European Food Innovation Alliance Launches €30M Regenerative Agriculture Initiative

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A coalition of food innovation organisations in Europe has recently unveiled the Regenerative Innovation Portfolio, a €30 million initiative aimed at advancing regenerative agriculture practices across the continent.

This collaborative effort, led by EIT Food – which is backed by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology – seeks to demonstrate solutions and facilitate partnerships within the agrifood value chains.

Unlike traditional approaches focusing solely on individual farms, the Regenerative Innovation Portfolio adopts a landscape-based strategy, tailored to local contexts. By identifying five priority landscapes across Europe, the initiative aims to foster collaboration among various stakeholders, including regional governments, investors and retailers.

EIT Food has committed €15 million to the Portfolio, with an additional €15 million expected from corporate partners over the next three years. This investment will support landscape initiatives, ecosystem development and inter-landscape learning within the community.

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Proponen en el Senado en México implementar agricultura regenerativa

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La senadora Geovanna Bañuelos de la Torre pidió poner en marcha un nuevo enfoque en el sector

La senadora Geovanna Bañuelos de la Torre presentó una iniciativa con el objetivo de que la Secretaría de Agricultura y Desarrollo Rural formule, conduzca y evalúe una política para el fomento e inversión de la agricultura regenerativa.

En el documento, que publicó en la Gaceta Parlamentaria del miércoles 20 de marzo, la legisladora del PT consideró que la mitigación del cambio climático va más allá de la descarbonización de la economía mundial.

Para ello, dijo, es indispensable cambiar radicalmente ciertas actividades, entre ellas la agricultura, “la cual representa la cuarta causa de emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero”.

Bañuelos de la Torre explicó que, para lograr este objetivo, es necesario regresar a ciertas prácticas, conocidas como agricultura regenerativa, que promuevan el menor uso de agroquímicos, la conservación de la materia orgánica, la humedad en los suelos y la biodiversidad, y que, por ende, cumplan con múltiples servicios ambientales.

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Agroforestry project sows seeds of hope in drought-hit Honduras

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Ivis Rene Cabrera no longer gazes up at the sky in hopes of rain to irrigate his field. He’s come to expect the long dry spells as northwestern Honduras grapples with increasingly longer periods of drought during the dry season.

Now, he and the rest of the Indigenous Tolupan community’s gaze is to the ground. Their hope lies in an agroecology project to revive the harvests on their typically fertile lands. Beans and corn, staple foods of the community, used to be bountiful in Honduras’s Yoro department, before they were hit by severe droughts.

“We used to produce 10-12 cargas [1,400-1,700 kilograms, or 3,000-3,700 pounds] each, and now we cannot cultivate the crops anymore in many parts of Yoro. The drought-led crop failure has led many people to migrate to other areas in search of better livelihood opportunities,” Cabrera says.

In 2021, to build community agricultural resilience to climate hazards in Yoro, Spain-based NGO Ayuda en Acción and its Honduran partner, FUNACH, introduced an initiative where 1,669 people, almost equal parts women and men, participated in multiple synchronized strategies to help them adapt to hazards like droughts.

Agroforestry in particular has helped Cabrera find his way back to the fields.

“We have now begun harvesting all year around as we cultivate different foods. The support that we received in building water systems helped us experiment and harvest new crops like leafy greens and avocados. It helps bring food to my table,” Cabrera tells Mongabay.

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Source: Mongabay | by Sonam Lama Hyolmo

Everglades to Gulf Conservation Area Founded with Seven Acres Donated by Paul Gray

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Source: Audobon.org

In March of 2024, the “Everglades to Gulf Conservation Area” became the newest unit in the National Wildlife Refuge system. As the 4-million-acre conservation area is protected with acquisitions, easements, and landowner incentive programs, it will protect wildlife corridors, enhance access to outdoor recreation, and bolster climate resilience.

To kickstart the conservation process, Paul Gray, PhD, rancher and Everglades science coordinator at Audubon Florida, donated seven acres of land to the Everglades to Gulf Conservation Area.

We chatted with Dr. Gray to learn more about his hopes for conservation in the region.

Q. When did you first become involved in ranching in Florida?

A. I came to the University of Florida in 1988 to do my dissertation on Florida’s Mottled Duck, our endemic version of the Mallard. I worked extensively on ranches because that is where most Mottled Ducks live and I developed an in-depth appreciation for what resources ranches have.

Vineyards Are Laying the Groundwork for a Regenerative Farm Future

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March 18, 2024 | Source: Civil Eats | by Lisa Held

On a cold, rainy day in late February, it’s hard to picture the bunches of juicy cabernet and chardonnay grapes that will decorate the Vineyards at Dodon’s neat rows of gnarled vines come summer, the fruit ripening in the hot sun.

But even during these dormant months, across 17 rolling acres just 30 miles east of Washington, D.C., the landscape is filled with life.

Long, diverse grasses blanket the ground around and between the vines. In one section, two dozen vocal sheep munch happily on those plants, leaving their waste to stimulate regrowth up and down the aisles. Three acres of meadows provide habitat for insects. A petite blue bird darts across the horizon, flitting between a few of the 600 diverse young trees—loblolly pines, hazelnuts, and plums among them—that are just establishing themselves around and within the perimeter.

This is what Tom Croghan means when he says that, “under the right conditions,” grapevines are especially good at executing nature’s most common magic trick: absorbing carbon dioxide from the air during photosynthesis and then depositing it far below ground, hopefully for a long while. “We can pay [to create those conditions],” says Croghan, Dodon’s co-owner, “because we can use a byproduct of that system to produce wine.”

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Regenerative Agriculture: A New Value Proposition for Kenya’s Coffee Sector

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Coffee productivity in Kenya has been on the decline, putting over 1.5 million households, majority smallholders, at risk of losing their means of livelihoods. Between 1990 and 2020, Kenya’s acreage under coffee declined by 30%, from 170,000 to 119,000 hectares. Even worse, production dropped by 70%, from 129,00 to 40,000 Metric Tonnes. The prices of coffee have recently plummeted to as low as Ksh 20 per kilogram of cherry compared to the expected minimum of Ksh. 80 per kg, causing an uproar among the farmers, majority of whom are smallholders. The current productivity of coffee averages 475 kilos per hectare compared to 970 kilos per hectare recorded in 1963.

The low productivity can be attributed to weak coffee sector and extension systems, declining soil health, poor coffee management, adverse climatic conditions and low global coffee prices compared to a high cost of production.

The Government of Kenya has embarked on plans to revive the coffee sector through various coffee sector structural and market reforms.

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Cultivar la tierra para combatir el cambio climático y resistir la sequía

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La sequía y la revuelta campesina, dos asuntos muy vinculados a la emergencia climática y a la tierra, llevan varias semanas en el centro del foco mediático. ¿Hay alguna forma de que el dañado sector primario sea precisamente quien impulse la mitigación del cambio climático? Sí, impulsando un cambio en el modelo de producción de los alimentos. Dejar atrás el sobrepastoreo, la agricultura intensiva y la deforestación para poner la salud del suelo y de la naturaleza en el centro del sistema, lo que llamamos agricultura regenerativa. Para fomentar este modelo agrícola, el CREAF arranca el proyecto Regenera.cat con financiación de la Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca (AGAUR); una iniciativa de dos años que combinará la experiencia de 4 fincas de Cataluña que llevan varios años implantando la agricultura regenerativa en vid, huerta y árboles frutales, entre otros.

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Report Calls for Agroecological Rethink of Africa’s Food Amid $61b Industrial Plan

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Civil society groups have criticized a new $61 billion initiative to industrialize African food systems, calling the plan a “significant threat to small-scale farmers.” The groups, under the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), say the initiative by the African Development Bank (AfDB) will marginalize smallholders through its one-size-fits-all approach, increase dependency on multinational corporations for seeds and agrochemicals, and lead to the loss of land and biodiversity.

“The emphasis on principal commodity crops, mechanized farming tools, and standardised land tenure systems condenses the practices into a uniform effort aimed at agro industrialization,” AFSA said in a report.

The “Feed Africa: Food Sovereignty and Resilience” initiative was born out of a two-day summit held in January 2023 in Dakar, Senegal, where representatives of various African governments, the private sector, multilateral organizations, NGOs and scientists met to discuss pressing food issues on the continent. Rates of undernourishment in sub-Saharan Africa are roughly at the same levels since 2005 figures, jumping after the COVID-19 pandemic, while a rapidly growing population is putting more pressure of food resources and production.

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Transforming Agriculture: Inaugural EU Carbon Farming Summit Breaks Ground for Climate-Resilient Practices

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As global environmental challenges intensify and the calls for sustainable agricultural solutions grow louder, the first EU Carbon Farming Summit prepares to welcome experts, innovators, and thought leaders from across Europe to discuss innovation and opportunities for carbon farming. Scheduled to take place in Valencia, Spain, from 5 to 7 March 2024, the summit promises to be a pivotal moment in the pursuit of sustainable agriculture and climate resilience.

Hosted by Project CREDIBLE, EIT Climate-KIC and SAE Innova, the EU Carbon Farming Summit will unite diverse stakeholders — from farmers, to policymakers, environmentalists, and technology experts — to explore innovative techniques that can boost the adoption of carbon farming practices.

The event is a first step in building an EU-wide community of practice for all those motivated by sustainable agricultural soil management. It will showcase everything from regenerative farming approaches to cutting-edge monitoring technologies and will illustrate opportunities to approach agriculture differently.

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Report calls for agroecological rethink of Africa’s food amid $61b industrial plan

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March 7, 2024 | Source: Mongabay | by Aimee Gabay

Civil society groups have criticized a new $61 billion initiative to industrialize African food systems, calling the plan a “significant threat to small-scale farmers.” The groups, under the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), say the initiative by the African Development Bank (AfDB) will marginalize smallholders through its one-size-fits-all approach, increase dependency on multinational corporations for seeds and agrochemicals, and lead to the loss of land and biodiversity.

“The emphasis on principal commodity crops, mechanized farming tools, and standardised land tenure systems condenses the practices into a uniform effort aimed at agro industrialization,” AFSA said in a report.

The “Feed Africa: Food Sovereignty and Resilience” initiative was born out of a two-day summit held in January 2023 in Dakar, Senegal, where representatives of various African governments, the private sector, multilateral organizations, NGOs and scientists met to discuss pressing food issues on the continent. Rates of undernourishment in sub-Saharan Africa are roughly at the same levels since 2005 figures, jumping after the COVID-19 pandemic, while a rapidly growing population is putting more pressure of food resources and production.

To address these challenges, the AfDB published agricultural development plans for 40 countries, known as country compacts, which are made up of concrete national policies, incentives and regulations to boost investments across the agricultural sector. Most of this financing would come from national governments and private sector partners, including seed companies, food giants such as Nestlé and Kellogg’s, as well as funds from the AfDB itself, amounting to $1.7 billion in 2022. This initiative is the latest itineration of big industrial agriculture solutions in Africa, which have a track record of failing on their own terms.

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