This ‘Carbon Removal Marketplace’ Will Make Buying Offsets Easier

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As companies like Lyft start to invest to make up for their carbon footprints, the world of offset buying needs more transparency and accountability.

Author: Adele Peters | Published: June 14, 2018

On his small family farm in Petaluma, California, Don Gilardi hopes to begin spreading compost over his pastures next year as a way to fight climate change. The technique helps plants pull more carbon from the air and store it in the soil. The farm will also use other “carbon farming” methods, like planting trees on pastures and managed grazing. In doing so, it could sequester an average of 295 metric tons of CO2 a year, more than the emissions of driving a Toyota Camry a million miles. In 20 years, the farm could sequester 32 times as much carbon.

A new “carbon removal marketplace” hopes to make it easier for consumers and businesses to directly support farmers who, like Gilardi, want to shift to climate-friendly practices. It will also later connect consumers to other types of carbon offsets, such as those from tree-planting projects. Called Nori, the new platform, which will launch by the end of the year, will use blockchain to streamline the process of buying and selling offsets.

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The Winner of Drawdown INNOVATE: Encouraging Regenerative Farming

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Published: May 18, 2018

The 2018 Drawdown INNOVATE program supported members in developing original ventures that impacted climate change, and incubated the best ones, moving us all to a better climate future. Program participants developed ideas that sought to maximize the impact of Project Drawdown’s 100 most substantive solutions to reverse global warming, which range from the impact of educating women and girls to energy, among others.

From Korea to Costa Rica to Copenhagen, students and young professionals gathered locally, using toolkits and videos from Net Impact to explore Project Drawdown’s solutions. Then, using design thinking and business planning they imagined, tested, and refined product, service, and other venture ideas to bring solutions to reverse global warming to market.

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Carbon Farmers Work to Clean Up the World’s Mess

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Author: Dana J. Graef | Published: June 14, 2018

It was a bright afternoon in March of 2011 when I met Pedro (a pseudonym) on his organic farm in the mountains of Costa Rica, north of San José. I was there to do research on changing agricultural practices in the country. As we walked around his land, he showed me his greenhouses where lettuce, potatoes, and peppers grew. The warm air smelled earthy and sweet.

Outside, there were curving rows of carrots planted in the dark earth. He pulled some out and, after washing off clumps of dirt that were clinging to the roots, handed them to me to taste. They were different colors, and each had its own flavor—the yellow was sweeter than the white.

There was a slight breeze. The rolling landscape was vibrant and green. And there was carbon in the ground. Pedro knew it was there, and he was talking about it because of climate change.

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Regeneration Guatemala Seeks to Transform Rural Guatemala Agriculture

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In 2017, several members of Social Lab Guatemala, an incubator for social business, were inspired to build a national model for regenerative agriculture in Guatemala. Their inspiration led them to strategic partnerships with Regeneration International (RI) Main Street Project (MSP) and ultimately to the formation of Regeneration Guatemala.

Regeneration Guatemala’s mission is to rebuild the deteriorated social, ecological and economic systems in Guatemala by transforming the agricultural landscape through regenerative agriculture and land-use practices, with a focus on Poultry-Centered Regenerative system design.

The organization is off to a strong start. This year, a team of young entrepreneurs, farming cooperatives and rural community members are in the process of establishing five regenerative poultry farms. These five pilot projects form the centerpieces of five regional demonstration models for how to scale regenerative poultry production while simultaneously developing the regional infrastructure needed to grow a national regenerative agriculture industry. 

RI and MSP both played key roles in the launch of Regeneration Guatemala. Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin, principal architect of the MSP poultry-centered regenerative agriculture model and an RI founding partner and steering committee member, had this to say about working with the team in Guatemala:

“As a Guatemalan immigrant living mostly in the U.S., but as someone who owes most of my training and professional capacity to the teachings of our elders and our rural community leaders in Guatemala, being able to turn around and bring all of the experience accumulated through years of learning and capacity-building back to Guatemala is really a dream come true. One must not be confused as to what I am bringing back, it is not a foreign idea, it is an idea that was born in Guatemala, in the forest and in the rural communities, which I have been able to further develop with support from people all over the world.”

Haslett-Marroquin says that Regeneration Guatemala is a story of resilience. He explains that the threat to survival caused by the agricultural systems that came out of the “green revolution” can be reversed by reclaiming and adapting traditional and ancient knowledge.

“The answer to poverty and hunger and to developing the capacity of communities to feed themselves, was right there in the communities all along. The time has come to recover what we know, use what we have learned and recall the falsehood of empty promises that corporate factory foods will nourish the world. It is time to engage nature at its best and to unplug from degenerative systems that are destroying our forests and the very ecosystems on which we depend to feed the country.”

Regeneration Guatemala is starting out with five strategically located regenerative poultry projects. But the organization envisions many more as it works to fulfill its long-term vision for achieving high-impact, large-scale change in Guatemala.

A big part of the organization’s commitment involves saving and restoring ancestral knowledge developed and curated by indigenous Mayan cultures throughout the Mesoamerican region. Their practices, production systems and native species have been handed down through generations, and conserved by their descendents, through struggle and resistance. Despite colonization and violence, history and contemporary circumstances make it critical that this ancient knowledge be preserved and put back into practice.

It isn’t just the future of Guatemala that motivates this new organization. By becoming an active contributor to the international regeneration movement, the founders and members of Regeneration Guatemala hope to do their part to help address global warming, feed the country and the world, promote public health and prosperity, and provide the foundation for creating the conditions that ensure global peace and wellbeing.

Stay tuned in for more news from Regeneration Guatemala and the growing regeneration movement around the world by signing up for the RI newsletter here. 

Luego de la trilla, hay que cuidar el suelo para seguir

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Publicado: 16 de Junio 2018

Publicado por Clarín

El buen manejo del barbecho incide de manera notable en la disponibilidad de agua para los cultivos, y existen claves que permiten mejorar las condiciones de humedad y logar buenos efectos en los rindes. Si decide ceder el campo en alquiler, bajo la figura legal que prefiera, hará un contrato y en él se detalla la secuencia de los cultivos a llevar adelante.

Luego de la cosecha, cada cuadro quedará liberado para la próxima siembra, que podrá ser entre otros un trigo o una cebada, o bien un cultivo de cobertura intercalado para llegar a la primavera, acumulando materia orgánica, o bien quedará en barbecho hasta la próxima gruesa. Son decisiones de quien maneja, y las tomará de acuerdo a la experiencia y lo conocido, y más allá de los problemas de granos brotados en planta que bajan la calidad de lo trillado. Es decir saliendo de una inundación post seca, combinación mortífera que atrasó el ciclo de los cultivos, y luego con el calor y la humedad, aparecieron los brotes de las semillas en planta.

En el caso de optar por un cultivo de cobertura, entre los más usados podemos citar centeno en el oeste arenoso, avena blanca en el sudeste de Buenos Aires, trigo, centeno, vicia villosa en el NOA, vicia sativa en el sudoeste de Buenos Aires, raigrass en Entre Ríos. Y hay más de acuerdo a la zona que nos ocupa y a la rotación aplicada.

En la ventana de tiempo que sucede a la soja debido al bajo aporte de rastrojo que la leguminosa deja en el suelo, además del bajo contenido de carbono, es decir un rastrojo pobre en fibra y que se descompone rápidamente dejando el suelo sin cobertura donde proliferarán a su gusto las malezas durante un tiempo bastante prolongado. Sea hasta el próximo trigo o peor aún hasta la próxima gruesa, el tiempo a esperar resulta extenso y es cuando, de manera frecuente, se recurre a los cultivos de cobertura.

Entre los beneficios más destacables que se desprenden de la inclusión de un cultivo de cobertura en una rotación podemos mencionar: control de malezas (con centeno) que se obtiene al tapar el suelo e impedir la llegada del sol que calienta el perfil y genera la germinación del banco de semillas de malezas presentes en él (algunas duermen siempre, en tanto no se les cree las condiciones de germinación); aporte de carbono es decir de materia orgánica al suelo, que le da estructura y proliferación de microorganismos benéficos que construyen fertilidad estable para los próximos cultivos –un mejoramiento en los macroporos del suelo y por ende aireación, se desprende de esta condición debido a la acción de los insectos benéficos–; aprovechamiento del agua del perfil (con triticale) que sin el cultivo de cobertura queda disponible para las malezas, o bien para detener o contra restar el ascenso de la napa que generará problemas de anegamiento.

Entonces el descenso de las napas es un beneficio a agregar para los cultivos de cobertura. Otro beneficio que se logra al sembrar oleaginosas como cultivo de cobertura es reducir la relación carbono-nitrógeno, con lo cual se pondrán los nutrientes del suelo más a disposición de la absorción por parte de las raíces del cultivo siguiente en la rotación.

LEER MÁS AQUÍ

Can Farming Save Puerto Rico’s Future?

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As climate change alters how and where food is grown, Puerto Rico’s agro-ecology brigades serve as a model for sustainable farming.

Author: Audrea Lim | Published: June 11, 2018

Our climate is changing, and our approaches to politics and activism have to change with it. That’s why The Nation, in partnership with the Food & Environment Reporting Network, is launching Taking Heat, a series of dispatches from the front lines of the climate-justice movement, by journalist Audrea Lim.

In Taking Heat, Lim will explore the ways in which the communities that stand to lose the most from climate change are also becoming leaders in the climate resistance. From the farms of Puerto Rico to the tar sands of Canada, from the streets of Los Angeles to Kentucky’s coal country, communities are coming together to fight for a just transition to a greener and more equitable economy. At a time when extreme-weather events and climate-policy impasse are increasingly dominating environmental news, Taking Heat will focus on the intersection of climate change with other social and political issues, showcasing the ingenious and inventive ways in which people are already reworking our economy and society. There will be new dispatches every few weeks (follow along here).

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Transforming Food and Agriculture to Achieve the SDGs – 20 Interconnected Actions to Guide Decision-Makers

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New FAO tool lists concrete steps ways to speed up implementation of the Sustainable Development Agenda

Published: June 7, 2018

To help policy makers and other development actors accelerate progress towards global promises to end poverty and hunger, FAO has released a set of 20 inter-connected actions designed to show the impact sustainable agriculture can have on tackling the world’s greatest challenges.

Transforming food and agriculture to achieve the SDGs offers a practical guide for countries on how to strengthen food security, generate decent employment, spur rural development and economic growth, conserve natural resources and respond to climate change – all part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

“For the first time, FAO has put together a set of interconnected tools that can help fix our broken food systems, and show that from the roots of sustainable food and agriculture come the fruits of transformation,” Maria Helena Semedo, FAO Deputy Director-General, Natural Resources, said at an event during FAO’s annual governing Council meeting.

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Carbon Farming Works. Can It Scale up in Time to Make a Difference?

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The knowledge and tools to sequester carbon on farmland have blossomed rapidly in California; now farmers and ranchers just need funding to make it happen.

Author: Twilight Greenaway | Published: June 12, 2018

Lani Estill is serious about wool. And not just in a knitting-people-sweaters kind of way. Estill and her husband John own thousands of sweeping acres in the northwest corner of California, where they graze cattle and Rambouillet sheep, a cousin of the Merino with exceptionally soft, elastic wool.

“Ninety percent of our income from the sheep herd comes from the lamb we sell,” says Estill. But the wool, “it’s where my passion is.”

Wool, an often-overlooked agricultural commodity, has also opened a number of unexpected doors for Bare Ranch, the land Estill and her family call home. In fact, their small yarn and wool business has allowed Lani and John to begin “carbon farming,” or considering how and where their land can pull more carbon from the atmosphere and put it into the soil in an effort to mitigate climate change. And in a rural part of the state where talk of climate change can cause many a raised eyebrow, such a shift is pretty remarkable.

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Carbon Farming Coming to Santa Barbara

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Author: Tanner Walker | Published: May 29, 2018

Carbon ranching is coming to Santa Barbara, but farmers aren’t growing carbon — they’re putting it back into the ground. With the help of compost and cattle, native grasses can sequester organic carbon, enriching the soil and removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

For example, a single acre of grazed grasslands in Santa Barbara can remove the equivalent of 3.9 tons of CO2 each year by using a compost application plan outlined by the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

According to the Community Environmental Council of Santa Barbara, 270,000 acres in the county are suitable for compost application. Even if only 15 percent of the available land received a single dusting of compost, their analysis “shows that the increased sequestration could offset all of the greenhouse gas emissions from the county’s agricultural sector.”

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PastureMap Brings a High-Tech Approach to Sustainable Grazing

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The startup company co-founded by entrepreneur Christine Su hopes to improve grazing practices while helping ranchers increase their bottom line.

Author: Shana Lynch | Published: June 8, 2018

Americans like their burgers. In 2016, they ate an average of 55.6 pounds of beef per person, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, up from 54 pounds the year before.

But beef producers face criticism for their product’s impact on the environment—from land degradation to high greenhouse gas emissions caused by manure storage, feed production, and even the way cattle digest food. Through her startup PastureMap, entrepreneur Christine Su hopes to improve those practices while helping ranchers increase their bottom line.

PastureMap helps ranchers raise climate-friendly beef. The software platform helps them manage their grazing land and strategically graze their herds in a sustainable way. “If you let your cattle run all over the place and continuously graze, they’ll overgraze,” Su says. But strategic grazing can prevent soil erosion, improve soil nutrients, and even reverse emissions by sinking carbon into the soil, she says. This is called regenerative agriculture. “It raises food in a way that heals the land rather than further extracting from and eroding it,” she says.

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