As the Great Plains Disappear, a Path to Better Farming

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Author: Peter Carrels | Published: June 29, 2017 

Gabe Brown’s 5,200-acre farm and ranch in central North Dakota practically straddles the 100th meridian, the line that historically divided Eastern lands that were farmed from the drier Western lands that were grazed by livestock.

That geographic boundary, of course, has always been somewhat blurry. But in recent years, row-crop agriculture on an industrial scale has pushed the dry line westward. Modern sod-busting has gobbled up vast expanses of native grasslands, markedly enlarging the nation’s corn and soybean acres.

Critics watched this happen but weren’t able to quantify the ecological alteration. Now, an analysis issued by the World Wildlife Fund, Plowprint Report, confirms just how extensively the American Great Plains has been transformed. The Great Plains region, the short and mixed-grass portion of the North American prairie, includes lands from the Canadian border east of the Rocky Mountains, between Great Falls, Montana, and Fargo, North Dakota, and stretching south to Texas — some 800 million acres in total.

Destruction of the Eastern portion of the continent’s prairie region — the tallgrass part — was caused by conversion to corn and soybean fields and is nearly complete. Less than 1 percent of the original tallgrass prairie ecosystem survives. The Plowprint study reveals that since 2009, more than 53 million acres of prairie on the Great Plains has been plowed and converted to corn, soybeans and wheat.  That figure — an area that equals the size of Kansas — represents about 13 percent of the estimated 419 million acres of Great Plains grasslands that had survived in its native condition.

Fortunately, stewardship models show how farming can be less damaging and more sustainable. For example, Brown changed the way he managed his land after suffering four years —1995 to 1998 — of hail and drought. Nearly broke and lacking access to capital to buy seeds and chemicals, Brown re-examined his approach to farming. Finding that his soils had dramatically deteriorated through conventional farming practices, he started avoiding tillage and now relies on cover crops, perennial grasses and a diversity of income streams. When many of his neighbors plowed pastures to plant corn, Brown did the opposite, reducing row crops from 2,000 acres to 800 acres and re-vegetating 1,200 acres back into prairie. His operation also emphasized grazing and grasses instead of growing annual grains.

“It’s not easy to admit that I farmed the wrong way for many years,” Brown said. “But we’ve completely weaned ourselves from government programs, stopped using synthetic fertilizers, minimized herbicide use, and in the process enriched and even built our soils.”

Keeping roots in the ground became his mantra, and that meant growing cover crops and indigenous grasses. He began measuring moisture retention and monitored microbes in the dirt. Soon he had a name for his soil stewardship: Re-generative agriculture.

On land still planted to row crops, Brown saw his yields rise, outpacing his county’s averages by 20 percent. He began selling grass-finished livestock and nutrient-dense eggs, honey and other produce directly to consumers. He grazed cattle, sheep and hogs on dozens of carefully rotated pastures. The operation included 1,000 pastured laying hens.

“We can feed the world better food by maintaining healthy soils,” declared Brown. “The destruction of perennial grasses to grow subsidized crops like corn and soybeans is a travesty.”

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Conventionally Farmed Land Is Literally Dirt Poor. A Vermont Couple Has Set Out to Change That.

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Author: Bonnie Blodgett | Published: June 23, 2017 

When Jesse McDougall and his wife, Cally, took over the Vermont farm Cally’s Aunt Edie had operated for decades, what they’d envisioned as a profitable business venture turned into a rude awakening.

Learning the ropes of running a conventional farm taught Cally and Jesse some hard truths about nature they hadn’t anticipated. They kindled a suspicion. Could farming have had a hand in why Edie had died of a brain tumor at age 56?

The couple decided to take the farm cold turkey. No more chemical fertilizers. No more pesticides and herbicides. No more tilling to reduce weeds, either, and no more tiling to encourage water to drain more quickly into unprotected lakes an streams after a hard rain.

The result was disastrous. The soil turned dry and gravelly. It was prone to washouts. Edie’s once-lush fields weren’t able to produce much of anything except weeds.

The farm had suffered the same fate as she had, the McDougalls believed. All that man-made chemistry had, for all intents and purposes, cost the soil its ability to fight off disease on its own. Eventually the living organisms that sustain life had perished in the chemical onslaught.

Unwittingly, just by following the advice of the local farm bureau and the university extension service and the companies from whom she’d purchased seed, Edie had deprived her farm of its self-sufficiency by depleting its most precious resource, the carbon-rich soil made up of decomposed organic matter that maintains a healthy balance of interdependent organisms.

She had robbed her land of its ecosystem. Quite possibly, she had also shortened her own life.

Jesse and Cally had two choices: either they could invest in sprays and seeds, knowing they’d be leaving their own kids worse off down the road, or they could stay the course, risking bankruptcy, and slowly bring the farm back to life.

They thought of the farm as an addict. Withdrawal is slow and brutal. But once they’d connected the dots from Aunt Edie’s premature death to the weeds, the web kept getting wider and the dots denser. Soon they were looking at the world in a whole new way. A lot of problems they’d thought of as unrelated — from algae blooms to avian flu — came together in a single word that encompasses both the problem and the solution.

The word is regeneration.

Since then they’ve taken the word to the Vermont legislature. If passed, Senate Bill 43 would establish a statewide regenerative soils program. It is sponsored by the Soil4Climate Advisory Board, one of whose members is Jesse McDougall.

“Years of chemical treatment and tillage damaged our soil and the fertility of our farm,” he says, “essentially making us dependent on more chemicals and tillage in order to produce crops. This led to our decision to practice regenerative farming, including the use of planned grazing, which we soon realized was a better alternative to conventional agriculture — ecologically and economically.”

Looking at the pros and cons made their decision a no-brainer: Nice profits for a few more years vs. having to live with the knowledge of what those nice profits would cost down the road. The role of carbon sequestration in slowing climate change cinched it. Carbon’s release from the soil through conventional agriculture is one of the leading causes of global warming. Regenerative farming holds promise for allowing the carbon in the atmosphere to come back to earth where it belongs. Some experts say that changing the food system is the single most important thing humans can do — more game-changing even than harnessing renewables for energy — to alter the current and inevitably catastrophic course of climate change.

“We don’t have a ‘climate change’ problem,” McDougall has written on his blog. “We have a broken carbon cycle. There’s too much carbon moving up (greenhouse gases) and not enough carbon moving down (depleted soils, erosion, unhealthy food, droughts, floods, and so on). There’s no more nor less carbon than ever before … it’s just in the wrong place. … For farmers, foresters, landowners, and land managers everywhere, the direct action to take is clear: simply change your land management policies to leverage techniques that put more carbon into the ground than they release to the atmosphere — no-till, cover crops, mulching, livestock rotation, etc.”

There are other benefits, too, lots of them. “This will not only sequester atmospheric carbon,” McDougall explains, “but it will also improve the fertility of the soil and therefore the yield and quality of the land’s crops.” That’s because “when soil loses its carbon through decades of plowing and the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, it is no longer able to retain nutrients that instead flow into rivers and lakes, causing the algal blooms we’re now seeing.

“This bill provides an incentive to farmers to rebuild the soil ‘sponge’ above Lake Champlain and across the state — keeping water and nutrients uphill and in the soil where they belong.”

This is the problem Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton has been trying to address through legislation that would require conventional farmers to set aside some of their land for plants that might slow farm runoff — mainly natives with long roots that hold soil in place. Conventional farmers say they can’t afford regeneration, not now, with farm prices low.

It’s a catch-22, of course, as the McDougalls know all too well. You can’t have it both ways. Farm prices are low because conventional agriculture is a self-contained system that penalizes long-term maintenance of soil, air and water. Small tweaks like Dayton’s buffer zones won’t make this system sustainable. Small tweaks in our economic model can make a difference, however. Capitalism is an efficient system, but without regulatory tools and monetary incentives that balance business interests with community interests it is a menace to society.

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Living Soils: The Role of Microorganisms in Soil Health

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Author: Christopher Johns | Published: June 20, 2017 

Soil fertility comprises three interrelated components: physical fertility, chemical fertility and biological fertility. Biological fertility, the organisms that live in the soil and interact with the other components, varies greatly depending upon conditions and it is highly complex and dynamic. It is the least well-understood fertility component. In addition to soil fertility, soil microorganisms play essential roles in the nutrient cycles that are fundamental to life on the planet. Fertile soils teem with soil microbes. There may be hundreds of millions to billions of microbes in a single gram of soil. The most numerous microbes in soil are the bacteria, followed in decreasing numerical order by the actinomycetes, the fungi, soil algae and soil protozoa.

Analysis

Introduction

In July 2015, FDI published a Strategic Analysis Paper entitled Under Our Feet: Soil Microorganisms as Primary Drivers of Essential Ecological Processes. Since the publication of that article there has been a moderate trend toward the study of soils holistically rather than the detailed study of soil components in isolation.  Holistic study is particularly pertinent to an understanding of soil microbiology. Microorganisms are not only directly influenced by fundamental soil characteristics such as moisture, oxygen and chemistry but also by each other in both beneficial and predatory ways. By becoming holistically aware of the fundamental importance of soil organisms and then developing and understand how biological processes in soil are influenced by changes in the soil environment, we can learn how to manage soil in a way that enhances the benefits provided by soil organisms.

The information to follow draws largely from the referenced title above. It is present here to outline the complexity and variety of soil microbiology and to propose a more holistic approach to soil research and management.

Soil fertility, or its capacity to enrich natural and agricultural plants, is dependent upon three interacting and mutually dependent components: physical fertility, chemical fertility and biological fertility. Physical fertility refers to the physical properties of the soil, including its structure, texture and water absorption and holding capacity, and root penetration. Chemical fertility involves nutrient levels and the presence of chemical conditions such as acidity, alkalinity and salinity that may be harmful or toxic to the plant. Biological fertility refers to the organisms that live in the soil and interact with the other components. These organisms live on soil, organic matter or other soil organisms and perform many vital processes in the soil. Some of them perform critical functions in the nutrient and carbon cycles. Very few soil organisms are pests.

Of the three fertility components, it is the microbiological element, the rich diversity of organisms such as bacteria, viruses, fungi and algae that form interactive microbial communities, that are the most complex and, paradoxically, the least well-understood. A near decade-long collaboration between the CSIRO and the Bio-platforms Australia company ranks the understanding of soil microbial communities as important as mapping the galaxies in the universe or the biodiversity of the oceans. It provides an opportunity to discover new species currently unknown to science. Soil microbial communities underpin the productivity of all agricultural enterprises and are primary drivers in ecological processes such as the nutrient and carbon cycling, degradation of contaminants and suppression of soil-borne diseases. They are also intimately involved in a range of beneficial and, at times essential, interrelationships with plants.

Definition

Soil microbiology is the study of organisms in soil, their functions and how they affect soil properties. Soil microorganisms can be classified as bacteria, actinomycetes, fungi, algae, protozoa and viruses. Each of these groups has different characteristics that define the organisms and different functions in the soil it lives in. Importantly, these organisms do not exist in isolation; they interact and these interactions influence soil fertility as much or more than the organism’s individual activities.

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UN Warns Human-caused Soil Contamination Threatens Global Food Security

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Published: June 27, 2017 

Soils are polluted due mostly to human activities that leave excess chemicals in soils used to grow food, the United Nations reports.

Excess nitrogen and trace metals such as arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury can impair plant metabolism and cut crop productivity, ultimately putting pressure on arable land, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on 23 June informed. “When they enter the food chain, such pollutants also pose risks to food security, water resources, rural livelihoods and human health.”

The issue took centre stage at the Fifth Plenary Assembly (PA) of the Global Soil Partnership (GSP) held at FAO headquarters in Rome this month.

“Soil pollution is an emerging problem, but, because it comes in so many forms, the only way we can reduce knowledge gaps and promote sustainable soil management is to intensify global collaboration and build reliable scientific evidence,” said Ronald Vargas, a FAO soils officer and Secretary of the GSP.

“Combating soil pollution and pursuing sustainable soil management is essential for addressing climate change,” said for his part Rattan Lal, President of the International Union of Soil Sciences, in his keynote address to the Plenary Assembly.

Tackling human-caused problems through sustainable practices will mean “more change will happen between now and 2050 than during the 12 millennia since the onset of agriculture,” he added.

The GSP Plenary Assembly is a unique, neutral and multi-stakeholder platform to discuss global soil issues, to learn from good practices, and to deliberate on actions to secure healthy soils for an effective provision of ecosystem services and food for all,” said Maria Helena Semedo, FAO Deputy Director-General, Climate and Natural Resources. “Action at the country level is the new frontier.”

The Plenary Assembly endorsed three new initiatives aimed at facilitating information exchange: the Global Soil Information System; the Global Network of Soil Laboratories, set up to coordinate and standardize measurement across countries; and the International Network of Black Soils, launched to increase knowledge about the world’s most fertile agricultural soils, which are also known for their high carbon content.

Soil Pollution Under Scrutiny

Around one-third of the world’s soils are degraded, due mostly to unsustainable soil management practices. Tens of billions of tonnes of soil are lost to farming each year and one cause is soil pollution, which in some countries affects as much as one-fifth of all croplands, the UN specialised agency reports.

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Our Land. Our Home. Our Future

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Author: Monique Barbut | Published: June 17, 2017 

We all have dreams. For most of us, those dreams are often quite simple. They are common to individuals and communities all around the world. People just want a place to settle down and to plan for a future where their families don’t just survive but thrive.  For far too many people in far too many places, such simple dreams are disappearing into thin air.

This is particularly the case in rural areas where populations are suffering from the effects of land degradation.  Population growth means demand for food and for water is set to double by 2050 but crop yields are projected to fall precipitously on drought affected, degraded land.

More than 1.3 billion people, mostly in the rural areas of developing countries, are in this situation.  No matter how hard they work, their land no longer provides them either sustenance or economic opportunity. They are missing out on the opportunity to benefit from increasing global demand and wider sustained economic growth. In fact, the economic losses they suffer and growing inequalities they perceive means many people feel they are being left behind.

They look for a route out.  Migration is well trodden path.  People have always migrated, on a temporary basis, to survive when times are tough. The ambitious often chose to move for a better job and a brighter future.

One in every five youth, aged 15-24 years, for example is willing to migrate to another country. Youth in poorer countries are even more willing to migrate for a chance to lift themselves out of poverty. It is becoming clear though that the element of hope and choice in migration is increasingly missing.  Once, migration was temporary or ambitious. Now, it is often permanent and distressed.

Over the next few decades, worldwide, close to 135 million people are at risk of being permanently displaced by desertification and land degradation.  If they don’t migrate, the young and unemployed are also at more risk of falling victim to extremist groups that exploit and recruit the disillusioned and vulnerable.

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As Climate Change Threatens Food Supplies, Seed Saving Is an Ancient Act of Resilience

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Author: Sarah van Gelder | Published: June 25, 2017 

On Feb. 26, 2008, a $9-million underground seed vault began operating deep in the permafrost on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, just 810 miles from the North Pole. This high-tech Noah’s Ark for the world’s food varieties was intended to assure that, even in a worst-case scenario, our irreplaceable heritage of food seeds would remain safely frozen.

Less than 10 years after it opened, the facility flooded. The seeds are safe; the water only entered a passageway. Still, as vast areas of permafrost melt, the breach raises serious questions about the security of the seeds, and whether a centralized seed bank is really the best way to safeguard the world’s food supply.

Meanwhile, a much older approach to saving the world’s heritage of food varieties is making a comeback.

On a recent Saturday afternoon, a group of volunteers in the northern Montana city of Great Falls met in the local library to package seeds for their newly formed seed exchange, and to share their passion for gardening and food security.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen to our climate in the future,” said Alice Kestler, a library specialist. “Hopefully, as the years go by, we can develop local cultivars that are really suited to the local climate here.”

For millennia, people the world over have selected the best edible plants, saved the seeds, and planted and shared them in sophisticated, locally adapted breeding projects that created the vast array of foods we rely on today. This dance of human intelligence, plant life, pollinators, and animals is key to how human communities became prosperous and took root across the planet.

The Great Falls Library Seed Exchange is continuing that tradition even while a modern agribusiness model works to reduce the genetic diversity of our food stocks and consolidate control over the world’s seeds. Six seed companies now control three quarters of the seed market. In the years between 1903 and 1983, the world lost 93 percent of its food seed varieties, according to a study by the Rural Advancement Foundation International.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that giant agribusiness companies have no interest in the vast varieties and diverse ways people breed plants. It is hard to get rich off of an approach based on the distributed genius of people everywhere. Such a model doesn’t scale or centralize well. It is intensely democratic. Many people contribute to a common pool of knowledge and genetic diversity. Many people share the benefits.

Making big profits requires scarcity, exclusive knowledge, and the power to deny others the benefits. In this case, that means the appropriation of the knowledge built up over generations, coupled with the legal framework to patent seed varieties and punish those who fail to comply.

Especially in a time of climate change, though, genetic diversity is what we need to assure food security and resilience.

The Great Falls Library Seed Exchange is on the second floor of the library, which sits less than a mile from the Missouri River. Climb the brick building’s big, central staircase, and you can’t miss the brightly painted seed catalog. Borrowers are encouraged, but not required, to save some of the seeds and return them to the library for others to plant.

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What You Wear Matters! Quick Guide to Organic Cotton

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Published: June 23, 2017 

Press Release

CONTACT: Donna Worley Director of Marketing Communications and Public Relations +1.806.577.0652 (U.S. Central) Donna@TextileExchange.org Textile Exchange, publisher of the Organic Cotton Market Report, releases Quick Guide to Organic Cotton, an overview of the positive impacts of organic cotton, including frequently asked questions and supporting facts that indicate organic cotton is the preferred fiber choice compared to its chemically produced counterpart. “The Quick Guide to Organic Cotton, highlights the benefit of organic production as a pathway to restorative, resilient and regenerative landscapes and communities,” notes La Rhea Pepper, the Managing Director of Textile Exchange. “Cotton production has evolved over the last 15 years,” Pepper said, and “greater awareness of the health, economic and environmental benefits of organic farming practices by farmers and buyers has influenced corresponding improvements in many cotton production systems, including the input intensive practices of chemically grown cotton.” According to its Preferred Fiber and Materials Market Report, Textile Exchange reports that adoption of preferred cotton production methods has grown to 8.6% of the cotton market but organic cotton, in general, continues to have the lowest environmental impacts. Textile Exchange’s Quick Guide to Organic Cotton includes the latest research from expert sources to create a comprehensive resource for the industry and media. The current research work reveals three top reasons to support the expansion of organic cotton agriculture:

  1. The Health and Environmental Impacts of Pesticides Must Be Acknowledged in a Comparison of Organic and Chemically Grown Cotton Production.

According to the USDA’s National Organic Program, organic farming is defined as: “the application of a set of cultural, biological, and mechanical practices that support the cycling of on-farm resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity. These include maintaining or enhancing soil and water quality; conserving wetlands, woodlands, and wildlife; and avoiding use of synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, irradiation, and genetic engineering.” Organic cotton is grown without the use of toxic and persistent pesticides or fertilizers while chemical cotton is dependent on both. According to the Pesticide Action Network UK, “cotton crops cover 2.4% of the world’s cultivated land but use 6% of the world’s pesticides, more than any other single major crop.” There is an overwhelming body of research showing higher incidents of serious diseases and development problems from exposure to agricultural chemicals or physical proximity to chemical-based farming communities. The Agricultural Health Study, funded by the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, is one of the largest ongoing health studies with over 89,000 participants from farming communities and reveals higher incidents of cancer (including prostate cancer), Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, thyroid disease and asthma.

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Video: Restoring Paradise

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Published: June 14, 2017 

Regenerative agriculture offers a future for the sustainable farming of meat in line with nature’s needs, by using holistic grazing and organic/biodynamic practices and even sequestering carbon in the soil – so important in the fight against climate change. At Mangarara, in New Zealand’s beautiful Hawke’s Bay, Greg Hart and his family are in the process of restoring 1500 acres of land conventionally farmed for over 150 years into the paradise it once was.

Focusing on diversity of animals, plantings and practices they are creating not only a beautiful landscape but also a beautiful place for animals and people to live and thrive. Holistic grazing keeps the grass long in order to build soil biology, sequester carbon, reduce fossil fuel inputs and keep animals naturally healthy. The neighbouring farmers might think it’s a wasteful practice, but as Greg says in the film, “Waste is a human concept. Nature doesn’t do waste.”

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California Farmers Creating Healthier Soil to Help Battle Climate Change

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Author:Wilson Walker | Published: June 7, 2017

California farmers and researchers are helping rethink approaches to climate change by reworking traditional farming practices.

At Green String Farm in Sonoma County, Bob Cannard grows produce for some of the most celebrated restaurants in California.  “The soil is the foundation of all life, and it can hold so much carbon, and produce so much bounty,” says Cannard, walking through fields that might look overgrown.

This ground cover explosion, however, is entirely by design, because the life and death of these weeds will bring new life to this dirt.  “It doesn’t all burn out in one year,” says Cannard. “You build carbon into your soil.”

That’s the big idea California will now invest in, moving carbon out of the atmosphere and back into our soil.  This summer the state of California will spend seven million dollars encouraging farmers to embrace practices that would make their soil more carbon absorbent.

It’s just a trial program, but the practices that are being encouraged have already been adopted by many climate-conscious farmers.  “The atmospheric carbon, bringing it in and doing positive things with it instead of frivolous or negative things,” explained Cannard, who has embraced the idea of so-called carbon farming for decades.

“I love that soil is becoming part of the story line, that people are saying the word out loud,” said a beaming Kate Scow, soil scientist with the University of California, Davis.  Near the town of Winters, Scow and a team of researchers are conducting a 100-year study on how land responds to different farming practices.

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Mexico’s Native Crops Hold Key to Food Security – Ecologist

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Author: Sophie Hares| Published: June 13, 2017 

Mexico’s ancient civilisations cultivated crops such as maize, tomatoes and chillies for thousands of years before the Spanish conquerors arrived – and now those native plants could hold the key to sustainable food production as climate change bites, said a leading ecologist.

José Sarukhán Kermez, who helped set up Mexico’s pioneering National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO) 25 years ago, said that analysing the genetic variability of traditional crops, and supporting the family farmers who grow most of the world’s food offered an alternative to industrial agriculture.

“We don’t need to manipulate hugely the genetic characteristics of these (crops)… because that biodiversity is there – you have to just select and use it with the knowledge of the people who have been doing that for thousands of years,” said Sarukhán, CONABIO’s national coordinator, in a telephone interview.

The emeritus professor and former rector of the National University of Mexico (UNAM) recently won the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, often referred to as a “Nobel for the Environment”.

Making use of the knowledge held by indigenous groups is “absolutely essential”, Sarukhán told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

That requires working with a wide range of people, from local cooks to small-scale farmers, especially in states like Oaxaca and Chiapas in the south of Mexico where indigenous farmers have a strong traditional culture, he said.

“They haven’t gone to university, and they don’t have a degree – but they damn well know how to do these things,” he said. For example, they discover and incorporate new knowledge as they exchange seeds with peers from different areas.

CONABIO is hoping to win some $5 million in funding from the Global Environment Facility for a five-year project worth more than $30 million to speed up research into indigenous crops.

The aim is to enrich the commission’s vast online database of biodiversity, with a view to influencing national agricultural policy, said Sarukhán.

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