Tag Archive for: Policy

Regenerative Soils Act – Vermont

Published: January 28, 2017 

Soil4Climate today announced that Vermont Senate Bill S.43, “an act relating to establishing a regenerative soils program” — originated by Soil4Climate Advisory Board member and Shaftsbury, Vermont farmer Jesse McDougall — has been submitted to the Vermont Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy. The proposed bill aims to encourage farming practices that improve soil health and to incentivize ecosystem restoration. It will also provide a host of additional economic and environmental benefits, including “increasing the carbon sequestration capability of Vermont soils [and] reducing the amount of sediment and waste entering the waters of the State.” The legislation was sponsored by Senator Brian Campion and co-sponsored by Senators Bray, Clarkson, Pearson, Pollina, and Sears.

Increasing the amount of carbon in soil boosts fertility and its ability to hold water, resulting in less need for fertilizer and reduced water pollution. Importantly, keeping nutrients in soil can eliminate the eutrophication plaguing Lake Champlain and other Vermont waterways. Further advantages include increased biodiversity, enhanced drought resilience and flood resistance, and improved forage nutrition.

The Vermont proposal is precedent-setting in calling for the creation of a Director of Regenerative Soils to oversee the program. Regular soil testing will be used to certify farms showing a steady improvement in soil health (i.e., carbon content) and/or quantity (i.e., depth). This proposed bill follows on the heels of other pro-soil health legislation enacted in recent years in California, Oklahoma, and Utah.

KEEP READING ON SOIL4CLIMATE

The Weather Matters a Lot to Farmers — and It’s Shaped by the Climate. Will Sonny Perdue Get That?

Andee Erickson | Published: January 20, 2017

President Trump has nominated Sonny Perdue, the former governor of Georgia, to be his secretary of agriculture. It’s a wide-ranging position at the head of a vast department, but one immediate question is where Perdue will stand on a number of environmental initiatives launched under the leadership of former secretary Tom Vilsack, who focused attention on the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions from farming and, simultaneously, to prepare the agricultural community itself for a changing climate.

But some green groups have expressed concerns about the nomination, given Perdue’s past comments suggesting he may take a different line than Vilsack did on matters related to climate change.

Writing in National Review in 2014, Perdue criticized attempts by “some on the left or in the mainstream media” to connect climate change to weather events. “Liberals have lost all credibility when it comes to climate science because their arguments have become so ridiculous and so obviously disconnected from reality,” he wrote.

Under former president Barack Obama, the Agriculture Department set up regional “climate hubs” to help farmers and landowners adapt to a changing climate. “There’s been a lot of work in developing, under the [previous] administration, climate resilience or climate smart agriculture,” said Charles Rice, an agronomy professor at Kansas State University.

And then there’s the contribution of agriculture itself to warming and other environmental problems. Agriculture produced 9 percent of the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions in 2014. Accordingly, the Obama administration had promised to curb agriculture’s contribution to climate change by reducing 120 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions per year by 2025. It’s not clear whether these policies would continue under Perdue.

While the responsibilities of the agriculture secretary don’t directly state that he or she must consider climate change in decision-making, Scott Faber, senior vice president for government affairs at Environmental Working Group, said the next secretary should. “Frankly, the next agriculture secretary should be leading efforts to require more environmental stewardship in exchange for the nearly $140 billion subsidies taxpayers provide to agriculture every year,” Faber said.

KEEP READING ON THE WASHINGTON POST 

Regeneration of Soils and Ecosystems: The Opportunity to Prevent Climate Change: Basis for a Necessary Climate and Agricultural Policy

[ Deutsch | English | Español | Italiano ]

Author: Íñigo Álvarez de Toledo, MSc

SUMMARY

We are probably at the most crucial crossroad of Humanity’s history. We are changing the Earth’s climate as a result of accelerated human-made Greenhouse Gases Emissions (GHG) and biodiversity loss, provoking other effects that increase the complexity of the problem and will multiply the speed with which we approach climate chaos1, and social too:

We explain and justify scientifically the need to give absolute priority to the regeneration of soils and ecosystems. The sustainability concept has driven positive changes but has failed on two levels: it has been easy to manipulate because of its inherent laxness, and because of the fact that since the Earth Summit (Rio de Janeiro, 1992) indicators show much worsening and certainly no improvement. Global emissions increase and soil erosion is every year hitting new negative records.

Ecological and agrosystem regeneration necessarily implies a change for the better, a positive attitude and the joy of generating benefits for all living beings, human or not. For all, because it is the way to not only reduce emissions to the atmosphere but to allow natural, agricultural and livestock soils to act as Carbon sinks, reducing the threat of an all too sudden increasing Climate Change.Regeneration improves products’ quality, thereby increasing their market value. It improves the properties not just sustaining but carrying them into a future of permanent virtuous processes, in the long and short run. In this way it tackles the increasing intergenerational justice problems. By means of increasing the resilience of the agrosystems, it also substantially contributes to Climate Change adaptation.

DOWNLOAD THE REPORT

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

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.

KEEP READING ON ECOSYSTEM MARKETPLACE 

Replace Dogma With Logic for Better Productivity

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.

KEEP READING ON BEEF PRODUCER 

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

 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.

KEEP READING ON ALTERNET 

This Man Is Helping the Entire Country of Bhutan Go Organic

Author: Clarissa Wei | Published: October 5, 2016

Located on the eastern side of the Himalayas, Bhutan is a tiny country with a population of around 750,000 people. It is known for being one of the happiest nations in the world, and the government puts a heavy emphasis on its unique Gross National Happiness metric, which measures progress through the spiritual, physical, social, and environmental health of its citizens.

It is also the first country in the world on track to becoming 100-percent organic.

For the 14,824-square-mile nation, going entirely organic was not that far of a stretch. The majority of food already comes from small farmers, and agriculture in the country never required much in the way of inputs. It wasn’t until the 1980s when synthetic agro-chemicals like fertilizers and pesticides were introduced that things began to change.

In 2011, the country decided to phase out those chemicals. Their goal: to make the entire country’s agricultural system organic by 2020.

The man behind that transition was Dr. Appachanda Thimmaiah. Thimmaiah is currently the associate professor of sustainable living at Maharishi University of Management in Iowa, and from 2008 to 2013 he served as the organic agriculture consultant to Bhutan.

He literally wrote the book on Bhutanese organic certification, so we called him up to talk about his plan for Bhutan and if such a strategy could be applied to the States.

Spoiler alert: The secret is cow piss.

MUNCHIES: So, how did you get invited to Bhutan?
Appachanda Thimmaiah: I have a consultancy company in India. We were the first consultancy company in biodynamic agriculture in India and we were the first to develop large agricultural projects transitioning to organic agriculture. The Bhutanese government wanted to see large successful projects in organic agriculture. I invited them to India and showed them some of my projects and after that, they sent a group of 30 officials from the government to get training for a week. A week training program doesn’t give you the entire experience. Then they were looking for somebody to come help them for organic agriculture development and I was chosen by the ministry of agriculture as a consultant.  It was funded by a couple of NGOs and eventually my work was for two years.

KEEP READING ON MUNCHIES 

Law Professor Outlines Steps to Achieve Global, Sustainable Agriculture

Author: Mike Krings | Published: December 13, 2016

Around the world, more land is being converted into agricultural production to feed the growing global population. However, the current model of agriculture is unsustainable, uses unprecedented amounts of fossil-carbon energy and contributes to pollution, water degradation and other problems. A University of Kansas law professor has written a book calling for support of a revolution in agriculture and outlines the legal, national and international political innovations that would be required to make it happen.

John Head, Robert W. Wagstaff Distinguished Professor of Law at KU, has written“International Law and Agroecological Husbandry: Building Legal Foundations for a New Agriculture.” The book first outlines the “extractive agriculture” system the modern world has used for the last few centuries and its unsustainability. Head then explores the prospects for transitioning to a system that could produce grains perennially and achieve adequate yields to feed the world while reducing problems such as climate change and soil degradation.

“How can we use international law and international institutions to facilitate the transition to a natural-system agriculture? My impression has been that those engaged in crop research efforts feel that if they come up with the right answer as a scientific and technological matter, then agriculture will be somewhat easily changed,” Head said. “I doubt that will be the case. I see it as a progression that has several elements and will take a great deal of international cooperation.”

Head, who grew up on a farm in northeast Missouri and has practiced international and comparative law, emphasizes his support for research being done at organizations such as the Land Institute in Salina. The institute, along with other research bodies around the world, is studying how to develop high-yield grain crops that could produce food year after year without replanting. Drawing inspiration from native grassland ecosystems such as those of the prairies that once covered North America’s Great Plains, the scientific efforts aim not only to develop crops that are perennial — wheat, for instance, that would not require yearly land preparation, planting and intense weed and pest control efforts — but that are also grown in mixtures with other plants. If successful, research efforts at the Land Institute and elsewhere would revolutionize the way agriculture can be practiced around the world, Head wrote.

“What they’ve achieved makes it pretty clear that it is possible to move from annual crops in a monoculture to perennial crops in a polyculture and produce adequate yields,” Head said of research at the Land Institute and other organizations.

KEEP READING ON THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS

Is There Any Money in Soil Carbon Projects? It Seems There Is Now

Author: James Nason | Published: December 9, 2016

One question more than any other is directed at CarbonLink’s Terry McCosker by producers wanting know more about on-farm carbon storing projects. Is there any money in it?

KEEP READING ON BEEF CENTRAL 

Characteristics of a Regenerative Global Diet

Author: Corinne Hanson | Published: November 28, 2016

We need to create, prepare and consume food differently. In every part of the food value network, we need to create system value, not system decay. In an earlier post, we established that today’s food system is falling short. What, then, do we propose as an alternative? How can we heal our food system and what can and should a healthy food system look like?

We are a long way from this Regenerative Diet on a global scale. Yet we know that there are several guiding elements that would support our decision-making as we rehabilitate the way we produce and enjoy food. Here is a proposed set of characteristics

  • The eater—not the consumer—comes first: We propose our future diet should be “eater-centric”, which is different from “consumer-driven”. We need to shift the conversation from being consumer-driven (“They like sugar, so we sell them sugar…”) to being system-driven (“We know that if people eat this, their health will be sustained as will the ecosystems which made the food possible”).Corporations’ license to operate in the food and agricultural sectors will be based on their ability to nourish people well. The improvement of human health will be the primary goal of any company in the food value chain.
  • Eating food heals the system: The question, “If more people ate this, would the world around us be better off?” has to be asked, and the answer has to be, “Yes.” This still allows for regional, cultural and personal diversity and breaks out of the divisive “meat bad, plants good” dichotomy. It shifts the equation from “what we believe” to “what we can demonstrate is creating the conditions that support life”.We know that farming practices that reduce biodiversity or do other damage to natural systems are detrimental to the wider system. Therefore, they need to change. Successful actors in a regenerative system will proactively ask and answer the question, “How is this contributing to overall human and ecosystem health, without undermining it?”
  • The business model incentivizes healthy eating: A regenerative diet requires that the business model of any food value chain company goes beyond how it is “increasing productivity” (e.g. a biotechnology that requires pesticide use in order to be profitable) or “improving consumer access and choice” (e.g. a floating grocery store of processed foods on the Amazon) and calls on a company to determine how—or even if—it is enabling eaters to be healthy without undermining other aspects of any social or environmental systems.There is room for interpretation and absolute answers will always be elusive but we can make more informed, purpose-driven decisions than we currently do. A regenerative business model creates financial value by intentionally contributing to human health, and while not being financially rewarded in any way for undermining human health or the health of other life on Earth.

These are tall orders; however, several companies have already been delivering progress. Marks and Spencer’s Plan A has long been lauded for aggressive ambitions across key products and ingredients in its food. They’re working directly to prevent food waste in the field, at manufacturing, and on shelves.

They blend business experience, Life Cycle Analysis, stakeholder input and benchmarking to inform approach and use science to clarify complicated tradeoffs, e.g. packaging vs. length of product life. There is still a significant shift required to induce healthy eating and a truly sustainable system contained within such a plan, but it’s pointed in the right direction.

Panera has increased their commitments to animal welfare and to removing artificial ingredients and antibiotics from all products, now sourcing 100 per cent vegetarian-fed and antibiotic-free chicken, with a brand focus on “food you can feel good about” and “good eating”.

KEEP READING ON ECO-BUSINESS