2016 Quietly Ushered in a New Global Era in Climate and Land Use

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Author: Jason Funk | Published: December 27, 2016

Future historians may look back at 2016 as a year that marked a significant shift in the land sector, leading to the acceleration of carbon sequestration around the world. It confirmed and widened the opportunities for countries to sequester carbon through better management of forests, croplands, pastures, and wetlands, while adding to the urgency of this opportunity as a key element of our efforts to prevent disruptive climate change. Fortunately, many countries have begun to take action at a large scale, and others are learning from their examples. At the same time, new resources to spur sequestration are being mobilized at an unprecedented scale. Although the year might be characterized as one of preparation and cultivation, rather than tangible, high-profile outcomes, the seeds of 2016 promise to bear significant fruit in the years ahead.

Global momentum on enhancing forest carbon is unleashed

After years of negotiations, the global climate community has aligned behind efforts to protect and restore forests, which have enormous potential to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Building on initiatives like the Bonn Challenge, the Warsaw Framework for REDD+, and the New York Declaration on Forests, 2015 concluded with worldwide consensus in the Paris Agreement that “Parties [to the Agreement] should take action to conserve and enhance, as appropriate, sinks and reservoirs of greenhouse gases,” including “biomass, forests and oceans as well as other terrestrial, coastal and marine ecosystems.” In 2016, we saw many countries begin to act on this commitment, individually and collectively, with a proliferation of new plans and policies, fueled by growing investments and practical science. More than 120 countries included forests in their commitments, with activities ranging from afforestation in Afghanistan to sustainable forest management in Zambia.

Many countries were already taking action toward reducing emissions from deforestation and enhancing forest carbon sinks, and 2016 gave them an opportunity to secure the gains they had made. For example, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Malaysia have each built a solid foundation for action in forests, by 1) developing monitoring systems that can track fluctuations in emissions from forests, 2) initiating processes for consultation with stakeholders, and 3) establishing official baselines for tracking progress, which have been reviewed by international experts. In 2016, we saw further progress, with nearly a dozen countries submitting forest baselines for formal review – as well as development of recommendations for how to make this process more accessible and streamlined, generated by an expert dialogue in which I played a role as a facilitator and co-author. These baselines and the associated accounting systems, used to track progress, are crucial early steps that set the stage for forest countries to secure financial support and implement policies that can build up forest carbon.

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Ecological Farming: A Conversation With Fukuoka, Jackson and Mollison

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Published: April, 1987 

Last August, three leaders of the global movement for a natural, permanent agriculture (also called permaculture) gathered at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, for the Second International Permaculture Conference. MOTHER EARTH NEWS was there, too, obtaining the only three-way interview ever with the men our Seasons of the Garden columnists half-playfully labeled “the Holy Trinity” of ecological farming. The following edited discussion is a head-to-head exchange between men who are taking key roles in defining our planet’s future. But first let assistant editor Pat Stone, who conducted the interview, fill you in with some background on the three subjects:

Australian Bill Mollison created the concept of permaculture in ecological farming. A gravel-voiced graybeard, Bill has a dry sense of humor, a feisty temperament, and absolute dedication to his cause. Introduced before his keynote conference speech as “a great yarn teller who’s motivated thousands of people to action,” Mollison has held every job from seaman to Tanzania bush researcher to senior lecturer in environmental psychology. He left that secure university position two years before retirement to blaze the permaculture trail.

To Mollison, permanent agriculture means carefully designed, sustainable systems in which the array, organization, and interactions of plants and animals are the central factors. Perennial plants-especially tree crops-play a large role in his multispecies landscapes. A permaculture system takes much planning, and a good bit of work, to set up, but it should then almost run itself.

Wes Jackson researches perennial crop mixes in Salina, Kansas. A hulking midwesterner with broad hands and a ready smile, Jackson combines a warm nature, down-home humor, and impeccable scientific scholarship (he has a Ph.D. in genetics). For example, his favorite lecture title is “Herbaceous Perennial Seed-Producing Polycultures: Their Contribution to the Solution of All Marital Problems and the End of the Possibility of Nuclear Holocaust.”

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2017 Hot Food Trends a Good Fit for County Farmers

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Author: Gillian Pomplun | Published: December 30, 2016 

Crawford County farmers could score big wins in growing the farm economy, protecting the unique and fragile ecosystem, and mitigating public safety threats from flooding, by taking steps on their farms to cash in on growing trends in the food industry.

Anti-inflammatory foods, regenerative grazing, and purple foods are among the top food trends for 2017 listed by food industry leaders. In addition, continued growth in demand for organic foods is creating growing demand for organic hay, which commands a premium price.

While 2015 and 2016 food trends focused on “antioxidants,” consumer awareness has evolved to an understanding that antioxidant-rich foods are part of a larger dietary focus of reducing inflammation.

Chronic inflammation is linked as an underlying cause of many chronic health conditions such as heart disease, obesity, autoimmune disorders like arthritis and lupus, cancer, and more. Increasingly health practitioners see dietary changes as a key way to combat chronic inflammation, and prevent or slow development of these conditions.

Regenerative production methods such as grassfed, pastured and free-range meat, grassfed dairy, and organic meat and dairy have been increasing trends with consumers for years.

The most passionate advocates of these farming and food production systems will tell you that they have encapsulated the concept of “regenerative” all along, and for the most part that is true.

What has shifted is less in the world of farming and more in the world of consuming. The trend of “regenerative agriculture” is an indication that consumers are increasingly concerned about not only “is it good for me,” but also about “is it good for the environment?”

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Five Key Messages From the 2016 Acres U.S.A. Conference

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Published: December 28, 2016

The Acres U.S.A. Conference & Trade Show is one of the premiere events nationwide for commercial-scale sustainable and organic agriculture, bringing together the world’s leading farmers, consultants, scientists and activists. Skillfully navigating diverse topics ranging from water management, GMOs, soil fertility and carbon sequestration to pastured livestock, biological weed control, human health and natural beekeeping, the 2016 Acres U.S.A. Conference in Omaha, Neb, provided an invaluable learning and networking opportunity for more than 1,200 attendees from across the U.S. and many countries, including Guam, Mexico, Germany, Japan, Canada, Brazil, New Zealand and more.

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Some Advice for Starting Your Own Backyard ‘Carbon Farm’

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Author: Julia Franz | Published: December 22, 2016 

For visitors to Eric Toensmeier’s home in Holyoke, Massachusetts, the lush, 8-foot banana plant in the front yard is the first indication that something is unusual about his landscaping.

A walk around his stucco-covered house confirms it. In the back garden, about 300 species of perennials are thriving on just one-tenth of an acre: Raspberries, mountain mint, bamboo and bush clover all jostle for space alongside persimmon, chestnut and mulberry trees.

Toensmeier’s garden is an exercise in what is known as “carbon farming,” or the use of agriculture to remove excess carbon from the air and soil; storing it instead in trees and plants. As scientists and policy experts rush to develop ways to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, Toensmeier estimates that the carbon sequestration in his garden roughly offsets the emissions of one American adult each year.

“So, certainly the scale at which we’re doing this is not the scale which is necessary to fully address the problem,” he says, “but it’s sort of a research and development project, and it’s certainly doing more than mowing a lawn. It’s a step in the right direction.”

In his new book, “The Carbon Farming Solution,” Toensmeier explores in detail the potential for using perennial crops and agroforestry to trap carbon from the atmosphere. But as he explains, many of the techniques he’s using to sequester more carbon in his own garden have long been used to make plots of land naturally produce more food.

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Cyrus Sutton’s “Island Earth” Makes Hawaiian Debut

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Author: Justin Housman | Published: December 5, 2016

Filmmaker/pro surfer Cyrus Sutton has spent the past couple years making “Island Earth,” a documentary chronicling Hawaii’s rural communities as they push back against Big Ag’s experimentation with GMO crops and advanced pesticides, in a battle to retake control over their own food supply. “Island Earth” has its Hawaii premiere tonight at Waihuena Farm, 59-414 Kam Highway, across from OTW. There will be free food and drinks at 6:00pm HAST, the film shows at 6:30 pm, and there’s a Q&A with Sutton and Kauai’s Dustin Barca—who’s become an outspoken activist in the battle against GMOs—following the movie. If you’re on the North Shore, come on out. It’s open to the public.

I talked with Sutton a couple years back when he’d just plunged into the filmmaking process. Here’s what Sutton had to say about the motivation behind “Island Earth” when it was still in its infancy.

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JH: What drew you in about this story and motivated you to make a documentary?

CS: It all started with Korduroy.tv five or six years ago. I founded that website to promote simpler values in our surf culture. Our focuses were taking care of gear, staying healthy, helping our communities, and saving money. Around that time, my friend Loren Luyendyk introduced me to permaculture and regenerative agriculture which are basically methods of sustaining communities without fossil fuels by growing food in balance with natural systems, instead of fighting them with pesticides and chemical fertilizers.

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Replace Dogma With Logic for Better Productivity

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Author: Walt Davis | Published: December 21, 2016

Those of you who have read my ramblings over the years know that I am not a fan of industrial agriculture.

There are several reasons for this position but the main one is that industrial agriculture simply does not work. It is not sustainable, much less regenerative. It produces a lot of product but at a cost that is unacceptably high.

Agriculture, once the premier generator of new wealth in the world, is now wealth-consuming and dependent for its existence on subsidies from outside the system.

The problem goes beyond the cost of products being too high in dollars and cents. In many and perhaps most areas, we are trading our natural resources – top soil, water, biodiversity – for dollars. This is a mining operation, not a growth operation.

In less than two generations, the organic matter content of most of our soils has plunged. It is difficult to find an area that has half of its historic level of soil organic matter remaining. The production practices of what passes as conventional agriculture today: tillage, acid-salt fertilizers, and removal of grazing animals from the farm, guarantee that soil organic matter will deplete rapidly.

Yet it is this soil organic matter that provides the home and food for soil life. It is the soil life, from bacteria and fungi up to earthworms and burrowing mammals that create the conditions that allow soil to take in and hold water and air. Soil life does the heavy lifting of soil formation. Without robust biology, soil productivity plummets, mineral cycling slows as the decay cycle breaks down and both insect and disease damage increases. Attempts to kill these pests with poisons seem to work short-term, but creates the conditions which will cause even worst outbreaks of pests later.

It does not have to be this way; we can have a highly productive and profitable agriculture that is regenerative rather than degrading. The largest problem in bringing about this agriculture is not technology; we know how to make this happen on the land. There are producers all over the world who are highly productive and profitable and at the same time regenerating resources.

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Soil: Keeping Nutrients in Food and Carbon in the Ground

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Author: Lyndal Rowlands | Published: December 13, 2016 

Healthy soil not only makes food more nutritious it also helps keep carbon out of the atmosphere by storing it underground.

Yet around the world over 500 million hectares of soil has become degraded – leading to the loss of valuable nutrients as well as the release of carbon, speeding up the process of man-made climate change.

Climate change then in turn, affects crop productivity creating a negative cycle for farmers, Lucrezia Caon Global Soil Partnership Consultant at FAO told IPS.

“If we degrade soil they admit carbon dioxide (CO2), that fosters climate change, and climate change effects crop productivity,” she said.

IPS spoke to Caon at an event ahead of World Soil Day, which is marked on December 5.

The event focused on the special role of pulses in preserving soils.

2016 is International Year of Pulses, following on from 2015, which was the International Year of Soil.

Pulses include peas, beans, chickpeas and lentils. They are particularly popular in South Asia and Latin America.

Pulses are generally more popular in developing countries than developed countries, Caon noted.

“Seventy five percent of pulses are consumed in developing countries and only 25 percent in developed countries,” she said.

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Why Owning Your Own Farm Isn’t Necessarily a Ticket for Financial Well-being

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 Author: Michael Colby & Will Allen | Published: December 10, 2016 

These are economically tragic times for America’s farmers. This year, the average on-farm income for a farm family will be -$1,400. Yes, negative. In other words, they’re paying to produce the nation’s food and fiber. And it’s been going on for decades, all the result of a food system, from production and processing to sales and regulations, that is dominated and controlled by a handful of integrated corporate behemoths. That control, coupled with an economic model centered on the devaluation of production (farming!), has spelled nothing but doom for farmers.

While it’s happening everywhere, we live amidst its damage in Vermont, seeing firsthand the impact commodity-priced dairy is having on our agriculture. It’s a horror, really, with thousands of farms lost in the last few decades, all squeezed and pinched and eventually forced to leave the only thing they knew—working the land. And again, it’s all the result of a cheap food model, dictated by the corporate few and allowed by a largely shrugging public.

There’s plenty of money in food. It’s just not getting to the farmers. Vermont’s dairy industry, for example, is dominated by two well-known corporate giants: Ben & Jerry’s and Cabot Creamery. Last year, Ben & Jerry’s grossed around $600 million and Cabot and its parent, Agri-Mark, grossed nearly a billion dollars. Both have bragged in financial reports about how well they’re doing, with increased executive pay and all kinds of bells and whistles for the office set. Ben & Jerry’s makes so much money that they have a foundation to give some of it away.

Lost in the largesse are the farmers producing the dairy for the ice cream and cheese. An average-sized Vermont dairy farm is losing more than $100,000 a year to produce the cheap commodity milk that in turn is making Ben & Jerry’s and Cabot a lot of money—$1.6 billion between them.

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Grow-ing Disaster: The Fortune 500 Goes Farming

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Published: December 15, 2016

Thousands of greenhouses cluster along the valleys of Lam Dong province in the central highlands of Vietnam. At night, the strong glow from their lights illuminates a flow of trucks carrying fruit, vegetables, flowers and herbs to Ho Chi Minh City or to nearby ports for export. Competition among traders here is intense. The climate is ideal for the production of a number of high-value cash crops, and companies fight to secure their supply of farmers’ products or for a share of the lucrative market in chemical inputs, seeds and farm equipment such as plastic greenhouse covers or drip irrigation piping.

Farming in the highlands is a high-stakes business. Each season, farmers gamble on which crop will pay the highest price or which new seed variety will reach the yields promised by dealers. Sometimes the payoffs are big. But losses resulting from crop failures, a sudden drop in prices or scams by traders are just as frequent. Debt weighs heavily on the area’s farmers.

Money is not the only problem. There’s a looming water crisis from the depletion of water tables and the pollution caused by pesticides and fertiliser run-off, which is generating a public health crisis. Land conflicts are escalating too, especially in the hills where indigenous communities live. Finally, there is a potential threat to food security from producing so many crops that local people don’t eat. Most farmers seem to agree that the government is doing little to address these challenges.

It is in this context that some of the world’s largest transnational food companies are rolling out a program promising “market-based” solutions. Vietnam’s central highlands are the showcase for Grow Asia, an agricultural program led by Nestlé, PepsiCo, Monsanto and other food and agribusiness giants. Grow Asia is the Southeast Asian leg of a global initiative under the World Economic Forum’s “New Vision for Agriculture”, which promises to increase food production, environmental sustainability and economic opportunity globally by 20 per cent each decade. Also under the Grow umbrella are Grow Africa, Grow Latin America and several national programs.

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