Baby Steps – Profile in Soil Health

/by

Moving Beyond Sustainability into a Regenerative System

Ezra Lakey started Lakey Farms in 1945 with a focus on small grain production.  Half the acres were in small grains and the other half were summer fallow, with the occasional plow down nitrogen pea crop.  The farm progressed and grew through the years as did the family.  Ezra’s five children all helped on the farm, but Dwight and his younger brother Jerry were the two who were most involved.  Dwight’s eldest son, David, returned after college to the farm to help the operation grow to nearly 9,000 acres at one point.  With the passing of Ezra in 2009 and the retirement of Jerry, additional help was needed.  At that time, Dwight’s youngest son, Dan, was 2 years out of college where he had obtained a bachelor’s degree in Business Management and was living in Twin Falls working in outside sales.  With the pending birth of his first child, the desire to raise his children on the farm was growing.  When presented with the opportunity to return to the farm, Dan and his wife, Marie, made the decision to return to the small East Idaho town.

A Legacy of Conservation

Soil conservation is nothing new to the Lakey’s.  In the early 1980s, they transitioned away from moldboard plowing into chisel plowing to reduce erosion.  They also incorporated water and sediment basins and contour farming for the same reason.  Then in the late 1990s ,they moved away from fallowing so many dryland acres and moved to annual cropping. Dwight served on the Caribou Soil Conservation District from 1989 to 1998.  Through the years, they have tried to implement the best conservation techniques of the time.

When Dan came back to the farm in 2009, changes were in the works.  The Lakey’s were seeing the negative effects of using Anhydrous Ammonia (NH3) fertilizer and starting to transition away from it.  Dwight was looking at incorporating mustard into their limited crop rotation.  Then a JD-1895 no-till drill was purchased. Dan was tasked with figuring out how to operate it and run it.  By 2013, mustard was in the rotation and giving the ground a much needed break from cereal grains, but they still were seeing some concerns on other cropland.   “At that time, I thought that what we needed was a different tillage tool or something to dump out of a jug that we could use to cure the problem,” Dan recalls.

Changing Views

The farm was looking at additional tillage implements such as disk rippers and high speed vertical tillage tools to deal with compaction and residue.  At one point, he thought possibly more fallowing and returning to the plow might be the answer.  Then, Dan began attending soil classes in 2014.

“I started to realize that what I was seeing and treating on the cropland were merely symptoms, and they weren’t addressing the real problem,” he said.

KEEP READING ON NATURAL RESOURCES CONSERVATION SERVICE

Conmemorarán el Día mundial de la acción frente al calentamiento terrestre

/by

Publicado: 29 de enero 2018

El Cambio Climático se ha producido, principalmente por:

– El excesivo aumento de gases de efecto invernadero por quema de combustibles fósiles (carbón y petróleo principalmente).

– La producción agropecuaria y el cambio de uso del suelo, en especial la deforestación.

– La industrialización y actuales patrones de consumo.

– La gestión de residuos sólidos y líquidos en los países desarrollados produce altos niveles de gases de efecto invernadero debido al consumo de energías relacionadas con los patrones de consumo y la gran producción industrial.

El cambio climático es  un problema global que afecta a todo el planeta, la preocupación es de todos los países, es así que se firma el Protocolo de Kyoto, un convenio internacional que intenta limitar globalmente las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero.

El aumento del contenido de dióxido de carbono que se está experimentando actualmente es el componente principal del cambio climático global, por lo que debemos de dejar de lanzar CO2 a la atmósfera, así como los otros gases de efecto invernadero  (metano, óxidos de nitrógeno, ozono, clorofluorocarbonos) o el calentamiento de la tierra será irreversible.

LEER MÁS AQUÍ
LEER MÁS ARTÍCULOS EN ESPAÑOL AQUÍ

En la frontera, los pequeños agricultores enfrentan grandes problemas de migración, cambio climático y política alimentaria

/by

Publicado: 31 de enero 2018

Ciudad Juárez en la frontera entre Chihuahua y Texas, ha sido históricamente un nexo de migración y flujos de capital global. Ahora que la presidencia de Donald Trump revivió los debates internacionales sobre ambos, la organización internacional de pequeños agricultores, La Vía Campesina, se reunió en todo el mundo a principios de noviembre para examinar las conexiones entre el trabajo con salarios bajos, la migración y el medio ambiente.

Las universidades locales también copatrocinaron eventos que llevaron a la comunidad mexicana junto con agricultores e investigadores de Haití, Nicaragua, Italia, España, Canadá, Colombia, Argentina, México y los Estados Unidos en la V Reunión sobre Migraciones y Trabajo Salarial. Activistas agrícolas de todo el mundo examinaron el estado de los derechos de los migrantes, la justicia climática, la seguridad alimentaria y el libre comercio, entre otros temas.

Juárez fue el lugar de elección para que La  Vía Campesina se reuniera. En las orillas de esta ciudad de alrededor de 1,4 millones de personas, los camiones de las carreteras y autopistas de libre comercio cargan con productos producidos para la exportación en más de 300 fábricas de bajos salarios. Los migrantes constituyen un sector importante de la población.

LEER MÁS AQUÍ
LEER MÁS ARTÍCULOS EN ESPAÑOL AQUÍ

Biodynamics: Where Regenerative Agriculture Meets Regenerative Capital

/by

Author: John Bloom | Published: January 25, 2018

Biodynamic farming, a “beyond organic” approach to agriculture long respected in Europe, may finally be poised for a breakthrough in the U.S. It has growing cachet in the wine industry, where biodynamic wines earn both high scores and high price points. Prince Charles speaks of its ecological, spiritual, and cultural importance. And the unimpeachably mainstream Today show recently aired a segment by Maria Shriver touting biodynamic produce’s flavor and benefits to health and soil quality.

With its emphasis on approaching the farm as an integrated living organism and the farmer as a deeply knowledgeable orchestrator, biodynamics is a natural path to regenerative agriculture—a real corrective to the negative effects of our dominant food system. Realizing the potential of biodynamics, however, will require an investment strategy that is also regenerative.

The industrialized agriculture system we have today—including industrialized organic agriculture—grew out of a particular capital approach: extractive, impatient, and designed to maximize profit rather than value for the community. We’re not going to create a different kind of agriculture with the same kind of capital.

Now, while the biodynamic market is where the organic movement was about 20 years ago, is the perfect time to look at how we can build a biodynamic farming movement with long-term integrity in mind. The central question is, can we grow the biodynamics market with capital that is consistent with the farming philosophy?

Building a balanced farm ecosystem

Similar to organic farming, biodynamic agriculture eschews synthetic pesticides and herbicides, GMOs, and hormones and other pharmaceutical growth promoters for livestock. But biodynamic farming goes well beyond that. It stands out for its system-level approach. Farmers strive to create a diversified, balanced farm ecosystem that generates health and fertility from within the farm as much as possible. Accordingly, the biodynamic certifier, Demeter, certifies whole farms rather than individual crops, ingredients, or parcels of land.

Biodynamic farmers build rich soil using integrated livestock, cover crops, farm-generated compost, and crop rotation. Biologically diverse habitat controls pests and disease. At least half of livestock feed must be grown on the farm. (Many organic farmers also follow these practices, but the USDA’s organic certification does not require them to.) Biodynamics also recognizes farmers and farm workers as vital actors whose health is essential to the health of the system, rather than seeing them as simply managers or processors. Biodynamics is more than a method—it’s a coherent philosophy.

KEEP READING ON TRIPLE PUNDIT

Farmland Could Be Used to Sustainably Offset America’s Entire Carbon Footprint—If the Will Exists

/by

Author: Dr. Louis Verchot | Published: January 24, 2018

Amid the roaring debate on how to curb climate change in Bonn last year, an impasse was finally broken on agriculture. Both a cause and casualty of climate change, our food system accounts for up to 24% of greenhouse gas emissions.

Yet hit by soaring temperatures and more frequent extreme weather, farming is becoming more difficult, as demand continues to increase.

Positive agricultural interventions could achieve up to 6% of reduction emissions needed to achieve the Paris Agreement goals—showing that this sector is not only part of the problem, but part of the solution to climate change.

Previously at climate talks, disagreement focussed on whether helping farmers adapt to climate change, or reducing the greenhouse gases produced by the sector should be prioritized, largely along developing vs. developed country lines.

Developed countries, already equipped with successful techniques for ramping up agricultural production, are more interested in mitigation, making existing techniques more climate-friendly. On the other hand, in developing countries, drought, floods, and hurricanes all play havoc with the mostly smallholder-driven agriculture sector. Their priority is to help those farmers adapt and find food security.

In Bonn at the latest round of climate talks, a compromise was reached to allow two technical bodies to work together to identify solutions on how the agriculture sector can be a part of the solution. The question is: where to begin? How can we rein in emissions in agriculture, while making farmers more resilient to the whims of the weather?

One solution stands out. Eighty-nine percent of agriculture’s future mitigation potential could lie in capturing carbon on farmland soils: carbon sequestration. Not only does this process suck harmful carbon out of the atmosphere, it makes soils healthier and more fertile for future food production, boosting resilience to climate change.

KEEP READING ON QUARTZ

Nobel Edmund Phelps urge economía verde para salvar el planeta

/by

 Por:Edmund S. Phelps| Publicado: 26 de enero 2018

Todos los países tienen problemas nacionales, por ejemplo, peligrosos niveles de exclusión y una costosa falta de crecimiento. Sabemos que para resolverlos es necesario que la sociedad los comprenda y haya consenso en la necesidad de actuar.

Pero el cambio climático es un problema compartido por todos los países. Y aunque los expertos hoy comprenden mejor el tema y llegaron a un consenso respecto de los objetivos que hay que alcanzar, el apoyo de la sociedad todavía es insuficiente.

Como todos saben, la principal causa del cambio climático es la quema de combustibles fósiles derivada de la industrialización que comenzó a fines del siglo XVIII y que produce desde entonces niveles de dióxido de carbono cada vez más altos.

Un aspecto central es que el deterioro del clima es tal que ya supone un costo para la sociedad e incluso un peligro para la vida: el aumento de la temperatura del agua en el Caribe trajo consigo huracanes más violentos, la calidad del aire empeora a ojos vistas en todo el mundo y muchas ciudades costeras corren riesgo por el aumento del nivel de los mares.

LEER MÁS AQUÍ
LEER MÁS ARTÍCULOS EN ESPAÑOL AQUÍ

Regenerative Movement Emerging in Uruguayan Pampas

/by

Published: January 24, 2018

A grasslands and livestock heaven, the Pampas of Argentina and Uruguay have always been a key economic driver of these countries. With this invaluable gift of nature comes a culture of deep connection to and knowledge of the land and its plants and animals, as well as unmatched land and livestock management skills of gauchos, landowners, and scientists.

But these incredible assets, both ecological and social, and their importance to the economy of these countries are being put at risk by the same trend of industrial monocrop agriculture, land conversion, and feedlots that the US has experienced for the past decades.

It would be wise for this region to stop following the US trend of chasing short term profits (based mainly on the liquidation of ecological capital), and instead turn around and lead the regenerative movement.

This is exactly what Pablo Borelli, at the helm of the Argentine Hub, Ovis 21, and an Accredited Professional with the Savory Institute, as well as Savory Champions in Uruguay, Althea Ganly, Patricia Cook, and Gary Richards are doing. With them, a crowd of young farmers, biologists, and urban food and climate activists are mobilizing the regenerative journey to keep the Pampas from jumping on the tragic path of biodiversity loss, water scarcity and pollution, and soil degradation.

Daniela Ibarra-Howell, CEO of Savory Institute, is an Argentine agronomist who dedicated the early part of her profession to addressing the problems of desertification in her native country’s brittle regions. Daniela and her husband, Jim Howell, led educational ranch tours for many years, learning and sharing experiences with many regenerative livestock producers around the world. Argentina was one of their favorite destinations for the amount of traditional and scientific knowledge still alive, which happens to inform much of the global regenerative movement today. Going back to the Pampas region is always exhilarating and inspiring to Daniela.

This month, Daniela spent a few days in the region, meeting with the movers and shakers in Uruguay. Rancher and Savory partner, Mimi Hillenbrand, who owns and manages 777 Bison Ranch in South Dakota and 45 South (named after its latitudinal location), a beef and sheep operation in Chilean Patagonia, accompanied her. Hosted by Savory Champion, Althea Ganly and her husband at their ranch, they participated in an inspiring gathering of aligned individuals committed to ensuring a sustainable path for the agricultural sector in the country. Among those attending were producers, entrepreneurs, and biologists, as well as leaders of businesses, NGOs and government groups.

KEEP READING ON THE SAVORY INSTITUTE

EverGreen Agriculture: A Solution for Degraded Landscapes

/by

Authors: May Gathigo and Susan Onyango | Published: October 19, 2017

Widespread land degradation is an increasing threat to ecosystem health, food production systems and livelihoods across sub-Saharan Africa. Processes such as soil erosion, biodiversity loss and deforestation, which are largely human-driven, significantly reduce the land’s capacity to deliver key ecosystem services including storm and drought buffering, soil nutrient availability, and thus food and fodder production. The good news is that affected countries, which have made crucial commitments to reverse this trend through initiatives such as AFR100, now take this fundamental problem increasingly seriously. But on the ground, the need to do something is immense – something recognized by donors.

Crucially, donors are extremely aware that compared to the scale of the need, the available funds are puny. They are thus keen to find and support transformative technologies that show great promise. And that is where Purity Gachanga, a superb smallholder farmer from Kenya’s Embu County, played a pivotal role.

During a visit to her farm in 2015, Dr. Roberto Ridolfi, the Director for Sustainable Growth and Development at the European Commission’s Directorate General for Development and Cooperation, saw for himself the astounding transformation that agroforestry could bring to poor smallholders. What Purity showed is that transformation does not necessarily lie in the bells and whistles of expensive new technologies, but mostly in the understanding and judicious use of agroecological processes.

Keen to see this transformation spread across the continent, Dr Ridolfi proposed a challenge: show that the work of farmers like Purity can be scaled up to re-green at least a million hectares at low cost. Should that work, the thinking went, the path would be clear to fulfill Dr. Ridolfi’s grand vision: to help tens of millions of farmers across Africa re-green hundreds of millions of hectares of degraded lands.

That challenge took the form of a just-initiated five-year effort developed by Dr. Ridolfi’s directorate, the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), the Economics of Land Degradation initiative and the NGO members in the EverGreen Agriculture Partnership including Catholic Relief Services, World Vision and Oxfam. Its title says it all: ‘Reversing Land Degradation in Africa by Scaling-up EverGreen Agriculture’.

KEEP READING ON WORLD AGROFORESTRY CENTRE

Why Healthy Humans and Ecosystems Need Healthy Soil

/by

Author: Eva Perroni | Published: January 2018

Emanuela Pille da Silva and Anabel González Hernández are working at the nexus of land rehabilitation, soil health, and sustainable agriculture. Their project Agricultural Production in Recovered Areas After Coal Mining in Brazil was a finalist in the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition (BCFN) Yes! Competition. The project assesses whether land that has been degraded by coal mining in southern Brazil is suitable for the production of safe and nutritious food. Their ongoing research at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil, uses plant microorganisms and soil microbes to monitor and aid the recovery of degraded lands.

Food Tank had the opportunity to talk with Pille da Silva and González Hernández about their project, the impact of coal mining on sustainable food production, and the links between soil and public health.

Food Tank (FT): What inspired you to become involved in food and agriculture research, and in particular to focus on soil microbiology?

Emanuela Pille da Silva & Anabel Gonzalez Hernandes (EPS & AGH): Our research team is multidisciplinary. We have experts in different areas from three universities in Latin America: a microbiologist from the University of Havana, Cuba, a biologist from the University of Antioquia, Colombia, and an agronomist from the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil. We have all finished or are completing studies in the Plant Genetic Resources Graduate Program at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, which has been dedicated for almost 20 years to identifying conservation strategies and the sustainable use of plant genetic resources. Within the program, we chose to work on projects related to the recovery of degraded areas after mining, since the Brazilian mining industry is a significant contributor to the economy of Brazil. In the past, coal mining has been inadequately developed in southern Brazil, without observing the biotic and abiotic aspects necessary and indispensable to maintaining the quality of the environment around the mined areas. We believe that the land that has been degraded as a consequence of these mining activities can and should be reclaimed and regenerated for food production, especially for local communities. However, food quality and safety need to be monitored and ensured in this context.

FT: Congratulations on your project Agricultural Production in Recovered Areas After Coal Mining in Brazil making the BCFN YES! Competition finals in 2016. Can you tell us about the project?

EPS & AGH: Thank you. Our project is based on the idea that there may be a global scarcity of suitable farmland in the future. We believe that this scenario is even more likely in southern Brazil, where coal mining has put great pressure on land use and lead to environmental impacts, such as the contamination of soil and water with heavy metals. These elements are known to be bioaccumulative and pose a danger to human health. For these reasons, the Brazilian government and the coal industry were forced to conduct environmental recovery projects, implementing measures such as revegetation of affected areas and land reclamation for future use. Food production has been identified as a potential future use for these areas. However, there is uncertainty about the risk of transfer of toxic and heavy metals to humans, animals, and agricultural crops in these locations. The objective of the project was to assess the quality of food produced in these so-called recovered areas and their potential risks to human health. We hope that the monitoring of food contamination with heavy metals will be adopted as a public health policy in the region.

KEEP READING ON FOOD TANK

Turning Appalachia’s Mountaintop Coal Mines Into Farms

/by

In the post-coal economy, community organizations are creating jobs and restoring the ravaged land.

Author: Catherine V. Moore | Published: January 12, 2018

On a surface-mine-turned-farm in Mingo County, West Virginia, former coal miner Wilburn Jude plunks down three objects on the bed of his work truck: a piece of coal, a sponge, and a peach. He’s been tasked with bringing in items that represent his life’s past, present, and future. “This is my heritage right here,” he says, picking up the coal. Since the time of his Irish immigrant great-grandfathers, all the males in his family have been miners.

“Right now I’m a sponge,” he says, pointing to the next object, “learning up here on this job, in school, everywhere, and doing the best I can to change everything around me.”

Then he holds up the peach. “And then my future. I’m going to be a piece of fruit. I’m going to be able to put out good things to help other people.”

Jude works for Refresh Appalachia, a social enterprise that partners with Reclaim Appalachia to convert post-mine lands into productive and profitable agriculture and forestry enterprises that could be scaled up to put significant numbers of people in layoff-riddled Appalachia back to work. When Refresh Appalachia launched in 2015, West Virginia had the lowest workforce participation rate in the nation.

When he’s not doing paid farm work on this reclaimed mine site, Jude is attending community college and receiving life skills training from Refresh. “I’m living the dream. The ground’s a little bit harder than what I anticipated,” he says of the rocky soil beneath his feet, “but we’ll figure it out.”

On this wide, flat expanse of former mountaintop, the August sun is scorching even through the clouds. In the distance, heavy equipment grinds away on a still-active surface mine site—the type of site where some of the Refresh crew members used to work, blowing up what they’re now trying to put back together.

Crew leaders drive out to an undulating ridge where we can see a 5-acre spread of autumn olive—a tough invasive shrub once heavily seeded on former mine sites as part of coal companies’ reclamation plans. It’s summer 2016, and the crew for this particular Reclaim Appalachia site is awaiting the arrival next week of a forestry mulcher that will remove and chew up the shrubs into wood chips. By the next spring, the clearing will have been replanted by this Refresh crew with over 2,000 berry, pawpaw, and hazelnut seedlings. During my visit, everyone’s clearly excited for the mulcher to arrive.

“It’s almost like a continuous miner head,” explains Nathan Hall, “but instead of mining coal, it’s mulching autumn olives.” Hall is from Eastern Kentucky and worked for a short time as a miner before attending the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies; now he heads up Reclaim Appalachia, which focuses on repurposing mine land.

A few small agriculture projects are on other former surface mines in the area, but Refresh and Reclaim are the only outfits attempting anything of this scale while also operating a job-training project. One crew member, former miner Chris Farley, says he’s stoked to be a part of “the first bunch” to attempt to farm these rugged lands.

“It’s a long-term science project,” says Ben Gilmer, Refresh’s president.

KEEP READING ON CIVIL EATS