Tag Archive for: Regenerative Agriculture

How Regenerative Farming Cut Fixed Costs by 40% in First Year

It is safe to say Nick Padwick isn’t looking for a long transition to farming using regenerative agricultural principles at Ken Hill Farms and Estate, near Snettisham.

With an immediate cost saving of £40,000 on diesel and a reduction in fixed costs from £562/ha to £330/ha in just one year, there are already some positive reasons why a virtually complete change in philosophy has been implemented so quickly.

Mr Padwick arrived as estate manager two years ago with a blank slate to transform the 1,400ha estate to farm in a more environmentally friendly way.

What is regenerative agriculture?

Typically, most regenerative farmers follow these four core principles

  1. Minimising soil disturbance
  2. Keeping the soil covered
  3. Maximising plant or crop diversity
  4. Integrating livestock

Countryside Stewardship payments

It was a focus that led to radical changes across the estate, with about 200ha of low-performing arable land entered into the creation of wood pasture (WD6) higher-tier Countryside Stewardship, alongside a further 200ha of woodland attracting restoration of wood pasture (WD5) payments.

 

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Why Agroecology, not Agribusiness, Will Save Our Food System

The global food system needs transforming, and family farmers can get us there. With centuries of knowledge in sustainable agriculture, farmers innovate daily to adapt and respond to the existential crises of COVID-19 and climate change. For our organization, ActionAid USA, showing up for farmers means standing up to the political leaders who claim to represent them but instead align with agribusiness.

Over the past year, Donald Trump’s Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies in Rome, agribusiness baron Kip Tom, has unleashed repeated attacks on the UN Food and Agricultural Organization for discussing how agroecology can improve food security.

While it is hardly surprising to see the Trump administration taking shots at multilateralism or pushing corporate interests, Tom’s comments reveal how threatened agribusinesses are by the movements of farmers and workers to create a global food system for all.

The ambassador’s latest attack comes in an op-ed, in which he vilifies agroecology, accuses agroecology of spreading the locust invasion in African countries, and preys upon people’s worst fears of hunger. These statements are dangerous at worst, baseless at best.

According to Tom, agroecology is part of a global conspiracy in which nongovernmental organizations trick developing countries into rejecting genetically modified crops and synthetic chemical inputs, thereby depriving them of these technologies and keeping them poor.

He calls for the U.S. to reclaim its role in leading and spreading the so-called “Innovation Imperative” for agriculture, meaning the administration and U.S. agribusiness companies should take more control over land and agriculture.

It’s alarming to hear a diplomat make such an inaccurate, neo-colonialist pronouncement, ignoring the reality of family farmers and people who face hunger around the world.

The ambassador’s version of the Green Revolution fails to count the environmental and human cost. Tons of pesticides have poisoned both water and people and have robbed the soil of its ability to regenerate. Farmers everywhere have been forced to take on insurmountable levels of debt to afford the proprietary and expensive technology he touts as miraculous.

In the U.S., farmers are paying out-of-pocket for the massive mechanization and industrialization of agriculture that dismantle small farms in favor of large monoculture. In India, far too many farmers fall into debt after adopting high-cost, high-tech solutions and attempt suicide, seeing no other way out.

Tom also blames agroecology’s aversion to pesticides for causing the locust outbreaks. This accusation is false. Pest management is an important part of farming, including agroecology, and the massive use of chemical pesticides provokes further problems as they remain in the soil and water for long periods and are dangerous to humans, livestock, fauna, and the whole environment.

It’s clear that the factors leading to the locust outbreak, including cyclones, favorable climate favorable conditions for swarms, COVID-19 measures restricting movement, and the lack of permanent infrastructure to respond quickly, have nothing to do with agroecology. On the contrary, agroecology can revert some of these factors by building a more diversified and resilient agricultural system.

As for Tom’s claim that we can’t feed the world farming this way, it ignores the reality that most people already depend on smallholder farmers for their food. Across developing countries, an estimated 500 million smallholder farms support almost 2 billion people. These farms produce about 80 percent of the food consumed in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

Tom wants you to believe agroecology is anti-technology. Yes, millions of small-scale food producers want to farm in harmony with nature. But they don’t reject technology. What they reject is highly priced, patented technology that locks them into a cycle of debt to agribusiness companies. They reject the power agribusiness has amassed in developed countries to dictate agricultural policy.

As CEO of Tom Farms, one of Bayer-Monsanto’s biggest seed growers, the ambassador speaks for powerful interests beyond the high-tech industry and big agribusiness that promise great benefits for the few that can afford them, at the expense of the poorest people and the environment. Tom also has the backing of an administration that tried to block progress on agroecology at last year’s UN Committee for World Food Security meetings. Under their logic, those who gain are not farmers but the shareholders of big corporations.

Family farmers are clear: if we are going to protect our planet and keep healthy food on our table, agroecology is the way forward.

And they aren’t alone.

In a report comparing sustainable agriculture approaches, the High-Level Panel of Experts recognized how “agroecology practices harness, maintain and enhance biological and ecological processes in agricultural production, in order to reduce the use of purchased inputs that include fossil fuels and agrochemicals and to create more diverse, resilient and productive agroecosystems.”

The movement for agroecology is growing, built on the logic that power should be distributed equally. That’s why aggressive opponents to agroecology like Tom are firing back. They’re scared.

 

Reposted with permission from Food Tank

We Can Partner With Nature To Feed Everybody

Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin is transforming the food system from the ground up by introducing poultry-powered, planet-cooling, regenerative agriculture. He talks about the need to rebalance humanity’s relationship with nature with Pip Wheaton, Ashoka’s co-lead of Planet & Climate.

Pip Wheaton: Why do you do this work?

Regionaldo Haslett-Marroquin: I came into this because of people’s suffering. I’m an agronomist; I’m passionate about nature. I believe I understand how nature operates, and how we can be partners with nature to feed everybody. The current system isn’t doing that. As a consequence, the way people live, the quality of people’s lives because of the food they eat, is impacted. Consumers are sick from conventional foods; diet related diseases, diabetes, heart disease. Minorities are more severely affected because of the way food reaches minority communities all around the world. Whether it is indigenous communities in Guatemala and Mexico, or African Americans or Hispanic or other minorities in the United States, or minorities in other countries, they’re the ones at the tail end. The people who hoard are normally able to have access to everything, but it is at the expense of the majority having real scarcity.

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What Regenerative Farming Can Do for the Climate

Tropical Storm Isaias downed power lines and trees across the greater New York City area in early August, snapping limbs from the ancient oaks that ring Patty Gentry’s small Long Island farm.

Dead branches were still dangling a month later. But rows of mustard greens were unfurling nearby, and a thicket of green vines reached toward the sun, dotted with tangy orange bulbs.

“These sungold tomatoes were toast,” Gentry said, sounding almost astonished. “But now look at them. They’re coming back. It’s like spring again.”

Over the past four years, Gentry has transformed 2 acres of trash-strewn dirt on Long Island’s southeast coast into a profitable organic farm by betting big on soil. Instead of pumping her crops with pesticides and petrochemical fertilizer, Gentry grows vetch, a hardy pealike plant, and rye to cover the exposed soil between the rows of greens intended for harvest. She layers the soil with specially mined rock dust that replenishes minerals and pulls carbon from the air. And in the spring and summer, she uses a system of crop rotation—shifting around where different crops are planted—so that one plant’s nutrient needs don’t drain the soil. These practices are collectively known as regenerative farming.

Tests of the soil show the organic content is now seven times higher than when she began. The result is produce so flavorful that she can’t keep up with the number of restaurants and home cooks looking to buy shares.

Gentry’s farm is also resilient, one where healthy soil soaks up rainwater like a sponge and replenishes the crops. She barely missed a delivery after the storm.

At a moment when fires and storms are wreaking havoc from coast to coast, mounting research suggests that practicing the soil techniques Gentry uses on a much wider scale could remove climate-changing gases from the atmosphere and provide a vital bulwark in the fight to maintain a habitable planet. They’re part of a mix of solutions experts say are needed to keep global temperatures from surpassing 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial averages, beyond which projections show catastrophic threats to our coasts, ecosystems, and food and water supplies.

Regenerative practices range from growing trees and reverting croplands to wild prairies, to rotating crops and allowing remnants after harvest to decompose into the ground. The techniques, already popular with small-scale organic growers, are steadily gaining traction among big farms and ranches as the chaotic effects of climate change and financial pressure from agribusiness giants eat away at their businesses.

“This is about covering the soil, feeding the soil and not disrupting it,” said Betsy Taylor, the president at Breakthrough Strategies & Solutions, a consultancy that focuses on regenerative agriculture. “Those are the basic principles.”

Countries such as France are promoting large-scale government programs to encourage farmers to increase the carbon stored in soil. Members of Congress have also proposed legislation to push regenerative farming in the U.S., and several states are designing their own policies. Progressive think tanks call for small shifts in existing U.S. Department of Agriculture programs and beefed-up research funding that could trigger the biggest changes to American farming in almost a century. Nearly every Democratic presidential candidate pitched paying farmers to trap carbon in soil as a key plank of their climate platform, including nominee Joe Biden.

“We should be making farmers the recipients of a climate change plan where they get paid to absorb carbon,” the former vice president said during a CNN town hall this past week.

While the benefits to soil and food nutrition are difficult to dispute, regenerative farming has its critics. They argue that its climate advantages are overhyped or unproven, the product of wishful thinking about a politically palatable solution, and that the focus on regenerative farming risks distracting policymakers from more effective, if less exciting, strategies.

Industrial Agriculture’s Bill Is Coming Due

At the end of World War II, federal farming policy started to transform the breadbasket of the Midwest into vast plains of corn, soybeans, and grains. The same principles of mechanized bulk production that turned the United States into a military powerhouse capable of fending off the Japanese and Nazi empires were applied to farming. Surplus chemicals from weapons manufacturing found new uses eradicating crop-eating insects, and nitrogen plants that once made components for bombs started producing ammonia to feed fields.

Geopolitics only hastened the trend, as widespread Soviet crop failures forced Russian officials to buy grain from overseas and the Nixon administration capitalized on the opportunity. Agriculture Secretary Earl “Rusty” Butz, who served under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, directed farmers to “plant fence row to fence row,” and quantity trumped all else. Farmers took out loans to expand operations, turning “get big or get out” into a mantra, as Butz promised that any surplus could be sold overseas.

The damage to farm soil kicked into overdrive as farmers planted the same monoculture crops year after year and added more chemical fertilizers to make up for the sapped minerals and dead microbes. The cumulative effect has been twofold. The U.S. loses top soil at a rate 10 times faster than it’s replenished. And carbon and other gases seep from the plowed, exposed soil into the air, contributing to the emissions rapidly warming the planet and increasing the frequency and severity of destructive droughts and storms.

Less than two weeks after Tropical Storm Isaias made landfall over Gentry’s farm, a powerful storm known as a derecho—or “inland hurricane”—formed in Iowa, some 1,100 miles west. The storm destroyed nearly half the state’s crop rows. “This will ruin us,” one farmer told a local newspaper. Another called it a “catastrophic scenario.”

Losses from extreme weather are only expected to grow in the years ahead. Even if warming is kept within a 2 degrees Celsius warming scenario, the less ambitious goal spelled out in the Paris climate accords, U.S. corn production will likely suffer an 18% hit, according to a 2018 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

For many farmers, the federal crop insurance program has been a lifeline in tumultuous times. But it also encourages them to plant in harm’s way by providing incentives to cultivate every inch of land, including marginal acres prone to flooding, and it promotes monocultures by making it difficult for farmers to insure a variety of crops at once. In 2014, the federal Government Accountability Office found that, as a result of the insurance program’s policies, farmers “do not bear the true cost of their risk of loss due to weather-related events, such as drought—which could affect their farming decisions.”

“As farmers, we’re trying to make rational economic decisions in an irrational system,” said Matt Russell, a fifth-generation Iowa farmer who promotes regenerative soil practices. “We have externalized the pollution so the public pays for those costs and nobody in the supply chain pays for it, while at the same time, when I do something good, I can’t externalize the cost at all.”

‘You’ve Got A Win’

Plans to shift federal incentives to favor regenerative farming aim first to loosen big agribusiness’s grip on the industry.

The think tank Data for Progress has proposed overhauling the federal crop insurance program to limit the total acreage eligible for coverage, phase out incentives for single-crop planting and create new tax credits designed specifically for family-owned farms, restricting how much corporate giants could benefit from the subsidized insurance.

With that stick would come a carrot: Under Data for Progress’ plan, Congress would increase the budget for the USDA’s existing conservation programs.

The Conservation Stewardship Program already provides farmers with cash payments of up to $40,000 per year and technological assistance for steps such as assessing which plots of farming and grazing land should be allowed to go natural. With an expanded mandate to sequester carbon dioxide, the program might fund a national assessment to determine which areas are best suited for rewilding or carbon farming and compensate farmers directly to do that.

The program paid out $1.4 billion last year alone. Data for Progress proposed that the USDA significantly increase funding for both the program and research, and provide employees in all its conservation programs with training to understand and help regulate regenerative farming practices.

“There are so many wins in regenerative agriculture,” said Maggie Thomas, a former climate policy adviser to the presidential campaigns of U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D), who serves as political director of the progressive climate group Evergreen Action. “You’ve got a win for farmers. You’ve got a win for soils and the environment. You’ve got a win for better food. There’s no reason not to do it.”

The hopes for such changes are dim under the Trump administration, which spent its first three years sidelining climate science and spurring an exodus of scientists from the USDA as frustration over political appointees’ meddling with research grew. (A five-year proposal the agency released in February did seem to show a growing acceptance of the need to address climate change, offering what InsideClimate News called “hopeful signs.”)

Maryland already pays farmers $45 per acre for fields maintained with cover crops. Montana state officials collaborated with a nonprofit consortium paying ranchers to adopt sustainable grazing practices that increase carbon storage in the soil.

In January, Vermont proposed a plan to incorporate carbon sequestration by farmers into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cap-and-trade scheme that includes most of the Northeast states. In March, Minnesota officials gathered for a summit on using soil to combat climate change. In June, Colorado solicited input for a state-level soil health program aimed at “advancing climate resilience.”

Investors see potential profit in the shift to regenerative agriculture. In January, the Seattle startup Nori was able to raise $1.3 million to fund its platform using blockchain technology to pay farmers to remove carbon from the atmosphere. And Boston-based Indigo Ag, a similar startup, announced in June that it had brought in another $300 million from investors, becoming the world’s highest-valued ag-tech firm at an estimated $3.5 billion.

But some fear these platforms offer dubious benefits, particularly because the credits generated by the farmers’ stored carbon could be bought by industrial giants that would rather offset their own pollution than eliminate it.

“It’s right to be skeptical of these companies,” said Mackenzie Feldman, a fellow at Data for Progress and lead author on its regenerative farming proposal. “It has to be the government doing this, and it can be through mechanisms that already exist, like the Conservation Stewardship Program.”

Are The Benefits Being Oversold?

But not everyone is jumping on the regenerative farming bandwagon. In May, a group of researchers at the World Resources Institute offered a skeptical take, arguing “that the practices grouped as regenerative agriculture can improve soil health and yield some valuable environmental benefits, but are unlikely to achieve large-scale emissions reductions.”

“No-till” farming—a seeding practice that requires growers to inject seeds into fields without disturbing the soil, which became popular with environmentalists several years ago—has had only limited carbon benefits because farmers inevitably plow their fields after a few years, WRI argued, pointing to a 2014 study in the journal Nature Climate Change.

And cover crops can be costly to plant and difficult to propagate in the weeks between a fall harvest and the winter months, WRI said, highlighting the findings of an Iowa State University study. The group also cast doubt over the methods used to account for carbon added to soil.

In June, seven of the world’s leading soil scientists published a response to WRI’s claims, which they said drew too narrow conclusions and failed to see the potential of combining multiple regenerative practices.

WRI researcher Tim Searchinger renewed the debate this past month with his own response to the response, accusing the critics of his critique of relying on misleading information from a 2007 United Nations report to inflate the potential for capturing carbon in soil at large scale.

“The realistic ability to sequester additional carbon in working agricultural soils is limited,” he wrote. “Because what causes carbon to remain in soils is not well understood, further research is needed, and our views may change as new science emerges.”

Rock You In A Hurricane

Some of the latest science sheds light on one aspect of regenerative farming that didn’t factor into the recent debate at all. In July, a major new study published in the journal Nature found that spreading rock dust on soil at maximum scale in the world’s three largest carbon emitters—China, the United States and India—could collectively remove up to 2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from the air per year.

The process, known as “enhanced rock weathering,” occurs when minerals in the rock dust react with carbon in rainwater and turn into bicarbonate ions. Those ions are eventually washed into the oceans, where they’re stored indefinitely as rock minerals.

“The more we looked into it, the more it seemed like a no-brainer,” said David Beerling, a soil researcher at the U.K.’s University of Sheffield and the lead author of the study.

That’s a leap Thomas Vanacore took nearly four decades ago. The Vermont farmer and quarryman realized in the 1980s that mineral-rich dust from basalt and shale quarries could replenish nutrients in soil without using synthetic fertilizers, which would appeal to his state’s organic farmers. But as he studied climate change, he also concluded that his product could help pull carbon from the atmosphere.

“You can’t do what modern farming has done for years, where you kill everything and expect to grow life,” Vanacore said, standing before a pile of black shale at a quarry in Shoreham, Vermont. For farmers looking to make the shift to regenerative practices, “rock dust is the jumpstart,” he said.

This month, he delivered his largest shipment to date to an industrial farm supplier in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. Vanacore said he expects to ship an added 245 rail cars full of rock dust over the northern border in the next 12 months.

His customers swear by the stuff—including Gentry, who started buying bags of his brix-blend basalt when she first started her farm. Without the rock dust, Gentry doubts that her soil would be as fertile as it is today. Her embrace of pioneering techniques is reflected in the name of her plot: Early Girl Farm.

 

Reposted with permission from YES Magazine

A Regenerative Revolution in the Poultry Industry

NORTHFIELD, Minn. ― As a farmer, Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin would tell you himself that he produces nothing. Nature does all the work.

However what Haslett-Marroquin can be credited for is leading a regional deployment of his patented regenerative poultry system, and managing systems development, infrastructure and farms operating under it.

Haslett-Marroquin and the Tree-Range system have turned southeast Minnesota into the epicenter of a budding movement in regenerative agriculture in the Midwest and beyond. The mission of the system is to deploy regenerative poultry at scale in the bordering region southwestern Wisconsin, northeastern Iowa and southeast Minnesota. Haslett-Marroquin said so far what’s been done is the organization of foundational support for the system and its infrastructure.

Fundamental to that infrastructure is deployment of poultry processing. Haslett-Marroquin said after a few years of work, the first poultry processing facility in Stacyville, Iowa, was purchased and is now in the process of becoming operational, with plans to open for processing next year.

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Livestock: A Powerful Tool

“Everything we humans do is 1,000% dependent on agriculture. Yet if you looked at our world from space you would consider us a desert-making species.”

That blunt observation comes from Allan Savory, a Zimbabwean ecologist, livestock farmer, and president and co-founder of the Savory Institute. He offers a remedy, however, for what he describes as the “desertification” of much of our planet: livestock grazing.

‘Regenerative Agriculture and the Soil Carbon Solution’: New Paper Outlines Vision for Climate Action

A white paper out Friday declares that “there is hope right beneath our feet” to address the climate crisis as it touts regenerative agriculture as a “win-win-win” solution to tackling runaway carbon emissions.

“Humans broke the planet with grave agricultural malpractice,” Tom Newmark, chairman of The Carbon Underground and a contributor to the research, said in a statement. “With this white paper, Rodale Institute shows us how regenerative agriculture has the potential to repair that damage and actually reverse some of the threatening impacts of our climate crisis.”

“This is a compelling call to action!” he added.

Released by the Rodale Institute and entitled Regenerative Agriculture and the Soil Carbon Solution (pdf), the white paper discusses how a transformation of current widespread agricultural practices—which now contribute indirectly and directly to the climate crisis—”can be rolled out tomorrow providing multiple benefits beyond climate stabilization.”

The findings are based on Rodale’s own trials, research data, and interviews with experts, and build upon the institute’s 2014 paper Regenerative Organic Agriculture and Climate Change: A Down-to-Earth Solution to Global Warming.

The claim made in the new paper is bold: “Data from farming and grazing studies show the power of exemplary regenerative systems that, if achieved globally, would drawdown more than 100% of current annual CO2 emissions.”

Regenerative agriculture, as the researchers describe, represents “a system of farming principles that rehabilitates the entire ecosystem and enhances natural resources, rather than depleting them.”

In contrast to industrial practices dependent upon monocultures, extensive tillage, pesticides, and synthetic fertilizers, a regenerative approach uses, at minimum, seven practices which aim to boost biodiversity both above and underground and make possible carbon sequestration in soil.

  • Diversifying crop rotations
  • Planting cover crops, green manures, and perennials
  • Retaining crop residues
  • Using natural sources of fertilizer, such as compost
  • Employing highly managed grazing and/or integrating crops and livestock
  • Reducing tillage frequency and depth
  • Eliminating synthetic chemicals

While passers-by may easily spot visual differences above ground between the divergent agricultural approaches, what’s happening below ground is also vital. From the paper:

Contrary to previous thought, it’s not the recalcitrant plant material that persists and creates long-term soil carbon stores, instead it’s the microbes who process this plant matter that are most responsible for soil carbon sequestration. Stable soil carbon is formed mostly by microbial necromass (dead biomass) bonded to minerals (silt and clay) in the soil. Long term carbon storage is dependent on the protection of the microbially-derived carbon from decomposition.

As for claims such as agricultural transformation wouldn’t be able to produce enough food, the paper counters: “Actual yields in well-designed regenerative organic systems, rather than agglomerated averages, have been shown to outcompete conventional yields for almost all food crops including corn, wheat, rice, soybean, and sunflower.”

But that is far from the only benefit. “When compared to conventional industrial agriculture,” the authors write, “regenerative systems improve”:

  • Biodiversity abundance and species richness
  • Soil health, including soil carbon
  • Pesticide impacts on food and ecosystems
  • Total farm outputs
  • Nutrient density of outputs
  • Resilience to climate shocks
  • Provision of ecosystem services
  • Resource use efficiency
  • Job creation and farmworker welfare
  • Farm profitability
  • Rural community revitalization

Rather than framing it as a “wake-up call,” the institute says the paper should be seen as an “invitation to journey in a new direction.”

“It is intended to be both a road map to change and a call to action to follow a new path,” the authors write. “One led by science and blazed by farmers and ranchers across the globe.”

“Together we both sound the alarm and proclaim the regenerative farming solution: It’s time to start our journey with a brighter future for our planet and ourselves as the destination,” the paper states.

Resources accompanying the white paper include a sample letter to members of Congress to urge support for the Agriculture Resilience Act (H.R. 5861), introduced in February by Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), and a “buyer’s guide to regenerative food” to help decipher food labels and questions to ask suppliers at farmers’ markets.

“A vast amount of data on the carbon sequestration potential of agricultural soils has been published, including from Rodale Institute, and recent findings are starting to reinforce the benefits of regenerative agricultural practices in the fight against the climate crisis,” said Dr. Andrew Smith, COO and chief scientist of Rodale Institute.

Reposted with permission from Common Dreams

Agro-Eco Filipinas ayuda a los agricultores filipinos a realizar la transición a prácticas regenerativas agroecológicas y orgánicas

DAVAO, FILIPINAS – Hace ya un año, Regeneration International (RI) firmó el pacto “Regeneración Filipinas”, un Memorando de Entendimiento entre la Liga Filipina de Municipios, Ciudades y Provincias Orgánicas (LOAMCP) y RI.

Hoy, un año después, tenemos la suerte de haber vuelto a contactar virtualmente con nuestros amigos en Filipinas, esta vez, mediante la incorporación de un nuevo socio de RI, Agro-Eco Filipinas (AEP), una organización que se dedica a “construir comunidades agrícolas resilientes y economías sostenibles”.

AEP comenzó su trabajo con pequeños agricultores en Mindanao en el sur de Filipinas en 1991. Hoy, la organización gubernamental sin fines de lucro (ONG) trabaja con 4.000 agricultores individuales en 300 organizaciones de agricultores en Mindanao, Visayas oriental y Luzón oriental.

Su misión es defender el derecho de los filipinos a una alimentación saludable, mitigar el hambre en las comunidades agrícolas afectadas por la pobreza y capacitar a los agricultores en prácticas orgánicas regenerativas y agroecológicas que les permiten producir alimentos saludables, aumentan el sustento socioeconómico de los agricultores y desarrollan la resiliencia contra los efectos del cambio climático.

AEP también invierte en el desarrollo de mercados locales a través de la investigación liderada por la comunidad para ayudar a aumentar los ingresos de los pequeños agricultores.

En nuestra serie de videos “Caminos de regeneración”, que muestra historias de regeneración en todo el mundo, te presentamos a AEP y su trabajo para apoyar a agricultores filipinos a hacer la transición de prácticas convencionales a prácticas agroecológicas y regenerativas orgánicas.

En nuestro último episodio, “Agro-Eco Filipinas ayuda a los agricultores a ser orgánicos”, el director ejecutivo de AEP, Geonathan Barro, explica cómo la ONG ha capacitado a un número impresionante de agricultores en prácticas orgánicas. Barro nos dijo en una entrevista de Zoom:

“Hasta ahora, hemos capacitado a aproximadamente 10,000 agricultores convencionales para que hagan la transición a prácticas orgánicas. La clave está en aprovechar el arduo trabajo de los años anteriores sin depender de intermediarios o entidades corporativas para distribuir y procesar nuestros productos ”.

AEP cree firmemente que el papel que desempeñan los seres humanos en las granjas es un componente clave de la agroecología. Según su sitio web:

“Los agricultores . . . son actores críticos en la práctica y la transformación agroecológica. Son administradores de la biodiversidad y verdaderos guardianes del conocimiento relevante para esta transición. Por lo tanto, es importante que los conocimientos y tecnologías agroecológicas se desarrollen sobre la base del conocimiento y la experimentación de los agricultores. Además, esto significa que la agroecología tiene que ser específica al contexto y culturalmente apropiada. La agroecología aprovecha al máximo el capital humano, social y ambiental disponible a nivel local”.

 

La Revolución Verde obliga a los agricultores a adoptar un modelo agrícola degenerativo

El futuro no siempre ha sido tan brillante para algunos agricultores de Filipinas.

Desde el lanzamiento de la Revolución Verde en la década de 1960, los agricultores filipinos han dependido en gran medida de modelos agrícolas degenerativos. Estos modelos han obligado a millones de agricultores a endeudarse debido al alto costo de los fertilizantes químicos y pesticidas que, con el tiempo, erosionaron el suelo y contaminaron los cursos de agua.

Hace más de medio siglo, el gobierno filipino, con la influencia de la Fundación Ford y la Fundación Rockefeller, creó el Instituto Internacional de Investigación del Arroz (IRRI). En 1962, el IRRI cruzó las cepas de arroz Dee-Geo-woo-gen y Peta para crear el IR8 o “arroz milagroso”. En 1981, el “arroz milagroso” representaba más del 80 por ciento del total de cultivos de arroz en Filipinas.

El “arroz milagroso” produjo altos rendimientos, diez veces más que las variedades de arroz tradicionales, lo que permitió a Filipinas pasar de ser un importador de arroz a un exportador mundial.

Desafortunadamente, los beneficios de la Revolución Verde fueron de corta duración. También se vieron contrarrestados por el aumento de los costos de las altas deudas, la caída de los ingresos y las consecuencias ambientales de la agricultura intensiva en productos químicos.

Esta cadena de eventos se da en muchos países en desarrollo que fueron víctimas de las grandes corporaciones agrícolas que venden semillas de alto rendimiento que proporcionan cosechas productivas el primer año, pero el año siguiente requieren mayores aumentos en los insumos químicos.

El atractivo de los altos (pero insostenibles) rendimientos de estos cultivos ha llevado a un sistema de agricultores esclavizados cuyas tierras de cultivo se han vuelto improductivas sin la aplicación de insumos sintéticos y químicos.

Con el tiempo, los pesticidas destruyen microbios clave en el suelo y alteran su capacidad para retener nutrientes y agua, lo que hace que los agricultores sean más vulnerables a la sequía, las inundaciones, las plagas y las enfermedades relacionadas con los cultivos. Esto aumenta los costos de producción y pone a los pequeños agricultores en riesgo de quiebra.

Agricultores filipinos haciendo campaña contra el arroz dorado de Monsanto, promoviendo sistemas regenerativos de intensificación del arroz y defendiendo la soberanía local de semillas.

AEP capacita a los agricultores en prácticas regenerativas orgánicas que benefician al medio ambiente y a la comunidad

AEP está trabajando para romper los patrones de los sistemas alimentarios y agrícolas convencionales proporcionando a los pequeños agricultores acceso gratuito a semillas nativas locales e información sobre prácticas como el compostaje, cultivos de cobertura, conservación de semillas, rotación de cultivos e integración del ganado.

También enseña a los agricultores sobre agrosilvicultura, la incorporación de árboles a la agricultura y fomenta el intercambio de conocimientos entre compañeros agricultores.

Las prácticas agroecológicas y regenerativas orgánicas nunca antes habían sido tan importantes. Como en muchos países del mundo, la pandemia de COVID-19 ha provocado escasez de alimentos en Filipinas.

El lado positivo, sin embargo, es que los estantes vacíos de las tiendas han animado a los lugareños a comprar directamente a sus agricultores. Esto no solo ayuda a los pequeños agricultores, sino que también les brinda a las familias alimentos seguros y nutritivos que fortalecen el sistema inmunológico, dijo Barro a RI.

Vender directamente a los consumidores y eliminar las tiendas de comestibles de la ecuación ha permitido a los agricultores filipinos vender sus productos más baratos.

Luz Astronomo, miembro de AEP y pequeño agricultor de la ciudad de Davao, Filipinas, dijo a RI en una entrevista de Zoom que puede vender sus productos por un 60% menos que los otros porque todo lo que necesita para cultivarlos proviene de su granja, incluidas las semillas e insumos orgánicos.

“Por lo tanto, no tenemos que vender nuestros productos a un precio alto”, dijo.

En muchas localidades, los agricultores convencionales ahora compran alimentos de los agricultores orgánicos porque los sistemas de monocultivo de los que dependen no pueden competir con los sistemas agroecológicos diversificados que practican los miembros de la AEP. Barro dijo a RI:

“Estos son tiempos muy difíciles a causa de la COVID-19, pero estos tiempos tan difíciles nos han hecho ver de manera clara qué tipo de agricultura necesita el mundo para superar tales crisis”.

 

La agricultura regenerativa orgánica ayuda a combatir el cambio climático

Además de producir alimentos más saludables, las prácticas agrícolas regenerativas orgánicas  y agroecológicas ayudan a mitigar el cambio climático porque favorecen la salud del suelo y el almacenamiento del exceso de carbono atmosférico en el suelo.

Los agricultores son fundamentales para abordar el cambio climático porque justamente experimentan los impactos de un clima cambiante, dijo Barro.

AEP también reconoce esto, por lo que ahora ofrece un curso sobre gestión de la calidad del suelo para enseñar a los agricultores cómo gestionar mejor el suelo cuando se enfrentan a plagas, enfermedades y climas extremos.

El Sr. René García, también pequeño agricultor y miembro de AEP, dice que las prácticas de agricultura regenerativa ayudan a restaurar microbios clave en el suelo. García nos dijo en una entrevista de Zoom:

 “Estamos practicando la agricultura regenerativa para devolver los microorganismos al suelo que alimenta a las plantas. Lo hacemos mediante el uso de sistemas de intensificación del arroz, que pueden reducir las inundaciones en los arrozales, reducir drásticamente las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero y también pueden ayudar a conservar el agua y aumentar los rendimientos “.

AEP cree que todos los agricultores pueden volverse resilientes a los efectos del cambio climático cuidando su suelo, deshaciéndose de los químicos tóxicos, produciendo y distribuyendo alimentos localmente y practicando y defendiendo sistemas agrícolas orgánicos regenerativos.

“Las historias de éxito de los agricultores que están trabajando para mitigar y adaptarse al cambio climático inspirarán a la gente de todo el mundo”, dijo Barro, y agregó que da a la gente la esperanza de saber que otros se están uniendo para hacer de este mundo un lugar mejor.

Estén atentos para más historias de regeneración tanto en Filipinas como en todo el mundo.

 

Oliver Gardiner representa a Regeneration International en Europa y Asia. Para mantenerse al día con noticias y eventos, regístrese aquí para recibir el boletín de Regeneration International.

 

Regenerative Ranching Could Solve Climate Change

A new study from Oregon State University shows regenerative ranching increases adaptability and socioeconomic status while helping to mitigate climate change.   

Climate Reality Project describes regenerative agriculture as a system of farming principles and practices that seeks to rehabilitate and enhance the entire ecosystem of the farm by placing a heavy premium on soil health with attention also paid to water management, fertilizer use, and more.   

According to Regeneration International, this method can help to reverse climate change as it works to rebuild organic matter and restore biodiversity to the soil.   

Regenerative ranching refers to the practices familiar to most of us as organic farming. These changes are brought about by using a dynamic and holistic approach, including organic farming techniques such as cover cropscrop rotationsno till and compost. These practices encourage carbon sequestration, and can dramatically affect the climate in extremely positive ways.   

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The Importance of a Regenerative Food System for Sustainable Agriculture

A regenerative food system focuses on feeding humanity without depleting the Earth. It is a holistic systems approach, stressing the importance of finding solutions that address problems collectively.

There is no single definition of regenerative agriculture, but most people agree that regenerative farming includes things such as no-till farming, cover crops, perennial and native plants, integrated livestock and crop diversity. Building a regenerative food system is vital to feeding humanity while also repairing damaged ecosystems. In the face of climate change, a regenerative food system will create resiliency by localizing economies, sequestering carbon and building greater food security.

Carbon Sequestration

One of the main benefits of a regenerative food system is the ability to sequester carbon. Agriculture is a top contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, and industrialized agriculture has a serious carbon footprint. Soil erosion and nutrient depletion are also two common side effects of conventional agriculture.

Utilizing techniques such as cover crops and no-till growing help sequester carbon, keeping carbon in the soil instead of releasing it into the atmosphere.

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Tag Archive for: Regenerative Agriculture

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