Turning Desert to Fertile Farmland on the Loess Plateau

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Soil is not just dirt but a living system with many important functions. Degraded soils impact on food production, erosion, and more, affecting the lives of people around the world. Restoration efforts in China, Zambia and other countries seek to reverse this trend.

Author: Richard Blaustein | Published: April 5, 2018

Around 3,000 years ago, farmers settled on the fertile Loess Plateau in western China, a region about the size of France. By the 7th century, the rich soils were feeding about one quarter of the Chinese population. But intense pressure on the land eroded the soil. By the 20th century, desertification had condemned the remaining population to poverty. “It was a desperate place,” says Juergen Voegele, an agricultural economist and engineer at the World Bank who first visited the region in the mid-1980s. But that would soon change.

Voegele returned in the 1990s to lead a major 12-year World Bank project to help restore dirt to healthy soils on a vast scale. “This was absolute desert. A few years later the whole thing came back,” he says. “We saw birds, butterflies, insects – the whole ecosystem began to recover. Even after hundreds of years of complete devastation, the seeds were still in the ground and things began to happen very quickly. We did not expect that.”

By 2009, and the programme’s end, approximately 920,000 hectares had been restored of the 65,000,000-hectare region in western China. But elsewhere in China and around the world, soils are still suffering.

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Australian Scientist Urges Farmers to Take a Light Touch With Their Soils

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Published: May 4, 2018

Curiosity about regenerative agriculture is growing and a field day drew an audience of more than 150 people to the Clinton Community Hall in South Otago this week.

The attraction was an address by Australian soil scientist Dr Christine Jones, whose research on restoring soil health has proven controversial among New Zealand soil scientists.

Jones introduced her audience to the concept of “light farming” – restoring carbon, organic nitrogen and biodiversity to agricultural soils through photosynthesis.

“Imagine there was a process that could remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, replace it with life-giving oxygen, support a robust soil microbiome, regenerate topsoil, enhance the nutrient density of food, restore water balance to the landscape and increase the profitability of agriculture,” she said in a supporting scientific paper.

“Fortunately there is. It’s called photosynthesis.”

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The Savory Institute’s Land to Market Verification Aims to Regenerate 1bn Hectares of Land

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Author: Elizabeth Crawford | Published: March 27, 2018

After decades of a slow build, the regenerative agriculture movement is finally taking off, thanks in part to the Savory Institute, which has launched the Land to Market verification program, which is designed to help stakeholders not just sustain the environment, but also improve it.

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Mesquite in Mexico: The Renaissance of an Ancestral Staple Crop in a Time of Climate Change

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Probably no other plant has played such a vital role in the ecologies, and among the human populations of the arid and semiarid regions of Mexico and the US, as the multifunctional mesquite tree. This extremely resilient and adaptable tree has a rich ethnobotanical history and holds great potential to become a major staple food crop for drylands throughout the world, while supporting climate change mitigation efforts and providing food security in the face of desertification, water stress, and climatic instability.

The Ecology of Mesquite

Mesquite is a nitrogen-fixing member of the legume family in the genus Prosopis. This genus includes around 44 species, distributed mainly throughout the Americas with a few species from Africa, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent. Some species native to the American continent are now naturalized around the world after being introduced either as a source of livestock fodder or as part of erosion control programs.

Old mesquite tree (P. laevigata) in the middle of a recently abandoned field in Mexico

The wide climatic range of Prosopis extends from fully tropical to warm temperate. Most species are able to thrive in extremely high temperatures and some of them can withstand temperatures as low as -20° C (-4° F).

With roots that can reach up to 50 meters (164 feet) deep and that are colonized by nitrogen-fixing bacteria and symbiotic fungal allies, mesquite has an extraordinary ability to thrive in very harsh environments and withstand long periods of drought. In general, Prosopis can thrive in regions that receive as little as 9-12″ of average rainfall, although when other sources of moisture are available, it can grow in hyper-arid regions that receive virtually no rainfall like the Atacama Desert or the Arabian Peninsula.

This multipurpose nitrogen-fixing tree is able to grow in extremely degraded soils and can tolerate alkaline soils with a pH as high as 11. In some extreme cases, like on the semiarid Pacific coast of Mexico, Prosopis juliflora grows right on the shore of coastal saltwater marshes.

The pods and leaves of most Prosopis species, both containing a high percentage of protein and other essential nutrients, provide a vital source of food for wildlife. Mesquite is also considered a nurse plant in the ecosystems where it grows, since many native plants are only able to establish under the microclimate that the mesquite provides.

The presence of mesquite and the leaf litter that it produces helps to increase soil fertility and lowers salinity. Soil particles and debris of organic matter are usually retained and fixed by its roots giving Prosopis an important role in erosion control. Studies done by Richard Felger, a world Prosopis expert, estimate that some species of mesquite can sequester as much as 1.2 to 8.94 tons/ hectare/year of carbon, depending on the climate and the soil type.

Traditional and Current Uses of Mesquite

The highly nutritious and sweet pods of the mesquite have been one of the most important staple foods of the native peoples of the Americas for thousands of years before corn was domesticated. The oldest archeological evidence of the use of mesquite as food dates from 6,500 BCE from the Tehuacan Valley in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Pod/seed selection from superior wild P. laevigata trees for propagation and further genetic improvement.

The fruit produced by Prosopis species are legume pods which contain, depending on the species, 7-22% protein, 11-35% soluble fiber, and as much as 41% sugar content. The sugar is mostly fructose, which humans can process without insulin. The mesquite pods have a low- glycemic index and contain lysine and other essential amino acids. They are also a good source of potassium, manganese, and zinc. Studies done by Richard Felger, estimate that one hectare of mesquite can yield between 2-10 tons of fresh pods, depending on climate and species.

During the harvesting season, indigenous people would gather huge quantities of pods. Fresh pods were commonly chewed, and are still consumed raw by children in rural areas of Mexico. The majority of the harvest was either sun-dried or roasted on hot coals. The pods were then ground into a meal using mortars and pestles or large wooden poles. This meal was sometimes sprinkled with water to make dense cakes that, once dry, could last indefinitely, providing vital sustenance during times of drought. The meal was also mixed with water to make a refreshing sweet drink or was fermented slightly.

Apart from being a prime source of food, native populations used the mesquite wood for fuel, tools, and construction, and a variety of plant parts were used in medicine.

Few native populations in northern Mexico and the southwestern US still rely on mesquite as a source of food. Human uses of processed pods have declined and traditional knowledge about the processing and consumption of the pods has, for the most part, been forgotten. This was a result of cultural colonization and the introduction of alternative foods like wheat, oats, and barley, as well as the widespread deforestation of mesquite savannas and woodlands that came with land clearance for agriculture, industrialization, and mining.

The main present use of Prosopis worldwide is for fuel. In many arid regions, where few other trees grow, mesquite is often the most important source of firewood for rural populations. An important industry exists in both Mexico and the US around the production of mesquite charcoal for barbecues and smoke wood.

Mesquite wood is commonly used for high-end rustic furniture and cabinets. Although the felling and milling of mesquite is now under regulation in Mexico, illegal logging keeps pressure on the few last stands of old growth trees and sustainable forestry programs involving mesquite are virtually non-existent.

The flowers of Mesquite are an abundant and high-quality source of nectar and pollen for apiculture in all regions where species are native and, in several areas, where it has been naturalized. A good example of this is Hawaii, where one of the world’s most expensive gourmet honeys, Kiawe white honey, is produced from the flowers of the introduced Prosopis pallida. Mexico, the world’s largest exporter of honey, also derives much of its production from the 9 species of Prosopis that grow there.

Honeybee foraging a mesquite flower during the dry season.

Mesquite is also known for its value as an animal fodder. The palatable leaves contain between 11-18 % crude protein and the trees maintain green foliage when most other vegetation has dried out. The pods also constitute a significant source of feed for grazing animals. Since the seeds germinate readily after passing through the digestive tract of grazing animals, these animals provide the most important means of mesquite propagation. In many regions of Mexico, mesquite pods are harvested, stored then sold as animal fodder in the drier months of the year.

The Mesquite Renaissance in the Central Mexican Plateau

In 2016 I co-founded the Mexquitl project with the objective of starting a regional mesquite flour operation that would support the renaissance of mesquite as an ecologically and culturally appropriate staple food.

The fresh pods are wildcrafted by local communities that conserve some of the last healthy stands of mesquite woodlands in the area. The pods are selected and hand- harvested straight from the trees by women who get paid the equivalent of $1.40 USD per Kg of fresh pods. As a reference, the current price of mesquite pods for livestock fodder in the region is around $0.16 USD/Kg and the price of corn around $0.22 USD/Kg. As an incentive for these women to bring back mesquite into their own diets, we offer free milling of unlimited amounts of pods for self-consumption.

Pods being sundried for 2-3 days on corrugated metal sheets.

All the harvest goes through a full inspection to make sure all pods are free from mold before they are spread on sheets of corrugated metal to be sun-dried for 2-3 days. During the drying process, the pods are stored in airtight containers overnight as well as during cloudy weather. Once fully dried, pods can be stored safely until milling time.

 

The dried mesquite pods are passed twice through the hammer mill using two different mesh sizes in order to come up with a fine flour texture. We then package and label the flour before it is sold at health food stores in central Mexico.

Portable hammer mill run by a 12 HP gasoline engine used for mesquite flour production.

One of the project’s goals is the creation of a cookbook in Spanish that will include traditional and new recipes that highlight the unique flavor of mesquite, such as tortillas, tamales, bread, cookies, waffles, ice cream, etc. For English speakers, I highly recommend the Eat Mesquite and More cookbook published by Desert Harvesters. The work of this Tucson- based non-profit has been a great inspiration for us.

To promote the edible uses of mesquite and the planting of mesquite trees in the agricultural landscape, we’ve been hosting community workshops and mesquite milling events at different locations in the region. Sharing information about the benefits of integrating mesquite into the diet and creating a local demand of the products is a critical step to achieve the widespread utilization of mesquite as a staple crop.

With the support of Via Organica, a Mexican non-profit organization that promotes regenerative organic agriculture practices, and the Organic Consumers Association in the US, we began working on the design of the first agroforestry system managed for the production of mesquite pods and their processing into flour and other value-added products. The main objective of the project is to showcase and test the agricultural potential of this high-yielding, drought tolerant perennial crop.

This pioneering project is being implemented at the Via Organica Ranch, an inspiring educational center located in the San Miguel de Allende region that hosts a wide range of educational experiences and receives visitors from around the world. The ranch is located in a subtropical, semi-arid region that receives between 480-580 mm (19-23 inches) of annual rainfall. Via Organica recently acquired the 5.5 hectares where the agroforestry system is being implemented. The land has severely degraded soils due to many years of overgrazing by cattle.

Around 650 mesquite seedlings of Prosopis laevigata were propagated on site from selected seeds that came from local wild trees that were superior in terms of annual yield, early maturation, pod sweetness, and pod size. The seedlings were grown in deep forestry tubes that promote healthy tap roots.

Mesquite seedlings planted along a rock terrace follosing a Keyline pattern with chiken wire to protect them from rabbits.

The layout of the agroforestry system is based on rock terraces placed 85′ apart, following a Keyline pattern that enables equidistance between rows, minimizes runoff, and distributes humidity throughout the site. The trees were planted along the rock terraces at different spacings between 4 to 6 meters (13-20′ in) order to find the most efficient spacing for the region. Inside each row, mesquite was interplanted in different combinations with other drought tolerant crops, including: maguey (Agave salmiana), nopal (Opuntia ficus-Indica), jujube (Ziziphus jujuba) and goji (Lycium chinensis). The savanna-style silvopastoral area in between rows includes wide spaced trees of sweet acacia (Acacia Farnesiana), palo dulce (Eysenhardtia polystachya), native oaks (Quercus spp.) and carob (Ceratonia siliqua).

This project is a first step in making mesquite a food crop of commercial importance at a regional level. Much work needs to be done in terms of developing improved mesquite cultivars and more efficient small-scale harvest and post-harvest processing techniques.

Selected seedlings emerging from the forestry tubes with substrate inoculated with mycorrhizal fungi and native rhizobium bacteria.

Arid and semiarid regions occupy around 60% of Mexico’s territory, this model will be a living example of how this high-yielding and reliable perennial crop can be a key component in creating agricultural systems that can regenerate degraded lands and sequester atmospheric carbon, while creating economic opportunities and feeding people in the face of climate instability and water stress.

 

Gerardo Ruiz Smith’s work is mostly focused on the research and propagation of drought tolerant perennial crops and design of agroforestry and silvopastoral systems that help regenerate degraded lands, restore the water balance, sequester atmospheric carbon, support the local economies, and strengthen food security for the people who live in arid and semi-arid regions of Mexico. Email gruizsmith@gmail.com.

This article was originally published in Permaculture Magazine North America Issue 08.

Science Writer Questions Magazine’s Support for Biotech Solution to Replace Pesticides

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On April 19, 2018, Yale Environment 360 ran an article on the use of gene editing, including the controversial RNA Interference (RNAi) technology, to develop biodegradable “vaccines” intended to protect crops from pathogens. According to the author: “As the world looks to feed more and more people, this and other emerging technologies hold promise for producing more food without using chemical pesticides.”

Regeneration International founding member Judith Schwartz raised concerns about the article in this letter to the editors of Yale Environment 360, which is published at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies:

To the editors:

I am writing from Emporia, Kansas, where I have been attending a farming conference. On Thursday, speaker Jonathan Lundgren expressed concern about agricultural chemicals and their detrimental effects on pollinator and beneficial insects. He said that RNAi technology was being rapidly brought out and that, despite high risks and unknown consequences, would soon be touted as the next great thing.

Less than 24 hours later, I read Richard Conniff’s article, “Can ‘Vaccines’ for Crops Help Cut Pesticide Use and Improve Yields?”

As a journalist covering land management, I am extremely disappointed in the lack of skepticism demonstrated in this reporting. Any distinction between this and “chemical pesticides,” or for that matter, “genetic engineering,” is merely semantic; if gene editing is not considered genetic engineering that’s only because the companies say so. As we do not know if this technology is safe, how can we be sure that non-targeted genes are not deactivated?

The consequences of this could be dire. This could dangerously impact insect, plant and/or mammal species and ecological stabilities. This at a moment when we are seeing insect populations plummet (something your publication has covered). For even if this “works” as planned, the insects killed are crucial to the food chain and therefore beneficial/predator insects suffer.

On what basis does the writer assume that these pest-management technologies are needed? Is your journal also suggesting this? There are a growing number of farmers who are working with nature by means of no-till, cover-cropping and other ecological practices, who are finding that the best means of managing problem insects is biodiversity: the other insects that prey on them. Such farmers have been able to grow healthy crops while markedly reducing and often eliminating herbicides and pesticides. Independent research has shown that pesticide-treated croplands often have far more pests and impacts than untreated cropland.

Aren’t problem pests a symptom of an out-of-balance ecology? Could not this RNAi experiment throw the ecology even further out of balance? How would this address the underlying problem, rather than merely boost the sale of pesticides? Furthermore, why should farmers accept the claim that this provides enhanced “precision?”

In talking to farmers—something your reporter might have considered—they often ask salesmen whether beneficial insects would be harmed by these biocides and are assured that they won’t be. Unfortunately, that may not be the case.

While the “we need to feed the world” angle is often used by agricultural chemical companies, we can already produce enough food to feed ten billion people; the challenge is in distribution, nutrient density and affordability. Nor is this the job of industrial agriculture. More than 70 percent of the world’s food is grown by small-holder farmers in the developing world. Meanwhile, a “food producing” state like Kansas imports 90 percent of its food.

Is YaleE360 endorsing these RNAi inputs? What liabilities could result from misinformation in this area?

While many admire YaleE360’s reporting, is this article naïve and uncritical? This would be extremely concerning in a publication that many turn to for thorough, unbiased journalism. Given the limited research on RNAi technology that is not funded by entities that would benefit from its use, isn’t more critical analysis required?

I would encourage your editorial staff to run an objective piece that goes into more details on the implications of RNAi technology and considers pest management alternatives.

Respectfully yours,

Judith D. Schwartz

Author of: “Cows Save the Planet and Other Improbable Ways of Restoring Soil to Heal the Earth” (Chelsea Green Publishing) and “Water In Plain Sight: Hope for a Thirsty World” (St. Martin’s Press)

Regenerative Farming: Single Solution to a World of Problems?

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Published: May 1, 2018

What if there were one solution that could fix a lot of the world’s problems?

That’s how organic farmer Ben Dobson began his TEDxHudson talk a few years ago. “Appropriate organic farming techniques and properly planned grazing can reverse climate change,” Dobson told his audience.

Dobson has been a farmer his entire life. But it wasn’t until six years ago that he made the connection between agriculture and climate change.

“We emit carbon dioxide in many more ways than just out of our exhaust pipes, out of coal plants, out of factories. We emit potentially more from our soils and by cutting down trees. Carbon is the skeleton of what’s under our feet and we’ve been taking that skeleton out of the ground bone by bone and putting it in the atmosphere.”

In Dobson’s opinion, photosynthesis is another word for carbon sequestration.

“Photosynthesis is the process by which plants breathe in carbon dioxide. They keep the carbon and they breathe the oxygen back out. The carbon then becomes the stock of the plant, the leaves, the roots. The extra carbon goes out of the roots into the soil—and in a proper farming system, it stay there.”

Dobson, who spent time farming in Maine, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, in addition to his family’s land in Hillsdale, New York, now works at Stone House Farm in Livingston, New York. He joined the 2,200-acre farm when the owners were planning to completely transition from conventional corn and soy production to a diversified organic farm.

Today, Stone House Farm is a model for regenerative organic agriculture that uses holistic management and long-term crop rotation to rebuild healthy soil and minimize the use of inputs from outside the farm.

And, Dobson says in his talk, “We’re really making it organic. We’re taking carbon dioxide from the air and putting it in the soil.”

How do they do that? After a crop is harvested, they grow cover crops, using crops that will live through the winter. They never leave the soil bare, so they are photosynthesizing all year long, bringing carbon out of the air and putting it in the soil.

“Having more carbon in the soil gives a better home for all the microbes in the soil to live in. They then can make more nitrogen available to plants naturally. That’s right nitrogen, that $40-billion industry that they pollute a lot to make and it’s ruining our oceans with runoff. That can be made naturally with bacteria under our feet while we’re sequestering carbon dioxide.”

Dobson is referring to the $40-billion fertilizer industry, responsible for the widespread nitrate-contamination of U.S. and global waterways and water supplies.

Stone House Farm has figured out “how to grow major commodity crops without chemicals, without pesticides and come close to conventional production targets while sequestering carbon dioxide,” the young pioneer said.

And grow major commodity crops is exactly what Stone House Farm is doing. The farm sells certified organic, non-GMO grains, seeds and animal feeds to local farms and food businesses. It also grazes black angus cattle, which are 100% grass-fed and free of growth hormones or antibiotics.

Ronnie Cummins, international director of Organic Consumers Association, and Steve Rye, CEO of Mercola Health Resources, visited Stone House Farms last month.

“I’ve been steadily visiting organic, biodynamic and regenerative or transition-to-regenerative farms and ranches across North America for the past several years,” Cummins said. “I must say that the several-thousand-acre Stone House Farm is the most impressive biodynamic and regenerative farm and grazing operation (and research center on carbon and methane sequestration) that I’ve ever seen. Ben Dobson is an agronomic genius and a true leader in the U.S. regeneration movement. Watch this TEDx Talk and you’ll see what I’m talking about.”

Rye was most impressed with Dobson’s ability to combine historical best practices and modern technology on a large scale:

“Accelerating soil improvements needs to happen quickly. Along with other innovative farmers like Will Harris, Gabe Brown and Joel Salatin, Ben is proving there’s reason to be optimistic.”

Dobson hopes that everyone listening to his TEDx Talk can understand the point he is trying to make:

“This one solution I’m talking about can make more money for farmers, produce the food we need and treat the earth in such a way that we can hold more water in it.

“We can sequester our carbon dioxide. We can reinvigorate local economies by taking corporate suppliers of chemicals, too much equipment and herbicides off the table and keep that money local where we can trade seeds. We can trade manure. We can sell crops locally to bakers who need it, to local farms who want food with no GMOs in it. This is what can be done. This is what we’re doing.”

Organic Consumers Association is a nonprofit consumer advocacy and grassroots organization. Keep up-to-date with OCA’s news and alerts by signing up for our newsletter.

The Lush Spring Prize Celebrates Social and Environmental Regeneration

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The £200,00 prize fund redefines what environmental and social responsibility should look like.

Author: Katherine Martinko | Published: April 26, 2018

‘Sustainable’ is an appealing yet complicated word. Since its definition is not officially regulated, any business or organization can describe its product or service as sustainable without being held accountable. This has resulted in a great deal of greenwashing, making things out to be more eco-friendly than they are.

At the same time, however, there are many wonderful organizations that model sustainability at its finest, working to develop systems that meet present-day needs without compromising the abilities of future generations to support themselves. This is good, except that it fails to address the problem of damage already done. For instance, a sustainable food production system could operate on degraded land, but that doesn’t mean the land will ever be improved or brought back to a biologically diverse state.

Enter the concept of regeneration, which some experts are hoping will replace sustainability as the buzzword of the future. Regeneration is sustainability taken a step further. Regenerative systems strive not only to do no harm, but also to improve their social, environmental, and economic contexts. In other words, they leave behind a better world.

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EU Agrees Total Ban on Bee-Harming Pesticides

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The world’s most widely used insecticides will be banned from all fields within six months, to protect both wild and honeybees that are vital to crop pollination

Author: Damian Carrington | Published: April 27, 2018

The European Union will ban the world’s most widely used insecticides from all fields due to the serious danger they pose to bees.

The ban on neonicotinoids, approved by member nations on Friday, is expected to come into force by the end of 2018 and will mean they can only be used in closed greenhouses.

Bees and other insects are vital for global food production as they pollinate three-quarters of all crops. The plummeting numbers of pollinators in recent years has been blamed, in part, on the widespread use of pesticides. The EU banned the use of neonicotinoids on flowering crops that attract bees, such as oil seed rape, in 2013.

But in February, a major report from the European Union’s scientific risk assessors(Efsa) concluded that the high risk to both honeybees and wild bees resulted from any outdoor use, because the pesticides contaminate soil and water. This leads to the pesticides appearing in wildflowers or succeeding crops. A recent study of honey samples revealed global contamination by neonicotinoids.

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Changing the World—One Chicken at a Time

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The chicks have arrived! A 6 a.m. phone call from the Northfield, Minnesota, post office alerted Eric Foster and others at the Main Street Project to the arrival of the first training flock of 2018. A new cohort of aspiring Latino farmers from the south-central region of Minnesota were about to start their poultry-centered regenerative agriculture training.

Their mission? To become part of a southeastern Minnesota cluster of farms designed to change the way poultry is produced in Minnesota and beyond, by joining dozens of other families in the region who have received similar training from Northfield-based Main Street Project.

Why Do We Need to Change How Poultry Is Produced?

The current poultry-production system has failed ecologically, economically and socially. It has caused ecological destruction, displacement of rural people and destroyed ancient resilient and healthy food security systems for communities worldwide. It has loaded animal production with pharmaceuticals, then hidden this information from consumers. The system has also built a massive global exploitative infrastructure that cheats farmers and consumers.

Today’s system never intended to deliver solutions. It was designed and structured to be extractive, degenerative and profit-driven. Through massive, well-funded campaigns, today’s poultry producers create the illusion that they can deliver large amounts of healthy food at very low prices. But the true cost of industrial food is hidden behind the convoluted systems the industry has created.

Some of those costs are obvious, yet we have no legal recourse to demand payment. Who pays for the ever-expanding list of food-related diseases? Or water contamination? Who pays the social cost of pushing food and agriculture workers into poverty?

The Real Cost of Cheap Food

Consumers pay the real cost of our food through a vast array of channels that have become untraceable, from our taxes that primarily subsidize a handful of large corporations through the Farm Bill—a cyclical federal agricultural subsidy program—to the public subsidies, volunteers and local taxes that go to clean up rivers, lakes and even oceans polluted in the name of feeding the world.

Some of this cost materializes when residents of cities where agriculture runoff has now impaired drinking water are taxed to pay for the cleanup of toxic levels of nitrates and other agricultural chemicals.

We need to change the system: It is not in its DNA to change itself. We, the billions of small farmers, consumers, scientists and students, need to reclaim control of our food production and redeploy under a regenerative design. In my book, “In the Shadow of Green Man,” I describe the life experiences and pathways that led me to this work and to this point in my life.

In this autobiographical book, I lay the foundation for why we need to fight for large-scale change, and why we should always look with distrust at anyone or any structure that seeks to degenerate the foundation of our well-being through our food, the most sacred foundation of nutrition, health and well-being.

Before publishing “In the Shadow of Green Man,” I did an interview with Dr. Mercola, where I laid out the principles for how we are redesigning a new poultry system. Our design process takes us back to the source of how nature provides a magnificent blueprint for energy transformation processes that deliver food out of air and soil.

Defining a Regenerative System

A regenerative system is one that can continually recirculate the natural energy from the soil and air to deliver not only a healthy environment, but also healthy foods, fiber and other vital outcomes of a regenerating landscape. Livestock on the landscape is critical to this process. And when it comes to livestock, chicken reigns supreme.

Poultry production offers the shortest economic cycle and lowest up-front investment cost. It is the only livestock that is accepted culturally in every region of the world. It is a healthy protein source and is easily scalable. If we design a system according to the chicken’s natural jungle environment, poultry can also serve as the foundation for a massive new agroecological and agroforestry model, capable of reforesting and restoring large amounts of conventionally farmed and degenerated landscapes.

We looked at the chicken’s original natural environmental blueprint in the jungles of southeast Asia and followed it across the world. The ancestors of the modern chicken (Gallus gallus, aka red jungle fowl) have adapted to most ecological condition. Like most other animals, chickens were never meant to be confined indoors—and they don’t have to be.

The only reason to confine animals is for ownership and control and to maximize profits. The industry did this, whether intentionally or not, at the expense of the welfare of the animals, the health of consumers, the environment, farmers and workers.

As a child, I watched a big fight roar around us as the Guatemalan civil war carried on. That was the Guatemalans’ way of attempting to remove from power the oligarchs and their army that ruled and controlled the land, under a system based on extraction, exploitation and abuse. As a child within this environment, my stories were defined by poverty and hunger and the need for more food. My understanding of its value and our right to it grew out of that environment, as did my desire to work for this inalienable right.

Today, as I hear Native American elders talk about food sovereignty as one challenge to their freedom, it confirms my decision to spend the rest of my life dedicated to this fight. One freedom that should not be compromised is the freedom to collectively own and control our food and agriculture system. Today we have a new plan, and as you may have guessed, it starts with a chicken-led revolution.

Starting From the Bottom Up

At Main Street Project, the focus on Latino families as a strategic starting point for launching regenerative poultry and grain systems was not coincidental. It became key to our strategy for movement building and market development. It was important to start with the natural geo-evolutionary blueprint of the chicken. But it was equally important that the starting point take into consideration the natural ability of immigrant farmers, especially Latinos, as a social impact foundation of our theory of change.

Each production unit that now serves as the foundation of this system was designed from the perspective of an aspiring immigrant or low-income farmer. We believed that by taking this approach, we would make the system structurally compatible with any farmer in the world and especially in the U.S.

The key was to design the production unit as simple and as complete as possible so that any farmer could start, grow and scale production systemically under a controlled and managed process. To analyze existing ideas, we developed a set of core principles, criteria, indicators and verifiers that guided the discovery of what others were doing, while also guiding our own design process.

Establishing the Foundation of the Poultry-Centered Regenerative Design
To design, you need a standard. But to get to a standard, you first need to know the departing and destination points. From the beginning, in 2007, we were clear on two things. First, we were going to design from the perspective of nature to the extent that we could decipher it. Second, we wanted to design with people in mind: consumers, farmers and farmworkers as the primary beneficiaries of the system.

If we did these two things right, we would get the farm economics right. Contrary to what some believe, we don’t get regenerative farming right by getting the economics right. As Charles Walters of Acres U.S.A. said in 1970, “To be economical agriculture must be ecological.”

Following this logic, we used our system-level principles, criteria, indicators and verifiers to organize an ecological, economic and social high impact design framework. The production unit details result from this process and give the farmer a concrete project-level engagement platform.

We base the farm-level strategy on the number of production units a farmer wants to deploy on his farm. A region of farm clusters within a state serves as the foundation for building support infrastructure such as processing facilities, value-added products and distribution. Clusters linked and structured within a larger multistate regional strategy anchor the building of industry-level infrastructure such as trade, commerce, financing and governance.

We don’t create the process by which one organizes an industry; we simply weave our system into existing and known processes, with the proper adaptations, to lead to our own predefined destination—a regenerative agriculture and food industry. Critical to this process is the fact that a farm is not a system.

A farm is a project that if properly designed and aligned, can become part of a system design. For this to happen, the farm must meet a set of standardized practices, procedures, accountability, scientific protocols and measurable outcomes. It must consistently produce a predictable scalable output (food or raw material product) no matter where it is located. Then, production can be aggregated with other producers and form the basis for a system design.

The Poultry-Centered Regenerative System Standard

Our standard fully integrates the environment for the chicken, the social foundation for the system deployment and the economics of farming and food industry management. Starting with nature’s blueprint, we weave the economic and social together to build a framework that delivers an integrated standard.

By design, our poultry production model breaks out of the traditional mold of the fossil-based industrial revolution that delivered us the current system. We have created a blueprint for a broad and synchronized model that can integrate fully with the new “internet of things” revolution.

Similarly, global trends are rapidly coming to life as a “third industrial revolution” emerges out of Europe and China. What this does is link the ecosystems benefits while integrating tracking and management technology that can aggregate ecological, social and economic data at virtually no aggregated costs to the system. This delivers a fully transparent system that consumers, farmers and everyone else can access.

The Production Unit

A production unit (PU) represents a snapshot of the system at a point where the farmer can make basic economic and social sense of what he/she is about to deploy. Ecologically, the PU allows the farmer to calculate the inflow of energy into the production process in the form of feed, grain and other inputs, and the amount of outflow of energy in the form of eggs, meat, nuts and fruits.

This forms the foundation for business planning at all levels. The PU comprises a shelter, two fenced-in paddocks, perennial and annual crops and other common poultry-related infrastructure to manage feed and watering. The paddocks are designed to vertically integrate as much production as possible while providing a multitude of other benefits that will be outlined later.

The PU is critical when calculating ecological impact. Anything that goes through the production process can be measured across the board no matter if a PU is in Minnesota, Mexico or Guatemala—wherever operations are already underway and the PU design has undergone full adaptation to those specific ecological, economic and social conditions. The cornerstones of the PU are the:

  1. Shelter: primarily protects the chickens during the night and during inclement weather
  2. Paddocks: provide ranging area
  3. Protective perennial and annual canopy11: directly defines the distance the chickens roam from their shelter and creates the foundation for management of chicken behavior. This includes stress management, ranging distance and temperature to name a few
  4. Sprouting systems: probably the most important of all, given that the cost of raising a pound of meat or a dozen eggs is significant (upward of 70 percent of the total cost)
How Cheap Grain Has Influenced America’s Food System

To understand this last point properly, it is important to clarify the role of cheap grain in the takeover of America’s food system. Taxpayer-subsidized grain production—mostly corn and soybeans—keep feed grain prices low for conventional farms.

The “external costs” are passed on to future generations in the form of degenerated landscapes, polluted groundwater systems and health issues related to the use of toxic chemicals. Taxpayers foot the bill under a system that transfers all the costs to society, and all the benefits to industry.

As for farmers, today’s farm bill subsidies12 don’t really help farmers. Instead, they represent the systematically structured flow of public funding that primarily enriches agribusiness disguised as a public benefit. Farmers across the country are left holding the risky part of the farm industry. According to Christopher Leonard, author of “The Meat Racket,”13 only about 5 cents of the price a consumer pays at the store for a pound of chicken ends up reaching the farmer.

The rest stays in the industrial chain. From that meager operating income, the farmer has to pay for the full cost of production such as their own salaries, farm labor, the interest to the bank, and building improvements and fixes—some of them mandated by the industry. This system effectively creates a firewall so no one can accuse a corporation of getting direct payments from the government.

Shifting the process by how grain is turned into eggs or meat, how farmers, farm and food-chain workers benefit from the system is critical to redesigning any sector of the food industry. Along with proper engineering and careful integration of natural efficiencies, we can deliver a blueprint for a different way of producing poultry that can be standardized and replicated, and that is fully adaptable to the regenerative nature of different ecologies, cultures and economic landscapes.

The Importance of Protective Canopy When Raising Free-Range Chickens

Each PU we design, and the standard that goes with it, has been carefully structured to deliver ecological, economic and social returns on investment. It is from that position of strength, transparency and integrity that we plan to launch a “chicken revolution” as our Guatemalan counterparts have renamed this idea.

Chickens are extremely responsive to and aware of their environment. As we fine-tuned the production unit’s management process, we learned that the canopy was not only essential for them to relax and roam most of the day outside, but also to protect them from aerial predators. The canopy also cools the soil by blocking the sun, which increases the relative humidity.

When all of these conditions are added up, the result is a perfect environment for large-scale natural sprouting of grain exactly where the chickens want it. Not only did we find ways to scale that source of food, but the chickens also supplement their diet more significantly by taking in more biomass, nutrients and water volume from sprouts, thus reducing the extra feed that they need when free-ranging.

By eliminating the need for industrial GMO grain production, this system not only reduces pollution, but actually mitigates it. The trees’ uptake of nutrients from the soil reduces and eventually eliminates pollution of water, soil and air. Trees also add value by helping to reverse climate change. The chemicals they emit into the atmosphere help stabilize rain patterns. In addition, trees sequester carbon from the atmosphere and produce oxygen, fiber, fruits, nuts and many other foods and ecological benefits.

A Return to Slow-Growth Poultry Breeds

For meat bird PUs, we selected slow-growth breeds that range well rather than the genetically degenerated industrial chickens. The industrial meat bird has lost its ability to properly range and live a healthy natural life. These birds are bred for confinement. Their body proportions and the way their organs develop make them unfit for free-ranging systems.

They have an incredible capacity to gain weight and with it, the need for a sedentary confined life. All of these characteristics are counter to the foundational principles and concept of regenerative agriculture.

In our system, the maximum stock density per PU for broilers is 2 square feet per bird. No more than 1,500 birds are permitted in each building. In northern cold climates, up to three slow-growth flocks (harvested at 70 days on average) can be raised delivering a total of around 4,500 birds per PU. For the Midwest ecology (different outdoor spacing and density is required for different ecologies), each bird must be allowed at least 42 square feet of ranging space or a total of 21 square feet per paddock.

In general, the unit must be laid out so that the farther corners are not further than 200 feet from the shelter’s exit doors. Ranging paddocks with perimeter fences farther than that will require more weed control, and birds will exceed the expected use of the areas closer to the shelter. Feed is not allowed indoors except during their four-week brooding period and during inclement weather. The rest of the time, feeders are fanned out farther and farther from the building to encourage ranging.

For egg layers, the PU consists of 3 acres of ranging area divided into two paddocks. Shelter requirement is set at a minimum of 1.8 square feet per bird. Maximum flock size is 3,000 hens. Shelter must be equipped with perches and other related infrastructure that is spelled out in the production manual provided to farmers after they complete their training.

A Farmer’s Cluster

With the PU defined, farms can be designed and other parts of the system integrated. First comes poultry processing or egg processing, then value-added processing and then distribution. In most of the country, there are no small custom processors that can handle more than a few thousand chickens a day.

Most of the processing infrastructure in the country is owned and controlled by the industrial system and unavailable to serve alternative systems. The need to plan clusters of farmers instead of single-farm operations emanates from these challenges.

Compared with a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO), one of our clusters represents a small number of animals. Unfortunately, the weakest link defines the strength of the whole chain, and so it is with food chain design. In the case of our regenerative poultry and grain system, the weakest link is processing.

Under the current system, it is impossible to dream of setting up a large-scale poultry processing facility. However, it is possible to design a starting point that allows for a group to focus their energy on this area for each farm cluster.

Taking the System to Scale

As we approach the 2018 growing season, we sit on a significant number of accomplishments. We moved from prototyping and proof-of-concept to the launch of the Main Street Project’s central farm14 out of Northfield. This farm will train and develop the capacity of a new generation of farmers throughout the Midwest with a focus on training the first farmer cluster in Southeast Minnesota.

Another important achievement we are ushering in this year is the launch of Regeneration Farms,15 the first commercial farm utilizing the system.

But we still face some challenges when it comes to scaling up the system. To scale means more than to deploy a regional cluster of farmers. We can’t just assume what scale in the poultry industry is—it has to be studied, measured and defined. The magnitude of each little detail in the industrial poultry system is simply breathtaking, from how many tens of thousands of birds are confined in a building to the millions of egg layers that go into a single caged egg production facility.

We studied this model and came to the realization that in order to scale up, we also need to organize at scale. Back in 2015, I became a founding member of Regeneration International,16 a global network of scientists, farmers, business leaders and grassroots organizations that also saw the need to organize at scale with an industry redesign at the center of their thinking.

Late October 2017, and throughout the first quarter of 2018, in partnership with these new organizations, we started organizing Regeneration Midwest.17 The operating goal of this initiative is to organize a 12-state coalition to bring together a regenerative agriculture industry leadership team. This team will then set forth the direction and assemble the infrastructure to bring regenerative agriculture to scale in the Midwest.

To accomplish its purpose, Regeneration Midwest will seek to move resources and acquire market presence at a scale sufficient to unleash not only a Southeast Minnesota farmers cluster, but a multitude of clusters networked and supported across the 12 Midwest states. The blueprint for each of these clusters is the same, and the only limit is the market and the combined ability to expand, capture and sustain it.

The Regeneration Midwest platform also brings together other regenerative agriculture sectors and combines them for a higher impact across the region. Within the Regeneration Midwest organizational structure, a larger team has been engaged to organize and deploy regeneration chapters in each state. From this effort, we are now engaging farmers in Nebraska,18 Iowa, South Dakota, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Other states are also in process of organizing and consolidating their state-based coalitions.

Our current estimates are that with at least one farmers cluster per state, and 250 meat chicken production units per cluster, we can reshape the flow of around $450 million of poultry-centered commerce. To this plan, we would aggregate the economic impact brought about through grain production and the integration of other regenerative sectors such as grass fed cattle, pork and turkey.

How You Can Participate in Building a Regenerative Agriculture System

You can help us finance the people working to organize this system by making sure you know your farmer, know your food and “vote with your fork.” Consumer choice is the foundation of the path to a better system. No matter where our compass places us, we need to start investing our daily food dollars, our retirement funds, our school, university and hospital budgets in a different system.

Every year, farmers are joining the regenerative movement because consumers choose to support them. Some start by buying from their local Community Supported Agriculture programs, farmers markets and the like. Others start urban gardens, or switch to organic foods, or become members of a food cooperative.

For farmers who want to join the system or nonprofits willing to engage in state-level organizing within the Midwest states, please reach out to the organizers of Regeneration Midwest by emailing Info@regenerationinternational.org. You can support Regeneration Midwest by making a tax-deductible donation to Regeneration International.

About the Authors: Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin is chief strategy officer at Main Street Project and founding member of Regeneration International. Ronnie Cummins is board chair of Regeneration International and international director of the Organic Consumers Association.

This article was originally published on Mercola.com.

Native Knowledge: What Ecologists Are Learning from Indigenous People

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From Alaska to Australia, scientists are turning to the knowledge of traditional people for a deeper understanding of the natural world. What they are learning is helping them discover more about everything from melting Arctic ice, to protecting fish stocks, to controlling wildfires.

Author: Jim Robbins | Published: April 26, 2018

While he was interviewing Inuit elders in Alaska to find out more about their knowledge of beluga whales and how the mammals might respond to the changing Arctic, researcher Henry Huntington lost track of the conversation as the hunters suddenly switched from the subject of belugas to beavers.

It turned out though, that the hunters were still really talking about whales. There had been an increase in beaver populations, they explained, which had reduced spawning habitat for salmon and other fish, which meant less prey for the belugas and so fewer whales.

“It was a more holistic view of the ecosystem,” said Huntington. And an important tip for whale researchers. “It would be pretty rare for someone studying belugas to be thinking about freshwater ecology.”

Around the globe, researchers are turning to what is known as Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) to fill out an understanding of the natural world. TEK is deep knowledge of a place that has been painstakingly discovered by those who have adapted to it over thousands of years. “People have relied on this detailed knowledge for their survival,” Huntington and a colleague wrote in an article on the subject. “They have literally staked their lives on its accuracy and repeatability.”

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