This New Denim Label Is Paving the Way for Sustainable Fashion in Copenhagen

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Author: Brooke Bobb | Published: February 1, 2018

While the word organic has become commonplace in American dialogue—whether it’s used to describe vegetables, face creams, or cotton—surprisingly, it’s a relatively up-and-coming stamp of approval in Denmark. The city of Copenhagen is suddenly bursting with new organic restaurants, skincare companies, and now, fashion labels. One such brand leading the charge is Blanche, a new line of eco-conscious denim that was launched in August 2017 by fashion natives Mette Fredin and Melissa Bech. Fredin is the creative director, and Bech, the commercial director, but they work in tandem on everything, including design, marketing, and branding. While Blanche does include ready-to-wear and some cool logo merch, the jeans are the sweet spot. Everything is made locally in Copenhagen using Global Organic Textile Standard–approved fabric and deadstock fabric. Prices for the wide range of denim run from around $150 to $216, and, at the moment, Blanche is only available in select Scandinavian retailers. Bech and Fredin are expanding quickly, however, and they say expansion into the U.S. and the rest of Europe will come soon.

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Connecting Through Food

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Author: Nigel McNay | Published: January 27, 2018

A greater profile for the wide-ranging benefits of regenerative agriculture is what a Stanley woman hopes will flow from her recognition in a national awards program.

Jade Miles has been announced as one of three finalists in the Victorian Rural Women’s Award.

The award is part of a wider program, with the Victorian winner to be named at Melbourne Museum on March 20 going on to the national award ceremony in Canberra in September.

Ms Miles said that to be nominated “really is incredible” and “actually a bit of a surprise”.

“More than anything it allows you to know that the work that you’re doing is understood and it reads with people,” she said.

“What it does is provide an opportunity where people are starting to actually listen to what your message is.

“Because mine is around regenerative agriculture and local food systems, it’s not one that usually gets a very loud voice.”

Ms Miles’ nomination outlined how she wanted to share her learnings from developing a community-owned regional food co-operative and to build a social enterprise-based model that could be rolled out in other regions.

She and her husband, Charlie Showers, and their three children live at Black Barn Farm, which they plan on becoming a regenerative and diverse orchard, nursery and learning space.

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Healthy Soil and Regenerative Farming as Major Food System Solutions

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Author: Sammy Blair | Published: February 2018

Lauren Tucker, Executive Director of Kiss the Ground, will be speaking at the Washington D.C. Food Tank Summit, “Cultivating the Next Generation of Young Food Leaders,” which will be held in partnership with George Washington University, World Resources Institute, the National Farmers Union, Future Farmers of America, and the National Young Farmers Coalition on February 28, 2018

Initially the manager of their local garden, Tucker is now the Executive Director of Kiss the Ground, a non-profit striving to combat climate change by cultivating healthy soil to sequester carbon in the atmosphere. Kiss the Ground focuses on public engagement through media and educational curriculum, and works to help farmers build healthy soil.

Growing up in rural West Virginia surrounded by conventional corn and soy fields, Tucker realized that despite being surrounded by an agrarian community,  people in the United States were disconnected from their land. She was inspired to help people and the planet and has spent her adult life learning about and sharing the connection between humans and the earth we live on.

Tucker graduated with a B.A. from the Honors program at American University in Psychology and International Studies, and then became a UC Master Gardener and earned her Permaculture Design Certificate. Tucker has extensive experience working with national and international non-profits, including Green Light New Orleans and Angel Flight West, and has worked as a chef and organizer for local farm dinners.

Food Tank spoke with Lauren about the importance of soil health, regenerative farming, and how consumer knowledge of our food system can help solve environmental and human health crises.

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

Lauren Tucker (LT): I started studying nutrition and then realized that nutrition is so much more than the right mix of minerals, proteins, carbs and fats. I discovered that soil and how we grow food is the basis for nutrition. Along the way I met Ryland Engelhart and Finian Makepeace, Kiss the Ground co-founders, who were inspired by healthy soil and plants’ potential to draw carbon out of the atmosphere. Healthy soils and regenerative farming have become my full passion as they provide a solution to global warming human health.

FT: How are you helping to build a better food system?

LT: We create educational materials (films, book, social media, and middle school curriculum) on soil as a carbon sequestration solution. We also raise money for farmer training and work with businesses to invest in healthy soils in their supply chains. Everything we do is helping to achieve our mission: to inspire participation in the global movement to restore soils.

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Corporations Need Nature’s Regenerative Service

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Author: Frank Hajek | Published: February 2, 2018

We heard the chainsaws first, like the buzz of a bee on amphetamines, interspersed with the crash of falling giants, then the toiling drone of bulldozers. We were approaching the edge of the Salvación-Boca Manu-Colorado road. Our Matsigenka guide, Feliciano, from Pankotsi Lodge in the nearby village of Shipetiari, led us expertly through the forest. Suddenly, we emerged onto the road clearing, precisely at the spot where a Caterpillar was digging up the roots of a recently felled tree.

The foreman at the road front was at first jovial and friendly, but when he noticed we were taking pictures, he began a speech about tourism and conservation not creating enough local jobs. He went on to say that the local district council had recently secured a large cacao project, which the road would support. I asked where he was from.

He replied he was from the Andean highlands of Puno, but that he had lived for 20 years in Madre de Dios and that he was a selvatico, a jungle man. We spoke for over an hour, and he showed us another Caterpillar that had broken down as a result of the grueling work. He was a nice guy. But in my mind the fact remained: He was helping to build a road, with illegal loggers hot on his tracks, already extracting precious woods from Manu National Park’s border, one of Peru’s last great wilderness areas.

So I decided to ask him directly: Did he not feel bad about all the forest they were felling?

His answer was also direct: “No. El bosque no me da trabajo.” No. The forest doesn’t give me a job.

And that is the problem: Many people do not perceive the value of wilderness areas, even though we receive life-sustaining services from them every day. These services include natural cycles that we take for granted such as climate regulation, water purification and maintaining biodiversity.

These services are, in theory, worth trillions of dollars to the world economy (PDF). But you cannot eat theory, and so we are losing millions of hectares of forests, countless animal and plant species, and many unique ecosystems every year, especially in the emerging economies of the developing world. The need for new tools and systems to make this loss and its value tangible to people long has been acknowledged, but successful models of how to do this are still thin on the ground.

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Agroforestry Systems May Play Vital Role in Mitigating Climate Change

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Agroforestry could play an important role in mitigating climate change because it sequesters more atmospheric carbon in plant parts and soil than conventional farming, according to Penn State researchers.

Author: Penn State | Published: February 1, 2018

An agricultural system that combines trees with crops and livestock on the same plot of land, agroforestry is especially popular in developing countries because it allows small shareholder farmers — who have little land available to them — to maximize their resources. They can plant vegetable and grain crops around trees that produce fruit, nuts and wood for cooking fires, and the trees provide shade for animals that provide milk and meat.

The researchers analyzed data from 53 published studies around the world that tracked changes in soil organic carbon after land conversion from forest to crop cultivation and pasture-grassland to agroforestry. While forests sequester about 25 percent more carbon than any other land use, agroforestry, on average, stores markedly more carbon than agriculture.

The transition from agriculture to agroforestry significantly increased soil organic carbon an average of 34 percent, according to Michael Jacobson, professor of forest resources, whose research group in the College of Agricultural Studies conducted the study. The conversion from pasture/grassland to agroforestry produced soil organic carbon increases of about 10 percent, on average.

“We showed that agroforestry systems play an effective role in global carbon sequestration, involved in carbon capture and the long-term storage of atmospheric carbon dioxide,” he said. “The process is critical to mitigating or deferring global warming.”

However, carbon was not stored equally in different soil levels, noted lead researcher Andrea De Stefano, a graduate student at Penn State when the study was done, now at Louisiana State University. He pointed out that the study, which was published in December in Agroforestry Systems, provides an empirical foundation to support expanding agroforestry systems as a strategy to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and mitigate climate change.

“The conversion from forest to agroforestry led to losses in soil organic carbon stocks in the top layers, while no significant differences were detected when deeper layers were included,” De Stefano said.

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Care What You Wear — Fixing Fast Fashion

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Author: Dr. Joseph Mercola | Published: January 30, 2018

In recent years, the true cost of cheap clothing and so-called “fast fashion” has become better understood, and with that knowledge, a call to change is being sounded. Investigations reveal the clothing industry is a significant source of environmental pollution — according to some estimates it’s the fifth-most polluting industry in the world1 — and excessive consumption only adds to these problems.

So, while in the past the fashion industry has largely skated below the radar, environmentalists and environmentally-minded industry insiders alike are now starting to really hone in on these problems. As noted by the Ellen Macarthur Foundation:2

“The time has come to transition to a textile system that delivers better economic, societal, and environmental outcomes. The report ‘A new textiles economy: Redesigning fashion’s future’ outlines a vision and sets out ambitions and actions — based on the principles of a circular economy — to design out negative impacts and capture a USD 500 billion economic opportunity by truly transforming the way clothes are designed, sold, and used.”

In the past, I had not really given much thought to the clothes I’m wearing, and was shocked to learn about the health and environmental damage occurring from “fast fashion.” I’ve now dedicated myself to wearing and supporting a responsible and regenerative movement to “Care What You Wear,” by developing the Dirt Shirt — organic clothing grown and sewn in the USA — and SITO; organic clothing produced responsibly outside the U.S.

This year, give some serious thought to cleaning up your wardrobe. Remember, being a conscious consumer does not stop at food and household products. Your clothing can be a source of hazardous chemicals, and cheaply made fast fashion items take a tremendous toll on the environment and the people working in the industry. As a consumer, your choices will help guide the garment industry toward more humane and environmentally sane manufacturing processes.

Clothing Sales Are at an All-Time High

According to the featured report, created by the Ellen Macarthur Foundation’s recently launched Circular Fibres Initiative,3,4 while sales of clothing are at an all-time high, utilization of clothing has dramatically diminished, which makes sense considering you can only wear so many items in a year. Most of us also have maybe a handful of items we really like and end up wearing repeatedly.

Between 2000 and 2015, clothing sales soared, doubling from 50 billion units to 100 billion. As a result, the average number of times a garment is worn before being discarded significantly dropped. As noted in the featured article, “steady production growth is intrinsically linked to a decline in utilization per item, leading to an incredible amount of waste.”

Estimates suggest more than half of all clothing purchases are discarded in less than a year. As crazy as it may sound, one British fashion company reminds its customers that a dress will only remain in a woman’s wardrobe for five weeks!5 As noted by Lucy Siegle, who made that stunning observation,6 “The way we get dressed now has virtually nothing in common with the behavior of previous generations, for whom one garment could be worn for decades.”

The result of treating clothing as single-wear disposables is a rapidly growing waste problem that is tough to remedy. Landfills burn the equivalent of one garbage truck full of garments each and every second, and since fabrics are typically dyed and/or treated with toxic chemicals, it’s all essentially toxic waste. Less than 1 percent of discarded textiles are recycled and reused. Growing chemical and plastic pollution is yet another side effect of fast fashion.

“The use of substances of concern in textile production has an important impact on farmers’ and factory workers’ health as well as on the surrounding environment. During use, it has been recently estimated that, half a million tons of plastic microfibers shed during washing ends up in the ocean and ultimately enters the food chain …” the foundation notes.

Introducing a New Textile Economy

To address these downsides, the featured report presents a new form of textile economy in which textiles “re-enter the economy after use and never end up as waste.” The four cornerstones of this new economy involve:

  1. Phasing out toxic substances used in textile production and redesigning materials to prevent shedding of microfibers
  2. Changing the way clothing is designed, marketed and used to move away from disposable fashion
  3. Improving textile recycling
  4. Transitioning to renewable inputs to prevent the waste of nonrenewable resources

Fashion designer Stella McCartney, who cohosted the launch of the report, said:

“What really excites me about ‘A new textiles economy: Redesigning fashion’s future’ is that it provides solutions to an industry that is incredibly wasteful and harmful to the environment. The report presents a roadmap for us to create better businesses and a better environment. It opens up the conversation that will allow us to find a way to work together to better our industry, for the future of fashion and for the future of the planet.”

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In Ethiopia’s Wheat Diversity, the Seeds of a Wheat Rust Solution

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With pathogens like Ug99 evolving and adapting quickly, a diverse agricultural gene pool is often the best insurance for the future.

Authors: Kerstin Hoppenhaus & Sibylle Grunze | Published: January 22, 2018

Ethiopia is one of the oldest cultivating regions not only for wheat, but also for other crops like coffee, millet, and barley. Over thousands of years, the environment and farmers have interacted by selecting and breeding in order to adjust old crop varieties to regional conditions. The result is a unique variety of crop variations, and today, Ethiopia is recognized worldwide as a center for genetic diversity.

The Russian botanist Nikolai Vavilov identified these centers as early as 1926. He noticed that in Peru, for example, there were thousands of potato varieties, while South and Central America had many different tomatoes and Central Asia saw a wide variety of carrots.

In Ethiopia, the diversity is in wheat — durum wheat in particular.

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Regenerative Movement Emerging in Uruguayan Pampas

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Published: January 24, 2018

A grasslands and livestock heaven, the Pampas of Argentina and Uruguay have always been a key economic driver of these countries. With this invaluable gift of nature comes a culture of deep connection to and knowledge of the land and its plants and animals, as well as unmatched land and livestock management skills of gauchos, landowners, and scientists.

But these incredible assets, both ecological and social, and their importance to the economy of these countries are being put at risk by the same trend of industrial monocrop agriculture, land conversion, and feedlots that the US has experienced for the past decades.

It would be wise for this region to stop following the US trend of chasing short term profits (based mainly on the liquidation of ecological capital), and instead turn around and lead the regenerative movement.

This is exactly what Pablo Borelli, at the helm of the Argentine Hub, Ovis 21, and an Accredited Professional with the Savory Institute, as well as Savory Champions in Uruguay, Althea Ganly, Patricia Cook, and Gary Richards are doing. With them, a crowd of young farmers, biologists, and urban food and climate activists are mobilizing the regenerative journey to keep the Pampas from jumping on the tragic path of biodiversity loss, water scarcity and pollution, and soil degradation.

Daniela Ibarra-Howell, CEO of Savory Institute, is an Argentine agronomist who dedicated the early part of her profession to addressing the problems of desertification in her native country’s brittle regions. Daniela and her husband, Jim Howell, led educational ranch tours for many years, learning and sharing experiences with many regenerative livestock producers around the world. Argentina was one of their favorite destinations for the amount of traditional and scientific knowledge still alive, which happens to inform much of the global regenerative movement today. Going back to the Pampas region is always exhilarating and inspiring to Daniela.

This month, Daniela spent a few days in the region, meeting with the movers and shakers in Uruguay. Rancher and Savory partner, Mimi Hillenbrand, who owns and manages 777 Bison Ranch in South Dakota and 45 South (named after its latitudinal location), a beef and sheep operation in Chilean Patagonia, accompanied her. Hosted by Savory Champion, Althea Ganly and her husband at their ranch, they participated in an inspiring gathering of aligned individuals committed to ensuring a sustainable path for the agricultural sector in the country. Among those attending were producers, entrepreneurs, and biologists, as well as leaders of businesses, NGOs and government groups.

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EverGreen Agriculture: A Solution for Degraded Landscapes

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Authors: May Gathigo and Susan Onyango | Published: October 19, 2017

Widespread land degradation is an increasing threat to ecosystem health, food production systems and livelihoods across sub-Saharan Africa. Processes such as soil erosion, biodiversity loss and deforestation, which are largely human-driven, significantly reduce the land’s capacity to deliver key ecosystem services including storm and drought buffering, soil nutrient availability, and thus food and fodder production. The good news is that affected countries, which have made crucial commitments to reverse this trend through initiatives such as AFR100, now take this fundamental problem increasingly seriously. But on the ground, the need to do something is immense – something recognized by donors.

Crucially, donors are extremely aware that compared to the scale of the need, the available funds are puny. They are thus keen to find and support transformative technologies that show great promise. And that is where Purity Gachanga, a superb smallholder farmer from Kenya’s Embu County, played a pivotal role.

During a visit to her farm in 2015, Dr. Roberto Ridolfi, the Director for Sustainable Growth and Development at the European Commission’s Directorate General for Development and Cooperation, saw for himself the astounding transformation that agroforestry could bring to poor smallholders. What Purity showed is that transformation does not necessarily lie in the bells and whistles of expensive new technologies, but mostly in the understanding and judicious use of agroecological processes.

Keen to see this transformation spread across the continent, Dr Ridolfi proposed a challenge: show that the work of farmers like Purity can be scaled up to re-green at least a million hectares at low cost. Should that work, the thinking went, the path would be clear to fulfill Dr. Ridolfi’s grand vision: to help tens of millions of farmers across Africa re-green hundreds of millions of hectares of degraded lands.

That challenge took the form of a just-initiated five-year effort developed by Dr. Ridolfi’s directorate, the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), the Economics of Land Degradation initiative and the NGO members in the EverGreen Agriculture Partnership including Catholic Relief Services, World Vision and Oxfam. Its title says it all: ‘Reversing Land Degradation in Africa by Scaling-up EverGreen Agriculture’.

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Why Healthy Humans and Ecosystems Need Healthy Soil

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Author: Eva Perroni | Published: January 2018

Emanuela Pille da Silva and Anabel González Hernández are working at the nexus of land rehabilitation, soil health, and sustainable agriculture. Their project Agricultural Production in Recovered Areas After Coal Mining in Brazil was a finalist in the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition (BCFN) Yes! Competition. The project assesses whether land that has been degraded by coal mining in southern Brazil is suitable for the production of safe and nutritious food. Their ongoing research at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil, uses plant microorganisms and soil microbes to monitor and aid the recovery of degraded lands.

Food Tank had the opportunity to talk with Pille da Silva and González Hernández about their project, the impact of coal mining on sustainable food production, and the links between soil and public health.

Food Tank (FT): What inspired you to become involved in food and agriculture research, and in particular to focus on soil microbiology?

Emanuela Pille da Silva & Anabel Gonzalez Hernandes (EPS & AGH): Our research team is multidisciplinary. We have experts in different areas from three universities in Latin America: a microbiologist from the University of Havana, Cuba, a biologist from the University of Antioquia, Colombia, and an agronomist from the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil. We have all finished or are completing studies in the Plant Genetic Resources Graduate Program at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, which has been dedicated for almost 20 years to identifying conservation strategies and the sustainable use of plant genetic resources. Within the program, we chose to work on projects related to the recovery of degraded areas after mining, since the Brazilian mining industry is a significant contributor to the economy of Brazil. In the past, coal mining has been inadequately developed in southern Brazil, without observing the biotic and abiotic aspects necessary and indispensable to maintaining the quality of the environment around the mined areas. We believe that the land that has been degraded as a consequence of these mining activities can and should be reclaimed and regenerated for food production, especially for local communities. However, food quality and safety need to be monitored and ensured in this context.

FT: Congratulations on your project Agricultural Production in Recovered Areas After Coal Mining in Brazil making the BCFN YES! Competition finals in 2016. Can you tell us about the project?

EPS & AGH: Thank you. Our project is based on the idea that there may be a global scarcity of suitable farmland in the future. We believe that this scenario is even more likely in southern Brazil, where coal mining has put great pressure on land use and lead to environmental impacts, such as the contamination of soil and water with heavy metals. These elements are known to be bioaccumulative and pose a danger to human health. For these reasons, the Brazilian government and the coal industry were forced to conduct environmental recovery projects, implementing measures such as revegetation of affected areas and land reclamation for future use. Food production has been identified as a potential future use for these areas. However, there is uncertainty about the risk of transfer of toxic and heavy metals to humans, animals, and agricultural crops in these locations. The objective of the project was to assess the quality of food produced in these so-called recovered areas and their potential risks to human health. We hope that the monitoring of food contamination with heavy metals will be adopted as a public health policy in the region.

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