Reforming our Land Management, Economy and Agricultural Practices

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Authors: Graham Unagnst-Rufenach and Aaron Guman| Published: February 2, 2017 

Regenerative agriculture allows us to produce food, shelter, medicines  and other products needed to sustain human life while simultaneously regenerating ecological health and the communities, economies and cultures associated with the land.

How does regenerative agriculture work?

Soils and aboveground biomass, such as trees and shrubs, represent one of the greatest opportunities for pulling carbon out of the atmosphere and putting it into long term, stable storage known as a carbon “sink.” Agroforestry, or agricultural systems which incorporate trees and shrubs, have the highest potential for sequestering carbon while providing other ecosystem benefits.

Storing carbon in the soil and maintaining perennial living soil cover (trees, pasture, grazing animals, etc.) brings a host of benefits, including: increased soil fertility and biological activity, improved wildlife and pollinator habitat, less vulnerability to disease, increased crop yield, increased drought and flood resilience, and increased water-holding and filtration capacity. A 1% increase in soil organic matter over an acre of land allows it to hold 20,000 additional gallons of water, which means less water, and any pollutants carried with it, running off downstream.

Regenerative agriculture is inherently political — it recognizes historical and contemporary injustices in relationship to land and wealth access and distribution, climate change, and human rights; and asserts the need for social, economic, and political — as well as agroecological —  equity and transformation.

Regenerative Agriculture in Vermont

Regenerative agriculture is site, region, and community specific, it meets people and landscapes where they are. This often means collaboratively assessing how we can: 1. mitigate existing problems, 2. adapt to climate change and, 3. implement regenerative practices to produce desired outcomes. Currently there is substantial policy and financial support for mitigation efforts on large farms. However, there is little focus on supporting and funding adaptation and transformation of these farms or our most actively growing agricultural sector in Vermont: small diversified farms.

A transition to regenerative practices

A family we work with wanted to transition the pasture-land they were moving onto into regenerative grazing management. It had long been overgrazed: cattle had been allowed access to the same parts of the land for weeks at a time, wet areas were deeply pock marked and spread out by hoof impact, the forage was stunted and eaten down nearly to the ground, and unfavorable species had begun to dominate parts of the pasture.

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Erica Hellen: “Farming Is Our Livelihood, but It Is Also Activism”

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Author: Emily Payne | Published: January 2017

Erica Hellen, co-owner and farmer at Free Union Grass Farm, is speaking at the third annual D.C. Food Tank Summit, Let’s Build a Better Food Policy, which will be hosted in partnership with George Washington University and the World Resources Institute on February 2, 2017.

Free Union Grass Farm is a diversified livestock farm producing beef, pork, chicken, duck, and eggs on nearly 300 acres in Albemarle county, Virginia. She and her husband utilize rotational grazing and portable infrastructure to raise animals in systems that mimic the natural world. After seven years as a full-time farmer, Erica is familiar with the flaws of our industrialized food system and hopes to convey the role small farmers play in helping fix it.

Food Tank had the chance to speak with Helen about

Food Tank (FT): What originally inspired you to get involved in your work?

Erica Hellen (EH): My liberal arts education at Warren Wilson College exposed me to the world of farming both in the classroom and in the field, on the school’s working farm and garden. It was there I learned the immense role agriculture plays in how we treat our environment. I grew up in an urban area and it had never occurred to me to consider farming as a career, but it combined so many things I love: working outside, being my own boss, and contributing to positive environmental change.

FT: What makes you continue to want to be involved in this kind of work?

EH: Providing something tangible for our community and creating relationships with our customers reminds me that our work is valued, and valuable. Farming is a unique kind of business because it is our livelihood, but it is also activism. There is much to be done when it comes to fixing the food system, and I feel inspired by the work that lies ahead of us.

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Beyond Organic: Carbon Farming Is a Pathway to Climate Stabilization and Resilient Soils

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Author: Derek Markham | Published: January 30, 2017 

Addressing the climate crisis calls for an ‘all of the above’ approach to reducing carbon emissions and increasing carbon sequestration, and although many of us are inclined to supporting organic farming practices, it’s high time we started focusing on carbon farming practices as well. Organically grown food, while a preferable choice for green shoppers in grocery stores and farmers markets, isn’t necessarily the same thing as food grown using smart carbon farming practices, and though the two aren’t mutually exclusive, demand for organics is driven more by marketing, while the other is still a bit of a mystery to the average person.

We’ve covered the concept of carbon farming and carbon sequestration in general many times here on TreeHugger, but it’s one of those topics that, while not nearly as sexy as e-bikes and tiny houses and amazing animals, bears further discussion.

Most of us are probably able to name just a few key examples of carbon farming practices, most likely the addition of compost and/or biochar, and moving to a no-till system with cover crops, but there are a host of other practical methods as well, which may vary a bit depending on the location where they’re implemented. In this short video from Nexus Media, Connor Stedman, a consultant with AppleSeed Permaculture, offers some insights into the importance of carbon farming:

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By 2030 Megacities May Devour More Than 86 Million Acres of Prime Farmland

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Author: Andrew Amelinckx | January 27, 2017 

A recent study by a group of scientists from around the world finds that by 2030, sprawling mega-cities will squeeze out productive farmland, especially in Asia and Africa, putting a burden on what will be an already overtaxed food system.

The study, “Future urban land expansion and implications for global croplands,” published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that by 2030, as much as 86.5 million acres of productive farmland worldwide—between two and four percent of total farmland—will be lost as the world’s so called mega-cities, generally defined as being more than ten million residents, and the adjoining areas, called “mega urban regions,” take over prime agricultural croplands to make room for a growing population and their activities.

The group of scientists from Yale, Texas A&M, the University of Maryland, and research institutions in Germany, New Zealand, Sweden, and Austria, found that the world’s most productive cropland—that which is irrigated—is the most at risk. That’s because 60 percent of it is on the the outskirts of large cities. As these cities expand, cropland is lost. According to the study, this irrigated land tends to be twice as productive as the other 40 percent.

“The loss of these critical farmlands puts even more pressure on food producing systems and shows that we must produce strategies to cope with this global problem,” Burak Güneralp, one of the study’s authors and a research assistant professor in the Department of Geography at Texas A & M told Texas A & M Today.

Urban agriculture, the expansion of farming into areas farther from urban centers, and farming intensification practices (such as the heavy use of fertilizers), will offset some of the loss of farmland, say the scientists. Even so, some arid regions, like North Africa and the Middle East, are already pushing the outer limits of land use and don’t have the luxury of expanding farming into new areas away from large cities.

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Carbon Farming – Video

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Published: January 30, 2017 

Some people farm corn. Some farm wheat. Some, like Connor Stedman, farm carbon.

“There’s a really significant potential for carbon farming worldwide to play a role in reversing the climate crisis,” said Stedman, an agricultural consultant at AppleSeed Permaculture.

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Call to the World Bank: Enable Farmers, Not Agribusiness

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Author: Shiney Varghese | Published: January 19, 2017 

Ahead World Bank’s release of the 2017 “Enabling the Business of Agriculture” (EBA) project report this month, 156 organizations (including IATP) and academics from around the world, denounced the Bank’s scheme to undermine farmers’ rights to seeds and destroy their food sovereignty and the environment. In letters to World Bank President Jim Yong Kim and EBA’s five Western donors, the group has demanded the immediate end of the project, as a key step to stop the corporatization of global agricultural development.

The Obama administration played a lead role in launching the highly controversial New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition at the 2012 G8 Camp David Summit. From the White House fact sheet, G-8 Action on Food Security and Nutrition’, it appears that the New Alliance was instrumental in urging the World Bank to develop options for generating a “Doing Business in Agriculture Index.” The index involved a ranking of the ease of doing business in a country, to help investors with agricultural investment decisions. This G8/New Alliance initiative appears to have given rise to Enabling the Business of Agriculture project, formerly called Benchmarking the Business of Agriculture. EBA focuses on identifying and monitoring regulations” which the Bank considers to “negatively affect agriculture and agribusiness markets”.

When taken together with other initiatives that seek to lower the barriers to investment, EBA becomes a problematic initiative. This is especially so in the context of small-holder food production systems, since such approaches often exclude a long-term view about the future of smallholder farming communities, and the interests of those engaged in such food systems. For example, the EBA awards the best scores to countries that ease private companies’ – but not farmers’ – access to public gene banks.

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Regrarians: Changing the ‘Climate of the Mind’

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For over 20 years, Lisa Heenan, Darren J. Doherty and their three children, Isaebella, Pearl & Zane, have been traveling the world sharing their knowledge and infectious passion for regenerative agriculture and the regenerative economy. Together they have worked on thousands of projects with over  2,000 clients. In 2016 alone, they held 13 x 10 day Regrarians (REX) conventions in six countries, training 350 people.

A REX convention includes training in all aspects of regenerative farming, including design, business management and hands-on farming practices.

Darren is a fifth-generation farmer, developer, author and trainer who has worked on projects in about 50 countries. He has trained over 15,000 farmers in regenerative agriculture. Lisa Heenan is a multi-award-winning producer/co-director, actor and singer/songwriter. She recently produced “Polyfaces,” a film that has won multiple awards around our Global Village. Most recently she won the WWF Award for Best Awareness Documentary at FICMA, the oldest Environmental Film Festival in Barcelona.

Darren and Lisa, along with their daughter, Isaebella, are directors of the organization Regrarians Ltd., which provides design and training for farmers and other stakeholders who have an interest in  regenerating, restoring, rehabilitating, rekindling and rebooting communities, landscapes, farms and most importantly soils. As Darren explains it:

Our primary responsibility is to the regenerative enhancement of the biosphere’s ecosystem processes. Our secondary responsibility is to provide the potential for people to be informed about the regenerative economy, whether it involves their work in agriculture, land management, corporate life, domestic services, manufacturing or other activities that are within the reasonable domain of humans.

The term “Regrarians” also refers to a growing movement that has sprung up around the REX conventions.

Regeneration International (RI) talked with Darren and Lisa at last year’s fifth REX convention in Sierra Gorda, Mexico in May 2016. In this interview, Darren and Lisa walk us through the principles and methodologies behind the Regrarians platform, Regrarians as a tool for farmers to mitigate climate change, the climate of the mind and how keyline is a game changer.

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Interview with Darren Doherty and Lisa Heenan

Watch the video

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Regeneration International (RI): How did you come up with name Regrarians?

Darren J Doherty (DJD): Regrarians was conceived in about 2012 as a word. It was something that we’d been working towards for a long time trying to actually give ourselves an identity that fit with our values and what our interests were. The word comes from regenerative agrarian. “Agrarian” is  a very old word.  So is “regenerative,” although we see this word being used a lot more these days. We’ve been involved with the regenerative agriculture field for a long time, so those two words combined sort of fit as a brand to identify the work we do.

RI: What are the defining principles of Regrarians?

DJD: That there’s a process to all of this, at least there has to be . . . that there is not so much a start and a finish but, at least when you’re looking at design and projects, there is a starting point. And for us that’s the climate, both in the literal sense, and in the more figurative sense—the climate of the mind. A lot of our work is based on keyline design which was developed by the late great P.A. Yeomans back in the 40s and 50s. Yeomans wrote a book in 1958 called the “The Challenge of Landscape: The Development and Practice of Keyline,” and in that book he talked about the ‘Keyline Scale of Permanence’. So we found that as a really good basis for what we then called the Regrarians Platform, which is based on the scale of permanence. But we also added economy and energy, and brought in the emphasis from holistic management and other social and economic methodologies.

Lisa Heenan (LH): As Darren says, the climate of the mind is the hardest thing to change. It can be especially so when you’re working with farmers. So the climate of the mind is a really important part of the work that we do. What do we love to do, what is our passion, how can we bring our skills, talents and pas

DJD: We also wanted to create something that was quite thorough and that people could see a process to, a methodology. Our approach is really that we’ve created a methodology of methodologies.

RI: How does Regrarians help farmers mitigate climate change?

DJD: To start with, Regrarians helps farmers identify the concerns in their immediate environment. We start with the climate. Climate has such an influence over what agricultural outputs and management strategies producers choose to undertake. But then there is also the climate of the mind. How are we going to mentally deal with the adversity of climate change?

For us in Australia, climate change is a real and current threat. It’s something we are very familiar with. Australia also has a reliably unreliable climate because of its geography since it’s surrounded by sea. Overall, climate change is getting worse and getting harder, especially as soil carbon levels decrease. The capacity of the soil and the landscape to remain humid and retain water becomes even more difficult with less carbon. So for us, it’s about adaptation and mitigation. Focusing on the soil, but also focusing on the economics. What is going to give us the biggest bang for the buck? How can we use the resources that we have – economic, social, landscape – so that we can work within the restrictions of climate change? What can we do to mitigate climate change?

RI: You’re giving farmers a toolkit to increase their resiliency.

DJD: Correct.

LH:  Many tools. Darren says you’ve got to have blue, which is water, before you have green, which is vegetation…

DJD: And money, cashflow. Before you’re green and black. So, black meaning profit and carbon. So you have to be blue before you’re green and black. That is a climate change adaptation strategy.

RI: One of the critical components of the Regrarians Platform is this notion of Keyline. Could you tell us about Keyline and why it is so important?

DD: When P.A. Yeomans released his first book, “The Keyline Plan,”  in 1954, it was an instant best seller which is unusual for an agricultural book. And it was the first book ever written on broad scale functional landscape design. That was pretty revolutionary.

Keyline is fundamentally a farm planning system whose primary objective is the control of water. The control of water within an agricultural landscape is the control of your destiny, as much as anything else. Obviously your management is very important, your attitude, the way that you manage your books, all of those things are important. But the management of water is absolutely critical, particularly in seasonal rainfall environments, which basically all of Australia is. And now that climate change is accelerating, more places are becoming like Australia. So  we are finding that Keyline is taking a place in a lot of other environments. Rainfall patterns were much more reliable than they are now.

That said, most farms are not well designed. In fact, they are not designed. They just happen. They are the result of incremental development of positioning of fencing, positioning of roads, ponds, or dams and all sorts of other infrastructure. Keyline creates a plan which is based on the climate and its relationship to the geography and the topography around where you place water, where you place roads, where you put trees, where you put buildings, where you put fencing. And then how do you quickly create living soil out of dead topsoil which Yeomans was another great exponent of through his keyline pattern cultivation techniques and also as an early adopter of Voisin’s rotational grazing and electric fencing and all of those sorts of things. That’s the fundamental basis of it.

RI: So you use the Keyline plow to create disturbance in the soil, that’s a part of this Keyline process?

DJD: It is one part, I wouldn’t say it’s the whole part. When people think of Keyline, they think of the Keyline Plow, and I think that’s reasonable. But for me, Keyline is a farm planning system. It’s not about the tool, it’s about the management and the practice of farm planning.

RI: What methodologies tie into Regrarians?

DJD: Regrarians believes that there is no one methodology that a producer or a person should have to follow. There have been some great minds and communities who have come up with some fantastic methodologies such as permaculture, biodynamics and holistic management. Most people tend to follow a single methodology, whereas Regrarians encourages people to use a combination.

LH: Think of Regrarians as a toolbox. You don’t usually have just one tool. The thing with the Keyline Plow that’s different from other ploughs is that it’s not turning the soil, it’s going in and aerating. It’s a totally different style of plough, it’s much gentler.

Watch the full interview

Learn more about Regrarians.

Stay tuned for part 2 of the interview series with Lisa Heenan and Darren J.Doherty.

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Alexandra Groome is on the coordination team for Regeneration International, a project of the Organic Consumers Association.

The USDA Is Trying to Help Save Native Grassland in Ore

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Author: Andrew Amelinckx | January 27, 2017 

The USDA recently gave $225 million in federal funding to 88 environmental projects across the country, including a program in Oregon to help improve the soil health in Wallowa County, home to the Zumwalt Prairie, one of the last intact native grasslands of its kind in the United States.

The prairie consists of about 330,000 acres of native grassland that once covered 10 million acres stretching across the Pacific Northwest. Today, the prairie is mostly owned by area ranchers and farmers, along with The Nature Conservancy, which owns about 40,000 acres in Wallowa County.

The goal of the project is to create opportunities for private landowners to apply integrated crop and livestock production systems to improve soil health while reducing the use of chemical inputs, increase water efficiency, and prevent the further fragmenting of the native grasslands.

The Nature Conservancy, a charitable environmental organization headquartered in Virginia, is the project’s lead partner. They’re joined by local non-profits Wallowa Land Trust and Wallowa Resources, along with the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

According to Jeff Fields, The Nature Conservancy Project Manager for the Zumwalt Prairie Preserve, the approach involves finding the sweet spot between ecology and the local economy.

“We’ve been focusing on not just the ecology of a place but the economy as well and socioeconomic issues that surround management by private owners,” says Fields in a phone interview with Modern Farmer. “Wallowa County has an awful lot of innovative farmers and ranchers who are thinking about soil health, supply-chain diversification—including grass-finished beef products—and getting away from commodity markets.”

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Sustainable Agriculture, Better-managed Water Supplies, Vital to Tackling Water-food Nexus – Un

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Published: January 26, 2017

Highlighting the challenges associated with the inextricable links between water and food – the so-called ‘water-food nexus’ – for food security, as well as for sustainable development, the United Nations agricultural agency today outlined steps that can be taken to improve water sustainability for current and future needs.

“The magnitude of the water-food nexus is underappreciated,” said Pasquale Steduto, UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) Regional Strategic Programme Coordinator for the Near East and North Africa regions.

In his briefing during an event at UN Headquarters in New York, the FAO official also pointed to the fact that a person needs between two to four litres of water for daily consumption, and for domestic uses (washing, etc.) between 40 to 400 litres per family.

But for food and nutritional needs, the requirement is between 2,000 and 5,000 litres per person, depending on diet, or “roughly one litre per kilo-calorie” he explained.

He further emphasized that the nexus is particularly significant for strengthening food security given that the world population is estimated to cross the nine billion mark by 2050, another 50-60 per cent food would need to be produced over current levels to feed everyone.

“This would imply having at least 50 per cent more water – which we will not have. Estimates show we can mobilize up to 10 per cent more, [highlighting] the issue of water scarcity,” added Mr. Steduto.

He also stressed the significance of water for the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

While Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6) explicitly calls for ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all, water is a key component for other Goals including those on poverty (SDG 1), hunger and malnutrition (SDG 2), and climate change (SDG 13).

Thus, highlighting the need for intensification of sustainable agriculture, Mr. Steduto called for improving efficiency in the use of resources; protecting and conserving natural resources; having a people-centred approach and protecting rural livelihoods; strengthening resilience of people, community and ecosystems, particularly to climate change; and ensuring good governance to safeguard sustainability for natural and human systems.

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Regenerative Soils Act – Vermont

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Published: January 28, 2017 

Soil4Climate today announced that Vermont Senate Bill S.43, “an act relating to establishing a regenerative soils program” — originated by Soil4Climate Advisory Board member and Shaftsbury, Vermont farmer Jesse McDougall — has been submitted to the Vermont Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy. The proposed bill aims to encourage farming practices that improve soil health and to incentivize ecosystem restoration. It will also provide a host of additional economic and environmental benefits, including “increasing the carbon sequestration capability of Vermont soils [and] reducing the amount of sediment and waste entering the waters of the State.” The legislation was sponsored by Senator Brian Campion and co-sponsored by Senators Bray, Clarkson, Pearson, Pollina, and Sears.

Increasing the amount of carbon in soil boosts fertility and its ability to hold water, resulting in less need for fertilizer and reduced water pollution. Importantly, keeping nutrients in soil can eliminate the eutrophication plaguing Lake Champlain and other Vermont waterways. Further advantages include increased biodiversity, enhanced drought resilience and flood resistance, and improved forage nutrition.

The Vermont proposal is precedent-setting in calling for the creation of a Director of Regenerative Soils to oversee the program. Regular soil testing will be used to certify farms showing a steady improvement in soil health (i.e., carbon content) and/or quantity (i.e., depth). This proposed bill follows on the heels of other pro-soil health legislation enacted in recent years in California, Oklahoma, and Utah.

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