Tag Archive for: Agroecology

A Rush of Americans, Seeking Gold in Cuban Soil

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Author: Kim Severson

HAVANA — Being an agricultural official in Cuba these days is like living in a resort town all your friends want to visit. You rarely get a moment to yourself.

For months, Havana’s government offices and its prettiest urban farms have been filled with American bureaucrats, seed sellers, food company executives and farmers who spend their evenings eating meals made with ingredients often imported or smuggled into restaurants that most Cubans can’t afford.

They seek the prizes that are likely to come if the United States ends its trade restrictions against Cuba: a new supply of sugar, coffee and tropical produce, and a new market for American exports that could reap more than $1.2 billion a year in sales, according to the United States Chamber of Commerce.

But for some, the quest is less about the money than about what they say is the soul of Cuban agriculture and how people eat.

“The Cubans are not enthusiastic about a Burger King on every corner or Monsanto being here,” said Representative Chellie Pingree, a Democrat from Maine and an organic farmer.

In May, Ms. Pingree led a coalition of organic industry leaders, chefs and investors on a five-day trip here. Their mission, in part, was to encourage Cuban officials to resist the enticements of larger, more conventional American food and farming interests and persuade Cubans to protect and extend the small-scale organic practices that are already a part of their daily life.

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Organic techniques can help conventional growers boost margins

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Can farmers make more money by growing food using regenerative, or agroecological, practices?

Yes, say the innovators behind the Agricology, a UK-based website launched last November, to help farmers transition away from conventional farming practices. Agricology, an online resource, translates scientific research into practical farming advice to help farmers increase food production while maintaining biodiversity.

So it’s in the UK. And it’s designed for farmers. Why should consumers care?

Because in a world where the population is growing, biodiversity is shrinking, modern farming models are polluting the environment and producing pesticide-contaminated nutrient-poor food, and global warming threatens us with extinction, consumers—the people who choose which food to buy and which to reject—hold if not all, at least most of the cards when it comes to reversing these trends.

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Towards a “Peoples” Agroecology

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Author: Blain Snipstal

This is the first article of the series “People’s Agroecology,” written by Blain Snipstal, a returning generation farmer part of the Black Dirt Farm Collective in Maryland. As part of the continuation of the 2015 Campesino a Campesino Agroecology Encounter led by farmworkers in the US, Blain visited four leading organizations in the US and Puerto Rico in this effort to learn more about challenges and current practices to advance their goals through Agroecology.

The place of Agroecology

As people in struggle, our causes, and our organized efforts do not exist in a vacuum. They are efforts that, taken into the historic contexts in which they appear, are created by and/or in response to the conditions of their time. It is within this vein that the articulation of agroecology in the US should be located, and as part of the 500 year (plus) process of struggle and resistance.

It is also critically important to situate agroecology as a tool for social struggle – that is, to use it to fundamentally change the relations of power in the food system and as way for healing of our Mother Earth, at local and national levels. It is not just a mere form of “Sustainable Agriculture”. To be clear, it is not about situating one word against another like permaculture versus agroecology, or sustainable agriculture versus biodynamic – to do so would limit the narrative to its ecological boundaries. It is about a series of ecological principles and values, the revalorization of local/traditional/indigenous knowledge, bringing dignity and vibrant livelihoods back to rural life and food systems labor, and a clear alternative to the industrial model of agriculture. Agroecology is a political and social methodology and process, as much as it is an ecological alternative to Agribusiness. This clarity is especially important given the current efforts by NGO’s, community based organizations and social movement organizations that are raising the banner of agroecology in the United States.

Why Agroecology? Who is advancing and using agroecology in the US? Why situate political training and leadership development while developing agroecological systems? These are some of the questions to explore and discuss throughout this series.

Starting from the bottom

The industrial food system as we know it today is the child of the plantation system of agriculture. They are both built upon exploited labor, dispossession and exploitation of land from indigenous peoples, the destruction of rural culture and land, consolidation of power and land in the ruling classes, and the forced migration of peoples. The plantation system was the first major system used by the colonial forces in their violent transformation of the Earth into land, people into property, and nature into a commodity – all to be sold on the “fair” market. This transformation was long, crafted and violent, and supported by the state. Land was stolen from the Indigenous and people were stolen from Africa. Race and White Supremacy were then created to give the cultural and psychological basis to support the rationale, organization and logic of capital. The church was implicated in deepening the rationale of slavery. Violence against women and gender-based violence further drove the normalization of servitude home. This was all woven into the fabric of the plantation system of agriculture in the South, during its development from the 16th to the 19th centuries.

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Soils for food security and the climate

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Thanks to plants and living organisms, soils contain two to three times more carbon than the atmosphere.  Carbon-rich soil organic matter is essential: it retains the water, nitrogen and phosphorus that are indispensable to agriculture. But alternating phases of drought and intense rainfall accentuate erosive phenomena.  In the long term, almost 30 million hectares of arable land could be lost every ten years.

The solution: carbon storage

If the carbon stocks in the top 40 centimetres of soil could be increased by 4 per 1000 each year, this could theoretically help to stop the current rise in the quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere, on condition that deforestation is halted.

The methods: 5 ways to develop soil management and agroecology

  1. Avoid leaving the soil bare in order to limit carbon losses
  2. Restore degraded crops, grasslands and forests
  3. Plant trees and legumes which fix atmospheric nitrogen in the soil
  4. Feed the soil with manure and composts
  5. Conserve and collect water at the feet of plants to favour plant growth

Applied to the surface horizon of the world’s soils, or a stock of around 860 billion tonnes of carbon, the 4‰ target would result in the annual storage of 3.4 billion tonnes of soil carbon, thus counterbalancing the rise in atmospheric CO2. This measure would be extended beyond agricultural soils to most soils and their uses, including forests.

570 million farms in the world and more than 3 billion people living in rural areas could implement these practices.

The cost for crops, 20 to 40 USD per tonne of CO2. For grasslands and forests, 50 or 80 USD per tonne of CO2. Carbon would continue to accumulate in soils for twenty to thirty years after the introduction of good practices, if they are sustained.

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Corporate vision of the future of food promoted at the UN

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La Via Campesina, ETC and GRAIN media release | 15 February 2016

Corporate vision of the future of food promoted at the UN: More than 100 civil society organizations raise alarm about FAO biotechnology meeting

(Rome, Monday 15 February, 2016) Just when the biotech companies that make transgenic seeds are merging, the corporate vision of biotechnology is showing up at FAO. At today’s opening of the three-day international symposium on agricultural biotechnologies convened by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Rome, more than 100 social movement and civil society organisations (CSOs) from four continents have issued a statement denouncing both the substance and structure of the meeting, which appears to be another attempt by multinational agribusiness to redirect the policies of the UN agency toward support for genetically-engineered crops and livestock.

Here you can download the statement and list of signatories.

The global peasant and family farm movement, La Via Campesina, invited CSOs to sign the letter when the symposium’s agenda became public. Two of the FAO keynote speakers are known proponents of GMOs, and the agenda and side events over the three days include speakers from the Biotechnology Industry Organization (a biotech trade group in the USA), Crop Life International (the global agrochemical trade association), DuPont (one of the world’s largest biotech seed companies) and CEVA (a major veterinary medicine corporation), among others. FAO has only invited one speaker or panelist openly critical of GMOs. Worse, one of the two speakers at the opening session is a former assistant director general of FAO who has pushed for so-called Terminator seeds (GMO seeds programmed to die at harvest time forcing farmers to purchase new seeds every growing season), in opposition to FAO’s own public statements. The second keynoter’s speech is titled, “Toward ending the misplaced global debate on biotechnology”, suggesting that the FAO symposium should be the moment for shutting down biotech criticism.

In convening the biased symposium, FAO is bowing to industry pressure that intensified following international meetings on agroecology hosted by FAO in 2014 and 2015. The agroecology meetings were a model of openness to all viewpoints, from peasants to industry. But the biotech industry apparently prefers now to have a meeting they can control. This is not the first time FAO has been drawn into this game. In 2010, FAO convened a biotechnology conference in Guadalajara, Mexico, that blocked farmers from its organising committee, and then tried to prevent their attendance at the conference itself.

“We are alarmed that FAO is once again fronting for the same corporations, just when these companies are talking about further mergers amongst themselves, which would concentrate the commercial seeds sector in even fewer hands,” the CSO statement denounces.

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On World Food Day, Celebrating the Power of Regenerative Organic Farming

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Author: Deidre Fulton

As environmentalists, humanitarians, and farmers from around the globe celebrate the 35th annual World Food Day on Friday, sustainability advocates are heralding the capacity of organic regenerative agriculture and agroecology to address wide-ranging challenges from climate change to public health to hunger.

“On this World Food Day we face two interlinked planetary challenges: to produce enough food for all people and to sequester enough carbon in the soil to reverse climate change,” said Tom Newmark, co-founder of The Carbon Underground, on Friday.

“Agroecology is political; it requires us to challenge and transform structures of power in society. We need to put the control of seeds, biodiversity, land and territories, waters, knowledge, culture and the commons in the hands of the peoples who feed the world.”
—Report of the International Forum of Agroecology at the Nyeleni Center, Mali.

Newmark made his statements at a Washington, D.C. press conference hosted by the nonprofit organization Regeneration International and featuring a panel of 10 international experts on organic agriculture, carbon sequestration, and world hunger.

“There is one solution for those challenges: regenerative organic agriculture,” he continued. “We can no longer afford to rely on chemical farming, as the use of synthetic fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides has destroyed soils worldwide and rendered them unable to rebuild soil organic matter.”

What’s more, as author, activist, and panel participant Vandana Shiva wrote in an op-ed on Friday, “For all the destruction it causes, the industrial food system produces only 30% of the food eaten by people. If we continue, we will soon have a dead planet and no food.”

However, she pointed to “another road to food security. The road that was abandoned by research institutes and governments under the influence of giant chemical corporations (now seed and Biotechnology Corporations). This is the road of agroecology and small scale farming, which still produce 70% of the food.”

Keep Reading on Common Dreams

The Exxons of Agriculture

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Author: GRAIN

It goes without saying that oil and coal companies should not have a seat at the policy table for decisions on climate change. Their profits depend on business-as-usual and they’ll do everything in their power to undermine meaningful action.

But what about fertiliser companies? They are essentially the oil companies of the food world: the products they get farmers to pump into the soil are the largest source of emissions from farming.1 They, too, have their fortunes wrapped in agribusiness-as-usual and the expanded development of cheap sources of energy, like shale gas.*

Exxon and BP must envy the ease their fertiliser counterparts have had in infiltrating the climate change policy arena. World leaders are about to converge for the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris in December, but there is only one major intergovernmental initiative that has emerged to deal with climate change and agriculture – and it is controlled by the world’s largest fertiliser companies.

The Global Alliance for Climate Smart Agriculture, launched last year at the United Nations (UN) Summit on Climate Change in New York, is the culmination of several years of efforts by the fertiliser lobby to block meaningful action on agriculture and climate change. Of the Alliance’s 29 non-governmental founding members, there are three fertiliser industry lobby groups, two of the world’s largest fertiliser companies (Yara of Norway and Mosaic of the US), and a handful of organisations working directly with fertiliser companies on climate change programmes. Today, 60% of the private sector members of the Alliance still come from the fertiliser industry.2

Read the media release about this report here

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Mitigating Climate Change Through Food and Land Use

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Authors: Sara J. Scherr and Sajal Sthapit

Summary

Land makes up a quarter of Earth’s surface, and its soil and plants hold three times as much carbon as the atmosphere. More than 30 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions arise from the land use sector. Thus, no strategy for mitigating global climate change can be complete or successful without reducing emissions from agriculture, forestry, and other land uses. Moreover, only land-based or “terrestrial” carbon sequestration offers the possibility today of large-scale removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, through plant photosynthesis.

Five major strategies for reducing and sequestering terrestrial greenhouse gas emissions are:

• Enriching soil carbon. Soil is the third largest carbon pool on Earth’s surface. Agricultural soils can be managed to reduce emissions by minimizing tillage, reducing use of nitrogen fertilizers, and preventing erosion. Soils can store the carbon captured by plants from the atmosphere by building up soil organic matter, which also has benefits for crop production. Adding biochar (biomass burned in a low-oxygen environment) can further enhance carbon storage in soil.

• Farming with perennials. Perennial crops, grasses, palms, and trees constantly maintain and develop their root and woody biomass and associated carbon, while providing vegetative cover for soils. There is large potential to substitute annual tilled crops with perennials, particularly for animal feed and vegetable oils, as well as to incorporate woody perennials into annual cropping systems in agroforestry systems.

• Climate-friendly livestock production. Rapid growth in demand for livestock products has triggered a huge rise in the number of animals, the concentration of wastes in feedlots and dairies, and the clearing of natural grasslands and forests for grazing. Livestock-related emissions of carbon and methane now account for 14.5 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions—more than the transport sector. A reduction in livestock numbers may be needed but production innovations can help, including rotational grazing systems, manure management, methane capture for biogas production, and improved feeds and feed additives.

• Protecting natural habitat. The planet’s 4 billion hectares of forests and 5 billion hectares of natural grasslands are a massive reservoir of carbon—both in vegetation above ground and in root systems below ground. As forests and grasslands grow, they remove carbon from the atmosphere. Deforestation, land clearing, and forest and grassland fires are major sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Incentives are needed to encourage farmers and land users to maintain natural vegetation through product certification, payments for climate services, securing tenure rights, and community fire control. The conservation of natural habitat will benefit biodiversity in the face of climate change.

• Restoring degraded watersheds and rangelands. Extensive areas of the world have been denuded of vegetation through land clearing for crops or grazing and from overuse and poor management. Degradation has not only generated a huge amount of greenhouse gas emissions, but local people have lost a valuable livelihood asset as well as essential watershed functions. Restoring vegetative cover on degraded lands can be a win-win-win strategy for addressing climate change, rural poverty, and water scarcity.

Agricultural communities can play a central role in fighting climate change. Even at a relatively low price for mitigating carbon emissions, improved land management could offset a quarter of global emissions from fossil fuel use in a year. In contrast, solutions for reducing emissions by carbon capture in the energy sector are unlikely to be widely utilized for decades and do not remove the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. To tackle the climate challenge, we need to pursue land use solutions in addition to efforts to improve energy efficiency and speed the transition to renewable energy.

Yet so far, the international science and policy communities have been slow to embrace terrestrial climate action. Some fear that investments in land use will not produce “real” climate benefits, or that land use action would distract attention from investment in energy alternatives. There is also a concern that land management changes cannot be implemented quickly enough and at a scale that would make a difference to the climate.

Download the Full Report on Worldwatch Institute

World Food Day October 16: Campaign for Climate, Food and Farm Justice

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Call to Action – BECOME AN ENDORSING ORGANIZATION TODAY

The industrial food system is a major contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions. Industrial agriculture practices, like Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), large-scale monocultures, overuse and abuse of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, fossil fuel intensive transportation and storage, all generate significant amounts of Greenhouse Gases (GHGs), not to mention underpin an inequitable and unhealthy food system.

Conversely, small-scale regenerative organic farming not only emits less greenhouse gases than industrial agriculture, including significantly less nitrous oxide and methane as compared to industrial agriculture, but has the potential to counter climate change by successfully sequestering carbon dioxide. Importantly, according to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, small farmers hold the key to doubling food production while mitigating climate change and alleviating rural poverty. In fact, recent studies by the GRAIN demonstrate small farmers already feed the majority of the world with less than a quarter of all farmland. The Rodale Institute’s White Paper, “Regenerative Organic Agriculture and Climate Change,” states that small farmers and pastoralists could sequester more than 100% of current annual CO2 emissions with a switch to widely available, safe and inexpensive agroecological practices.

However, small-scale farmers and producers unfairly bear the brunt of climate impacts, threatening their communities and livelihoods. The Global South, although emitting only a fraction of all GHGs, disproportionately suffers the impacts of climate change, leading to environmental refugees, widespread hunger and economic injustice. For too long, only those who have been responsible for creating climate change have had a seat at the policy-making table; it is time to ensure those most affected and those most able to create solutions are heard.

While it is critical to continue to support efforts to develop a sensible and far-reaching strategy for renewable energy in both the government and marketplace, it is equally important to address one of the largest emitters of GHG and unjust sectors in the global economy, the industrial agriculture system. Addressing climate change on the farm and food system can not only tackle the challenging task of agriculture generated greenhouse gases, but produce more food with fewer fossil fuels, while building a just and sovereign food system.  Our communities, our economy, and our families demand immediate action.

BECOME AN ENDORSING ORGANIZATION TODAY

Agroecology Will Feed the World

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EVIDENCE IS MOUNTING: A widespread global shift in farming away from industrial production models toward agroecology is key to increasing food production and mitigating the effects of climate change.

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