson and Texas A&M to help farmers learn the risks they face from a world that has been largely warmed by pollution from carbon emissions.

The USDA’s climate programs extend far beyond farms. As America’s largest forest manager, Perdue will determine the direction of the science conducted by the U.S. Forest Service and whether some of America’s most carbon-dense and diverse forests are clear cut for timber harvesting or managed to sustain and blunt the impacts of climate change.

“Just about every activity that the USDA regulates is likely to impact climate policy,” said Mark Squillace, a natural resources law professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder. “Forests and soils store vast amounts of carbon. When forests are logged or when they burn, much of that stored carbon is released into the atmosphere. Crop farming also contributes to climate change by releasing large quantities of nitrous oxides, much of it from fertilizers, and animal farming contributes vast amounts of methane especially from ruminant animals.”

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Combatir a Trump con Producción de Alimentos Nacionales, Cero Importaciones y Creación de Mercados Regionales

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Autor: Desinformémonos | Publicado: febrero 2017

Sergio Barrales Domínguez sostiene “las amenazas de Donald Trump son una gran oportunidad para ‘prescindir de la comida norteamericana’, impulsar el mercado interno y la producción alimentaria nacional. Sólo hace falta voluntad política y dejar de lado las presiones extranjeras.

“Las amenazas de Donald Trump son una gran oportunidad para ‘prescindir de la comida norteamericana’, impulsar el mercado interno y la producción alimentaria nacional. Sólo hace falta voluntad política y dejar de lado las presiones extranjeras” declaró el rector de la Universidad Autónoma Chapingo (UACH), Sergio Barrales Domínguez en conferencia de prensa acompañado de investigadores de la casa de estudios, quienes se pronunciaron por sacar la agricultura nacional del Tratado de Libre Comercio de Norteamérica (TLCAN).

“Hace falta recuperar la autoestima del campesino. Producir barato es posible así como dejar de dar ‘mochilas, bultos de cemento y Procampo’ pues muestra de lo anterior explicó el investigador Juan Rafael Sánchez Bravo es el programa de Chapingo que enseña al campesino a cosechar agua de lluvia en las comunidades más marginales del país para la siembra y consumo humano . Para la UACH, el campesino es “sujeto de cambio y no objeto” enfatizaron los ponentes.

Alertó Barrales Domínguez sobre una debacle en la soberanía alimentaria y el acceso a alimentos de calidad por falta de producción nacional, carencia de empleo, falta de ingreso bien remunerado y exceso en importación de granos básicos, hortalizas y oleaginosas de dudosa procedencia, por lo que “la UACH está lista para participar en la renegociación del TLCAN, en la elaboración de políticas públicas a favor del campo y la creación de mercados locales y regionales de alimentos para cerrarle el paso a los intermediarios y abaratar el costo de los mismos”.

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Climate Change, Resilience, and the Future of Food

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Author: Laura Lengnick | Published: February 3, 2017 

The United States food system has proven remarkably adaptable over the last 150 years, producing an abundant supply of food, feed, and fiber crops for national and international markets amidst dynamic social change, and despite dramatic natural resource variability across North America.

The story of American agriculture’s rise to world class status is usually told with technology in the hero’s role. In the typical story, the major “revolutions” in the industrialization of American agriculture came about as the result of one or more technological innovations—such as mechanical harvesters, hybrid corn and more feed-efficient livestock, chemical pesticides and fertilizers, and genetic engineering. As awareness of the current and potential costs of climate change to agriculture and food systems increase, this singular focus on technological solutions continues through widespread enthusiasm for sustainable intensification.

Public investment: The true hero of the story

Rarely acknowledged is the real, underlying reason for the success of industrial agriculture: the continuous intended and unintended investment of public resources to develop, support, promote, and enable the industrial food system. These resources have taken many forms:

  • Financial resources such as direct and indirect payments designed to stabilize production, recover from disasters, and reduce environmental harms
  • Public financing of the education, research and development programs and institutions that serve the agricultural-industrial complex
  • Unintended human resource subsidies as farm families struggle to balance the demands of full-time farming with full-time off-farm work to maintain family well-being in the face of steadily declining farm profitability
  • Unintended natural resource subsidies in the form of degraded soil, water, and air quality, biodiversity, and ecosystem services
  • Unintended social resource subsidies in the form of degraded health and well-being of rural communities both at home and abroad

Although the costs of industrial food and the benefits of sustainable food systems are widely recognized, and despite new evidence that the global industrial food system is uniquely vulnerable to climate change and other 21st-century challenges, national and international agricultural policy continues to support public investment in an unsustainable global industrial food system.

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