EverGreen Agriculture: A Solution for Degraded Landscapes

01/29/2018/by Regeneration International

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

01/28/2018/by Regeneration International

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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Kuli Kuli: A Superstar of Superfoods

01/25/2018/by Regeneration International

Author: Marilyn Waite | Published: January 10, 2018

Nestled in downtown Oakland, California, sustainable food and agriculture startup Kuli Kuli has roots more than 7,000 miles away.

Founder Lisa Curtis was introduced to the moringa tree while serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in a small town in Niger. A vegetarian whose local diet consisted mainly of millet and rice, Curtis was able to curb her malnourishment, a lack of protein and key vitamins by adding moringa to her daily regime. Her health turnaround sparked an interest in introducing the benefit of the moringa plant to North American eaters.

When Curtis returned from Niger, she and her co-founders began creating food products from sustainably sourced moringa leaves. They started producing health bars in small batches and selling the goods at farmer’s markets. Today, the product line — which includes teas, powders for shakes, health bars and energy shots — is available in more than 6,000 stores.

Moringa is not your come-and-go food fad. It’s difficult to directly compare to any one plant. Like kale, it’s a green superfood, yet richer in nutrients; the taste profile is similar to matcha, which comes from specially grown and processed green tea leaves, with an earthy, mild flavor. On the shelf, you likely will find it next to other superfoods such as goji berries.

Moringa contains a wide range of nutrients and attractive attributes, including iron, calcium, vitamins A and C, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory phytochemicals, highly digestible protein and all nine essential amino acids. Also, it’s vegan and free of soy, gluten, dairy and genetically modified organisms.

Agriculture, food and related industries represent about 5.5 percent of U.S. GDP, contributing around $992 billion each year. Transforming this industry to be sustainable and regenerative is one of the biggest opportunities to address climate change while creating economic opportunity.

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How To Be a Better, Smarter, Happier Meat Eater

01/23/2018/by Regeneration International

Author: Mark Bittman | Published: January 18, 2018

Sure, you’ve heard that red meat is cruel and unsustainable, and that it’ll destroy the environment if it doesn’t give us all heart attacks first. But it’s so delicious! Which is why we begged Mark Bittman to reconcile our principles with our appetites—and teach us the new rules of red meat.

1. Start Beefing with (Most) Beef

Under natural conditions, cattle are an almost perfectly beneficial part of a regenerative agricultural system. Their waste feeds the fields on which they’re pastured; carbon is sequestered in that grass; and their meat, in limited quantities, is good for us, good for the land, and good for the community of farmers, ranchers, butchers, and the variety of small businesses that raise, butcher, and sell it.

Take the cattle off those fields, multiply their numbers by thousands, feed them industrially produced grain encouraged by subsidies, damage some of the world’s best farmland to grow that grain using a destructive assortment of chemicals, pump the cows full of antibiotics (to prevent illness in the unnatural conditions), scale and intensify this process so that almost anyone in the world can afford to eat meat daily, and…that’s not good for us. Or the farmland. Or the planet. Or, needless to say, the cattle. And yet beef raised this way is what almost everyone in this country has eaten exclusively for the past 50 years.

Fortunately, a growing cadre of ethical ranchers and butchers have started turning this system around. They’re pasture-raising cows on grass and mother’s milk—which gives the meat a wonderfully complex flavor, pleasantly minerally and deliciously beefy—and they’re using whole animals, minimizing waste and expanding our palates. Here’s how to find, buy, and order beef that’s not only better for the planet but tastes better, too.

2. Expand Your Vocabulary

Just about anything is better than the industrially produced grain-fed feedlot beef. The best alternative, and I’m being very specific here, is “grass-fed, pasture-raised,” especially if it’s raised locally (to reduce the carbon footprint) and organically (to prevent the widespread use of pesticides that harm the environment). There are other good alternatives that play with those variables, but the bottom line is that most of what you find for sale isn’t cutting it.

3. Open Your Wallet

The price for pasture-raised beef does vary, but it’s expensive. Beef finished in a feedlot should be somewhat cheaper, but it’s still going to be steep. Ground beef—which constitutes about a third of the yield from every animal—should be $5 to $10 a pound; less is suspect, and more is, well, high. The premium cuts, like rib eye and filet mignon, are likely to be around $30 a pound; more is common.

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Let’s Wrench Power Back from the Billionaires

01/23/2018/by Regeneration International

If we stand together against powerful special interests we can eliminate poverty, increase life expectancy and tackle climate change

Author: Bernie Sanders | Published: January 14, 2018

Here is where we are as a planet in 2018: after all of the wars, revolutions and international summits of the past 100 years, we live in a world where a tiny handful of incredibly wealthy individuals exercise disproportionate levels of control over the economic and political life of the global community.

Difficult as it is to comprehend, the fact is that the six richest people on Earth now own more wealth than the bottom half of the world’s population – 3.7 billion people. Further, the top 1% now have more money than the bottom 99%. Meanwhile, as the billionaires flaunt their opulence, nearly one in seven people struggle to survive on less than $1.25 (90p) a day and – horrifyingly – some 29,000 children die daily from entirely preventable causes such as diarrhoea, malaria and pneumonia.

At the same time, all over the world corrupt elites, oligarchs and anachronistic monarchies spend billions on the most absurd extravagances. The Sultan of Brunei owns some 500 Rolls-Royces and lives in one of the world’s largest palaces, a building with 1,788 rooms once valued at $350m. In the Middle East, which boasts five of the world’s 10 richest monarchs, young royals jet-set around the globe while the region suffers from the highest youth unemployment rate in the world, and at least 29 million children are living in poverty without access to decent housing, safe water or nutritious food. Moreover, while hundreds of millions of people live in abysmal conditions, the arms merchants of the world grow increasingly rich as governments spend trillions of dollars on weapons.

In the United States, Jeff Bezos – founder of Amazon, and currently the world’s wealthiest person – has a net worth of more than $100bn. He owns at least four mansions, together worth many tens of millions of dollars. As if that weren’t enough, he is spending $42m on the construction of a clock inside a mountain in Texas that will supposedly run for 10,000 years. But, in Amazon warehouses across the country, his employees often work long, gruelling hours and earn wages so low they rely on Medicaid, food stamps and public housing paid for by US taxpayers.

KEEP READING ON THE GUARDIAN

Let's Wrench Power Back from the Billionaires

01/23/2018/by Regeneration International

If we stand together against powerful special interests we can eliminate poverty, increase life expectancy and tackle climate change

Author: Bernie Sanders | Published: January 14, 2018

Here is where we are as a planet in 2018: after all of the wars, revolutions and international summits of the past 100 years, we live in a world where a tiny handful of incredibly wealthy individuals exercise disproportionate levels of control over the economic and political life of the global community.

Difficult as it is to comprehend, the fact is that the six richest people on Earth now own more wealth than the bottom half of the world’s population – 3.7 billion people. Further, the top 1% now have more money than the bottom 99%. Meanwhile, as the billionaires flaunt their opulence, nearly one in seven people struggle to survive on less than $1.25 (90p) a day and – horrifyingly – some 29,000 children die daily from entirely preventable causes such as diarrhoea, malaria and pneumonia.

At the same time, all over the world corrupt elites, oligarchs and anachronistic monarchies spend billions on the most absurd extravagances. The Sultan of Brunei owns some 500 Rolls-Royces and lives in one of the world’s largest palaces, a building with 1,788 rooms once valued at $350m. In the Middle East, which boasts five of the world’s 10 richest monarchs, young royals jet-set around the globe while the region suffers from the highest youth unemployment rate in the world, and at least 29 million children are living in poverty without access to decent housing, safe water or nutritious food. Moreover, while hundreds of millions of people live in abysmal conditions, the arms merchants of the world grow increasingly rich as governments spend trillions of dollars on weapons.

In the United States, Jeff Bezos – founder of Amazon, and currently the world’s wealthiest person – has a net worth of more than $100bn. He owns at least four mansions, together worth many tens of millions of dollars. As if that weren’t enough, he is spending $42m on the construction of a clock inside a mountain in Texas that will supposedly run for 10,000 years. But, in Amazon warehouses across the country, his employees often work long, gruelling hours and earn wages so low they rely on Medicaid, food stamps and public housing paid for by US taxpayers.

KEEP READING ON THE GUARDIAN

Mexico’s Prickly Pear Cactus: Energy Source of the Future?

01/23/2018/by Regeneration International

Author: Yemeli Ortega | Published: August 17, 2017

The prickly pear cactus is such a powerful symbol in Mexico that they put it smack in the middle of the national flag.

It was considered sacred by the ancient Aztecs, and modern-day Mexicans eat it, drink it, and even use it in medicines and shampoos.

Now scientists have come up with a new use for the bright green plant: producing renewable energy.

Instantly recognizable with its jumble of spiny discs—its bright red fruit protruding like fat fingers from each one—the prickly pear cactus is farmed on a massive scale in Mexico.

Its soft inner flesh plays a starring role in a plethora of favorite national dishes: tacos, soups, salads, jams and even candies.

Believed by some to have healing powers, the cactus is also used in blood pressure medications, anti-hair loss shampoos, skin creams and diet juices.

“Since before the Spanish conquistadors arrived, we have eaten prickly pear cactus. It’s our tradition and our culture,” said Israel Vazquez, who has farmed the cactus for the past 20 years on a small plot in Milpa Alta, a neighborhood on Mexico City’s south side.

The cactus’s thick outer layer, with all those spines, has always been a waste product—until researchers developed a biogas generator to turn it into electricity.

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Mexico's Prickly Pear Cactus: Energy Source of the Future?