Is Soil the Great New Integrator?

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Author: Lisa Palmer | Published: March 28, 2017 

Carlos Hernando Molina pressed his boot onto the shovel and the blade cut into the earth. He rocked the handle, turned over the clump of soil, and fingered the dirt to point out the worms, bugs and plant fibers as the soil crumbled.

His land was alive. Worms twisted and beetles scurried to hide. Microorganisms were there, too, but you couldn’t see them working to help plant fibers decompose, making the soil ready to supply nutrients to roots. The shovel-full of soil was the definition of healthy, but it didn’t always look this way.

Much of the agricultural land devoted to grazing cattle around Molina’s farm in Latin America—and pastures in the U.S.—does not look like his, which contain tree-lined fields that are planted with dense layers of shrubs, grasses, and ground cover. Open grassland or vast acres of monocrop land is more the norm.

But the open land is susceptible to the loss of topsoil from wind and heavy rain, the loss of moisture from increasing cycles of drought, and a decline in nutrients that crops need to grow. In coastal areas, soils are increasing in salinity. In parched areas, it’s blowing away.

Farmers, researchers and development agencies are all increasing their focus on soil. Globally, change in the way land is used and managed puts pressure on soils to do more. Farmers are growing more monoculture crops; rotating them less; and leaving behind pesticide residues, polluted waters from fertilizer run off, carbon loss, and depleted aquifers.

Molina and other farmers I’ve met with over the years are bucking the trend. Their attention to soil has been a business decision, leading to increased production and yields, and has helped them withstand weather extremes.

It’s catching on: In a recent survey, insight from 2,020 farmers from across the United States reflected enthusiasm for cover crops to help improve soils—for the fourth year in a row—and found a yield boost in corn and soybeans following cover crops.

In West Texas, for example, Barry Evans has not plowed his fields in 20 years. By leaving the dried stubble in the fields where he grows sorghum and cotton, he said he “banks the water,” describing how he retains moisture from precious droplets of rain. By not tilling the fields, the residue from cotton, sorghum and wheat grown as a cover crop has created an organic mat that protects the soil from wind and shatters rain drops as they fall, gently dispersing the water and allowing it to filter into the aquifer.

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How to Cultivate a Career in Regenerative Agriculture: Interview with TGI’s Ethan Soloviev

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Ever thought about starting a business or building a career in regenerative agriculture? Prepare to get creative—and to get some dirt under your fingernails.

Ethan Soloviev is a founding team member of Terra Genesis, an international regenerative design consultancy. He helps create resilient and profitable businesses by redesigning supply chains to make them regenerative.

How did Soloviev find his way to his current career? Let’s just say that the guy who in his early 20s traveled the world to study apples, didn’t exactly follow a linear career track.

In this interview with Regeneration International, Soloviev covers several topics related to regenerative agriculture, including what types of experiences you might want to get under your belt if you’re contemplating a career in the fast-growing field of regenerative food, farming, and natural products.

Interview: March 3, 2017
This interview has been edited for brevity and readability.

Regeneration International (RI): Tell us about yourself.

Ethan Soloviev (ES): I’m a designer at Terra Genesis International. We grow th e field of regenerative supply by working with companies around the world to transform supply chains into networks of resource production. I am also the EVP of Research for HowGood, which assigns sustainability ratings to food, personal care products and cleaning products. We’re working to change the overall direction of the marketplace, and also to empower consumers to purchase and choose the best products that they can.

RI: How did you build your career in regenerative supply networks, agriculture and design?

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Ethan and his wife Dyami pruning in their 28-acre permaculture orchard in New York.

ES: It’s been 15 years now. I did a degree in biology and afterwards I traveled around the world studying apples. I visited some amazing places—Sweden, Kazakhstan, Japan, New Zealand, Chile, Central America—and I got to see a global picture of how apples are grown. That really woke me up to agriculture and the damage that monoculture chemical industrial agriculture systems around the world are doing. That led me to permaculture. I took a Permaculture Design Course (PDC) and started a permaculture business back in 2005. I grew that business (AppleSeed Permaculture LLC) for a decade. It’s still one of the largest Permaculture Design businesses in the northeast of North America.

We started doing small-scale edible landscapes and eventually built up to larger design work, doing 300-1200-acre farms. I learned a lot about farm design and startup. People would often say, “It’s great to create food forests and ponds and biointensive vegetable gardens but it’ll take time, investment and energy to get this going—can it really make a return?” So we started running the numbers. We schooled ourselves very quickly in agronomics, and built a series of enterprise budgets to check if an enterprise was going to be economically viable. We found that a lot of the brilliant ideas of permaculture need to be checked against the economic reality of whatever place you’re working in to see if there’s something that can be sustained beyond the initial excitement.

RI: Right, the big question in the regeneration movement right now is “how do we scale regenerative agriculture?”

ES: It’s interesting, I go back and forth about whether “scaling” regenerative agriculture is the right thing to do. Part of me really wants to do it and wants to do it as fast as possible. It’s early and we’re heading towards the birth of a new industry. The supply of regenerative goods and massive landscape restoration that regenerative agriculture enables can produce multiple forms of profit. So it is exciting to think, “How fast can we scale this?”

However, another part of me has a different perspective. Regenerative agriculture is not a machine. We’re actually seeking to regenerate whole living systems. All of the language in the startup and venture capital communities is derived from a mechanical paradigm, where “scaling” means adding more machines to do more of the same work. Humans, and landscapes, are not machines. So I don’t think “scaling” is the appropriate metaphor for regenerative agriculture.

At the same time, I think now is a moment when we can and should work to quickly grow the community. How can we reconcile the two perspectives?

RI: What are the biggest gaps in knowledge in the movement right now that young people looking to get into the industry could fill?

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Walkers Quarry, agroforestry regeneration

ES: The biggest gap is investable enterprise —enterprises that have proven business models that actually capture carbon in the soil, increase biodiversity and generate financial capital returns. Proven business models and experienced teams will be required to metabolize the slow money and venture capital that is out there looking for a place to land.

Most of what I see in the regenerative movement is big ideas and excitement but not a lot of reality about how to pull off those ideas. That’s another big gap. There are many things that we can do to create enterprises worth investing in. Whether we’ll see exponential or linear or logarithmic growth, I’m not sure, but I do believe that working with the current system ofaccepting investment capital is going to be the fastest route to move forward and set the foundation for the real birth of a new industry.

The movement needs people who have depth of knowledge in what they’re doing. We need people who have experience running and growing businesses, or who want to go and get that experience. Even more, we need people who can do the farming. People who can actually get out there and run a holistic management livestock operation with multiple species on multiple pieces of land, who can successfully repair the land and grow food. We also need people with experience growing nut trees and fruit trees—perennial crops have already proven to be profitable, and they are our best bet for rapid global carbon sequestration. Then we need to integrate the two, bring together livestock operations and perennial tree crops—that’s where the fun really starts.

RI: For people who don’t have that in-depth knowledge or experience, where should they start?

ES: People would do well to hone in on what they’re really excited about. If it’s nut crops, great! Go for that. If it’s animals, great! Go for that. If a number of people can get depth in these functional farming enterprises and collaborate with other people who have gone and acquired the business skills along the way, that will lead to the creation of new enterprises. We could call this integrative depth. We’re really going to need teams of people working together to move regenerative agriculture forward.

I think we need about 1000 companies to really take this on. The restraint and challenge with that right now is that there are only about 10 businesses that have even said that they want regenerative supply systems. Those companies are great. Some of them are large and moving in this direction quickly. But there aren’t enough.

The 1000 companies need to be a combination of one, existing companies who agree to pick up and take on regenerative agriculture, transform their supply systems into regenerative supply, and two, new ventures with totally fresh perspectives, drawing from fresh investment sources.

RI: What is TGI doing to get those other 990 companies on board? And how does that relate to developing your client base?

ES: Terra Genesis focuses primarily on the natural products industry—food, consumer packaged goods and cosmetics. The exciting thing for our clients is there’s actually a real business case for regenerative agriculture. We carry out risk assessments where we look at a company’s supply chain, which includes all of the ingredients in their portfolio whether it’s 5 or 500. Then we ask, “What are the risks right now?” “What are the opportunities?”

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A TGI design: Walkers Reserve Sand Quarry Regeneration

A lot of times the opportunities come from where a company is purchasing from of the commodities marketplace, whether it’s cocoa butter or citric acid or almonds. We hone in on those and look for ways to go directly to producers who are really pushing the edge on regenerative practices. By cutting out the multiple middle-people that are implicit in the commodity supply chain you can get prices that are similar or even better, while simultaneously offering real living and cultural capital profits on the ground for farmers. There are actual cost saving potentials in doing this inside a supply chain! And then we help our clients leverage the story of doing this.

Businesses that take a step in this direction, especially now, they get to be leaders. They’re early adopters and they will fully shine at the top. Patagonia, Nutiva, Lush Cosmetics and Epic are all talking about regenerative agriculture. They have real leadership in the marketplace.

Fortunately there’s a lot of room in a lot of different categories for businesses to step up and head towards regenerative agriculture.

RI: Which categories have the most potential right now?

ES: Cosmetics. Cleaning products. Sunscreen. Clothing. In food, there are so many opportunities! I don’t think there’s a potato chip company that is doing regenerative agriculture yet. How about an ice cream company? Tea. Soda. Almonds. Any kind of fruit. Olive oil. Salt. Bread. Beer. In any category brands are always looking for ways to position themselves as #1 (that’s one of the immutable laws of marketing). I think regenerative agriculture is a powerful tactic for this—it almost creates a new category for brands to step into and lead.

RI: What are your top favourite design courses that you recommend, to help people build the right skills to work in this industry?

ES: If you’re new to this realm, take a Permaculture Design Certification (PDC). You can do that while working your job that you don’t really like, at a bank or at a software company. The reason I say that is that while it is useful to grow and build skills in certain practices, what’s more useful if you want a career in regeneration is to evolve your paradigm. To do this, you have to disrupt your current paradigm. The PDC will do that. PDCs are an emersion in ecosystem thinking and whole systems design. Go get the certification. It’s a great start.

The next level of depth I recommend is taking a REX course from Regrarians, which is really the best training in regenerative agriculture that’s out there. In the past our team has run Carbon Farming Courses, and we’ll be re-starting some carbon farming education later this year. Also excellent would be any trainings in holistic management, from Savory Institute, or Holistic Management International. They’re different, but both are good.

RI: After taking some of these training courses, what next?

ES: Go work on a farm. You need to actually work, and then ideally manage a perennial agriculture or an agroforestry or a livestock-based system. If you’ve got a great idea and are trying to go out there and pitch people on it and get venture capital to fund an idea, unless you have proven experience and a proven business model, it’s not really going to work.

Go get some experience! Dig in. Spend a year or two on the farming side of things actually farming and producing food or fiber. You could also explore growing crops for the personal care industry. There’s something very interesting about growing for personal care: the margins are much better than they are in food. And for single ingredients (e.g. essential oils or nut butters), if you’ve got a really good story, then you can gain leadership and sales.

L’Oreal has a plan to be carbon negative by 2020. It’s one of the five largest personal care companies in the world. They’re going to need to be purchasing fair trade regenerative agriculture products in order to meet that. But there’s not enough supply for that anywhere on the planet. Maybe 1/1000th of it currently exists. So get to work!

RI: What about supply chain management courses or MBAs to complement on-the-ground experience?

ES: I’m a big fan of on-the-job learning and training. There’s one masters degree I highly recommend, from Gaia University, that allows on-the-job training. It’s accreditation is through a global action learning system that encourages people to be working at their jobs while learning and getting accredited while they do it. You could for example do an online supply chain optimization course while working for a personal care or food products company, and get credit for it.

As for an MBA, while I’m not 100 percent sure, I’m going to go ahead and say, “yes.” We need some people who are excited about regenerative agriculture to go get an MBA and report back on how useful it’s been. As we discussed earlier, I think there’s a danger in getting addicted to the “scale or die” mechanical model so popular in current business. It looks nothing like how natural systems actually work. Make sure to take your PDC as you do your MBA. Or volunteer on a local organic farm every weekend to keep it real. If there’s anybody who’s got an MBA who wants to play in this realm, let’s go for it, I’d love to talk to them and hear their experiences. I haven’t seen MBA graduates turn into leaders of regenerative enterprises or regenerative agriculture systems (yet). But I would love to!

There’s an upswell of venture capital seeking to invest in regenerative enterprises but I don’t think there’s enough farm businesses that are ready. I think this asymmetry of demand and supply has emerged partially because it’s easier to invest money than it is to farm. Overall, I think the abundance of capital is a good thing. I see it as an activating force in this whole situation. For example, Renewal Funds, Cienega Capital, Sonen Capital are doing excellent work to grow the field. There’s also a handful of family offices that are investing in some of the few regenerative agriculture enterprises that are ready for investment. So there are examples to learn from and work from… but still a ways to go.

RI: What kind of resources people should prioritize studying?

ES: Dirt and trees. Chickens and cows. Spend time in forests. Follow the closest stream to the top of the watershed. Those are really the best “resources.”

Online resources are great for quickly getting content and gaining intellectual capital, but what’s more important is taking the intellectual capital and grounding it into experiential capital. I stopped going to organic farming conferences four years ago because I realized I had gathered more intellectual capital than I had put into use. When I can really and truly say that I’ve put everything I’ve learned into practice, then I’ll go back for more.

That said, there is a difference between gathering informational content and growing your ability to vision, design and execute. There is always room for growth in these realms—especially if we are aiming to regenerate whole living systems. To work here, you need to engage in a community of practice. Ideally, it’s one that can disrupt your current paradigm and help you evolve a new one. And then disrupt your paradigm again.

RI: What “communities of practice” do you recommend?

ES: There are two communities of practice that are effective in this realm. The one I’m closely linked to is the Carol Sanford Institute and the Regenerative Business Summit. Carol Sanford is an incredible mentor and guide and she’s been working in this realm for four decades. Her lineage coined the term “regenerative” more than 40 years ago and put it to work inside companies like Procter & Gamble, Colgate Palmolive and Clorox. She’s now working with companies like Google on whole-systems paradigm shifts. Her school is amazing. Joining is by invitation only. You’ve got to make a real human connection with someone who is in the school. Being part of the school is not easy. It’s disruptive, intellectually confronting and definitely not a “comfortable” experience. That said, I would be happy to talk with anyone who wants to learn more.

There is also a simpler path. If you are the leader of a business and you want your company to be one of the 1000 that will move the world, then you can apply to come to the Regenerative Business Summit. It happens every year, in the fall, in Seattle. It’s an amazing event to get a sense of what a new paradigm of work looks like, and feels like. If you want an effective path towards regenerative business, this is a good place to start.

The other group that I recommend is Regenesis. They offer a series called “The Regenerative Practitioner,” which leads to connection with an international community of practice that’s putting the regenerative paradigm to work. It’s more focused on design, architecture and development but there’s great learning you can get there that can be applied to regenerative agriculture.

If you want to head into business, check out the Carol Sanford Institute and Carol Sanford’s books, especially for case studies. The Responsible Entrepreneur is really amazing. Her two books, the Responsible Entrepreneur and the Responsible Business actually should be called the Regenerative Entrepreneur and the Regenerative Business but the publishing company (many years ago) basically thought that nobody would know what the word means… so they’re called responsible but they’re really about regeneration. They’re the best books out there on the subject.

RI: I remember being introduced to Regenesis in Mexico City last year. They ask you to commit to attend several workshops, at least four.

ES: It’s an amazing group, definitely worth attending—but as I said, not necessarily “easy.” It’s important to commit over time, because regeneration takes a while to get going. It takes some time to disrupt your paradigm so that you can step into a new one. It takes some disturbance in a landscape for a the soil to start holding water and growing trees and really regenerating. JJust going to a one-off workshop, you may get some inspiration. Reading a bunch of things on the internet, you may get some cool ideas. But committing to a school of practice that’s actively working on regeneration is a whole different world.

RI: One of the feasible ways to scale up or help the movement grow is to help others replicate frameworks that are working. Is TGI thinking of doing that, of helping other people do what you’re doing?

ES: TGI is definitely growing and adding new clients and team members rapidly. If you want to come engage, let us know. Formal education to train other consultants to do what we do doesn’t really make sense yet. I could see that potentially happening in the future. If anyone is interested in learning how TGI is working with clients, contact us and we’ll look for an opportunity where there’s space to play. Anybody can always come work with us if they bring a client.

I want to push back against the idea of “replicating” as a goal. This stems from that same perspective of a mechanical paradigm. TGI doesn’t do the same work with any client, ever. Every business is a unique business that has its own essence that we reveal. Nobody else has it. And if a company can use that, grasp it and work with it, then they become non-displaceable in the marketplace. There is a process that we use that has internal coherency from one client to the next, but it isn’t “replication”. Part of regenerating whole living systems is that, like real natural systems, you never do the same thing twice.

RI: It’s really skills for facilitating businesses through a process.

ES: Yes, but no. Do you know what the root word of facilitate is?

RI: Facil. To make easy.

ES: We don’t always make it easy for our clients. Making it easy isn’t always the right thing to do. Of course we have to “facilitate” from time to time, but our main work is more in what we call “resourcing.” Resourcing is supporting businesses and executives to re-source themselves: To become the source of their own fresh thinking. This is not based on trends in the marketplace or customer surveys. Using whole living systems frameworks, it is based on their own image of what’s emerging in the world and how to head in that direction. That is not an easy process. People don’t like doing it. Most businesses aren’t willing to do the hard work it takes to be regenerative.

When TGI works with a company we ask people there to commit for a good chunk of time, usually our contracts are three to five years, because it takes that long to break out of old ruts and really disrupt and innovative. Like the personal growth and development we discussed before, it requires commitment over time.

RI: Any closing words you’d like to add?

ES: You originally asked “how do you find a career in regenerative agriculture?” You can’t. They don’t exist. You have to go make them. And that means you’re either, one, growing an integrative depth of experience in particular area that you have connection to and real commitment for and then start your own company, or two, figuring out how to contribute value to an existing business that is heading in that direction.

RI: Anything else?

ES: Let me just make a quick note about NGOs and nonprofits. They’re great, there are lots of them and there are more NGOs talking and thinking about regeneration than there are businesses currently—for example Kiss the Ground, The Carbon Underground, Carbon Drawdown, Savory Institute, Soil Carbon Coalition, Green America, Biodiversity for a Livable Climate, International Living Future Institute, Holistic Management International, Regenerative Agriculture Foundation, Rodale and of course Regeneration International. All these organizations are doing excellent work and we partner with them wherever appropriate. That said, TGI has the belief that business is the most effective route through which large systemic world changes can occur. Therefore, we focus on business.

So… go get that integrative depth! Join a company that’s headed in this direction or start your own. The key is not to focus on the “practices” of regenerative agriculture, but instead to disrupt, shift and evolve your paradigm and continue to do that in an ongoing way. If we have enough people doing it and taking their own unique paths to do it, then we can head towards that 1000 companies focused on regenerative agriculture. When we do that we’ll be well on our way to birthing a new industry, and that’s really what I think is the bigger direction here for anyone interested in having a career in regenerative agriculture and regenerative supply. We have to think big and beyond what’s currently there and work together, intensively, quickly to make it real.

Learn more about TGI:
Terra-genesis.com

Can Organic Cotton Become as Mainstream as Organic Food?

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Author: John Ewoldt | Published on: March 25, 2017

MINNEAPOLIS | Organic cotton textiles register no more than a footnote in the world’s cotton production, but Vishal Naithani wants to change that.

His company, Sustained Organic Living in suburban Minneapolis, selects certified organic cotton grown in India with non-GMO seeds. The products are made using only fair trade labor on the farms and in the factories.

The challenge for Naithani and his company, which is known as Sol Organics, is to be able to create the level of interest among consumers for organic apparel that has been generated for organic food. For now, his chief weapon is price: He aims to price his products significantly lower than his online competitors and on par with high-quality bedding that is not fair trade organic.

“Every family should have access to affordable organic cotton just like they have access to affordable organic food,” he said. “It shouldn’t be only the wealthy who can afford premium products.”

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Market Rejection of GMOs Grows — Four-Year Plan to Topple Toxic Agriculture

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Author: Dr. Joseph Mercola | Published: March 26, 2017 

Our annual GMO Awareness Week is upon us, and in this interview, Ronnie Cummins, founder of the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) details the current state of the opposition to genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

We first met about six years ago, when we collaborated to create the direct ballot initiative to label GMOs in California.

A lot has happened since then, including the passing of what’s colloquially known as the Deny Americans the Right to Know (DARK) Act, ironically misnamed “The Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act” — this despite a full 90 percent of consumers supporting mandatory labeling.

The Trump administration has also selected or appointed notorious cheerleaders for GMOs and factory farms to his cabinet — Mike Pompeo as head of the CIA, Sonny Perdue as USDA Secretary, and Rick Perry as Energy Secretary.

Meanwhile, his Tea Party allies in Congress have called for the abolition of the entire National Organic Program!1

On the upside, in 2016 we saw, for the first time in nearly 20 years, a decrease in the amount of genetically engineered (GE) crops grown around the world, in terms of acreage.

As noted by Cummins, “This represents the fact that this technology is failing, in the sense of superweeds and superpests are popping up all over the world.” In the U.S., three-quarters of farmers growing GE crops like soybeans, corn or canola are having problems with these herbicide- and pesticide-resistant pests.

Market Rejection of GMOs Has Grown

Even more importantly, consumers around the world have become aware of the many problems associated with GE crops and the toxic herbicides and pesticides used on them, and do not want any of it on their plates.

In other words, the market has started rejecting GMOs, and that’s what we’ve been fighting for all along. Nothing can or will change unless consumers apply pressure in the form of refusing to buy GMOs.

In the European Union (EU), which is the biggest agriculture market in the world, few if any GMOs are found on supermarket shelves.

In the U.S. — despite industry spending hundreds of millions of dollars to manipulate market preference — about 40 percent of Americans still believe GE foods and GE ingredients are dangerous. Another 20 percent are unsure whether GMOs are dangerous or not.

“This combination of consumer rejection and, basically, Mother Nature’s resistance, has caused a drop-off,” Cummins says. “I think this is the beginning of the end of at least this generation, the first generation, of GMO crops.

Now, industry is saying, ‘Don’t worry about the fact that we’re using more and more toxic pesticides and herbicides … Don’t worry about these pests spreading across the fields. We’ve got a new generation of GMO crops where we can just do gene editing.

We don’t have to pull some DNA from a foreign species and haphazardly splice it into a corn or a soybean crop.’

But the bottom line is that this gene-splicing and this so-called new gene editing are unnatural processes that disrupt the genetic structure, the natural workings of living organisms. These aren’t going to work either.”

Organics and Grass fed Are Increasing in Popularity

Worldwide, we’re also seeing strong growth in organics and grass fed farming and ranching. In the U.S., the organic sector grew 11.5 percent in 2016. Grass fed grew about 50 percent. In France, organics grew by 20 percent.

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Mitigation Update: Agriculture and Soil Management in the Spotlight

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Author: Jennifer Allan | Published: March 23, 2017 

Recent news has put agriculture and soil management in the spotlight, as soil is shown as a crucial carbon reservoir, and agriculture is responsible for a significant share of New Zealand’s emissions. This Update features these and other developments, that relate to the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13 (climate action).

Soil management could “make or break” climate change mitigation efforts, according to a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO). Plants and other organic residues absorb carbon and keep it in the soil, creating a reservoir of carbon, that, according to FAO, could be re-released back into the atmosphere by rising temperatures and other disturbances. The report recommends better information and good practices to help end hunger (SDG 2) while adapting to and mitigating climate change (SDG 13). The report was launched at the Global Symposium on Soil Organic Carbon where Fijian president Jioji Konousi Konrote warned that “if we fail to maintain our soils as a carbon reservoir, I am afraid that these discussions and negotiations [for the Paris Agreement] would have been in vain.” [FAO Report] [FAO Press Release]

To help countries develop agricultural strategies in the context of climate change, the UNFCCC and the FAO signed an agreement that facilitate the cooperation. The agreement will include policy advice, data sharing and promotion of access to knowledge by agricultural smallholders. It will also facilitate capacity building and sharing technical expertise between the staff of the UNFCCC, FAO and developing countries’ representatives.

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Our Current Food System Is Broken and Unjust—we Need a Paradigm Shift That Values Nutrition As a Human Right

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Author: Dr. Robert Biel | March 22, 2017

There is a sense that the world food system has reached an impasse. Hunger afflicts at least an eighth of the world population, mostly in the global South, but also in the North where austerity policies—which respond to crisis by prioritizing the interests of the wealthy—leave working people hungry. What is even more serious is that even this damaged ‘food security’ cannot be guaranteed into the future. International institutions now recognize that something fundamental must change, a realization embodied in the notion of paradigm shift and further concretized in the form of sustainable intensification.

Such recognition is all the more significant since, for most of its history, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) tended to be somewhat unwilling to offend corporate interests. Within the UN system it was mostly the two successive Special Rapporteurs on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler and Olivier de Schutter, who pushed for a more radical and systemic critique. The latter notably placed his authority behind agroecology, a term that implies bringing farming back to an understanding of natural systems, and that forms an important point of reference for this book.

A landmark in official critiques of the ruling food paradigm was the publication of Save and Grow, A New Paradigm of Agriculture—A policymaker’s guide to the sustainable intensification of smallholder crop production, which argued specifically for a revitalization of small farms and a recognition of their dignity and essential contribution. Expanding on this, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) further stated: “The world needs a paradigm shift in agricultural development: from a ‘green revolution’ to an ecological intensification’ approach. This implies a rapid and significant shift from conventional, monoculture-based and high-external-input-dependent industrial production towards mosaics of sustainable regenerative production systems that also considerably improve the productivity of small-scale farmers. We need to see a move from a linear to a holistic approach in agricultural management, which recognizes that a farmer is not only a producer of agricultural goods, but also a manager of an agroecological system…”

This and similar statements embody a welcome reflection on what the shift may entail: terms like ‘mosaics’ and ‘regenerative’ imply a change in how we think, moving away from linear and reductionist approaches and towards a systems perspective.

These ideas are stimulating. Nevertheless, we should ask whether the new paradigm is correctly framed. Not everyone, even among those critical of the old paradigm, would accept that it is, particularly the assumption that the answer is ‘intensification,’ which could imply a merely quantitative solution and contradict the more qualitative issues raised. Indeed, the notion of a ‘new paradigm’ entered the debate quite some time ago, precisely in relation to quality issues. The emphasis on quality arose as a critique of earlier mainstream policies, targeting mainly quantity, which often were critically labelled ‘productivist’ and were typified by the now-discredited Green Revolution in which hybrid crop strains were bred only for quantity of yield.

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Sink It or Lose It: The Carbon Trade-off

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Author: Rolf Sommer | Published: March 20, 2017 

In the race to keep climate change in check, our soils are an important ally. A natural carbon sponge, they represent the earth’s largest terrestrial store of this essential, life-giving element.

And if we’re to meet the climate targets laid out in the Paris Agreement, then we must take advantage of the ability to sink carbon in soil, especially because this can offset harmful greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere.

But while we’re at the forefront of understanding how to make the most of soils to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, our research shows that we’ve still got a way to go before we can realize the full potential of long-term carbon storage – or carbon sequestration.

Before anything else, we need to be realistic about how much carbon our soils actually can store, how long this will take, how this changes from region to region, and how much this would contribute to climate change mitigation.

Evidence is improving and research advancing, but we still don’t have enough data. Not surprisingly, many aspirations are based on quite a bit of guesswork.

At the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), we have found that even using the best soil management techniques known to science, we can’t seem to store enough carbon – if any – to put a notable dent in global emission figures.

Yet what we do know is that carbon is being lost from soils, especially in the humid tropics, where there is a high turnover of the organic matter in which carbon is found. So we need to focus on reducing – and avoiding – carbon losses before we talk about carbon storage, or sequestration.

One of the contributors to carbon loss is tilling the soil, a common activity on most smallholder farms in developing countries. Here, only very small amounts of organic matter – from crop residues, manure or compost – are dug back into the soil, as these resources are usually in short supply.

It’s a tall order to call on African smallholders to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and build carbon in the soil when food insecurity, drought and other challenges are looming. For them, harvesting food – to eat or sell – is the number one priority. And, these farmers already contribute very few emissions to start with, paling in comparison with large commercial farms.

But our research shows that little changes could have tremendous impacts. For instance, quantifying the climate smartness of best soil protection and restoration practices in Kenya, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, India and Benin revealed that there are methods that can sustainably intensify farming systems without adding to greenhouse gas emissions.

If we can convince farmers to adopt small soil conservation practices, we can slow carbon loss down significantly, quickly and without too much effort. The bottom line is that we need more sophisticated management practices than the ones being advocated right now, since sustainable and smart cropping systems have not yet been widely adopted.

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The Business Case for Soil

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Author: Jess Davies | March 15, 2017 

Nobody likes dirty business, but the business world must get to grips with dirt. Soil provides food, fibres and fuels, and regulates water resources and climate. Yet most businesses are unaware that their bottom lines depend on soil; nor are they aware of the risks they face from its degradation. More must recognize that improving soil quality is a smart investment.

One-third of all soils and more than half of agricultural soils are moderately or highly degraded. Erosion, loss of organic carbon, compaction and salinization reduce soil’s fertility and ability to hold moisture1. Every year, we damage another 12 million hectares — an area the size of Bulgaria — through deforestation, overgrazing, intensive farming, urbanization and pollution2. Climate change and biodiversity loss exacerbate soil problems. Yet global needs for food and resources are rising as populations grow, lifestyles shift and the world transitions to a low-carbon economy.

Many businesses in the agricultural and forestry arenas, and some in the food sector, describe the measures they’ve taken to reduce soil impacts in their sustainability reports. Most others do not. Soil is vital to all industries that use plant or animal products in their supply chains, from fashion to pharmaceuticals and, increasingly, energy. Insurers and investors have a stake — when crops fail, they lose money, commodity prices rise and operations are disrupted.

Businesses are aware of the risks of climate change: more than 900 companies petitioned President Donald Trump for the United States to stay in the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Extreme weather, water scarcity, natural disasters and climate change were listed in the top five risks in terms of impact in the World Economic Forum’s 2017 Global Risks Perception Survey. Soil cuts across all these environmental concerns but was not mentioned.

If the private sector is serious about sustainability and commitments to climate change, it must take action on soil. In collaboration with researchers, businesses should advocate for international legislation, assess their soil risks and impacts and invest in maintaining and enhancing this resource.

Buried treasure

Soil’s invisibility in the boardroom is the result more of unfamiliarity than apathy. For instance, last October, I ran a session on the risks and opportunities that soil presents at the annual meeting of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), a chief-executive-led forum of more than 200 multinational companies. Participants from across the accounting, agriculture, chemicals, engineering and food sectors said that they were surprised to learn of soil’s roles beyond agriculture.

Water regulation is one function in which business has a stake. Soil moisture is crucial for rain-fed agriculture, which accounts for three-quarters of human usage of fresh water3. Soils that are compacted, eroded or lacking in organic material hold less water. This increases the likelihood of floods and the impact of droughts, and intensifies competition for water resources. Water scarcity is widely acknowledged as a major risk to the global economy4: in 2016, droughts and shortages cost businesses US$14 billion5. The contributions of soil to water problems and its potential for mitigating risks are uncertain, however.

Water-intensive industries such as beverages, mining and energy are taking action in the catchments where they operate. For example, the Coca-Cola Company has been working with wildlife charity WWF and communities to maintain irrigation channels in Nepal, remove invasive sugar cane from the banks of Rio Grande and reforest in Mexico to improve water availability6. It should also look at protecting local soils by, for example, reducing disturbance and promoting conservation agriculture.

Climate risk and mitigation is another area in which businesses underappreciate soil’s potential. It is the largest global reservoir of organic carbon. Land-use change and poor soil management have resulted in a loss of 42–78 gigatonnes of carbon from soils over the past century7. The majority was emitted as carbon dioxide. This compares with 450–600 gigatonnes of anthropogenic carbon emissions since the industrial revolution.

Sustainable land management can reverse this trend by increasing the amount of carbon stored in soils. On 21–23 March, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) will hold the first Global Symposium on Soil Organic Carbon. The aim is to review the role of soils in climate change and integrate the issue into the regular assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

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Soil Management Could Make or Break Climate Change Response Efforts

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Published: March 21, 2017 

Warning of “colossal” negative impacts for the environment and human societies if the massive stores of carbon trapped in the Earth’s soils are released, Fijian president Jioji Konousi Konrote called for stronger management of this critical natural resource at the start of an international symposium today.

There is currently more carbon locked up in just the first meter of the planet’s soils than can be found in the atmosphere and all terrestrial plant life combined, he said during his keynote address to the Global Symposium on Soil Organic Carbon (21-23 March).

Referring to international commitments to limit global temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius made under the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, Konrote warned: “If we fail to maintain our soils as a carbon reservoir, I am afraid that these discussions and negotiations would have been in vain.”

“We cannot afford to neglect a resource that could be our serious and viable ally against climate change,” he added.

Fiji and other small island developing states are on the front lines in the battle against climate change. The government of Fiji is poised to assume the presidency of the next Conference of Parties of the UN Climate Agreement that will take place in in Bonn, Germany, in November.

FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva in his remarks stressed that beyond their critical role as a carbon sink, healthy soils underpin multiple environmental processes upon which humankind depends and which are the foundation of global food security.

“Soils with high organic carbon content are likely to be more fertile and productive, better able to purify water, and help to increase the resilience of livelihoods to the impacts of climate change,” he noted.

This means that improving the health of the planet’s soils and boosting their organic carbon content is critical to achieving several of the international development goals established by the UN’s 2030 agenda, especially the second goal of eradicating hunger and malnutrition, FAO’s Director-General said.

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Ben Hewitt: A Groundswell for Agricultural Change

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Published: March 10, 2017 

When I was a young boy, I traveled every summer to the Iowa farm where my mother was raised. There, my grandparents grew hundreds of acres of corn and soy. It was not the biggest farm in Iowa, not by a long shot, but it was plenty big enough. I remember standing at the edge of a cornfield, gazing toward the horizon, trying to discern where the field ended. And failing. I remember riding in the combine with my grandfather at harvest time, listening to the crop report on the radio, watching row after row after row of corn fall beneath the cutter bar. My grandfather didn’t talk much. Neither did I.

This was in the late ’70s and early ’80s, in this nation’s halcyon days of commodity cropping. Those who truly understood how damaging this style farming was to the land, the soil, the consumers and even the farmers themselves were relatively few and far between, while the rest of us were in the thrall of rapidly increasing yields, economies of scale and the lure of new technology.

Forty years later, we no longer have any excuse for failing to acknowledge the destructiveness of contemporary commodity agriculture and the fragility it has engendered across the spectrums of economy, ecology and human health, to name but a few. In Vermont, this is most visible in the perennially stressed commodity dairy industry, in which farmers are currently paid less than the cost of production, and over the years have been coerced to rely upon practices and products that negatively impact animal health, while playing a significant role in the degradation of our waterways and environment. This is emphatically not the fault of the farmers; as my grandparents were, so are today’s farmers caught in a tangled web of policy and economic incentives that are not of their making, yet which drive many of their decisions.

The need to reform our state’s agricultural policies and practices extends far beyond the dairy industry. Although Vermont’s local food movement has made tremendous progress, the ability for all farmers to achieve access to land and maintain a reasonable livelihood, while supporting the health of their communities and the land, is severely and unjustly compromised. The economic incentives still point in the wrong direction — consolidation, concentration, commoditization, exploitation of cheap labor and exporting of products and wealth. These incentives, coupled with policies that too often disadvantage community-scale food production, ensure that Vermont’s local food offerings remain unaffordable to a wide swath of our population. And as goes viable, accessible community-scale production, so goes the vibrant, diversified farms that once defined and nurtured Vermont’s rural landscape, fed our communities, and invigorated our economies.

Regenerative agriculture is a term meant to describe agricultural and food-production practices that return more to the land, community and farmer than they extract. Often the term is associated with improved grazing and cropping methods that grow and protect rather than deplete topsoil, in the process sequestering carbon, increasing water retention capacity (critical in the context of massive flooding events like hurricanes Irene and Sandy), and creating wildlife habitat.

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