Cambio Climático y su Efecto en la Agricultura del Futuro

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Autor: Porfirio Juárez López, José Irán Bojórquez-Serrano, Edel Soto-Ceja | Publicado: 25 de febrero, 2011

El cambio climático es cada vez más un tema de atención de científicos, políticos y público en general. La Organización de las Naciones Unidas (ONU) define el cambio climático como “un cambio del clima atribuido directa o indirectamente a la actividad humana que altera la composición de la atmósfera global y que es observado durante períodos de tiempo comparables.”

Factores relevantes del cambio climático en la agricultura.

Los factores relevantes del cambio climático que se han identificado para la agricultura y la seguridad alimentaria son: el aumento de la temperatura, el incremento del dióxido de carbono (CO2) atmosférico y la variación de los patrones de precipitación.

Estas condiciones, sin duda, tendrán un impacto potencial negativo en el rendimiento y en la producción global de los cultivos; sin embargo, se espera un efecto muy diferente del cambio climático en la agricultura en distintas partes del mundo, en función de las condiciones del suelo, de la disponibilidad de recursos hídricos y de la infraestructura disponible para hacer frente al cambio, así como de las medidas de mitigación que se adopten a nivel mundial.

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By 2030 Megacities May Devour More Than 86 Million Acres of Prime Farmland

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Author: Andrew Amelinckx | January 27, 2017 

A recent study by a group of scientists from around the world finds that by 2030, sprawling mega-cities will squeeze out productive farmland, especially in Asia and Africa, putting a burden on what will be an already overtaxed food system.

The study, “Future urban land expansion and implications for global croplands,” published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that by 2030, as much as 86.5 million acres of productive farmland worldwide—between two and four percent of total farmland—will be lost as the world’s so called mega-cities, generally defined as being more than ten million residents, and the adjoining areas, called “mega urban regions,” take over prime agricultural croplands to make room for a growing population and their activities.

The group of scientists from Yale, Texas A&M, the University of Maryland, and research institutions in Germany, New Zealand, Sweden, and Austria, found that the world’s most productive cropland—that which is irrigated—is the most at risk. That’s because 60 percent of it is on the the outskirts of large cities. As these cities expand, cropland is lost. According to the study, this irrigated land tends to be twice as productive as the other 40 percent.

“The loss of these critical farmlands puts even more pressure on food producing systems and shows that we must produce strategies to cope with this global problem,” Burak Güneralp, one of the study’s authors and a research assistant professor in the Department of Geography at Texas A & M told Texas A & M Today.

Urban agriculture, the expansion of farming into areas farther from urban centers, and farming intensification practices (such as the heavy use of fertilizers), will offset some of the loss of farmland, say the scientists. Even so, some arid regions, like North Africa and the Middle East, are already pushing the outer limits of land use and don’t have the luxury of expanding farming into new areas away from large cities.

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Carbon Farming – Video

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Published: January 30, 2017 

Some people farm corn. Some farm wheat. Some, like Connor Stedman, farm carbon.

“There’s a really significant potential for carbon farming worldwide to play a role in reversing the climate crisis,” said Stedman, an agricultural consultant at AppleSeed Permaculture.

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Names of Northfield: Guatemalan Immigrant Combines Rain Forest Wisdom With Academic

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Author: Philip Weyhe | Published: January 31, 2017

Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin remembers sitting in his Minneapolis apartment on cloudy, rainy days — a little lost, a little frustrated — reading through a local phone book, determined to learn the pronunciation of every name listed.

“I needed to command the English language, so that I could professionally develop my skills and continue my college education,” he said. “I knew I was so far from being able to do that, it really frightened me.”

Those experiences are now more than two decades in the past. Reginaldo, 49, today, lives in Northfield with his wife, Amy, also 49. They have two grown children, William (22) and Ana Nicktae (18), and one still at home, Lars (13).

While Amy teaches at Prairie Creek Community School, Reginaldo works his small farm, where he combines the wisdom he attained growing up in the Guatemalan rain forest with the academic knowledge he has collected since.

The farm, or the “production unit” as Reginaldo calls it, is funded by the Main Street Project, where Reginaldo is the chief strategy officer. According to the organization’s website, he is “the principal architect of the innovative poultry-centered regenerative agriculture model that is at the heart of Main Street Project’s work.”

Reginaldo’s expertise is grounded in a lifetime of agriculture — whether working the small family farm through adolescence or receiving an education in the subject as a teenager and adult. He attempts to marry those experiences in his work today.

“I thought, ‘what if I could match that reverence for nature and academic knowledge?’” he said. “That’s the kind of thought process we are using in the sophisticated program deployed now in Northfield.”

Wisdom

To understand Reginaldo’s story and perspective, a look back to the rain forest is required.

He actually lived the first four years of his life in the dry region of Guatemala, west of the dividing mountain range. He was the seventh-born child in the family, and they all lived together in a single-room mud house built by his parents. They ran a subsistence farm.

One day, the nearby river crested, and the small dam built up was broken. The crop was destroyed, and the family was forced to immediately uproot.

“It was pretty much life and death, because you would starve without the corn and beans and squash,” Reginaldo said. “So we moved to the rain forest.”

It was the most logical move for the Marroquin family. For years, they struggled with the lack of rain, so where better to go than the rain forest? They would find, though, that the consistent and massive rain fall presented challenges of its own.

For 5-year-old Reginaldo, the dramatic shift in climate and lifestyle was a lot to handle.

“I remember running and trying to find cover every time it rained,” he said. “The forest creates this loud, torrential rain sound. It engulfs and surrounds you before it comes. Then it starts to come down so cold. It’s a really surreal feeling I can’t even fully explain.”

Reginaldo eventually became accustomed to the environment, and he spent his formative years, working the rain forest, learning the best ways to farm amidst a challenging landscape. He didn’t just work, though. His parents also wanted to see their children in school.

“My dad was very smart,” Reginaldo explained. “But he could not read and write. There were many times that could have made a difference for him.”

The family located in a village near a school, allowing the children to attend. However, that meant about a two-hour walk to the small farm, and Reginaldo and his siblings spent considerable time among the trees.

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Call to the World Bank: Enable Farmers, Not Agribusiness

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Author: Shiney Varghese | Published: January 19, 2017 

Ahead World Bank’s release of the 2017 “Enabling the Business of Agriculture” (EBA) project report this month, 156 organizations (including IATP) and academics from around the world, denounced the Bank’s scheme to undermine farmers’ rights to seeds and destroy their food sovereignty and the environment. In letters to World Bank President Jim Yong Kim and EBA’s five Western donors, the group has demanded the immediate end of the project, as a key step to stop the corporatization of global agricultural development.

The Obama administration played a lead role in launching the highly controversial New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition at the 2012 G8 Camp David Summit. From the White House fact sheet, G-8 Action on Food Security and Nutrition’, it appears that the New Alliance was instrumental in urging the World Bank to develop options for generating a “Doing Business in Agriculture Index.” The index involved a ranking of the ease of doing business in a country, to help investors with agricultural investment decisions. This G8/New Alliance initiative appears to have given rise to Enabling the Business of Agriculture project, formerly called Benchmarking the Business of Agriculture. EBA focuses on identifying and monitoring regulations” which the Bank considers to “negatively affect agriculture and agribusiness markets”.

When taken together with other initiatives that seek to lower the barriers to investment, EBA becomes a problematic initiative. This is especially so in the context of small-holder food production systems, since such approaches often exclude a long-term view about the future of smallholder farming communities, and the interests of those engaged in such food systems. For example, the EBA awards the best scores to countries that ease private companies’ – but not farmers’ – access to public gene banks.

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Regrarians: Changing the ‘Climate of the Mind’

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For over 20 years, Lisa Heenan, Darren J. Doherty and their three children, Isaebella, Pearl & Zane, have been traveling the world sharing their knowledge and infectious passion for regenerative agriculture and the regenerative economy. Together they have worked on thousands of projects with over  2,000 clients. In 2016 alone, they held 13 x 10 day Regrarians (REX) conventions in six countries, training 350 people.

A REX convention includes training in all aspects of regenerative farming, including design, business management and hands-on farming practices.

Darren is a fifth-generation farmer, developer, author and trainer who has worked on projects in about 50 countries. He has trained over 15,000 farmers in regenerative agriculture. Lisa Heenan is a multi-award-winning producer/co-director, actor and singer/songwriter. She recently produced “Polyfaces,” a film that has won multiple awards around our Global Village. Most recently she won the WWF Award for Best Awareness Documentary at FICMA, the oldest Environmental Film Festival in Barcelona.

Darren and Lisa, along with their daughter, Isaebella, are directors of the organization Regrarians Ltd., which provides design and training for farmers and other stakeholders who have an interest in  regenerating, restoring, rehabilitating, rekindling and rebooting communities, landscapes, farms and most importantly soils. As Darren explains it:

Our primary responsibility is to the regenerative enhancement of the biosphere’s ecosystem processes. Our secondary responsibility is to provide the potential for people to be informed about the regenerative economy, whether it involves their work in agriculture, land management, corporate life, domestic services, manufacturing or other activities that are within the reasonable domain of humans.

The term “Regrarians” also refers to a growing movement that has sprung up around the REX conventions.

Regeneration International (RI) talked with Darren and Lisa at last year’s fifth REX convention in Sierra Gorda, Mexico in May 2016. In this interview, Darren and Lisa walk us through the principles and methodologies behind the Regrarians platform, Regrarians as a tool for farmers to mitigate climate change, the climate of the mind and how keyline is a game changer.

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Interview with Darren Doherty and Lisa Heenan

Watch the video

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Regeneration International (RI): How did you come up with name Regrarians?

Darren J Doherty (DJD): Regrarians was conceived in about 2012 as a word. It was something that we’d been working towards for a long time trying to actually give ourselves an identity that fit with our values and what our interests were. The word comes from regenerative agrarian. “Agrarian” is  a very old word.  So is “regenerative,” although we see this word being used a lot more these days. We’ve been involved with the regenerative agriculture field for a long time, so those two words combined sort of fit as a brand to identify the work we do.

RI: What are the defining principles of Regrarians?

DJD: That there’s a process to all of this, at least there has to be . . . that there is not so much a start and a finish but, at least when you’re looking at design and projects, there is a starting point. And for us that’s the climate, both in the literal sense, and in the more figurative sense—the climate of the mind. A lot of our work is based on keyline design which was developed by the late great P.A. Yeomans back in the 40s and 50s. Yeomans wrote a book in 1958 called the “The Challenge of Landscape: The Development and Practice of Keyline,” and in that book he talked about the ‘Keyline Scale of Permanence’. So we found that as a really good basis for what we then called the Regrarians Platform, which is based on the scale of permanence. But we also added economy and energy, and brought in the emphasis from holistic management and other social and economic methodologies.

Lisa Heenan (LH): As Darren says, the climate of the mind is the hardest thing to change. It can be especially so when you’re working with farmers. So the climate of the mind is a really important part of the work that we do. What do we love to do, what is our passion, how can we bring our skills, talents and pas

DJD: We also wanted to create something that was quite thorough and that people could see a process to, a methodology. Our approach is really that we’ve created a methodology of methodologies.

RI: How does Regrarians help farmers mitigate climate change?

DJD: To start with, Regrarians helps farmers identify the concerns in their immediate environment. We start with the climate. Climate has such an influence over what agricultural outputs and management strategies producers choose to undertake. But then there is also the climate of the mind. How are we going to mentally deal with the adversity of climate change?

For us in Australia, climate change is a real and current threat. It’s something we are very familiar with. Australia also has a reliably unreliable climate because of its geography since it’s surrounded by sea. Overall, climate change is getting worse and getting harder, especially as soil carbon levels decrease. The capacity of the soil and the landscape to remain humid and retain water becomes even more difficult with less carbon. So for us, it’s about adaptation and mitigation. Focusing on the soil, but also focusing on the economics. What is going to give us the biggest bang for the buck? How can we use the resources that we have – economic, social, landscape – so that we can work within the restrictions of climate change? What can we do to mitigate climate change?

RI: You’re giving farmers a toolkit to increase their resiliency.

DJD: Correct.

LH:  Many tools. Darren says you’ve got to have blue, which is water, before you have green, which is vegetation…

DJD: And money, cashflow. Before you’re green and black. So, black meaning profit and carbon. So you have to be blue before you’re green and black. That is a climate change adaptation strategy.

RI: One of the critical components of the Regrarians Platform is this notion of Keyline. Could you tell us about Keyline and why it is so important?

DD: When P.A. Yeomans released his first book, “The Keyline Plan,”  in 1954, it was an instant best seller which is unusual for an agricultural book. And it was the first book ever written on broad scale functional landscape design. That was pretty revolutionary.

Keyline is fundamentally a farm planning system whose primary objective is the control of water. The control of water within an agricultural landscape is the control of your destiny, as much as anything else. Obviously your management is very important, your attitude, the way that you manage your books, all of those things are important. But the management of water is absolutely critical, particularly in seasonal rainfall environments, which basically all of Australia is. And now that climate change is accelerating, more places are becoming like Australia. So  we are finding that Keyline is taking a place in a lot of other environments. Rainfall patterns were much more reliable than they are now.

That said, most farms are not well designed. In fact, they are not designed. They just happen. They are the result of incremental development of positioning of fencing, positioning of roads, ponds, or dams and all sorts of other infrastructure. Keyline creates a plan which is based on the climate and its relationship to the geography and the topography around where you place water, where you place roads, where you put trees, where you put buildings, where you put fencing. And then how do you quickly create living soil out of dead topsoil which Yeomans was another great exponent of through his keyline pattern cultivation techniques and also as an early adopter of Voisin’s rotational grazing and electric fencing and all of those sorts of things. That’s the fundamental basis of it.

RI: So you use the Keyline plow to create disturbance in the soil, that’s a part of this Keyline process?

DJD: It is one part, I wouldn’t say it’s the whole part. When people think of Keyline, they think of the Keyline Plow, and I think that’s reasonable. But for me, Keyline is a farm planning system. It’s not about the tool, it’s about the management and the practice of farm planning.

RI: What methodologies tie into Regrarians?

DJD: Regrarians believes that there is no one methodology that a producer or a person should have to follow. There have been some great minds and communities who have come up with some fantastic methodologies such as permaculture, biodynamics and holistic management. Most people tend to follow a single methodology, whereas Regrarians encourages people to use a combination.

LH: Think of Regrarians as a toolbox. You don’t usually have just one tool. The thing with the Keyline Plow that’s different from other ploughs is that it’s not turning the soil, it’s going in and aerating. It’s a totally different style of plough, it’s much gentler.

Watch the full interview

Learn more about Regrarians.

Stay tuned for part 2 of the interview series with Lisa Heenan and Darren J.Doherty.

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Alexandra Groome is on the coordination team for Regeneration International, a project of the Organic Consumers Association.

Compre Comida Ecológica Si Quiere Salvar el Planeta

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Autor: Montse Escutia y Marta Moreno, SEAE 

Los alimentos ecológicos son aquellos que han sido cultivados respetando los ciclos propios de la naturaleza, sin utilizar variedades modificadas genéticamente (de forma inducida) ni tratamientos con pesticidas de síntesis química, y por ello, consumirlos, contribuye al cuidado de nuestro medio ambiente.

El 36% de los españoles que consumen productos ecológicos (sinónimo de biológicos u orgánicos) lo hacen movidos por motivos medioambientales, según una encuesta de 2014 del Ministerio de Agricultura. En su publicación “¿Cómo contribuye a la sostenibilidad la alimentación ecológica?” los investigadores del FIBL (Instituto de Investigación en Agricultura Ecológica) analizan diferentes estudios que demuestran que la agricultura ecológica tiene un menor impacto sobre el medio ambiente y concluyen que es un método válido para luchar a escala global contra los retos ambientales que se nos presentan.

Nadie pone en duda que “lo ecológico” está de moda. La superficie en los países de nuestro entorno crece año tras año, acercándose ya, en nuestro país a los 2 millones de hectáreas. Este tipo de producción está favoreciendo la fijación del tejido social en el medio rural, permitiendo que muchos agricultores puedan mantener su actividad de forma rentable.

Incluso anima a un gran número de jóvenes agricultores a permanecer en sus zonas de origen. Aunque constantemente se pone de manifiesto la cuestión que hace referencia a si la agricultura ecológica puede alimentar a un planeta superpoblado no se trata sólo de cambiar el sistema productivo. Está claro que se necesita un cambio de modelo en el que se plantee una mayor concienciación de la sociedad para evitar el despilfarro de los alimentos.

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The USDA Is Trying to Help Save Native Grassland in Ore

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Author: Andrew Amelinckx | January 27, 2017 

The USDA recently gave $225 million in federal funding to 88 environmental projects across the country, including a program in Oregon to help improve the soil health in Wallowa County, home to the Zumwalt Prairie, one of the last intact native grasslands of its kind in the United States.

The prairie consists of about 330,000 acres of native grassland that once covered 10 million acres stretching across the Pacific Northwest. Today, the prairie is mostly owned by area ranchers and farmers, along with The Nature Conservancy, which owns about 40,000 acres in Wallowa County.

The goal of the project is to create opportunities for private landowners to apply integrated crop and livestock production systems to improve soil health while reducing the use of chemical inputs, increase water efficiency, and prevent the further fragmenting of the native grasslands.

The Nature Conservancy, a charitable environmental organization headquartered in Virginia, is the project’s lead partner. They’re joined by local non-profits Wallowa Land Trust and Wallowa Resources, along with the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

According to Jeff Fields, The Nature Conservancy Project Manager for the Zumwalt Prairie Preserve, the approach involves finding the sweet spot between ecology and the local economy.

“We’ve been focusing on not just the ecology of a place but the economy as well and socioeconomic issues that surround management by private owners,” says Fields in a phone interview with Modern Farmer. “Wallowa County has an awful lot of innovative farmers and ranchers who are thinking about soil health, supply-chain diversification—including grass-finished beef products—and getting away from commodity markets.”

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Sustainable Agriculture, Better-managed Water Supplies, Vital to Tackling Water-food Nexus – Un

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Published: January 26, 2017

Highlighting the challenges associated with the inextricable links between water and food – the so-called ‘water-food nexus’ – for food security, as well as for sustainable development, the United Nations agricultural agency today outlined steps that can be taken to improve water sustainability for current and future needs.

“The magnitude of the water-food nexus is underappreciated,” said Pasquale Steduto, UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) Regional Strategic Programme Coordinator for the Near East and North Africa regions.

In his briefing during an event at UN Headquarters in New York, the FAO official also pointed to the fact that a person needs between two to four litres of water for daily consumption, and for domestic uses (washing, etc.) between 40 to 400 litres per family.

But for food and nutritional needs, the requirement is between 2,000 and 5,000 litres per person, depending on diet, or “roughly one litre per kilo-calorie” he explained.

He further emphasized that the nexus is particularly significant for strengthening food security given that the world population is estimated to cross the nine billion mark by 2050, another 50-60 per cent food would need to be produced over current levels to feed everyone.

“This would imply having at least 50 per cent more water – which we will not have. Estimates show we can mobilize up to 10 per cent more, [highlighting] the issue of water scarcity,” added Mr. Steduto.

He also stressed the significance of water for the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

While Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6) explicitly calls for ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all, water is a key component for other Goals including those on poverty (SDG 1), hunger and malnutrition (SDG 2), and climate change (SDG 13).

Thus, highlighting the need for intensification of sustainable agriculture, Mr. Steduto called for improving efficiency in the use of resources; protecting and conserving natural resources; having a people-centred approach and protecting rural livelihoods; strengthening resilience of people, community and ecosystems, particularly to climate change; and ensuring good governance to safeguard sustainability for natural and human systems.

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