What We Can Learn From the California Drought

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Author: Alice Cunningham| Published: February 7, 2017 

Over the past three weeks, continued rain and snow across California has, almost miraculously, lifted nearly half of the state out of drought. That’s a huge improvement from last February, when more than 95% of the state was listed as being in some form of drought. Large parts of the state have been under threat of extreme drought continuously for three consecutive years.

While those of us in California are thankful, counting on unreliable weather patterns to save us isn’t a viable approach to preparing for, or enduring, the kind of crippling drought our state has suffered through.

However, there are some very straightforward steps that can be taken to mitigate against both drought AND flood – two conditions of which California has had its share and which are linked by the extreme weather that accompanies climate change. These measures provide the most important protections that we have against drought and flood. Both are too often overlooked and taken for granted.

The first action we can take is planting trees and increasing forest cover around farmland. Trees help manage water: on average, one large tree can lift up to 100 gallons from the ground and discharge it through the air. Trees sequester carbon, clean water along streams, attract wildlife and prevent erosion through their root systems. They conserve soil by providing nutrients as their leaves and roots decay.

That takes us to our second and most important measure: healthy soil. Its holding capacity is simply remarkable: one percent of organic matter in the top six inches of soil could hold about 27,000 gallons of water per acre, according to the USDA. Increasing organic matter in topsoil increases holding capacity, making it capable of storing 20 times its own weight in water. Healthy soil makes the land itself far more resilient to drought, flood and other forms of extreme weather.

Healthy soil is full of life. Literally. Organic material, microorganisms, bacteria, arthropods, fungi, and air and water – all these things bring life to soil. This life, this fertility, makes it possible to grow plants naturally, without additional fertilizers or other inputs. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N., sustainable soil management can produce up to 58 percent more food than soil managed under prevailing monoculture agricultural practices. And, the kind of healthy soil that makes this fertility possible is also porous, allowing water and air to move through it freely, a property that increases water-holding capacity, improving the land’s ability to better resist drought conditions and better work for us.

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How Agroforestry Is Reshaping the Kenyan Countryside

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Author: Steve Zwick | Published: February 2, 2017

Prisca Mayende still remembers the lush, tree-covered countryside of her youth, when the farms in this part of Kenya, about 50 kilometers from the Ugandan border, yielded consistent harvests – year-in and year-out – of sorghum, white corn, and the dark green, kale-like sukuma wiki. Then came the sugar boom, and its bitter consequences.

“They destroyed all the trees to plant sugar,” she recalls. “And that is where the problems started.”

First came the floods, because the trees weren’t there to stop them; then came the dry spells, perhaps because the trees weren’t there to draw in the rain. Finally, the soil stopped producing – as it had in North America during the Dust Bowl, and as it’s doing across Africa today – because the trees weren’t there to replenish the earth.

But then, in 2010, Mayende’s neighbors told her about a man on a motorcycle.

“He was just moving around, looking for those farmers who were in groups,” she recalls. “So, when he [asked] some of the communities, they said, ‘Mama Prisca is one of the farmers who is interested in doing the agroforest.’”

As a leader of the Naikai Community Water Project, she’d been working to coordinate water-use and well-drilling, but the man on the motorcycle asked if members of her group would be interested in planting trees – lots of them – in their cornfields and cabbage patches. It was a tough sale – but not for her.

“People really feared that, maybe, when there are trees on the farm, the production cannot be good,” says Mayende, adding: “But me, I like trees.”

So she took the plunge, and within three years her farm was covered in trees – some fruit-bearing varieties like mango and banana, but mostly varieties like sesbania, albizia, and grevillea – which provide fodder for her cow.

Soon, the birds returned, and today her corn, cabbages, and potatoes are thriving – largely because the trees helped revive the soil – and she’s not alone. All across Africa, Latin America, and Asia, small farmers are replenishing soil by planting trees on formerly sunbaked row-farms; while consumer-facing giants like Danone and Mars are beginning to accelerate the process by investing in programs that support sustainable agriculture.

“We have all forgotten that food starts in soils,” said Danone CEO Emmanuel Faber at 2015’s Paris climate talks – sounding more like a soil scientist than a businessman. “We have disconnected the food chain.”

To fix that, Danone spearheaded the creation of two separate Livelihoods Funds, which “create mutual value for smallholder farmers, businesses and society as a whole.”

In 2014, Danone took a 40% stake in Kenyan dairy group Brookside, which had built a nationwide network of collection facilities that gathered milk from more than 130,000 farmers. As Brookside grew, however, they noticed something unusual: in some parts of their territory, farmers brought in three liters per cow on a good day. In other parts, they brought in seven or more, and consistently.

Driving this, they found was agroforestry: those farmers who embraced the practice ended up delivering more milk than those who didn’t. And there was another benefit as well: those who adopted agroforestry spent more time on their farms and less in the forests.

“Most of them used to cut trees,” says Takin Arnold, who runs the cooperative. “But because of the market that Brookside has created, those farmers have left the cutting of trees and embarked on selling to Brookside.”

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It’s… Alive?

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Author: Terri Gordon | Published: February 21, 2017

It is everywhere, from forest floors to ocean beaches. It is the stuff under our feet, our sidewalks, our roads. It is the stuff we dig in as kids, the stuff we bulldoze to build houses, and yes, the medium we use to grow flowers, trees, and food.

The New Oxford American Dictionary defines “soil” as “ the upper layer of earth in which plants grow.”

Gardeners talk about “rich” or “good” soil, or loam, made up of humus, sand, and clay.

What those who study soil are realizing, however, is that soil is not just sand, clay, and water—it is also a complex matrix of fungi, bacteria, and a number of other microbes. It is a full-on microbiome all its own. In fact, the microbiome is what creates the soil carbon sponge that holds nutrients and water. Without the matrix of microbial life, rain doesn’t percolate; it simply runs off, and the soil lacks fertility. And when we stir up the earth’s microbiome, we destroy it. And we’ve been destroying it since the very dawn of agriculture. This is the message Didi Pershouse will bring to the Healthy Soils Symposium on Feb. 24 and 25 at Antioch College in Yellow Springs. In a pre-conference reading on Feb. 23, she will sign copies of her book, “The Ecology of Care: Medicine, Agriculture, Money, and the Quiet Power of Human and Microbial Communities” at Yellow Springs Library.

Pershouse hails from the state of Vermont, where she practices acupuncture and works, through her Center for Sustainable Medicine, with the Soil Carbon Coalition to study and educate others about those systems that govern human health and the health of Earth—especially where the health of the planet and the health of its inhabitants intersect—because, in truth, the health of one is tied inextricably to the health of the other.

Community Solutions in Yellow Springs, is sponsoring the symposium as part of its mission to “support small communities” and foster their resilience, their ability to weather storms—metaphorically and literally.

“The more we can grow our own food, in our own region, the more resilient we are,” explains Susan Jennings, executive director of Community Solutions. “The more we are able to keep our water clean, and where it belongs—as in, not running off, but really being absorbed into the soil—the more resilient we are. And healthy soils are at the center of that.

“The healthier our soils are, the healthier our food will be; and the more fertile the soil, the greater the output of food we’ll be able to have. And if we are able to cool the climate through carbon sequestration in the soil, then it makes, not just the region, but the planet itself more resilient.”

The symposium begins as a roundtable event on Friday with presenters and participants contributing questions and information in an informal effort to delineate the needs of and progress in the region, as well as a plan of response.

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Widely Accepted Vision for Agriculture May Be Inaccurate, Misleading

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Published: February 22, 2017

“Food production must double by 2050 to feed the world’s growing population.” This truism has been repeated so often in recent years that it has become widely accepted among academics, policymakers and farmers, but now researchers are challenging this assertion and suggesting a new vision for the future of agriculture.

Research published in Bioscience suggests that production likely will need to increase between 25 percent and 70 percent to meet 2050 food demand. The assertion that we need to double global crop and animal production by 2050 is not supported by the data, argues Mitch Hunter, doctoral student in agronomy, in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences. He says the analysis shows that production needs to keep increasing, but not as fast as many have claimed.

However, clarifying future food demand is only part of the story.

“In the coming decades, agriculture will be called upon to both feed people and ensure a healthy environment,” said Hunter. “Right now, the narrative in agriculture is really out of balance, with compelling goals for food production but no clear sense of the progress we need to make on the environment. To get the agriculture we want in 2050, we need quantitative targets for both food production and environmental impacts.”

Specifying quantitative targets, the researchers contend, will clarify the scope of the challenges that agriculture must face in the coming decades, focusing research and policy on achieving specific outcomes.

“Food production and environmental protection must be treated as equal parts of agriculture’s grand challenge,” says study co-author David Mortensen, professor of weed and applied plant ecology, Penn State.

These new findings have important implications for farmers. Lower demand projections may suggest that prices will not rise as much as expected in coming decades. However, the authors note that economic forecasting models already are based on up-to-date quantitative projections, so price forecasts may not be affected greatly by this new analysis.

At the same time, farmers will need to ramp up efforts to hold nutrients on their fields, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve soil health.

This analysis builds on the two most commonly cited food-demand projections, one from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and one led by David Tilman, a prominent ecologist at the University of Minnesota. Hunter and his colleagues did not dispute these underlying projections; they simply updated them to help reframe the narrative.

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Unlikely Allies Seek to Make Vermont’s Milk the Cream of the Industry

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Author: Alicia Freese | Published: February 22, 2017 

An improbable coalition is calling for dramatic changes to the state’s dairy industry. Former agriculture secretary Roger Allbee has joined forces with three longtime environmental activists to argue that depressed milk prices, the need to reduce water pollution, and uncertainty about trade and migrant labor at the federal level present a unique opportunity to reinvigorate Vermont dairy farming.

“A perfect storm is brewing,” Allbee told the House Agriculture and Forestry Committee earlier this month. “Vermont has the rare opportunity of helping rescue its largest agricultural industry and to plot a future agriculture [system] for the state that is uniquely Vermont.”

The goal: to develop a set of environmental and ethical standards for dairy farms and build a made-in-Vermont brand that would bring farmers a premium price for their milk. Farms would have to meet those requirements — which could go above and beyond using organic practices — to qualify for using the state seal.

Requirements could include providing a livable wage and decent housing to farmworkers, allowing cows to graze on grassland, using non-GMO corn, forgoing pesticides and synthetic fertilizer, and cultivating carbon-rich soil. State financial incentives would encourage, rather than force, farms to make the transition.

“Our model is broken,” said Allbee, though he added: “I recognize that all dairy farmers cannot go organic.”

In addition to making its pitch to the legislature, the loose alliance of activists is meeting with government officials, writing op-eds and pressuring Vermont’s largest milk customers, which rely on conventional milk.

The Green Mountain State’s conventional dairy farmers have struggled for decades. Unlike farmstead cheese, milk is a commodity. Consumers don’t differentiate Vermont milk from that produced in Wisconsin or Idaho. So farmers here are subject to the price volatility of an international market and to increasing competition from larger farms able to produce cheaper milk. Vermont currently has 838 dairy farms, down 158 from five years ago, according to the Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets. The number of cows declined by 4,000, to 130,000, during the same time period.

Persistently low prices have further squeezed Vermont’s farmers in recent years. Milk has been selling for less than what it costs to produce, and a federal price insurance program has failed to provide much relief. At the same time, farmers are under mounting pressure to reduce water pollution as the state launches a concerted effort to clean up Lake Champlain and other waterways. Runoff of manure and fertilizer from farms contributes roughly 40 percent of the phosphorous contaminating the waters.

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NYS Lawmaker Introduces Carbon Farming Tax Credit Bill

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Author: Allison Dunne | Published: February 15, 2017

A New York state Assemblywoman has introduced legislation on carbon farming that she says is the first of its kind. The idea is to promote environmentally friendly farming practices while, at the same time, putting money back into the pockets of farmers.

Democrat Didi Barrett has sponsored a bill that creates a carbon farming tax credit. Barrett, who represents portions of Columbia and Dutchess Counties, says the plan will give farmers a new tax break while helping the state reach its climate change goals.

“This would make New York state the first in the country,” Barrett says. “And I’m very excited about something that really is a win-win for our environment and for our farmers and have New York be the lead on it.”

The 2014 Farm Bill gave USDA authority to provide technical assistance to farmers and land owners in support of their response to climate change. Barrett says that while other states like California have also begun to develop programs with similar aims, New York’s carbon farming tax credit would be the first of its kind to create a tax break for farmers who use climate-smart methods. Barrett says she had been speaking with farmers over the past few years about whether they thought such a tax credit would be beneficial.

“In continuing this conversation, in the midst of one of them, I said, do you think that if we created a tax credit for practices that put carbon back in the soil and obviously therefore take it out of the atmosphere that farmers would find that attractive,” says Barrett.

And these conversations led to her crafting the bill. Barrett, who sits on both the Assembly’s agriculture and environmental conservation committees, says there are items that still need to be worked out, such as metrics, or figuring out how to measure carbon in the soil. She says metrics on the USDA web site are a good place to start.

“What we need to work on next is really figuring out how we measure the changes,” says Barrett. “At one point, you start, and then you measure what the carbon content of the soil is, and then, after a particular cycle, measure again to see the change and the increase, and then develop a tax credit based on that.”

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Companies, NGOs and Scientists Come Together Behind New Definition For “Regenerative Agriculture”

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Published: February 23, 2017 

Press Release

New approach to agriculture helps create topsoil and mitigate climate change.

Representatives from over 100 countries, including virtually all areas of food production, manufacturing, retailing and soil science have, for the first time, come together on a unified definition for the quickly emerging “Regenerative” approach to growing food that has been shown to provide multiple benefits to food security, health, and climate change.

According to Tim LaSalle, PhD, former head of the Rodale Institute and co-director of the Regenerative Agriculture Initiative at California State University Chico: “Regenerative agriculture keeps the natural cycles healthy—like water and carbon—so that land can keep growing food and keep carbon and the climate in balance.”

Additionally, as the world has realized that most of the planet’s topsoil has been lost due to poor soil management, efforts are being made to rebuild soil health. “It’s impossible to feed the world without soil. The UN says we have sixty harvests left at the rate we’re going.” says Tom Newmark, The Carbon Underground co-founder. “Regenerative agriculture actually creates new topsoil, reversing the last century’s trend of destroying it.”

But perhaps the most powerful reason for the movement toward regenerative agriculture is the impact it will have on the biggest threat facing humanity—climate change. “Reducing emissions alone cannot solve climate change. We must draw down hundreds of billions of tons to succeed, and restoring our soil is the only known path to do this,” says Andre Leu, President of International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements (IFOAM).

“Regenerative agriculture builds healthy soil, helping with challenges like climate change, biodiversity loss and water scarcity,” says Shauna Sadowski, Vice President of Sustainability and Industry relations at Annie’s Foods, “But we also see it as a critical way to strengthen our own supply chains. Healthy soil creates greater resilience for farmers and their crops, which become our ingredients and ultimately our products.”

Regenerative agriculture complements the global movement to healthier food. “Let’s face it—demand for organic food is exploding. But this is different,” says Ronnie Cummins, head of the Organic Consumers Association, “Organic food keeps people healthy. Regenerative agriculture keeps the planet healthy.”

Additional signatories include:

Dr. Tim LaSalle, Co-director, Regenerative Agriculture Initiative, CSUC

Dr. Cindy Daley, Co-director, Regenerative Agriculture Initiative, CSUC

Doug Greene, Founder, New Hope Network

Dave Carter, National Bison Association, former Chair NOSB

Anthony Zolezzi, Board Member, Wild Oats Marketplace

Dr. Elaine Ingham, Soil Food Web

Dr. Appachanda Thimmaiah, Maharishi University of Management

Will Rapp, Gardener’s Supply

Dr. David Johnson, New Mexico University

To view the definition, join as a signatory, or see the most current list, go to: www.thecarbonunderground.org/definition

For additional information contact: info@thecarbonunderground.org

DOWNLOAD THE DEFINITION HERE
READ THE DEFINITION HERE 

How a Climate-friendly Flour Company Built a Flourishing Market

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Author: Patrick Mazza | Published: February 20, 2017 

Shepherd’s Grain sells not only high-quality flour made from wheat grown with no-till practices, it also sells the story of no-till, a farming method that eliminates the significant climate-warming carbon releases caused by plowing.

Based in Portland, Oregon, the company sources wheat directly from family farmers around the interior Pacific Northwest and other regions who practice no-till. Washington farmers Fred Fleming and Karl Kupers founded Shepherd’s Grain in 2002 as a way to keep more wealth on the farm by cutting out the middleman. Since then, it’s grown into a $6 million annual business, and most of its growers have an ownership stake.

The company sells its flours directly to hundreds of bakeries, restaurants, and markets in the region, from the big metro areas of Portland and Seattle to smaller cities like Boise, Idaho. National brands such as Krusteaz and Smuckers use the company’s flour, too.

“We are looking for customers who understand the true value of the product, that they can then sell to their customers,” explains Fleming. A key value proposition is that Shepherd’s Grain is helping to save family farms. “Dollars are going back to care for the land,” Fleming says. “If we don’t bring wealth back to the land, we can’t take care of it.”

Making direct connections with customers helps the company produce better flour because the bakers and restaurateurs provide vital feedback on product quality and variety. “On a quality basis, we surpass anything on the market,” says the company’s general manager, Mike Moran, who used to be the chief baker for Grand Central Baking Company in Seattle and Portland. “Part of what gives us the quality is those relationships. The farmer grows with a different level of care because, ‘I know who the crop is going to.’”

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How Climate Change’s Effect on Agriculture Can Lead to War

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Author: Ryan Bort | Published: February 17, 2017 

On February 12, the temperature in Magnum, Oklahoma, reached 100 degrees. It was a state record for the month of February, besting a mark that was set in 1918. The average February high in Magnum is 56.

Many see the unseasonably warm temperature as yet another undeniable sign of climate change, but won’t likely be heeded by Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, who famously brandished a snowball on the Senate floor in 2015 in an effort to prove that climate change was not real. Inhofe’s views have been echoed by the current president of the United States, Donald Trump, who famously tweeted in 2012 that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese to “make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” Trump’s pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruit, is a known climate change denier who has written that the debate surrounding the “extent of global warming” is “far from settled.”

Most of the rest of the world isn’t so cavalier in dismissing what many see as the 21st century’s greatest threat to humanity. At this week’s World Government Summit in Dubai, the subject of climate change had a prominent place in discussions led by the world’s preeminent scientists, professors, business leaders and heads of state. In particular focus was the effect climate change could have on the world’s food supply, which most agree will be catastrophic if both the public and private sectors don’t do enough to combat rising temperatures.

“The implications are enormous,” said Dr. Thomas Homer-Dixon of the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation. “It affects every aspect of the global food supply around the planet.”

Much of the concern is over temperatures exceeding the scope of what modern agriculture was developed to withstand. “It’s going to be radically different from what we’ve seen before,” Homer-Dixon explained. “The variation in temperature has been within .75 degrees over a period of almost 1,500 years, and this century we’re moving far outside of this envelope in which human beings laid down their industrial infrastructure, their agricultural systems, their irrigation systems, their road networks and their ports.”

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China Moves to Implement More Sustainable Ag Practices, Which Is Good for Everybody

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Author: Andrew Amelinckx | Published: February 9, 2017 

On Sunday, the Central Government released its Number One Central Document, the first policy statement of the year, and as in the previous 13 years, it focused on agriculture and rural development. While previous Number One Documents have included mentions of sustainability measures, this year’s had a particularly strong focus on developing “green” policies.

“Green production and sustainable farming practices, under the overall framework of supply-side reform, was one of the highlights of this year’s document. ‘Green’ actually becomes one of the most frequently used words in the document,” Vincent Martin, the representative for China from the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations tells Modern Farmer. “The gist of supply-side reform in China’s agricultural sector is to increase the output of high-quality products based on green and innovative production.”

China is now the fourth largest consumer of organically-produced food in the world, so expanding domestic organic production makes sense. The Central Government plans to push organic products in part by promoting favorable taxes for start-ups in rural areas, and by creating innovation centers to help support the production of high quality farm produce, according to Reuters.

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