Ganadería regenerativa

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La agricultura es concebida como el manejo de la Naturaleza (Primavesi A.) y la regeneración consiste en la recuperación de los procesos vitales de los ecosistemas.

Los componentes del ecosistema pastoril (la pastura o el pastizal, el ganado y el suelo) funcionan en forma sistémica, es decir, interrelacionados e interdependientes. El manejo de cada uno de ellos debe realizarse en forma holística, es decir, teniendo en cuenta al entero, a la totalidad.

Manejo de la producción vegetal

El objetivo de la producción vegetal es su maximización: cuanto más forraje se produzca en la finca y esta sea de la mejor calidad, se dispondrá de más insumos para la producción animal y habrá menor dependencia de insumos externos.

Para ello se debe incentivar la fotosíntesis. Lo cual se consigue respetando los ciclos biológicos del pasto por medio de descanso adecuado después del pastoreo y corte oportuno cuando el mismo haya alcanzado su máxima tasa de crecimiento, manteniendo así la mayor cantidad de hojas verdes eficientes fotosintéticamente.

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The Secret Behind Costa Rica’s Remarkable Green Transformation

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Aldo Sánchez surveys a field of lofty banana trees with cacao plants bursting with fruit nestled beneath them. “Two and a half years ago, this was pure pasture,” he says. Indeed, his neighbor’s field is just grass.

Four decades ago, a swath of land including Sánchez’s farm in Jabillos in central Costa Rica was deforested to plant coffee. It was later turned over to cattle, but ranching dried up when prices collapsed. Cacao — the raw material for chocolate — had not been planted since the late 1970s, when the monilia fungus destroyed 80 percent of the national crop.

“Even 10 kilometers [6 miles] away, people couldn’t believe we were planting cacao because the last people to do that were their grandparents,” Sánchez says.

His farm is a successful example of agroforestry — the sustainable combination of crops with trees — that is complementing Costa Rica’s remarkable reforestation in the past three decades.

Today, with exuberant tropical vegetation cloaking its countryside, it’s hard to imagine that the Central American nation of 5 million people could once have been any greener.

 

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Proponen salvar el permafrost con una masa de grandes herbívoros

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MADRID, 27 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) –

Investigadores de Oxford estiman que introducir en masa grandes herbívoros en la tundra ártica para restaurar el ecosistema y mitigar el calentamiento global resulta económicamente viable.

Se sabe que los animales que pastan como los caballos y los bisontes diseñan el paisaje a su alrededor, por ejemplo, suprimiendo el crecimiento de los árboles pisoteando o comiendo árboles jóvenes. Cuando este proceso se aprovecha para restaurar un ecosistema a un estado anterior, se denomina reconstrucción. También se puede usar para cambiar un ecosistema a un estado diferente pero más deseable. Esto se conoce como ingeniería de ecosistemas megafaunales.

En muchas partes del mundo, los ecosistemas forestales se consideran los más importantes para restaurar debido a su capacidad para almacenar carbono. Pero en la tundra ártica, cambiar el paisaje de la vegetación leñosa a los pastizales mejoraría la protección del permafrost rico en carbono, reduciría las emisiones de carbono asociadas con el deshielo del permafrost y aumentaría la captura de carbono en el suelo.

CONTINUE LEYENDO EN NOTIMERICA

Cambio climático: qué es el carbono azul y por qué es tan importante para la lucha contra el calentamiento global

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Si piensas en una solución natural que ayude a combatir el cambio climático. ¿Cuál es la primera que se te viene a la mente?

Seguro pensaste algo como sembrar más árboles o proteger los bosques y las selvas.

Y es cierto, los árboles juegan un rol fundamental en producir oxígeno y capturar dióxido de carbono, uno de los principales gases que producen el efecto de invernadero que calienta al planeta.

Existe, sin embargo, una trampa que captura CO2 de manera más rápida y eficaz que los bosques.

Se trata de los ecosistemas marinos costeros como los manglares, pantanos y humedales, donde se entierran grandes cantidades de carbono.

A ese carbono atrapado bajo el agua se le llama “carbono azul” y aunque a veces pasa desapercibido, mantenerlo bien aprisionado es vital para la salud del planeta.

 

CONTINUE LEYENDO EN BBC NEWS MUNDO

Carbon Gardening: A Natural Climate Solution that Can Help Reduce CO2 Emissions While Restoring Biodiversity

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Gardeners new to the concept of carbon gardening often ask these two questions: What good soil management strategies will help maximize carbon sequestration? And, what would be a good plant palette to help accomplish this? Good questions both, to which I wish I could give detailed, specific answers. Carbon gardening in northern Illinois, where I live, differs from carbon gardening in other regions; each will require region-specific strategies and plant palettes. Everything depends on where the gardener lives and the conditions in which they are gardening. Thus, what follows is more in the way of a general discussion that might help point in the right direction than a series of rigid prescriptions.

Organic carbon sequestration is one of the oldest tricks in nature’s ancient playbook for global ecosystem regulation. These days, as we search for ways to pull excess carbon out of the atmosphere in order to mitigate global warming, new attention has focused on “natural climate solutions,” or managing land for carbon sequestration by conserving and restoring ecosystems and changing agricultural and gardening practices.

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Why It’s Time to Stop Treating the Soil Like Dirt

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• We risk losing the world’s topsoil within 60 years.

• Tens of millions of farmers could provide an incremental transformation of soil care.

• Businesses are underestimating the impact of nature loss.

One of my greatest joys is to see first-hand the many solutions already created to help solve the climate crisis. One of my greatest frustrations, however, is our inability to apply these solutions at scale.

2019 was the year that nature and land use made it to the top of the global agenda. It became clear that we will not meet the Paris Agreement if we don’t solve broken food and land-use systems.

Land degradation is affecting 3.2 billion people, and for far too long this has gone under the radar. This must change in 2020. If not, we risk that all the world’s topsoil be eroded in the next 60 years.

Healthy soil is a resource of incredible magnitude. It captures and stores water and carbon, increases biodiversity, and it preserves and increases food security.

KEEP READING ON WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM

Agave Power: How a Revolutionary Agroforestry and Grazing System in Mexico Can Help Reverse Global Warming

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“Unsustainable land use and greenhouse gas emissions are delivering a one-two punch to natural ecosystems that are key to the fight against global climate change.

And without sweeping emissions cuts and transformations to food production and land management, the world stands no chance of staving off catastrophic planetary warming.”

Agave plants (the best known of which are blue agave, used to produce tequila), along with nitrogen-fixing, companion trees such as mesquite, huizache, desert ironwood, wattle, and varieties of acacia that readily grow alongside agave, are among the most common, prolific, and yet routinely denigrated or ignored plants in the world. As India climate scientist Dr. Promode Kant points out:

“Agave is to the drier parts of the world what bamboo is to its wetter zones. Capturing atmospheric CO2 in vegetation is severely limited by the availability of land and water. The best choice would be species that can utilize lands unfit for food production and yet make the dynamics of carbon sequestration faster.

As much as 40% of the land on earth is arid and semi-arid, largely in the tropics but also in the cool temperate zones up north. And on almost half of these lands, with a minimum annual rainfall of about 250 mm and soils that are slightly refractory, the very valuable species of agave grows reasonably well.”

Agave plants and nitrogen-fixing trees densely intercropped and cultivated together have the capacity to draw down massive amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere and produce more above ground and below ground biomass (and animal fodder) on a continuous year-to-year basis than any other desert and semi-desert species.

Ideal for arid and hot climates, agaves and their companion trees, once established, require little or no irrigation to survive and thrive, and are basically impervious to rising global temperatures and drought. Agaves alone can draw down and store above ground the dry weight equivalent of 30-60 tons of CO2 per hectare (12-24 tons per acre) per year. One hectare equals 10,000 square meters or 2.47 acres.

Now, a new, agave-based agroforestry and livestock feeding model developed in Guanajuato, Mexico promises to revitalize campesino/small farmer livestock production while storing massive amounts of atmospheric carbon above and below ground.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewoPIVVmcSs[/embedyt]

Scaled up on millions of currently degraded and overgrazed rangelands, these agave/agroforestry systems have the potential to not only improve soil and pasture health, but to help mitigate and potentially reverse global warming.

Climate Emergency

As international scientists, activists, and our own everyday experience tell us, we are facing a Climate Emergency. A “profit at any cost,” fossil fuel-supercharged economy, coupled with industrial agriculture and factory farms, destructive land use, and mindless consumption have pumped a dangerous load of CO2 and greenhouse gas pollution into the sky, bringing on global warming and violent climate change.

Degenerative food, farming, livestock, and land use practices have de-carbonized and killed off much of the biological life and natural carbon-sequestering capacity of our soils, forests, and ecosystems.

This degradation and desertification of global landscapes has oxidized and released billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and eliminated much of the above ground carbon biomass once stored in our forests and landscapes.

This global degeneration has depleted so much of the carbon and biological life in our soils, trees, and plants that these natural systems can no longer draw down and sequester (through natural photosynthesis) enough of the excess CO2 and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to maintain the necessary balance between CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the carbon stored in our soils, trees, and plants.

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) estimates that arid and semi-arid lands make up 41.3% of the earth’s land surface, including 15% of Latin America (most of Mexico), 66% of Africa, 40% of Asia, and 24% of Europe.

Farmers and herders in these areas face tremendous challenges because of increasing droughts, erratic rainfall, degraded soils, overgrazed pastures, and water scarcity. Many areas are in danger of degenerating even further into desert, unable to sustain any crops or livestock whatsoever.

Most of the world’s drylands are located in the economically under-developed regions of the Global South, although there are millions of acres of drylands in the US, Australia, and Southern Europe as well. Farming, ranching, and ecosystem conservation are becoming increasingly problematic in these drylands, especially given the fact that the majority of the farms and ranches in these areas do not have irrigation wells or year-round access to surface water.

Crop and livestock production levels are deteriorating, trees and perennials have typically been removed or seasonally burned, and pastures and rangelands have been overgrazed. Poverty, unemployment, and malnutrition in these degraded landscapes are rampant, giving rise to violence, organized crime, and forced migration

The good news, however, coming out of Mexico, applicable to many other regions, is that if farmers and ranchers can stop overgrazing pastures and rangelands, eliminate slash and burn practices; and instead reforest, revegetate, rehydrate, and re-carbonize depleted soils, integrating traditional and indigenous water catchment, agroforestry, livestock, and land management practices with agave-based agroforestry, we may well be able to green the drylands and store and sequester massive amounts of carbon.

Via Organica, the “Organic Way”

After decades as a food, farm, anti-GMO, and climate campaigner for the Organic Consumers Association in the US, I now spend a good part of my time managing an organic and regenerative farm and training center, Via Organica, in the high-desert drylands of North Central Mexico.

Our semi-arid, temporal (seasonal rainfall) ecosystem and climate in the state of Guanajuato is similar to what you find in many parts of Mexico, and in fact in 40% of the world. In our valley, we typically get 20 inches or 500 millimeters of precipitation in the “rainy season” (July-October), greening the landscape, followed by eight months with little or no rain whatsoever.

At Rancho Via Organica, we’ve been trying to regenerate our high-desert (6300 feet elevation) environment, developing farming, livestock, and landscape management practices that produce healthy organic food and seeds, sequester carbon in the soil, preserve our monte or natural densely-vegetated areas, slow down and infiltrate rainwater (including runoff coming down the mountains and hillsides) to recharge our water table, and reforest and revegetate our still somewhat degraded corn fields and pasturelands.

Looking across our mountain valley, the most prominent flora are cactus and agave plants (some of which are quite large) along with hundreds of thorny, typically undersized, mesquite, huizache, and acacia shrubs/trees.

In order to grow our vegetables and cover crops, maintain our olive, mulberry, citrus, and pomegranate trees, and provide water and forage for our animals, we like most small farmers and ranchers in Mexico, irrigate with only the rainfall that we can collect and store in cisterns, ponds, and soils.

Eighty-six percent of Mexican farmers and herders have no source of water, other than seasonal rainfall, and therefore have to struggle to maintain their milpas (corn, beans, and squash) and raise their animals under increasingly adverse climate conditions.

Greening the Drylands: A New Agroforestry Model

Recently Dr. Juan Frias, a retired college professor and scientist, came up to me after attending a workshop at our farm. As we discussed regenerative agriculture practices and climate change, Juan told me about a new system of drylands agroforestry and livestock management (sheep and goats), based upon agave plants and mesquite trees in the nearby community of San Luis de la Paz. They call their agroforestry system Modelo Zamarripa.

By densely planting, pruning, and inter-cropping high-biomass, high-forage producing, fast-growing species of agaves (1600-2000 per hectare) amongst preexisting deep-rooted, nitrogen-fixing tree species such as mesquite, or amongst planted tree seedlings, these farmers are transforming their landscape and their livelihoods.

When the agaves are three years old, and for the following five to seven years, farmers can begin pruning the leaves or pencas, chopping them up finely with a machine, and then fermenting the agave in closed containers for 30 days, ideally combining the agave leaves with 20% or more of mesquite pods by volume to give them a higher protein level. In our region mesquite trees start to produce pods that can be harvested in five years.

By year seven the mesquite and agaves have grown into a fairly dense forest. In year eight to ten, the root stem or pina (weighing up 100-200 pounds) of the agave is ready for harvesting to produce a distilled liquor called mescal. Meanwhile the hijuelos or pups put out by the mother agave plants are being continuously transplanted back into the agroforestry system, guaranteeing continuous biomass growth (and carbon storage).

In their agroforestry system, the Zamarripa farmers integrate rotational grazing of sheep and goats across their ranch, supplementing the pasture forage their animals consume with the fermented agave silage. Modelo Zamarippa has proven in practice to be ideal for sheep and goats, and we are now experimenting at Via Organica with feeding agave silage to our pastured pigs and poultry.

The revolutionary innovation of these Guanajuato farmers has been to turn a heretofore indigestible, but massive and accessible source of biomass, the agave leaves, into a valuable animal feed, using the natural process of fermentation to transform the plants’ indigestible saponin and lectin compounds into digestible carbohydrates and fiber.

To do this they have developed a relatively simple machine, hooked up to a tractor, that can finely chop up the tough leaves of the agave. After chopping the agave, the next step is to anaerobically ferment the biomass in a closed container (we use five gallon buckets with lids).

The fermented end-product, after 30 days, provides a nutritious but very inexpensive silage or animal fodder (in comparison to alfalfa, hay, or cornstalks), that costs less than one Mexican peso (or approximately five cents US) per kilo (2.2 pounds) to produce.

According to Dr. Frias, lambs readily convert ten kilos of this silage into one kilo of body weight. At less than 5 cents per kilo (two cents per pound) agave silage could potentially make the difference between survival and bankruptcy for millions of the world’s small farmers and herders.

Agaves and Carbon Storage and Sequestration

The Zamarripa system of drylands afforestation and silvopasture draws down and stores in the plants large quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere. Agronomists have observed that certain varieties of agave can produce up to 43 tons per hectare of dry weight biomass per year, on a continuous basis.

These high biomass varieties of agave will likely thrive in many of the world’s arid ecosystems, wherever any type of agave and nitrogen-fixing trees are already growing.

Nitrogen-fixing trees such as mesquite can be found in most arid and semi-arid regions of the world. Mesquite grows readily not only in Texas and the Southwestern US, Mexico, Central America, Argentina, Chile, and other Latin American nations, but also “thrives in arid and semi-arid regions of North America, Africa, the Middle East, Tunisia, Algeria, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Myanmar (Burma), Russia, Hawaii, West Indies, Puerto Rico and Australia.”

At Via Organica, outside San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, we are utilizing moveable, solar-fenced paddocks for our grazing sheep and goats in order to protect our mesquite tree seedlings, to prevent overgrazing or under-grazing,to  eliminate dead grasses and invasive species, and to concentrate animal feces and urine across the landscape in a controlled manner.

At the same time that we are rotating and moving our livestock on a daily basis, we are transplanting, pruning, finely chopping, and fermenting the heavy biomass leaves or pencas of agave salmiana plants. Some individual agave pencas or leaves can weigh (wet) as much as 40 kilos or 88 pounds.

The bountiful harvest of this regenerative, high-biomass, high carbon-sequestering system will eventually include not only extremely low-cost, nutritious animal silage, but also high-quality organic lamb, mutton, cheese, milk, aquamiel (agave sap), pulque (a mildly alcoholic beverage) and distilled agave liquor (mescal), all produced organically and biodynamically with no synthetic chemicals or pesticides whatsoever, at affordable prices, with excess agave biomass and fiber available for textiles, compost, biochar, and construction materials.

Massive Potential Carbon Drawdown

From a climate crisis perspective, the Modelo Zamarripa is a potential game-changer. Forty-three tons of above ground dry weight biomass production on a continuing basis per hectare per year ranks among the highest rates of drawing down and storing atmospheric carbon in plants in the world, apart from healthy forests.

Imagine the carbon sequestration potential if rural farmers and pastoralists can establish agave-based agroforestry systems over the next decade on just 10% of the worlds five billion degraded acres (500 million acres), areas unsuited for crop production, but areas where agave plants and suitable native nitrogen-fixing companion tress (such as acacia varieties in Africa) are already growing.

Conservatively estimating an above ground biomass carbon storage rate of 10 tons of carbon per acre per year on these 500 million acres, (counting both agave and companion trees, aboveground and below ground biomass) we would then be able to cumulatively sequester five billion tons of carbon (18 billion gigatons of CO2e) from the atmosphere every year.

Five billion tons of additional carbon sequestered in the Earth’s soils and biota equals nearly 50% of all human greenhouse gas emissions in 2018.

More Background on Agaves

To better understand the potential of this agroforestry/holistic grazing system, a little more background information on agave plants, and nitrogen-fixing or trees such as mesquite, huizache, or other fodder and food producing trees such as inga or moringa may be useful.

Various varieties of agave plants (along with their cactus relatives and companion nitrogen-fixing trees) are found growing on approximately 20% of the earth’s lands, essentially on the half of the world’s drylands where there is a minimum annual rainfall of approximately 10 inches or 250 mm, where the temperature never drops below 14 degrees Fahrenheit.

Dr. Promode Kant has described the tremendous biomass production and carbon-storage potential of agaves in dry areas:

“Agave can … be used for carbon sequestration projects under CDM [the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Climate Protocol] even though by itself it does not constitute a tree crop and cannot provide the minimum required tree crown cover to create a forest as required under CDM rules.

But if the minimum required crown cover is created by planting an adequate number of suitable tree species in agave plantations then the carbon sequestered in the agave plants will also be eligible for measurement as above ground dry biomass and provide handsome carbon credits…

It causes no threat to food security and places no demand for the scarce water and since it can be harvested annually after a short initial gestation period of establishment, and yields many products that have existing markets, it is also well suited for eradication of poverty…”

Agaves, of which there are 200 or more varieties growing across the world, can thrive even in dry, degraded lands unsuitable for crop production because of their Crassulacean Acid Metabolism (CAM) photosynthetic pathway (cacti and other related desert plants also have a CAM pathway) that essentially enables these plants to draw down moisture from the air and store it in their thick tough leaves during the nighttime, while the opening in their leaves (the stomata) close up during daylight hours, drastically reducing evaporation.

Meanwhile its relatively shallow mycorrhazal fungi-powered roots below the soil surface spread out horizontally, taking in available moisture and nutrients from the topsoil, especially during the rainy season.

In addition, its propagation of baby plants or pups, (up to 50 among some varieties) that grow out of its horizontal roots makes the plant a self-reproducing perennial, able to sustain high biomass growth, and carbon-storage and sequestration on a long-term basis.

Even as a maturing agave plant is pruned beginning in year three (to produce fermented silage) and the entire mature agave plant (the pina) is harvested at the end of its lifespan, in order to make mescal, in our case after 8-10 years, it leaves behind a family of pups that are carrying out photosynthesis and producing biomass (leaves and stem) at an equal or greater rate than the parent plant.

In other words, a very high level of above ground carbon storage and below ground sequestration can be maintained year after year. All with no irrigation, and no synthetic fertilizers or chemicals required, if intercropped in conjunction with nitrogen-fixing tree such as mesquite, huizache, inga, moringa, or other dryland species such as the acacias that grow in arid or semi-arid areas.

Agaves and a number of their tree companions have been used as sources of food, beverage, and fiber by indigenous societies for hundreds, in fact thousands of years. However, until recently farmers had not been able to figure out how to utilize the massive biomass of the agave plant leaves, which, unless they are fermented, are basically indigestible and even harmful to livestock.

In fact, this is why, besides the thorns and thick skins of the leaves, animals typically will not, unless starving, eat them. But once their massive leaves (which contain significant amounts of sugar) are chopped up and fermented in closed containers, livestock, after a short period of adjustment, will gobble up this sweet, nutritious forage like candy.

Developing a native species/agroforestry/livestock system on 5-10 million acres of land unsuitable for food crops in a large country like Mexico (which has 357 million acres of cropland and pastureland, much of which is degraded) could literally sequester 37-74% of the country’s net current fossil fuel emissions (current net emissions are 492m tons of CO2e).

And, of course, wherever these agave/agroforestry/holistic grazing systems are deployed, farmers and ranchers will also be restoring the fertility and moisture holding capacity of millions of acres of pasturelands and rangelands, thereby promoting rural food self-sufficiency and prosperity.

Scaling up best regenerative practices on the world’s billions of acres of croplands, pasturelands, and forest lands—especially those degraded lands no longer suitable for crops or grazing can play a major role, along with moving away from fossil fuels to renewable energy, in stopping and reversing climate change.

Above ground Carbon Sequestration Figures

 

References and Sources
1. HuffPost August 8, 2019
https://www.huffpost.com/ entry/united-nations-ippc-report-climate-land_n_5d4b872ce4b09e729740d9fb

2. Institute of Green Economy, Could Agave be the Species of Choice for Climate Change Mitigation?
https://www.igrec.in/ could_agave_be_the_species_of_choice_for_climate_change_ mitigation.pdf

3. Facebook, Hacienda Zamarripa https://www.facebook.com/ haciendazamarripa/

4. Institute of Green Economy, Could Agave be the Species of Choice for Climate Change Mitigation?
https://www.igrec.in/ could_agave_be_the_species_of_choice_for_climate_change_ mitigation.pdf

5. Texas Almanac, The Ubiquitous Mesquite
https://texasalmanac.com/topics/environment/ubiquitous-mesquite

6. Institute of Green Economy, Could Agave be the Species of Choice for Climate Change Mitigation?
https://www.igrec.in/ could_agave_be_the_species_of_choice_for_climate_change_mitigation.pdf

From Sustainable to Regenerative: Bold Business Moves to Transform the Agriculture System

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With a new decade comes a new era of sustainability leadership.

The 2020s herald a pivotal chance to deliver on our great climate, environment and development challenges, and the scale and pace of change will require truly transformative thinking. We will need to move beyond efficiency and doing less harm, and base strategies on new goals that ensure business success also meets the needs of people and the planet. It’s time to step up a gear or three on our journey toward a sustainable future. But what does this mean for how we do business?

At the heart of this shift is a move toward “regenerative” rather than just “less extractive” business strategies. With growing public commitments to “carbon zero” targets, businesses are refocusing on how to work in ways that put back more into society, the environment and the global economy than they take out. This sounds like an abstract goal on the surface, but in real terms, it is a powerful reframing of mindset and action.

Organizations taking this approach share an ambition to grow their brands, have strong financial performance, attract the brightest talent and, most important, be future-fit; but these thriving organizations also deliver benefits that align traditional business boundaries of profit margin and shareholder value with wider societal goals.

One of the most impactful areas for intervention is in agriculture. Any business based on agricultural raw materials is vulnerable to increasing insecurity and volatility of supply, as weather patterns shift and natural resources dwindle.

KEEP READING ON GREENBIZ

Un uso apropiado de la tierra podría reducir drásticamente las emisiones globales

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El uso de la tierra es ampliamente conocido como un factor importante detrás del cambio climático. Un nuevo documento proporciona una hoja de ruta ambiciosa para los cambios en el manejo forestal, la agricultura y la bioenergía para garantizar que los aumentos de temperatura global se mantengan por debajo del objetivo de calentamiento de 1.5 ° C.

Publicado en Nature Climate Change, el estudio explora medidas clave que pueden reducir a la mitad las emisiones del sector terrestre cada década desde 2020 hasta 2050. Partiendo de modelos climáticos, el estudio sugiere 24 prácticas que pueden proporcionar las mayores reducciones de emisiones y otros beneficios colaterales.

Los autores enfatizan el potencial de seis áreas de acción prioritarias:

(1) reducir la deforestación; (2) restaurar bosques y otros ecosistemas, particularmente en países tropicales; (3) mejorar el manejo forestal y la agrosilvicultura; (4) mejorar el secuestro de carbono del suelo en la agricultura; (5) reducir el desperdicio de alimentos de los consumidores y (6) hacer que una de cada cinco personas cambie a dietas bajas en carnes.

SIGA LEYENDO EN ECOPORTAL

Soil Health Hits the Big Time!

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It began at the pivotal UN climate summit in Paris in 2015 (COP21), which I had the honor of attending on the behalf of the Quivira Coalition and Regeneration International as an observer. As you will recall, in an effort to slow climate change delegates from 197 nations negotiated and then signed a landmark Agreement committing their governments to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions starting in 2020 (alas, recent events have undercut the Agreement’s prospects).

This was big news at the time, but there was another important development that did not make headlines. It occurred on December 1st when the French government launched a plan to improve food security and fight climate change with soil carbon called the ‘4 For 1000 Initiative’ – a number that refers to a targeted annual growth rate of soil carbon stocks. “Supported by solid scientific documentation, this initiative invites all partners to state or implement some practical actions on soil carbon storage and the type of practices to achieve this.” (see)

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