Tag Archive for: Resilient Food Systems

Why Urban Farming Is Key in the Fight Against Hunger and Climate Change

/by

Author: Lorraine Chow | Published: January 14, 2018

The urban farms sprouting up and across cities around the world aren’t just feeding mouths—they are “critical to survival” and a “necessary adaptation” for developing regions and a changing climate, according to a new study.

Urban farms—which include plain old allotments, indoor vertical farms and rooftop gardens nestled amongst busy streets and skyscrapers—have become increasingly popular and important as the world’s population grows and more and more people move to cities.

The United Nations predicts that by 2030, two-thirds of the world’s population will be living in cities, with the urban population in developing countries doubling. That’s a lot of mouths to feed.

The new paper, published in the journal Earth’s Future and led by the Arizona State University and Google, finds that this expected urban population boom will benefit from urban farming in multiple ways.

As the Thomson Reuters Foundation explained from the study, “Urban farms could supply almost the entire recommended consumption of vegetables for city dwellers, while cutting food waste and reducing emissions from the transportation of agricultural products.”

According to the study, urban agriculture can help solve a host of urban environmental problems, from increasing vegetation cover (thus contributing to a decrease in the urban heat island intensity), improving the livability of cities, and providing enhanced food security to more than half of Earth’s population.

After analyzing multiple datasets in Google Earth Engine, the researchers calculated that the existing vegetation on urban farms around the world already provides some $33 billion annually in services from biocontrol, pollination, climate regulation and soil formation.

The future of urban agriculture has even more potential, the researchers found.

“We project potential annual food production of 100–180 million tonnes, energy savings ranging from 14 to 15 billion kilowatt-hours, nitrogen sequestration between 100,000 and 170,000 tonnes, and avoided stormwater runoff between 45 and 57 billion cubic meters annually,” the authors wrote.

KEEP READING ON ALTERNET

Forest Gardening with Space and Place for Wild Elephants

/by

Date Published: January 11, 2018 | Author: Michael B. Commons

In my collaboration with Terra Genesis International, I have been given space and support to investigate what we may call “Regenerative Pathways” looking at real life examples of functional farming systems that we can identify as being on the “Regenerative Agriculture Pathway.”

While these farms/farming systems might be called “Regenerative Farms,” we see regeneration more as a long term process and continuum that we can evaluate through indicators such as soil health, water retention, biodiversity, community health and more.

Of particular interest for us is to look at farms/ systems that are producing “key economic crops” as so much of our land area is now dominated by “economic crops” and these crops’ link to larger trade systems. With such a link there is the possibility to develop collaborative relationships to support regenerative practices and systems between farmers, consumers and intermediaries.

My wife and I, for many years, have been active members of the Thai Wanakaset (Agroforestry and Self-Reliance) network, which has a number of farmer members who live at the edges of natural forest reserves with wild elephant populations. For most Thais in this situation, as well as farmers with whom I have spoken from Sri Lanka and Bhutan, this relationship and interaction is much more confrontational.

Generally, forest and wild areas are being reduced and transformed into farming monocultures, while the Thai wild elephant population is actually increasing seven percent a year, according to a recent Thai PBS article. 

From my own observations living in this area around the Eastern Forest of Thailand, most all of the small marginal wild areas that served many species of wildlife have been removed in the last decade (converted to farmland or other uses). Therefore, the elephants are increasingly going out of the preserves and national parks to farms for food.

From what I have learned talking with those who live in and around the elephants, these four-legged beings are incredibly intelligent and adept learners, so they have learned and adapted to eat many new foods, like pineapples, corn and rice. My colleagues have told me that elephants can choose to politely harvest from fields rather than to destroy them. Yet for most Thai farmers, they don’t accept any such sharing of their harvest. Thus, the greater focus has been on converting to crops that elephants don’t like to eat, or using measures to prevent their entry or scare them away.

Kanya shows banana trees next to her home that they have planted for the elephants. If the elephants are courageous to show themselves so close they can enjoy the banana stalks- which is what usually happens. Photo Credit: Michael B. Commons.

The Wanakaset members of Pawa subdistrict, Chantaburi, have taken a very different path. They have developed diverse forest garden systems that allow space and place for wild elephants. Their farm environments have many different plants that the elephants can eat without needing to take or destroy the family’s key crops. The stories these farmers tell are also quite amazing and inspiring. It seems that the elephants are completely aware of what the forest gardeners are doing and the lands they manage. They hold this coexistence in regard, coming regularly into these shared spaces and largely respecting the crops the humans ask to be left alone, while they enjoy other crops and places provided for them.

In my deeper vision of “Regeneration,” I believe we need to heal the divide between humans and non-humans, and that humans can be stewards of lush gardens that provide valuable yields for humans and food and habitat for other living beings. As elephants are such a key species with great power, including the power to destroy, that we can find examples of a peaceful, balanced co-existence, gives much hope.

Thus I decided to embark on a journey to learn more from my farmer colleague, Ms. Kanya Duchita, to understand and share with others.

Kanya Duchita and her parents are students of Pooyai Viboon and practitioners of “Wanakaset,” the philosophy and system of organic agroforestry and self-reliance that he taught. Wanakaset, like permaculture, is a design system that reflects the land, situation, needs, skills and interests of the people involved. The process should arrive at some form of an integrated forest garden system that meets the needs and interests of the farmer/gardeners who live in it and who guide its evolution. The land and climate of Pawa are favorable for wet tropical fruits (durian, mangosteen, langsat, rambutan) and rubber. Kanya’s family land sits very close to Khao Chamao National Park, a healthy forest with a large number of resident wild elephants.

Michael Commons (MC): “Kanya you once told me that you practice Wanakaset because you are a lazy person. Can you really be lazy and practice Wanakaset (forest gardening)?

Kanya Duchita (KD): “The work of Wanakaset is light work all of the time, compared to conventional farmers who need to work very hard in periods, having to rush to complete their work. As forest gardeners we just need to do some light work and observation all of the time.”   

“As we work a bit all of the time, you might say we are not lazy, and we can choose to do more management and get better yields and returns, but at the same time our trees take care of themselves. If we just leave them alone they will be fine and we will still be able to harvest from them.”

“We also have many diverse resources in our forest gardens during the whole year. Herbs such as bamboo grass (for heavy metal detoxification), Chamuang leaf (Garcinia cowa for heart disease and weight loss), we can harvest and process any time. That is, if we want to spend the time to harvest and process them. Even with fruits which are seasonal, we can sell fresh, but also process them for more value.”

A Mapram (Garcinia species) growing to the right of a productive rubber tree. This medicinal fruit tree came naturally once this rubber plantation was allowed to become a rubber forest. Photo Credit: Michael B. Commons.

MC: “As I see most tropical fruit orchards are integrated and have durian, mangosteen, langsat, and rambutan, how does your garden differ?”

KD: “As forest gardens we integrate more, like fiddle head ferns, pak wan pa (Melientha suavis) and different types of gingers and herbs that can live under the shade of these trees. We also plant pepper vines (black and long pepper) to directly climb up our trees. Most farmers would plant these separately, but we just let them grow up our trees and don’t provide any other care. This is methodology derived from laziness.”

“Most fruit gardeners don’t like to have other trees around their durian trees as it can make harvesting (catching) the durian difficult. But we have observed that with this mix the soil quality is better and holds moisture much longer—meaning in dry season we need to water much less than conventional farmers, and when tropical windstorms come through we don’t lose branches from our durian trees.”   

“Wild elephants are a big part of the reason we choose to practice forest gardening, if we only grow fruits (that we harvest and sell), then the elephants often come and eat this fruit and damage the trees. But in our very integrated system, we have many other trees with foods that elephants also enjoy to eat at the edges of our land, like bamboo and fishtail palms, which we do not mind at all if they eat. We have learned a lot from experience what is the best way to garden that can work for us and the elephants who are our neighbors and also come into our gardens.”

MC: “You grow rubber as well, which we normally see only as a monoculture, but you have it in a very integrated garden system, does this affect yields?”   

KD: “The yield (in rubber) per tree is not really different than in chemical plantations, but very different in terms of costs (much lower). In transitioning (to organic) we used manure for four or five years but since then did not need any fertilizer at all. Many older wild plants and trees came back after we stopped using herbicide. This includes wild vegetables, wild fruits, herbs and hardwoods. These produce valuable yields for us on top of the rubber. Now we are expanding our focus and cultivation of Mapram—a wild forest fruit related to mangosteen—which does very well in the shade of the rubber and is increasingly valued. (probably Garcinia hombroniana)”

“So in some cases we have allowed the forest to come back under our rubber plantations—now rubber forests—but we also have planted rubber along with other species in integration from the start: sator beans (Parkia speciosa), boon nak, jantana (wood used for incense), dipterocarpus and ginger species, in between the rows of rubbers. In this case the rubber production is good for the whole year except for a break in the driest months, and then we have other valuable yields, such as sator-tree beans. My older brother also harvests many seeds for propagation as seedling trees to sell. The rubber yield is as good as others obtain with no use at all of fertilizer (including organic fertilizers beyond the first years). This rubber forest is still organized in rows and easy to enter and harvest.”

A section of rubber integrated into a fruit and herb forest.  Photo Credit: Michael B. Commons.

MC: “How about native biodiversity and wildlife?”   

KD: “All three of our gardens have good edible mushrooms growing with them, mycorrhizal and termite mushrooms. There are many birds everywhere and of many different species. These birds also help us in propagation—they have seeded rattan and pak wan (a delicious edible perennial vegetable) all around and brought some unusual varieties to our garden from afar. We also have many squirrels who do eat and sometimes damage our fruits. While many other gardeners shoot squirrels, we just leave damaged and unattractive fruit for them on the trees.”

MC: “What about snakes as I have heard many rubber growers say that snakes are a threat harvesting in the very early morning?”

KD: “While snakes can be scary, I don’t really feel we have more snakes, and maybe even less problem as it seems they have their own space to live and be apart from humans (in our garden) and don’t bother us.”

With Kanya, we see three gardens types showing three different pathways to integration.

  1. Fruit forest, with rubber and herbs. This was their existing tropical fruit orchard—still with strong valuable productive fruit trees like durian. In some areas, they then added rubber trees into this mix as well bringing in and allowing many smaller herbs, vines and more to be under, on and around the trees. While there is ample space for access (and even to allow elephants through) the rubber is not at all in rows and the feel is like a mature forest.
  2. Rubber forest: Let the rubber plantation evolve into a rubber forest—allow herbs, wild fruits and trees to come back. This seems like the easiest path towards regeneration, allowing Mother Nature and her helpers to take to the task. It is clear from what Kanya explained that there are seed and root reserves under and around always, so just by stopping the use of herbicide and allowing the forest to come back, it will. Birds also clearly play a key role in propagation. Then the gardener just manages to allow and support what comes, and removes what is not convenient or of particular interest or ready to be harvested.  
  3. Strip intercropping: Plant rubber trees in rows (7-8 meters between rows—according to best practices such a distance is needed for good production in any case—being closer creates too much competition between the rubber trees and less yields) and in between plant a row of different forest and fruit trees that do well in a garden forest environment and provide yields that the farmer/gardener knows how to use. This seems like the best path if starting fresh, however; Kanya and her family have developed a lot of knowledge and experience both in what grows well together, and in the different uses of many different species of trees, fruits and herbs. While the Duchita family shares their knowledge freely and encourages other to practice forest gardening, even someone without such contacts and with little experience can try and plant different trees and herbs that are interesting and may do well, but then observe, learn and evolve (with) his/ her forest garden over time.

From an economic basis, this system wins on many levels: less cost, less work, no less yield in the key economic crops (rubber and tropical fruits), and far greater diversity of total yields. While there are many other indicators, just the peaceful co-existence of the wild elephants in these forest gardens is proof of their ecological success. Most farmers do not appear to be prepared to accept living in and around diverse forest systems with wildlife; adoption is quite low. However, the third method explained above could be easier to accept and adopt for someone who wants an organized and orderly system.

Another Wanakaset farmer who lives not too far away, Ms. Kamolpatara Kasikrom, explained to me more about elephant behavior.  She said that resident elephants are territorial and spread out to different areas to feed. For a given territory, about one to three elephants will manage and eat from it. It seems clear that the forest gardens are considered by the elephants to be part of their managed territory, whereas most all farms where humans try to keep elephants out are not part of their territory. The greatest damage from elephants can come when a large herd transmigrates. Resident elephants will protect their territories from such herds and the damage they can bring. No such protection is offered to an unfriendly parcel. While elephants are exceptionally intelligent beings, I believe this may touch to the very core of both our problem and the solution. Here we see that if we consider our land not to be exclusively ours, but also to belong to the many other lifeforms, and we manage it accordingly, these other beings will come to hold the same vision and practice, also working to manage the land for sustainable health and productivity.

***

About the author:

Michael B. Commons lives with his family in Chachoengsao, Thailand where they practice Wanakaset (forest gardening and self-reliance) and are active in the Wanaksaet Network. For over twelve years he has worked with Earth Net Foundation to support small-scale farmer groups and associated supporting organizations from South and Southeast Asia to develop organic and fair trade supply chains, regenerate ecological and community health, and build their resilience capacity. Two years ago he joined Terra Genesis International to use his skills to help link and assist concerned and innovative companies, their consumer networks and farmers’ groups to collaborate in developing regenerative pathways together.

Thailand: ‘We Need to Save Our Seeds, Climate, Seasons to Protect Our Communities!’

/by

Author: Lee Ayu Chuepa | Published: October 5, 2017

This is what we try to do daily at the Akha Ama coffee factory. My name is Ayu and I am a young coffee farmer and a social entrepreneur. I belong to the Akha indigenous community living in the Maejantai, in the Northern Thailand. I grew up in a small village where people used to provide everything for themselves, from building houses and tools to foods by doing subsistence agriculture.

I was lucky because my parents worked hard to give me the chance to study. Later on, whilst working for an NGO, which supports village kids by teaching them how to build social enterprises, I understood that was my mission too!

Making a living as a coffee farmer is not easy. So I went back to my village and started a social business, a coffee factory dealing with the whole value chain, from the seed to the coffee bean, to avoid middlemen and maximise income for the farmers. We apply integrated agriculture and agroforestry to grow coffee and other foods such as cherries, peaches and persimmons. Thus, aside from the coffee we sell, we also have food to eat. These production systems allow us to gain twice: we earn an income to support our livelihoods whilst growing our food and preserving a resilient land which ensures long-term food security and the continuity of our income-generating activities. Moreover, in a healthy forest we can find plenty of useful plants which thrive without any human intervention, from mushrooms to bamboos and the plants used in traditional medicine: if you treat the forest well, the forest will treat you!

This is what I believe in, and what made me join the Slow Food movement, whose mission is to promote this kind of sustainable agriculture and to support and protect the work of small producers.

KEEP READING ON SLOW FOOD INTERNATIONAL

Agroecological Approaches to Enhance Resilience Among Small Farmers

/by

Authors: Clara Inés Nicholls and Miguel Altieri | Published: June 26, 2017 

Many studies reveal that small farmers who follow agroecological practices cope with, and even prepare for, climate change. Through managing on-farm biodiversity and soil cover and by enhancing soil organic matter, agroecological farmers minimise crop failure under extreme climatic events. 

Global agricultural production is already being affected by changes in rainfall and temperature thus compromising food security. Official statistics predict that small scale farmers in developing countries will be especially vulnerable to climate change because of their geographic exposure, low incomes, reliance on agriculture and limited capacity to seek alternative livelihoods.

Although it is true that extreme climatic events can severely impact small farmers, available data is just a gross approximation at understanding the heterogeneity of small scale agriculture, ignoring the myriad of strategies that thousands of small farmers have used, and still use, to deal with climatic variability.

Observations of agricultural performance after extreme climatic events reveal that resilience to climate disasters is closely linked to the level of on-farm biodiversity. Diversified farms with soils rich in organic matter reduce vulnerability and make farms more resilient in the long-term. Based on this evidence, various experts have suggested that reviving traditional management systems, combined with the use of agroecological principles, represents a robust path to enhancing the resilience of modern agricultural production.

A summary of social and ecological
factors that determine the degree of
resilience to climatic, and other, shocks.
Diverse farming systems

A study conducted in Central American hillsides after Hurricane Mitch showed that farmers using diversification practices (such as cover crops, intercropping and agroforestry) suffered less damage than their conventional monoculture neighbours. A survey of more than 1800 neighbouring ‘sustainable’ and ‘conventional’ farms in Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala, found that the ‘sustainable’ plots had between 20 to 40% more topsoil, greater soil moisture and less erosion, and also experienced lower economic losses than their conventional neighbours. Similarly in Chiapas, coffee systems exhibiting high levels of diversity of vegetation suffered less damage from farmers to produce various annual crops simultaneously and minimise risk. Data from 94 experiments on intercropping of sorghum and pigeon pea showed that for a particular ‘disaster’ level quoted, sole pigeon pea crop would fail one year in five, sole sorghum crop would fail one year in eight, but intercropping would fail only one year in 36. Thus intercropping exhibits greater yield stability and less productivity decline during drought than monocultures.

At the El Hatico farm, in Cauca, Colombia, a five story intensive silvo-pastoral system composed of a layer of grasses, Leucaena shrubs, medium-sized trees and a canopy of large trees has, over the past 18 years, increased its stocking rates to 4.3 dairy cows per hectare and its milk production by 130%, as well as completely eliminating the use of chemical fertilizers. 2009 was the driest year in El Hatico’s 40-year record, and the farmers saw a reduction of 25% in pasture biomass, yet the production of fodder remained constant throughout the year, neutralising the negative effects of drought on the whole system. Although the farm had to adjust its stocking rates, the farm’s milk production for 2009 was the highest on record, with a surprising 10% increase compared to the previous four years. Meanwhile, farmers in other parts of the country reported severe animal weight loss and high mortality rates due to starvation and thirst.

Enhancing soil organic matter 

Adding large quantities of organic materials to the soil on a regular basis is a key strategy used by many agoecological farmers, and is especially relevant under dryland conditions. Increasing soil organic matter (SOM) enhances resilience by improving the soil’s water retention capacity, enhancing tolerance to drought, improving infiltration, and reducing the loss of soil particles through erosion after intense rains. In long-term trials measuring the relative water holding capacity of soils, diversified farming systems have shown a clear advantage over conventional farming systems. Studies show that as soil organic matter content increases from 0.5 to 3%, available water capacity can double.

At the same time, organically-rich soils usually contain symbiotic mycorrhizal fungi, such as vesicular arbuscular mycorrhizal (VAM) fungi, which are a key component of the soil microbiota, influencing plant growth and soil productivity. Of particular significance is the fact that plants colonised by VAM fungi usually exhibit significantly higher biomass and yields compared to non-mycorrhizal plants, under water stress conditions. Mechanisms that may explain VAM-induced drought tolerance, and increased water use efficiency involve both increased dehydration avoidance and dehydration tolerance.

Managing soil cover

Protecting the soil from erosion is also a fundamental strategy for enhancing resilience. Cover crop mulching, green manures and stubble mulching protects the soil surface with residues and inhibits drying of the soil. Mulching can also reduce wind speed by up to 99%, thereby significantly reducing losses due to evaporation. In addition, cover crop and weed residues can improve water penetration and decrease water runoff losses by two to six times.

Throughout Central America, many NGOs have promoted the use of grain legumes as green manures, an inexpensive source of organic fertilizer and a way of building up organic matter. Hundreds of farmers along the northern coast of Honduras are using velvet bean (Mucuna pruriens) with excellent results, including corn yields of about 3 tonne/ha, more than double the national average. These beans produce nearly 30 tonne/ha of biomass per year, adding about 90 to 100 kg of nitrogen per hectare per year to the soil. The system diminishes drought stress, because the mulch layer left by Mucuna helps conserve water in the soil, making nutrients readily available in periods of major crop uptake.

Today, well over 125,000 farmers are using green manures and cover crops in Santa Catarina, Brazil. Hillside family farmers modified the conventional no-till system by leaving plant residues on the soil surface. They noticed a reduction in soil erosion levels, and also experienced lower fluctuations in soil moisture and temperature. These novel systems rely on mixtures for summer and winter cover cropping which leave a thick residue on which crops like corn, beans, wheat, onions or tomatoes are directly sown or planted, suffering very little weed interference during the growing season. During the 2008-2009 season, when there was a severe drought, conventional maize producers experienced an average yield loss of 50%, reaching productivity levels of 4.5 tonne/ha. However the producers who had switched to no-till agroecological practices experienced a loss of only 20%, confirming the greater resilience of these systems.

KEEP READING ON ILEIA

Agroecology Getting to the Root Causes of Climate Change

/by

Published: July 21, 2017 

Food has not been the focus of climate change discussions as much as it should have been. (…)  We can still act and it won’t be too late”   Barack Obama, 26 May 2017.[1]

Of course, Barack Obama can speak more freely now that he’s not in the White House with the agribusiness lobby breathing down his neck. But he is right in that the climate–food connection has been largely absent from the climate discussions – at least in the official circles. This issue of Farming Matters focuses on this connection. It shows how the industrial food system is a main culprit when it comes to the climate crisis, and illustrates how agroecology and food sovereignty offer solutions by addressing the root causes of this crisis – political, social and environmental.

The latest studies calculate that the global food system – from farm to fork – is responsible for at least one third of all greenhouse gas emissions, a figure that seems to increase with the release of each new report. [2] GRAIN puts the figure closer to 50%, and stresses that it is the industrial food system which is mostly responsible for this. [3] Besides not feeding the people with enough healthy, culturally appropriate and sustainably produced food, the industrial food system is also leading us down the path of a global environmental crisis, of a scale and impact that humanity has never faced before.

Agriculture is supposed to be about turning the energy provided by the sun into food and fibre. But the corporate-driven global food system mostly relies on fossil energy: for chemical fertilizers and pesticides, mechanisation of the farm, pumping water for irrigation, etc.

Deforestation driven by ever expanding commodity crop plantations, soil erosion driven by unsustainable practices, transport, processing and freezing of food produced in places far away from where it is consumed, and the tremendous energy waste in the increasingly centralised corporate retail and supermarket systems aggravate the problem. Each of these emit huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Despite the obvious connection between the industrial food system and the climate crisis, and the obvious potential that agroecology and food sovereignty offer to turn the tide, these links are nowhere to be seen in any of the governmental climate negotiations. Instead, government officials seem to be betting on financial carbon markets and other corporate-driven ‘solutions’ that get us in deeper trouble. As Michel Pimbert explains, these false solutions include ‘Climate-smart Agriculture’ initiatives which merely conform to the dominant industrial food and farming system and are working against a truly transformative agroecology . REDD+, carbon markets and biofuel policies are additional examples of false solutions that work against agroecology and food sovereignty. In another article, GRAIN shows how industrial meat and dairy production is encouraging over consumption of meat with a disastrous impact on the climate and human health.

It doesn’t need to be this way. A radical shift towards food sovereignty would go a long way in solving the climate crisis: agroecological practices would massively build back organic matter (carbon) into the soils and largely eliminate the need for chemical fertilizers, and a focus on local markets and fresh produce would reduce the need for long distance transport, freezing and processing. Agrarian reforms aimed at supporting small scale food producers rather than promoting plantation farming would give back the land to those who produce food rather than those who produce commodities and help stop deforestation in the process.

Nurturing the soil, cooling the planet

The food–climate intersection is rooted in the earth. The expansion of unsustainable agricultural practices over the past century has led to the destruction of between 30-75% of the organic matter in soils on arable lands, and 50% of the organic matter on pastures and prairies. This massive loss of organic matter is responsible for a large part of the current CO2 excess in the earth’s atmosphere. But the good news is that the CO2 that we have sent into the atmosphere can be put back into the soil simply by restoring and supporting the practices that small farmers have been engaging in for generations. This has the potential to capture more than two thirds of the current excess CO2 in the atmosphere. [4]

KEEP READING ON GRAIN 

A Soil Scientist With a Plan for a More Resilient Food System

/by

Author: Kai Olson-Sawyer | Published: July 14, 2017 

Laura Lengnick is a big thinker on agriculture and the environment. She has been guided in her work by the understanding that the problems generated by the U.S. industrial food system have been as significant as its ability to produce vast quantities of food. As she sees it, it’s not enough to produce food if there’s not a reckoning of costs and benefits from an unbalanced system.

This comprehensive outlook is a hallmark of Lengnick’s work, as is her positive vision for a more equitable and sustainable future. When it comes to her career, the question is not what work Lengnick has done to explore resilient, sustainable agriculture, but what hasn’t she done. Soil scientist, policymaker as a Senate staffer, USDA researcher, professor, sustainability consultant, advocate—Lengnick has done it all.

With her home nestled in a sunny cove in the North Carolina mountains, she bio-intensively tends to her 3,000-square-foot micro-farm. (She grows everything from greens and radishes to figs and sweet potatoes.) Based on her rich experience and deep expertise, Lengnick now views herself as a science interpreter in her interactions with farmers, public officials and the public at large. (She calls it “science-in-place.”)

Lengnick is the author of many articles and papers for scholars, practitioners and the general public, including the useful and engaging book Resilient Agriculture: Cultivating Food Systems for a Changing Climate. She was also selected as a contributor to the Third National Climate Assessment, the authoritative U.S. climate report.

Over the years she’s traveled throughout the United States to meet with farmers to investigate the challenges and successes in the field and present her findings to many different audiences. Most recently, Lengnick has been invited to collaborate with the world-renowned Stockholm Resilience Centre, which will bring her views to an even larger audience. In a series of conversations, Lengnick and I spoke about her background, career, and philosophy to better explain where she is today.

Don’t Discount the Future

Innately curious, Lengnick didn’t start out imagining that she was on the road to food and agriculture—she thought of farming as grueling labor, an upbringing which her grandparents were eager to leave. In college she went into a pre-vet program, then photography and the visual arts. After she entered into landscape architecture and took a soils course, things came together. As she dug into soil science she knew she’d found her calling.

As she says, “Coming at it from the front I didn’t see all this connection and relevance you see now. But what I remember, and I think it is what’s sort of served me well in my whole career, is that if I had an option about work or if I was trying to create options for the next thing, it was always something that I was really passionate about.”

After acquiring her degrees in soil science, including a Ph.D., Lengnick was motivated to make an impact. With the passion and knowledge of soils and sustainable agriculture, she turned to a monumental question: How can we feed humanity while maintaining the health of the planet? What she observed was an out-of-whack food system where ever-greater yields and production came at a price to the surrounding environment. From plowing under healthy soils for depleted, monocropped fields to the impairment of clean air and water, she knew the current American agricultural model must do better.

To change the scenario, Lengnick went into the policy realm and became a staffer for South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle, a prominent voice on farm and environmental issues, in a role where she worked on soil, water, and wetland conservation programs for farmers. She then moved on to ag research in the USDA, after which she left and spent five years on the outside, lobbying and crafting policy for sustainable ag producers at the federal level.

While Lengnick was successful in her efforts at the federal level, she felt the pace of change was too slow, and decided to leave government. It freed her to be a leader for sustainability in the academic and advocacy worlds, where she had more flexibility to address the challenges of the industrial mindset, of which the industrial food system is just one form. What she identified earlier in her career had become even clearer upon further analysis: The industrial food system was simultaneously productive and brittle, and it degraded natural resources and social bonds.

“The cost-effectiveness of the food system is the same as many other systems that are created by the industrial mind, the neoliberal mindset,” she explains. “I don’t think the food system stands out as particularly good or bad. It is another expression of industrialism, and so I see the same kind of quality in the food system. I also see the same kinds of costs in education system and in communities and any sort of modern industrial assembly of communities and materials and energy.”

Lengnick notes that the industrial system is based on a philosophy that is “laser focus[ed] on technology as being the source of solutions and the source of wealth.” While technological innovation is welcome and necessary to create a good society, the fixation on it is not. This narrow focus perpetuates the concentration of wealth and defines success as the accumulation of material things beyond the point where they retain their value.

KEEP READING ON CIVIL EATS

Erica Hellen: “Farming Is Our Livelihood, but It Is Also Activism”

/by

Author: Emily Payne | Published: January 2017

Erica Hellen, co-owner and farmer at Free Union Grass Farm, is speaking at the third annual D.C. Food Tank Summit, Let’s Build a Better Food Policy, which will be hosted in partnership with George Washington University and the World Resources Institute on February 2, 2017.

Free Union Grass Farm is a diversified livestock farm producing beef, pork, chicken, duck, and eggs on nearly 300 acres in Albemarle county, Virginia. She and her husband utilize rotational grazing and portable infrastructure to raise animals in systems that mimic the natural world. After seven years as a full-time farmer, Erica is familiar with the flaws of our industrialized food system and hopes to convey the role small farmers play in helping fix it.

Food Tank had the chance to speak with Helen about

Food Tank (FT): What originally inspired you to get involved in your work?

Erica Hellen (EH): My liberal arts education at Warren Wilson College exposed me to the world of farming both in the classroom and in the field, on the school’s working farm and garden. It was there I learned the immense role agriculture plays in how we treat our environment. I grew up in an urban area and it had never occurred to me to consider farming as a career, but it combined so many things I love: working outside, being my own boss, and contributing to positive environmental change.

FT: What makes you continue to want to be involved in this kind of work?

EH: Providing something tangible for our community and creating relationships with our customers reminds me that our work is valued, and valuable. Farming is a unique kind of business because it is our livelihood, but it is also activism. There is much to be done when it comes to fixing the food system, and I feel inspired by the work that lies ahead of us.

KEEP READING ON FOODTANK 

Ecological Farming: A Conversation With Fukuoka, Jackson and Mollison

/by

Published: April, 1987 

Last August, three leaders of the global movement for a natural, permanent agriculture (also called permaculture) gathered at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, for the Second International Permaculture Conference. MOTHER EARTH NEWS was there, too, obtaining the only three-way interview ever with the men our Seasons of the Garden columnists half-playfully labeled “the Holy Trinity” of ecological farming. The following edited discussion is a head-to-head exchange between men who are taking key roles in defining our planet’s future. But first let assistant editor Pat Stone, who conducted the interview, fill you in with some background on the three subjects:

Australian Bill Mollison created the concept of permaculture in ecological farming. A gravel-voiced graybeard, Bill has a dry sense of humor, a feisty temperament, and absolute dedication to his cause. Introduced before his keynote conference speech as “a great yarn teller who’s motivated thousands of people to action,” Mollison has held every job from seaman to Tanzania bush researcher to senior lecturer in environmental psychology. He left that secure university position two years before retirement to blaze the permaculture trail.

To Mollison, permanent agriculture means carefully designed, sustainable systems in which the array, organization, and interactions of plants and animals are the central factors. Perennial plants-especially tree crops-play a large role in his multispecies landscapes. A permaculture system takes much planning, and a good bit of work, to set up, but it should then almost run itself.

Wes Jackson researches perennial crop mixes in Salina, Kansas. A hulking midwesterner with broad hands and a ready smile, Jackson combines a warm nature, down-home humor, and impeccable scientific scholarship (he has a Ph.D. in genetics). For example, his favorite lecture title is “Herbaceous Perennial Seed-Producing Polycultures: Their Contribution to the Solution of All Marital Problems and the End of the Possibility of Nuclear Holocaust.”

KEEP READING ON MOTHER EARTH NEWS

This Man Is Helping the Entire Country of Bhutan Go Organic

/by

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 

Chestnuts: A Regenerative Food Crop and The Next Health Craze

/by

Author: Harry Greene | Published: October 7, 2016 

Propagate Ventures’ mission is to accelerate the widespread implementation of agroforestry in cold climates, via the establish of profitable tree crops. We envision highly productive, ecologically-sound landscapes that produce food, fuel, and fiber for humanity. 100 years ago, the United States had a booming chestnut economy. The American chestnut, castanea dentata, was an overstory species from Iowa to Northern Georgia, to Maine. In 1904, a parasitic fungus known as the “chestnut blight” arrived from Japan, and killed as estimated 4 billion trees. 100 years later, Chinese chestnuts and Chinese-American hybrids blight-resistant, but pure American chestnut stands are few and far between. Pure American chestnuts are beautiful, productive forest trees, but for our purposes, Chinese chestnuts are just as good, if not better for food production.

Red Fern Farm

Red Fern Farm is a 25-year-old chestnut orchard in Wapello, Iowa. Kathy Dice and Tom Wahl own and run the property. Jeremy and Harrison of Propagate Ventures recently visited the farm to learn about chestnut production. Tom Wahl is an ecologist by trade, and in 1990, saw and foresaw the ecological and culinary benefits of chestnuts in comparison to annual crops such as corn and soy. Often in the regenerative agriculture sphere, figureheads with productive farms like to speak loudly about their operations. Kathy and Tom are much more modest, but nonetheless run an extremely productive, profitable business that we should pay attention to.

For the farmers among us, we’d like to go through some of the nuances of chestnut production at Red Fern Farm. We’ll do so with photos.

KEEP READING ON PROPAGATE VENTURES