Our planet is in the middle of a climate crisis; the cause is anthropogenic carbon dioxide, the potent greenhouse gas released when fossil fuels are burned for electricity generation, industry, and transportation. The agricultural sector is also a significant contributor and, together with forestry and other land use, it is responsible for around 25% of all human-created greenhouse gas emissions.
As the global population rises, how land is used will continue to change. More forests will be felled to make way for farming and livestock, and emissions of powerful greenhouse gases released through our current agricultural practices will rise.
A recent study found that unless farming methods change, rising emissions from human land use will jeopardize the aims of the Paris Climate Agreement. Poorer countries (Latin America, Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa) have had the greatest increase in land-use change emissions due to population expansion; developed nations (Europe, North America) had negative land-use change, but still extensive farm-originated pollution.
https://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/bigstock-Young-Plant-Seed-Growing-Of-Sp-401586116-scaled.jpg17072560Kerry Taylor-Smithhttps://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/RI-Logo-New.pngKerry Taylor-Smith2021-04-20 03:53:302021-04-20 03:53:30Why Regenerative Agriculture is Important for the Future of our Planet
Hidden under our feet is a miniature landscape made up of tunnels, caves and decaying matter. Soil is where a quarter of the species on our planet are believed to live and in this dark, quiet, damp world, death feeds life. Rotting leaves, fruits, plants and organisms are folded into the soil and burped out as something new.
Good soil structure provides many nooks and crannies that house organisms, which, in turn, create an environment that suits them, directly altering – and improving – the structure of soil. Like a collective of tiny chemists, they keep soils healthy and productive by passing nutrients between them, either by collaborating or killing each other.
Complex food webs move nutrients around the system, generating healthy soils that provide goods and services for humanity. Goods include food, fibre and clean water. Services include regulation of the carbon and nitrogen cycles, nutrient recycling, water storage, regulation of disease and detoxification of pollutants.
https://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/bigstock-Cut-Of-Natural-Soil-With-Diffe-406226720.jpg16402460Phoebe Westonhttps://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/RI-Logo-New.pngPhoebe Weston2021-04-16 07:02:452021-04-16 07:02:45‘A Poor Man’s Rainforest’: Why We Need to Stop Treating Soil like Dirt
When foresters first tried to plant non-native Pinus radiata in the southern hemisphere, the trees would not grow until someone thought to bring a handful of soil from the native environment. “They didn’t know it then, but they were reintroducing the spores of fungi that these trees need in order to establish,” Colin Averill, ecologist at The Crowther Lab, explains. “When we plant trees, we rarely ‘plant’ the soil microbiome. But if we do, we can really accelerate the process of restoration.”
That process of restoration has become one of humanity’s most urgent missions. In order to slow global warming, we know that we need to decarbonize our economy and start removing carbon from the atmosphere – and we’ve largely been looking at doing so through dreams of negative emissions technologies and schemes of tree-planting.
But only very recently has more attention been turned toward another major potential tool for carbon capture: soil. An astonishing 80 percent of the carbon stored in terrestrial ecosystems is stored underground. According to the 4 per 1000 Initiative, a modest and achievable increase in soil carbon of 0.4 percent could be enough to stop the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Cerca del 75% de las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero (GEI) en Uruguay responden al sector agropecuario y dentro del mismo, el ganadero vacuno, es responsable del 62% del total de emisiones. Si a esto se le suma la situación del cambio climático y el incremento en las opiniones negativas sobre el consumo de carnes rojas, hace que este sector sea estratégico para comenzar acciones de mitigación.
La economía uruguaya depende en gran medida de sus exportaciones de carne, sobre todo vacuna.
Según datos del Instituto Nacional de Carnes (INAC), en 2019 se faenaron más de 2,2 millones de bovinos, se exportaron más de 330 mil toneladas de carne de esta especie a un valor que superó los US$ 1,8 mil millones. Por lo tanto, Uruguay, un país en donde hay cuatro vacas por persona, tiene trabajar para cambiar la imagen que la ganadería tiene en el mundo. Y así lo está haciendo.
El proyecto Producción Ganadera climáticamente Inteligente y Restauración del Suelo en Pastizales Uruguayos, o Ganadería y Clima, plantea contribuir a enfrentar los desafíos del sector ganadero a través de un enfoque integral que abarca la mejora de la productividad y la sostenibilidad de los establecimientos ganaderos del país.
https://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/bigstock-Cows-Volyn-Meat-Limousine-Ab-392175269-scaled.jpg17072560Manuela García Pintoshttps://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/RI-Logo-New.pngManuela García Pintos2021-04-12 06:16:592021-04-12 06:16:59Uruguay avanza a una ganadería aún “más verde”
After organizing and attending our first syntropic farming workshop in 2019, our team at Porvenir Design knew that we were looking for just the right client to implement a larger scale system to learn more about these ideas. Finca Luna Nueva presented that opportunity as they were seeking to expand their existing cacao orchards and we had recently taken over full administration of their farm.
As part of this work we documented the transformation of the space during its first year and a half, from design and planning to implementation and feedback. This blog seeks to explain in detail exactly why and how we incorporated syntropic farming principles into the installation of a one hectare cacao orchard. It is also our chance to explore feedback, discuss what we would do differently in the future and hear from the larger syntropic farming community.
Special thanks to the Finca Luna Nueva farm crew: Carlos A., Jose, Eladio, David, Christopher, Frander, Nelson, Carlos R., and Walter for their diligence and patience.
Syntropic Farming is a process and principle based form of agriculture developed and propagated primarily in Brazil. Syntropic farming is a field within the larger domains of agroecology and agroforestry. Syntropic systems complement the food forest ideas within permaculture design by providing more specific design details, metrics, and arrangements that focus on precisely imitating the spatial and temporal relationships of the region’s native forest ecology. It has shown the ability to be scaled beyond many similar fields of agroecology. Syntropic agriculture provides a set of principles and tools for shifting from organic monocultures and input based agriculture towards a holistic focus on ecology. In the end it is a system that seeks to imitate the forest and results in a forest ecosystem.
This blog won’t attempt to define syntropic farming beyond this. The following links are key places to explore the topic.
Finca Luna Nueva (FLN) is a farm and eco-lodge located in the Costa Rican lowland Caribbean slopes, near the town of La Fortuna and the famed Arenal volcano. It is situated down river of the Bosque Eterno de Los Niños. FLN was one of the first certified organic and Demeter certified biodynamic farms in Central America, focused primarily on growing ginger and turmeric for export to the United States of America. The farm was successful in this endeavor until the soil fungal pathogen Fusarium sp became such an issue that total crop loss approached 80%. In the following years the farm resources shifted toward tourism activities as the lodge pivoted to remain financially viable and create diverse revenue streams. The Porvenir Design team was brought on board in 2018 to begin re-vitalizing the farm with a new perspective in agriculture.
Why Adopt Syntropic Farming in this Context?
As FLN watched their turmeric crops fail following conventional organic/biodynamic approaches, they realized a new approach was going to be required on the farm. Their agricultural exploration shifted towards a focus on ecology, in particular the microbial health of the farm as a whole. Our team brought the additional perspective of creating systems which imitate forest ecology. For us, syntropic farming nests within permaculture design as a more organized form of agroforestry, integrating existing concepts of alley cropping, intercropping, keyline design and layout, and tree crop based agriculture.
FLN has a long history of pushing the edge of agricultural norms, being early adopters of many now-commonplace techniques and crops. They have the resources to trial new systems, so this was our chance to apply our new knowledge of syntropic agriculture in an opportune setting.
The Context of the Site
Elevation: 350 m above sea level in the Tileran Cordillera of the Caribbean slope.
Climate: Wet tropics, 4000 mm of rain/year average, driest season from January through May.
Watershed: San Carlos river watershed
Slope: Gentle slope toward the SE, drop of 12 meters from high to low points.
Size of Orchard: 1.1 hectares
Existing Vegetation: Pioneer species, early secondary forest growth, five to eight years of rest from any previous agriculture depending on the location in the site.
Existing trees, approximately 100, after thinning of overstory for timber crops: 1/3 timber, 2/3 fruit trees primarily breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis) and mamonchino (Nephelium lappaceum).
Neighbors: The orchard is within the original FLN farm, within a short walk to the lodge and other hotel infrastructure; the syntropic plot also borders 12 hectares of protected forest.
History: First cleared in 1997 for ginger planting. Management and practices included certified organic and biodynamic preparations/amendments, crop rotation, fallow period, tillage with oxen, cover crops, and earthworks with vetiver grass for erosion control.
Goals and Decision Making in the Syntropic Cacao Orchard
The stakeholders at FLN are highly involved as advocates within the regenerative agriculture movement, hence the system needed to demonstrate the principles of regenerative agriculture. Carbon sequestration in particular was an important goal in the design of the system.
In addition, we recognized the privilege and resources available at this particular project and wanted to leverage them to create an experimental system, as far from monoculture as possible. We anticipated it would be a complex system to manage, and we knew the farm crew, with decades of experience, would be able to do just this. We understood that this would be a very labor intensive system.
The more specific goals of the farm were to grow food for the lodge’s kitchen, while developing a few export grade cash crops (turmeric, cacao, ojoche) over all time scales. The system was designed to have yields within six months through 50 years. Much of the specific species selected to fill in the ecological niches were selected based on seed which we could source easily at quantity in our bioregion.
The COVID-19 pandemic struck after the initial set up of this system and forced our team to minimize labor intensive activities. Since the beginning of the pandemic we adjusted our goals to focus on maintenance of the most valuable crops, like cacao, while minimizing maintenance of short rotation crops.
Orchard Design
Row Design and Layout
As can be seen in the below graphic, the system was designed primarily to accommodate the cacao crops. A rows, featuring cacao, are spaced at 5 meters distance, parallel and offset from an initial contour line near the top of the slope. In between these rows are B rows, and in between all A-B lines are C rows. The pattern looks as follows A-C-B-C-A-C-B-C-A-C.
In total there are 17 A rows, 17 B rows, and 34 C rows. The longest row is 129 meters, the shortest is 73 meters, and the average is approximately 110 meters long.
A row detail
Cacao (Theobroma cacao) planted every 4 meters
Poro (Erythrina sp.) posts planted every 4 meters between cacao
Pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan) was planted between each cacao and poro post
In a few select rows Sacha Inchi (Plukenetia volubilis) was established on these poro posts
Jack Bean (Canavalia sp.) was seeded throughout the rows, especially around the cacao planting location
B row detail
Tithonia diversifolia was planted every meter
Musa sp were planted every 3 meters
Pejibaye (Bactris gasipaes) and Ojoche (Brosimum alicastrum) were planted every 18 meters, with the exceptions of locations with existing overstory trees .
C row detail:
Turmeric (Curcurma longa) was planted in mounds every 2 meters, 150 grams of turmeric per mound.
In a few select rows only pineapple were planted.
Between turmeric, depending on light conditions and seed material, the following crops were planted:
Papaya (Carica papaya)
Pigeon Pea
Rosa de Jamaica (Hibiscus sabdariffa)
Jack Bean
Sun hemp (Crotalaria sp.)
Squash (Cucurbita spp.)
Yuca (Manihot esculenta)
Chili Dulce (Capsicum annum)
Moringa (Moringa oleifera)
Beans (Phaseolus sp.)
Corn (Zea mays)
Strata and Life Cycle
The below chart demonstrates how and where each plant fits within their expected time and space niches, as the system evolves toward maturity. In syntropic systems, plants are used to prepare the conditions for the next life cycle of plants. Hence Placenta species will be pruned or harvested out of the system to make room for the Secondary group of plants to grow to maturity.
Plant and Other Materials
The following is an approximate list of the number of species put into the ground over the first year of this orchard:
500 cacao trees of the following varieties: Buffalo 1, UF 613, UF 653, ICS 95, R6
40 pejibaye palms
40 ojoche trees
450 kg of turmeric
2000 Tithonia cuttings
600 Musa sp seedlings
3000 gandul seedlings
20 kg of canavalia
2500 pineapple (Ananas comosus) starts
All other noted species were planted at relatively small numbers by comparison.
Compost was applied to the base of each fruit tree and to the turmeric mounds. In total 2500 kgs of compost were applied
Mountain Microorganisms (MM) and other foliar sprays such as fish emulsion (Pescagro) have been applied to the fruit trees and turmeric periodically.
Two strands of woven electric wire were used to fence the entire site to prevent animal predation of crops, particularly that of wild pigs.
Implementation and Management Process
Our first step began with clearing the land. This process took approximately two months, and we laid out the orchard as it was cleared. We removed approximately 5000 cubic inches of milled timber with an oxen team in this process.
The first A row was selected from an existing contour line near the top of the slope. All lines were pulled parallel from this line. This allowed us to maintain equidistant spacing between lines but still approximate the natural topography of the slope.
A small part of the orchard was laid out and planted during our Permaculture Design Course, the rest of the work was accomplished by the FLN farm crew, six full time workers.
Plantings were done first to delineate the A and B Rows with Tithonia, Musa, and Poro in particular. The approximate calendar of installation looked as followed:
October-November 2019: Clearing and lay out of lines
November -December 2019: Primary planting to delineate lines
December- February 2020: Planting of long term overstory trees/palms, cover crops, and most shorter rotation crops
March – April 2020: Harvest of squash, beans, corn, and cover crop seeds
May 2020: Heavy pruning, planting of turmeric crop
June 2020: Planting of cacao trees
August 2020: Heavy pruning
December 2020: Cacao maintenance
February 2021: Heavy pruning and cacao formation pruning
This first heavy pruning occurred in May 2020 prior to the planting of the turmeric crop. This primarily involved pruning or removing Tithonia, Pigeon Pea, and Jack Bean to create more light. A second pruning occurred in August to open up additional light for the turmeric and cacao trees. A third heavy pruning occurred in February 2021. Ideally all planting would have occurred at the same time but was limited due to sourcing and logistical challenges.
Foliar sprays are applied every three months to at least the cacao crop. Specific pest control sprays are applied as the farm crew sees fit. It is important to understand that in this context, the farm crew has years of experience working within organic systems and has an understanding of remedies for in field issues such as insect pressure, bacterial/fungal influence, and more.
Harvest
While the pandemic significantly reduced both the lodge’s demand for food and the farm crew’s hours, we have experienced significant harvests of existing breadfruit and mamon chino trees, bananas, and plantains. We harvested and continue harvesting smaller quantities of chili, pina, corn, beans, and yucca. The turmeric harvest will occur in April 2021.
Feedback and Conclusion
Our team continues to take in a number of lessons from this installation and management. The following are from our notes on what we learned and would have done differently.
Parallel Offset versus Triangulation: When laying out the initial cacao tree planting holes, we expected to triangulate the trees from each other while maintaining the equidistant planting lines. After much head scratching, we realized this is impossible on a terrain whose topography varies even slightly. We could only do one or the other. As usual, it was a challenge to take something from theory and put it into practice on a larger scale.
Pest Control: Our workers stated very clearly that tuber, grains, and pulses would be easy food for nearby wildlife. We wanted to see if a more diverse system, with more regular human presence would deter this, but quickly found out that wild pigs don’t care about those ideas. We adjusted rapidly and placed an electric fence around the entire hectare. An alternative decision would have been to simply not grow these types of short rotation crops. There is a good argument to be made that the cost of the fence and its maintenance is not worth the benefit of mixing our long term perennials, which don’t need protection, with these short rotation crops.
Access: In hindsight we would have adjusted the line layout slightly. Around the halfway point of the slope we would have liked to add a wider access path and used this to find a new contour line and run the lower lines parallel and offset to this. We considered this at the start but in order to simplify the installation process, decided against it.
Seeding Logistics: We used a mix of direct seeding, bare rooting plants from in ground planters and establishing plants in bags prior to planting. There are distinct pros and cons to each of these. In general we feel that the more one can direct seed the better, but this requires a higher level of skill from the farm crew. We are continually working with our farm crew to determine what they believe are the most efficient methods.
Simplification: During our workshop in 2019, we were astounded by the complexity and number of plant species and interactions that were recommended by our instructors. We sought to replicate this, despite some hesitation, by incorporating 23 different species into this system. Many of these crops did not thrive because it was simply too challenging, in our context, to manage this complexity. Some of this was based on having too few plants, some based on COVID labor shortages, some on poor crop selection, and so forth. In a more recent 3000 sq meter vanilla orchard we simplified our syntropic system to around 10 species.
Limitations of Organic Certification: It has become clear to us in this process, and with another installation at a different site, that conventional organic certification does not match well with highly diverse systems such as this. We felt severely limited in the soil amendments we could use and the complications of documenting all the sourcing becomes a part time job for someone. Organic certification is clearly designed for input-based agriculture and not process-based agriculture.
Pruning, Light and Biomass Management: We found ourselves needing to heavily prune certain biomass species to open up more sunlight for the turmeric and cacao. Although many crops can adjust to shade, they really need lots of sun to start growing well. This management, the details of pruning, has been the most challenging piece to communicate to our farm crew, as we learn with them. In addition figuring out exactly where to place biomass on the ground has been a full conversation, as the biomass both helps with weed suppression but also makes clearing around young trees more challenging. These are the details which we will be playing with for years to come.
In summary, we are excited to keep learning about syntropic systems in the future and hope that this project can be a source of inspiration and learning for anyone else interesting in this realm. Come and visit the farm!
https://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/DJI_0056.jpg.jpeg15362048Scott Gallanthttps://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/RI-Logo-New.pngScott Gallant2021-04-08 04:32:242021-04-08 04:32:24Syntropic Agriculture: Cacao, Costa Rica, Case Study
En la visión de Bill Gates, la tecnología está destinada a arreglar todos los problemas de nuestro planeta y recientemente se ha añadido el cambio climático a la lista. Pero esta es la misma mentalidad que nos ha llevado a la etapa devastadora en la que nos encontramos actualmente, mientras que lo único que se mejora exponencialmente son los ingresos de las empresas que se aprovechan vendiendo estas propias tecnologías. Es necesario salir de esta histeria technofix para recuperar una visión holística basada en verdaderos agricultores, en alimentos sanos y nutritivos, y en un modelo agroecológico que no impacte el clima sino que, por el contrario, ayude a mitigarlo. Ninguna hamburguesa falsa podriá hacer esto. El último informe de Navdanya International, «Bill Gates & his Fake solutions to Climate Change (Bill Gates y sus falsas soluciones al cambio climático)», detalla los motivos por los que Bill y Melinda Gates intentan centrar el debate en tecnologías milagrosas y los verdaderos intereses que se esconden tras su propaganda.
Aunque las numerosas inversiones de Gates están aparentemente justificadas por una noble causa humanitaria y medioambiental, el informe muestra que en realidad le permiten imponer su estrategia tecnosolucionista mediante una influencia directa sobre todo tipo de protagonistas del desarrollo mundial.
Pero este juego de lucro multimillonario y asociaciones empresariales es aún más claro en uno de los fondos de inversión más destacados de Gates: Breakthrough Energy Ventures. Las empresas financiadas por Breakthrough están llenas de ex ejecutivos de DuPont, Monsanto, PepsiCo y Microsoft, lo que revela cómo las mismas compañías que provocaron nuestra crisis medioambiental y de salud nos venden ahora soluciones igualmente arriesgadas para los problemas que crearon en un principio.
El informe destaca una de estas supuestas «soluciones» técnicas a través del ejemplo de los alimentos sintéticos, que pretenden sustituir los productos animales por ingredientes altamente procesados, generalmente a través de la biología sintética. Los multimillonarios están invirtiendo mucho en este creciente sector: Solamente Gates ha invertido 50 millones de dólares en la principal empresa, Impossible Foods, y financia activamente a varias otras. La alimentación sintética se anuncia como una solución al cambio climático y a la degradación del medio ambiente, pero en realidad, la alimentación sintética tiene una huella de carbono siete veces mayor que las proteínas vegetales menos procesadas. La carne de origen celular también emite más gases de efecto invernadero que algunos productos de origen animal e incluso investigaciones recientes sugieren que, a largo plazo, su impacto medioambiental podría ser mayor que el del ganado. Lejos de acabar con el cambio climático o el hambre en el mundo, la comida falsa sigue dependiendo de un modelo agrícola industrial, basado en monocultivos, pesticidas tóxicos y transgénicos, que está destruyendo nuestros ecosistemas y amenazando nuestra salud. El informe también muestra cómo el patentamiento de estas tecnologías de producción de alimentos artificiales se ha convertido en un instrumento para la generación de lucro de las empresas y los multimillonarios, desplazando el poder de los agricultores hacia las empresas de biotecnología, mientras se ignoran por completo las soluciones que ofrece el movimiento de la agricultura regenerativa.
Estas innovaciones tecnológicas, que se ofrecen como las únicas soluciones a los problemas del mundo, garantizan una mayor concentración de modelos industriales fracasados, desviando la atención de los profundos cambios sistémicos que se necesitan para abordar las crisis a las que nos enfrentamos actualmente. No necesitamos seguir por el camino que ya está destruyendo nuestra salud y biodiversidad. En su lugar, tenemos la oportunidad de fomentar realmente un enfoque ecológico de la alimentación y la agricultura que pueda proporcionar una solución de largo plazo al cambio climático, además de asegurar la soberanía alimentaria. Diversas comunidades locales ya están haciendo la transición hacia esta vía ecológica y democrática, reclamando las semillas, los alimentos y el conocimiento como bienes comunes, al tiempo que tienen muy en cuenta la red de biodiversidad para proteger la Tierra y la salud humana. El informe pide el apoyo a esta transición y el rechazo de las falsas alternativas propuestas por los filantrocapitalistas y sus socios empresariales.
https://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/modified-1744952_1920.jpg12751920Navdanya Internationalhttps://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/RI-Logo-New.pngNavdanya International2021-04-07 09:52:232021-04-07 09:52:23Gates y los intereses detrás de las soluciones falsas al cambio climático
The budding farmer’s fondness for linking humans to the promise of the oft-disregarded ground beneath their feet spurred him to launch a social — and earthy — enterprise as a high schooler in metropolitan Washington, D.C.
Chander Payne
His hands-on effort to connect farming with homeless shelters and schools in underserved communities has thus far delivered 3,600-plus pounds of fresh vegetables to residents of local food deserts.
Payne, now in college, named his city-centric endeavor Urban Beet. The ambitious effort to connect students with gardening, families with real food and everyone with the soil was awarded a Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes in 2020, the year he graduated from Bethesda-Chevy Chase, a top-ranked high school in Montgomery County, Maryland. The Colorado-based nonprofit affiliated with the prize annually recognizes 25 young, inspiring and public-spirited leaders across the United States and Canada who have made a significant difference to people, their communities and the environment.
Payne was introduced to the concept of regenerative agriculture at a summer job where he learned how pesticides and tilling had severely disrupted the natural carbon-capturing ability of plants and soil microorganisms. Reversing those modern trends can mitigate climate change in at least a couple of ways. Healthy replenished soil can store carbon underground, offsetting some of the emissions from fossil fuel power plants and vehicles. Urban gardens can also reduce what’s known as the heat island effect when they replace asphalt and other heat-absorbing hard surfaces.
These lessons led him to see his surroundings as a garden that needs tending. Beyond food, he wants his farms to offer joy, empowerment and healing to children.
“My work has led me to see the world as a regenerative farmer, to be perceptive and empathetic,” said Payne, now a freshman at Williams College in Massachusetts, leaning toward a major in environmental studies. “I envision a world where I walk into underserved neighborhoods and see colorful beets and tomatoes growing — a world where every kid has a close relationship with living soil and fresh food.”
Urban Beet’s educational materials explain the basics of regenerative agriculture, how to harvest and tend to an urban garden, and the “magic of soil.” Credit: Chander Payne / Urban Beet / Courtesy
Urban Beet’s educational materials explain the basics of regenerative agriculture, how to harvest and tend to an urban garden, and the “magic of soil.” Credit: Chander Payne / Urban Beet / Courtesy
Chemistry teacher Christopher Knocke was part of the team that nominated Payne for a Barron Prize. Author T.A. Barron established the prize two decades ago to honor his mother, Gloria, who labored for years to create a nature museum at the Colorado School for the Blind.
Payne’s idea for Urban Beet sprouted as a single raised bed filled with soil, compost and seeds in his high school’s courtyard. It’s still thriving and has expanded to 200 square feet, with an additional solar-powered vertical farm.
Now, the 18-year-old is executive director of what’s evolved into an LLC fueled by donations. His team of young go-getters has constructed farms at three high schools in suburban Maryland and five at homeless shelters and related facilities in the nation’s capital and Delaware. Urban Beet plans to create 10 additional farms in Virginia and elsewhere around the region later this year.
“I am eager to continue investigating the relationship between the well-being of soil microbiomes, families and farming communities,” he said.
In an interview with the Energy News Network, Payne explained how and why food insecurity, urban heat islands and soil degradation in his own backyard inspired his passion for global soil health and the climate fight. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What prompted your interest in growing vegetables?
A: It all started when I noticed food inequality at my high school when I was a sophomore. My classmates who ate in the cafeteria, typically those without extra money to eat off campus, had french fries as their only vegetable. That motivated me to ask to see the school kitchen. When I looked into the vegetable refrigerator, it was empty. I took a photo to remember.
Credit: Chander Payne / Courtesy
Q: The photo evidently had an impact on you. What did you do next?
A: I wanted to address the disparity in access to nutritious food, so I created a partnership between a local rooftop garden and my school’s food pantry in 10th grade. Previously, the pantry provided families with canned food. Soon, needy families had access to 20 pounds of fresh produce weekly. Besides lettuce and tomatoes, the harvests include beets, kale, corn, chard, okra and spinach.
Q: Then, you decided to get your hands dirty. How did that work out?
A: I spent the summer of 2017 building vegetable gardens around the District of Columbia for Love & Carrots, a local company. That’s where I learned the practice of regenerative agriculture, farming techniques that build healthy soil by sequestering carbon in the ground.
Q: And that, literally, laid the groundwork for what is now Urban Beet?
A: Yes. As the school year began, my aspiration was to make urban farming accessible. I wanted to help marginalized young people grow food regeneratively while sharing the soothing mental escape that gardening provides.
Q: How did you find like-minded classmates to work in that courtyard garden at your high school?
A: It was challenging because soil is not the most thrilling topic to all 16-year-olds. But I eventually assembled a dedicated team of nine. We called ourselves the Avengers of Urban Farming.
One of our first partnerships was with the Homeless Children’s Playtime Project, a nonprofit. I invited them to receive produce by joining us on summer field trips to our regenerative farm. When we host community workdays at our farms, children enjoy their harvest as farm-fresh meals made by True Food Kitchen.
Q: You refer to soil as the silent hero beneath our feet. Why?
A: I have found the magic of soil. It connects everything, capturing carbon from the air and nourishing families. My love for soil is why my initial intention to fight food deserts through produce deliveries has transformed into a project connecting people with their environment and each other.
Q: You mentioned that your mentor from Paraguay at Love & Carrots, Manuel Rojas, showed you how to read plants as closely as scholars read texts. What does that mean?
A: I learned to relate the tiniest detail to the whole. For instance, a single wilted leaf on a sunflower can reveal a garden-wide need for water. Manuel’s lessons opened my heart and eyes as he inspired me to act with the compassionate vigilance of a regenerative farmer in other areas of my life.
Urban Beet’s Free Little Farms offered relief to struggling families during the coronavirus pandemic by offering portable container gardens. Credit: Chander Payne / Courtesy
Q: What are Free Little Farms, another offshoot of Urban Beet?
A: These windowsill planters, complete with soil, seeds and a note of support, are created for families and people experiencing homelessness during the COVID-19 pandemic. We partnered with homeless shelters and food pantries to distribute these portable container gardens and have donated 205 so far throughout the region.
Q: Does gardening or farming run in your family?
A: My “Namma,” or grandma, was my family’s original urban farmer. She grew up on a farm in Southern India where she grew food in harmony with the Earth. When she immigrated to America, she started growing a thriving garden.
Q: Lastly, you refer to yourself as a natural introvert. Did that make it hard for you to act on this project?
A: Nourishing young people with education and complete meals has taught me the beauty of courageous openness when communicating with others.
Alrededor del 68% de las tierras agrícolas del mundo (3,2 mil millones de hectáreas en comparación con 1,6 mil millones de hectáreas de tierras de cultivo) se utilizan para el pastoreo. La mayoría de estos paisajes no son aptos para el cultivo, sin embargo, son hogar para más de mil millones de personas que dependen del ganado que los pasta para su sustento. Estas áreas son a menudo algunas de las tierras más degradadas del planeta debido a la deforestación y a las prácticas inapropiadas de pastoreo.
Imagen cortesía de Richard Teague
La buena noticia es que hay una variedad de sistemas de pastoreo que han demostrado que regeneran estos ecosistemas, aumentando la cobertura del suelo, la biodiversidad, la materia orgánica del suelo, la capacidad de retención de agua y la capacidad de producción.
Pastoreo adaptativo multi-parcelas (AMP)
Uno de los métodos más exitosos para manejar las malezas y mejorar la productividad de los pastos es el pastoreo adaptativo de multi-parcelas (AMP). En muchos de los sistemas de pastoreo actuales, los animales no se mueven por diferentes pastizales y pasturas y esto causa el sobrepastoreo, ya que los animales se comen las especies que prefieren continuamente, incluso arrancándolas de raíz. Este sobrepastoreo elimina los pastos más nutritivos y permite que proliferen las malas hierbas y las especies invasoras. Existe una gran cantidad de sistemas de pastoreo que permiten que el ganado paste en exceso, dejando un suelo desnudo y expuesto que termina siendo erosionado por el viento y el agua. Gran parte de la degradación ambiental en las zonas áridas y semiáridas (que actualmente comprenden el 40% de las tierras del mundo) se debe a prácticas de pastoreo degenerativas.
Mediante el sistema AMP se rota una gran cantidad de ganado por potreros más pequeños o se delimitan áreas de pastoreo por períodos cortos, lo que los obliga a pastar absolutamente todas las plantas comestibles. El estar en masa (pastoreo en turba) obliga al ganado a comer todas las plantas comestibles, no solo sus especies preferidas, lo que resulta en un uso más eficiente del pasto.
La mayor densidad de población también asegura que las malas hierbas sean aplastadas y pisoteadas y que el estiércol sea pisoteado y esparcido por el suelo, actuando como fertilizante. Luego, los animales se trasladan a otro pastizal o potrero y se repite el proceso. Hay una rotación continua de pastoreo controlado en diferentes potreros, y los animales solo regresan al pastizal original cuando la hierba y la cubierta vegetal han vuelto a crecer.
La clave de los sistemas AMP son los períodos cortos e intensos de pastoreo que garantizan que los animales se coman menos del 50% del forraje disponible. Esto significa que la cobertura vegetal del suelo no formará muchas raíces y, en consecuencia, se recuperarán más rápidamente. La investigación muestra que estos sistemas producen mucho más alimento por hectárea, hacen un uso más eficiente de la lluvia y mejoran significativamente la salud y fertilidad del suelo. Las granjas administradas con sistemas AMP pueden tener más ganado por hectárea que aquellas con sistemas de ganado fijos.
Imagen cortesía de Christine Jones y Acres USA
Traducción imagen:
Uso del 50%: las raíces no dejan de crecer cuando se elimina el 50% de la planta.
Uso del 70%: con el 70% de la planta eliminado, el 50% de las raíces dejan de crecer por 17 días.
Uso del 90%: con el 90% de la planta eliminado, el 100% de las raíces dejan de crecer por 17 días.
Otro beneficio muy importante de estos sistemas rotativos es un mejor control de los parásitos internos. Es importante comenzar con el ganado limpio. La mayoría de los animales se infectan por los huevos de los parásitos presentes en el suelo desnudo. Al asegurarse de que el ganado nunca se coma más del 50% del área foliar, los ganaderos pueden evitar que la boca del ganado entre en contacto con los huevos de los parásitos. La otra técnica de gestión importante es conocer la duración del ciclo de vida de los
Imagen cortesía de Richard Teague
parásitos y no devolver el ganado a un potrero hasta que finalice su ciclo de vida. En algunos casos, esto requerirá un período de hasta tres ciclos de vida para garantizar que el potrero esté limpio.
Los investigadores han demostrado que los sistemas donde el tiempo de pastoreo es administrado de manera adecuada no eliminarán una sola planta y aumentarán la biodiversidad de plantas, animales, insectos y microorganismos nativos en el ecosistema agrícola.
Algunos de los ejemplos más exitosos de AMP utilizan múltiples especies de animales en sucesión, como el ganado de pastoreo seguido de ovejas y aves de corral, ya que cada una tenderá a comer especies diferentes.
Pastoreo AMP con ovejas (cortesía de Google Fotos).
El pastoreo rotativo también se está utilizando con muchas especies de aves de corral tanto para huevos como para carne. Incluir el pastoreo de pollos después del ganado es una excelente manera de esparcir el estiércol del ganado y de reducir las plagas y las malas hierbas, ya que los pollos se comen los insectos y las semillas de las malas hierbas. Los gansos también pueden ser muy útiles para controlar las malas hierbas. Se puede entrenar a los gansos chinos jóvenes para que coman malezas específicas dándoles estas malezas a los pichones cuando son muy jóvenes. Desarrollan el gusto por estas malas hierbas y se convierten en su forraje preferido. Los gansos los buscarán activamente y se los comerán por completo.
Pastoreo AMP con aves de corral jóvenes (cortesía de Google Fotos).
La evidencia publicada muestra que los pastos administrados correctamente pueden acumular materia orgánica del suelo más rápido que muchos otros sistemas agrícolas, y este carbono se almacena más profundamente en el suelo.
La investigación de Machmuller et al muestra que las prácticas de pastoreo regenerativo pueden regenerar el suelo y la cobertura del suelo en tres años. Los ranchos analizados aumentaron su capacidad de intercambio de cationes (disponibilidad de nutrientes) en un 95% y aumentaron su capacidad de retención de agua en un 34%.
Estos sistemas de pastoreo son algunas de las mejores formas de aumentar los niveles de materia orgánica del suelo. Machmuller et al señalaron que secuestraron 29.360 kg de CO2 por hectárea por año. Se trata de una enorme cantidad de dióxido de carbono que se extrae del aire mediante la fotosíntesis y se convierte en materia orgánica para alimentar el microbioma del suelo. Varios estudios muestran que la cantidad de CO2 secuestrado de la atmósfera es mayor que las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero de los sistemas ganaderos, lo que demuestra que aumentar el pastoreo regenerativo puede ayudar a revertir el cambio climático. Hay varios proyectos de créditos de carbono del suelo que están pagando a los agricultores y ganaderos por aumentar los niveles de materia orgánica del suelo.
El pastoreo regenerativo puede convertir la producción ganadera de ser uno de los principales contribuyentes al cambio climático a una de las mayores soluciones al cambio climático.
Hay muchas organizaciones agrícolas y de investigación involucradas en la ampliación de los sistemas de pastoreo regenerativo en todos los continentes cultivables. En la actualidad existe un corpus considerable de prácticas científicas y basadas en evidencia que muestran que estos sistemas regeneran tierras degradadas y aumentan la diversidad de especies de pastos, mejorando así la productividad, la capacidad de retención de agua y los niveles de materia orgánica del suelo. Existen numerosos libros, sitios web, grupos sociales en línea y organizaciones excelentes que pueden proporcionar información detallada sobre los sistemas más eficaces.
https://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/lomig-HHpRh6rNQMo-unsplash-scaled.jpg19202560Ronnie Cummins and Andre Leuhttps://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/RI-Logo-New.pngRonnie Cummins and Andre Leu2021-04-07 04:48:362021-04-07 04:49:25Pastoreo regenerativo: aumento de la producción, resiliencia de la biodiversidad, ingresos y una solución al cambio climático
One decade ago the United Nations Environment Programme predicted that in a worst case scenario, yearly global greenhouse emissions could reach 56 gigatons in 2020. And Rodale Institute’s paper notes that in 2018 total emissions approached this projection, reaching 55.3 gigatons. Global agricultural production accounts for roughly ten percent of these yearly emissions.
Despite this, Rodale Institute remains confident the world is already equipped with the tools it needs to achieve massive drawdown. The action paper assures that the technology necessary for a massive ecological rehabilitation is already available.
The paper defines regenerative agriculture as a set of farming practices that return nutrients to the earth and rehabilitate entire ecosystems, rather than depleting them. These practices include farming organically without synthetics and chemical sprays, diversifying crop rotations, cover cropping, and integrating livestock with rotational grazing.
And the Institute stresses the importance of incorporating these techniques into conventional farming in the hope that every farming model may make use of its most valuable tool: healthy soil.
The paper indicates that soil can contain three to four times as much carbon as the atmosphere or terrestrial vegetation. This implies that even small changes to the quantity of carbon stored in the soil can vastly impact levels of atmospheric carbon.
“There are very few cost-effective tools that work as well as the soil, that can be implemented across such a broad spectrum of topographies and cultures,” Jeff Moyer tells Food Tank. “We’d be amiss to not use this tool.”
Producers and consumers also have a key role to play. “If we don’t incentivize [regenerative agriculture] at the policy level, then we have to incentivize it from within the supply chain,” Moyer says.
Elizabeth Whitlow, Executive Director of the Regenerative Organic Alliance (ROA), says incentivizing regenerative farming and generating trust with shoppers may go hand-in-hand. In 2017, ROA created a certification, Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC), to incentivize regenerative practices from within the supply chain.
“We wanted to create a high-bar standard to demonstrate and clarify what regenerative can and should be: a holistic type of agriculture that regenerates resources and considers all players in the farm system, from the soil microbiome to the animals to the workers,” Whitlow tells Food Tank.
According to Whitlow, ROC surpasses what is required by most other certifications. To pass, farms must apply with a baseline of organic certification and meet strict requirements under each of ROC’s three pillars: soil health, animal welfare, and social fairness. Since its founding, the program has certified 15 brands through its pilot program, including Dr. Bronner’s and Patagonia Provisions.
Whitlow says brands will have a significant role to play in driving interest and investment in regenerative organic farming. While she believes consumers are ready to start making purchases in line with their values, producers may need a push from their supply chains.
“Growers operate on razor-thin margins,” Whitlow tells Food Tank. “To adopt regenerative organic practices, which carry more risk than chemical-intensive methods, growers need buyers that will pay a premium and commit long-term through the trials and tribulations of adopting new, innovative methods.”
https://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/bigstock-Young-Plant-Seed-Growing-Of-Sp-401586116-scaled.jpg17072560Julia Friedberghttps://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/RI-Logo-New.pngJulia Friedberg2021-04-06 06:48:372021-04-06 06:56:25The Rodale Institute’s Soil-Carbon Solution and the Future of Regenerative Agriculture
The filmmakers of The Seeds of Vandana Shiva are allowing for a FREE special stream through April 8th, 2021. CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT getting the film out into the world to build awareness around industrial agriculture vs regenerative farming and food.
Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., is a physicist and activist who works tirelessly to defend the environment and protect biodiversity from multinational corporations. Her life’s work has culminated in the creation of seed banks that may one day save future generations’ food sovereignty, but how she got there is a fascinating story, chronicled in the documentary “The Seeds of Vandana Shiva.”
Shiva, “a brilliant scientist” who became “Monsanto’s worst nightmare and a rock star of the international organic food movement,”1 grew up in a Himalayan forest, where her father, a forest conservator, carried out inspections. She would travel up to 45 miles a day with her father as a young girl, and as they traversed the forest he taught her everything about the trees, plants and herbs therein.
“We had a classroom out in the forest,” Shiva said, but her formal studies were done in a convent which, at that time, didn’t regard science as a subject fit for girls. Shiva wanted to study physics, though, and she was especially intrigued by Einstein and his connections of intuition with science. “Everyone has their favorite person that they want to be,” she said. “Einstein was the shaper of the dream of my life.”
A Search for Knowledge as a Whole
Shiva got a scholarship to attend Chandigarh University in Punjab, India, and from there she went on to the Bhabha National Atomic Research Center in Mumbai, India, for training in atomic energy. Later, her sister, a medical doctor, asked her about the health and environmental effects of nuclear technology and radiation.
As Shiva grasped the devastation nuclear energy had caused, she said, “I realized that a science that only teaches you how to modify nature without the understanding of what that modification does to the larger world is not a complete science.”
She gave up her idea of being a nuclear physicist and instead went looking for knowledge as a whole. She studied on her own, finding quantum theory, and while pursuing a Ph.D. in Canada, went to visit some of her favorite spots, including an oak forest she held close to her heart.
When she arrived, the forest had been cut down to make room for apple orchards, changing the entire microclimate in the area. The loss of something that she felt was a part of her impacted her deeply and set the stage for her environmental activism.
The Tree Hugging Movement Is Born
Shiva states that her involvement in the contemporary ecology movement began with the Chipko movement in 1973.2 The timber mafia were cutting down trees throughout the Indian Himalayas, taking away this precious resource from the rural villagers who depended on the forest for subsistence.
The government denied villagers access to the land and the lumber, while the logging companies cleared out forests, leading to problems with erosion, depleted water resources and flooding.
The villagers, primarily women, fought back in the best way they could, by physically embracing the trees to stop the loggers. Chipko is a Hindi word that means “to hug” or “to cling to,”3 and the movement spread, creating what became widely known as the tree hugging movement.
The women of Chipko taught Shiva how much women who hadn’t been to school knew about the interconnectedness of nature, but it took a major flood to make the government realize that what the women were saying was right. The revenue that came in from the forest logging was little compared to what they had to pay for flood relief.
In 1981, the government listened to the women and ordered a ban on logging in the high-altitude Himalayas, while tree hugging became a worldwide practice of ecological activism.
https://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/131895759_1848489708631683_7929587591472525392_n.jpeg6651182Dr Joseph Mercolahttps://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/RI-Logo-New.pngDr Joseph Mercola2021-04-06 05:27:452021-04-06 05:33:11The Seeds of Vandana Shiva
