Tag Archive for: Holistic Management

Regenerative Organic Certification Launched in US

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Author: Michelle Russell | Published: March 14, 2018

A new organic certification programme has been launched in the US, aimed at improving fairness for farmers and workers, as well as addressing animal welfare and ecological land management.

Launched at last week’s Natural Products Expo West show in California by the Regenerative Organic Alliance, the Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) is a holistic agriculture certification encompassing “robust, high-bar standards”.

The Regenerative Organic Alliance is led by Rodale Institute, a US non-profit that supports research into organic farming.

In 2014, research by Rodale Institute estimated that if current crop acreage and pastureland shifted to regenerative organic practices, 100% of annual global CO2 emissions could be sequestered in the soil.

Founding members of the certification include Compassion in World Farming, Grain Place Foods, Maple Hill Creamery and White Oak Pastures.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) organic standard is the bedrock of the new certification: only products certified under the USDA programme are eligible to meet the Regenerative Organic Certified criteria. With the requirement farms achieve organic certification as a baseline, the ROC standard addresses next-level soil health and also adds in requirements for animal welfare and farm labour.

“Regenerative Organic Certification does not aim to supplant current organic standards. Instead, this certification aims to support these standards while at the same time facilitate widespread adoption of holistic, regenerative practices throughout agriculture,” Rodale Institute said. “It builds upon the standards set forth by USDA Organic and similar programs internationally, particularly in the areas of animal welfare and farmer and worker fairness.

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Note to USDA: The Time for Regenerative Agriculture Is Now

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Lessons taught by a Kansas farmer continue to guide Blogger Ron Nichols years later about the importance of soil to agriculture.

Author: Ron Nichols | Published: March 12, 2018

It was Kansas farmer Gail Fuller who “took me to school.”

“You should be ashamed,” he told me bluntly.

As an employee (at the time) of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, I had assumed our 80-plus years of conservation work would insulate us (and me) from such a scathing rebuke. I assumed we were the ultimate “good guys” when it came to soil stewardship.

“Your agency came up with ‘T,’” Gail said in a tone that rang of indictment. (“T” is a concept developed by the Soil Conservation Service, now the NRCS, that established the minimum soil loss or erosion rate required to sufficiently reduce soil organic content and harm crop productivity. That rate, which is still used today, is measured in tons of soil per acre.)

“Tolerable loss of soil? Do you really think there’s such a thing as a ‘tolerable’ loss of soil?” he asked. “We should be rebuilding our soil.”.

After absorbing the initial impact of Gail’s candid reprimand, I realized he was right. “Okay,” I said, “but can soil regeneration be done profitably on a large scale without reducing productivity? “

“It can and it is. Right here on my farm,” he said.

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Chris Kerston About Building the World’s First Regenerative Wool Supply Chain

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Author: Elisabeth van Delden | Published: March 8, 2018

Chris Kerston is the Market Engagement and Public Outreach at the Savory Institute. In this episode, Chris introduces us to Allan Savory and the work of the Savory Institute. Chris explains how desertification happens and what role sheep and wool play to reverse desertification. You also get to learn details about the Land to Market certification scheme Chris and his team are working on to build a regenerative supply chain.

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Nature Can Reduce Pesticide Use, Environment Impact

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Author: Michigan State University | Published: March 1, 2018

Farmers around the world are turning to nature to help them reduce pesticide use, environmental impact and, subsequently, and in some cases, increasing yields.

Specifically, they’re attracting birds and other vertebrates, which keep pests and other invasive species away from their crops. The study, led by Michigan State University and appearing in the current issue of the journal Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, showcases some of the best global examples.

“Our review of research shows that vertebrates consume numerous crop pests and reduce crop damage, which is a key ecosystem service,” said Catherine Lindell, MSU integrative biologist who led the study. “These pest-consuming vertebrates can be attracted to agricultural areas through several landscape enhancements.”

For example, Lindell and graduate student Megan Shave led earlier research to bring more American kestrels to Michigan orchards. Installing nest boxes attracted the small falcons, the most-common predatory bird in the U.S., to cherry orchards and blueberry fields. The feathered hunters consume many species that cause damage to crops, including grasshoppers, rodents and European starlings. In cherry orchards, kestrels significantly reduced the abundance of birds that eat fruit. (Results from blueberry fields are pending.)

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Regenerative Farming Starts Here—with Chickens

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Are you ready to say goodbye to the monocrop industrial approach to agriculture and hello to regenerative farming?

Check out this Main Street Project video which tells a story about restoring our land and our relationship with plants and animals, and valuing the power of small farmers—all while deploying a small-scale system that is “accessible, productive and economically viable.”

How does the Main Street Project do all that? As the makers of this video explain, “the path to healing our food and agriculture system is a path walked on by chickens.” That’s right. Main Street Project has developed a poultry-centered regenerative agriculture system that can change how food is produced around the world.

Well-managed paddocks and rotational grazing—practices that regenerate soil, eliminate erosion and increase production—play a big role in Main Street’s well-planned 100-acre farm ecosystem in Northfield, Minnesota.

According to the video, chickens “contribute to the farm ecosystem by providing an affordable entry point for long-term economic investment and help transform that investment into a wide array of marketable products,” all while contributing to a “vibrant farm economy.”

Main Street Project’s goal is to provide a “revolutionary approach to eliminating harmful practices in the poultry industry while healing the land and relationship to the labor force.” The project’s founders want to solve the nation’s food crisis by equipping and uplifting the “next generation of consumers, farmers and investors in regenerative agriculture practices.”

Main Street Project’s Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin describes the project’s approach:

“We are advocating for a farming approach that brings back ancient knowledge, wisdom and techniques that farmers have survived on for a long time. What we are doing is restructuring those techniques so we can meet current demands in a way that the farming system that we deploy is good for the people, good for the landscape and the ecology, and is good for the economy.”

It’s part of the project’s “ecological, economic and social triple bottom line.” And the beauty of it is that the regenerative-poultry and grain model can be adapted to different climates in different parts of the U.S and the world. And it can operate on a small scale, or can be scaled up to meet the growing demand  for organic, regenerative poultry.

If a lot of this sounds familiar, it’s because of the steady drumbeat led by Regeneration International (RI), which works to build a “healthy global ecosystem in which regenerative agriculture and land-use practices cool the planet, feed the world, and promote public health, prosperity and peace.”

As Organic Consumers Association’s International Director Ronnie Cummins explains in a recent blog post, the regeneration movement is “the one movement that we believe has the power to address all our individual and collective concerns, the movement that holds the most hope for resolving the multiple and deepening global crises of hunger, poverty, crumbling political systems and climate change. The movement that begins with healing our most critical resources—soil, water, air—through better farming and land management practices. And ends with healing our local communities and global societies and restoring climate stability.”

Want to get involved? Help us rapidly scale up the signatories of Regeneration International’s 4 per 1000 initiative, which calls for countries to draw down more carbon than they emit, and to store it in the soil. Connect us with your local farmers, NGOs, agencies and companies that would be interested in signing on.

Increasing the number of those committed to healthy soil is the first step toward building a regeneration movement in your community.

Sign up here to keep up with news and alerts from Organic Consumers Association. Posted in full with permission.

Biodynamics: Where Regenerative Agriculture Meets Regenerative Capital

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Author: John Bloom | Published: January 25, 2018

Biodynamic farming, a “beyond organic” approach to agriculture long respected in Europe, may finally be poised for a breakthrough in the U.S. It has growing cachet in the wine industry, where biodynamic wines earn both high scores and high price points. Prince Charles speaks of its ecological, spiritual, and cultural importance. And the unimpeachably mainstream Today show recently aired a segment by Maria Shriver touting biodynamic produce’s flavor and benefits to health and soil quality.

With its emphasis on approaching the farm as an integrated living organism and the farmer as a deeply knowledgeable orchestrator, biodynamics is a natural path to regenerative agriculture—a real corrective to the negative effects of our dominant food system. Realizing the potential of biodynamics, however, will require an investment strategy that is also regenerative.

The industrialized agriculture system we have today—including industrialized organic agriculture—grew out of a particular capital approach: extractive, impatient, and designed to maximize profit rather than value for the community. We’re not going to create a different kind of agriculture with the same kind of capital.

Now, while the biodynamic market is where the organic movement was about 20 years ago, is the perfect time to look at how we can build a biodynamic farming movement with long-term integrity in mind. The central question is, can we grow the biodynamics market with capital that is consistent with the farming philosophy?

Building a balanced farm ecosystem

Similar to organic farming, biodynamic agriculture eschews synthetic pesticides and herbicides, GMOs, and hormones and other pharmaceutical growth promoters for livestock. But biodynamic farming goes well beyond that. It stands out for its system-level approach. Farmers strive to create a diversified, balanced farm ecosystem that generates health and fertility from within the farm as much as possible. Accordingly, the biodynamic certifier, Demeter, certifies whole farms rather than individual crops, ingredients, or parcels of land.

Biodynamic farmers build rich soil using integrated livestock, cover crops, farm-generated compost, and crop rotation. Biologically diverse habitat controls pests and disease. At least half of livestock feed must be grown on the farm. (Many organic farmers also follow these practices, but the USDA’s organic certification does not require them to.) Biodynamics also recognizes farmers and farm workers as vital actors whose health is essential to the health of the system, rather than seeing them as simply managers or processors. Biodynamics is more than a method—it’s a coherent philosophy.

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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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Where the Natural Products Industry Goes, So Goes the Mainstream

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Author: Brian Frederick | Published: January 2018

Lara Dickinson is the Co-Founding Director of One Step Closer to an Organic Sustainable Community (OSC2) and Cofounder of the Climate Collaborative. She applies over 20 years of consumer packaged goods marketing, sales, and management experience to helping healthy product innovations grow in natural and mass markets.

The goal of the Climate Collaborative is to bring together the natural products industry—from manufacturers to suppliers, distributors, brokers, and retailers—to inspire and facilitate action on climate change. It launched in 2017 at Natural Products Expo West as a project of OSC2 and the Sustainable Food Trade Association (SFTA). On December 20, 2017, nine months after launching, the Climate Collaborative celebrated its 150th member, No Evil Foods, which committed to taking climate action in agriculture, deforestation, packaging, and transportation.

Dickinson earned a B.S. in Business from the University of Southern California and studied European international relations at the University of Oxford. Returning to the United States, she finished her M.B.A at Cornell University in 1994 and started out working in consumer products marketing. Dickinson served as the Vice President of marketing at several companies, including Numi Organic Tea and Balance Bar, and the CEO at LightFull Foods. In 2012, she helped create OSC2 to drive positive change in the natural products industry, provide sustainable leadership, and build a collaborative platform.

Food Tank had the opportunity to talk with Lara Dickinson about the Climate Collaborative and what role the natural products industry can play in mitigating climate change and reducing food waste.

Food Tank (FT): What incentives are there for the natural products industry to mitigate climate change?

Lara Dickinson (LD): Well, the first incentive is that if we don’t actually reverse global warming, our industry will be forced to face some dramatic challenges. But there is a much more hopeful answer. Food and agriculture together represent the number one cause and also most hopeful solution area for climate change. We have made the journey more straightforward for companies. In our initial survey of the industry, nearly every natural product business leader we spoke with agreed that they, and the industry, can and must do more. But the majority also shared that they were not clear on the most important thing to do. So we have identified the nine priority commitment areas where companies can have the most impact. We provide tools, resources, webinars, and case studies to help them on their path. The industry is a leader in so much—organics, animal welfare, non-GMO—and climate is now a focus. Retailers, such as NCG and INFRA, and distributors, such as KEHe, are a part of this network of companies working together and recognizing best practices among the brands engaged. In terms of incentives, there are solutions that actually have long-term cost savings benefits such as increased use of solar power and reduction of food waste.

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Local View: Ode to the Cow: Cattle as Climate Champions

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Author: Eric Enberg | Published: January 8, 2018

In science, it pays to have an open mind to new ideas and concepts. I recently ran across some research from the Land Stewardship Project (myth buster #47: “Cattle are a Climate Change Catastrophe”) and the bestseller book, “Drawdown,” which challenged a lot about the way I view the lowly cow and its role in climate change.

We’ve all been told that raising and eating cattle is the worst thing we can do for the climate, and it probably is true considering that we have separated the cows from the land, mono-cultivating corn and soybeans, which erodes the topsoil, and ship the feed to the cows in large confined animal feedlot operations, or CAFOs. There, cows spend their last miserable months standing and sleeping in their own waste. Small mountains of manure pile up, as there is no other place to put it. Farmers who grow the corn and soybeans don’t even have the machinery with which to handle the manure anymore; they only use energy-intensive synthetic fertilizers. And, of course, you are happy to know your tax dollars go a long way toward supporting all of this in the name of feeding the world.

Only in America could we have designed a set of government incentives that simultaneously mine the only soil we have and pollute the water with synthetic fertilizer on one end and manure on the other — all of it mixed with a strong whiff of small-farm bankruptcy, animal misery, and climate change.

Why climate change? The black in healthy topsoil is atmospheric carbon that has been incorporated into the soil over many thousands of years. Understanding how it got there is key to reversing climate change. It turns out that healthy soil needs animals on the land to eat the plants. When a cow or any other herbivore, like the millions of bison that once roamed North America, tears off part of a plant, a portion of the root system dies for lack of support from the leaves. The roots are largely made of cellulose, which is one glucose molecule attached to another in long chains. Each glucose molecule has six carbon atoms, and this carbon is consumed by the soil organisms. Once it enters the bodies of these organisms, the carbon is locked into the soil.

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Video: 50 Years Ago, This Was a Wasteland. He Changed Everything | Short Film Showcase

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Published: April 24, 2018

Almost 50 years ago, fried chicken tycoon David Bamberger used his fortune to purchase 5,500 acres of overgrazed land in the Texas Hill Country. Planting grasses to soak in rains and fill hillside aquifers, Bamberger devoted the rest of his life to restoring the degraded landscape. Today, the land has been restored to its original habitat and boasts enormous biodiversity. Bamberger’s model of land stewardship is now being replicated across the region and he is considered to be a visionary in land management and water conservation.

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