We, the members of the regenerative organics movement, invite you to educate yourself about the good news of regenerative organics and natural carbon sequestration.
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Saturday, 09 August 2014 11:17 By Sarah Streat and Katherine Paul, Organic Consumers Association | Op-Ed
An Organic farm in Yakima, Washington. (Photo: Mark Davis / Flickr)
“A nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
In his opening address to the Savory Institute global conference in London on August 1, Alan Savory said that while agriculture is the foundation of civilization and of any stable economy, it is also, when poorly practiced, the most destructive industry—even more so than coal mining.
The World Wildlife Fund estimates that since 1960, a third of the world’s arable land has been lost through erosion and other degradation. Much of the destruction is caused by increased demand for GMO corn, soy, cotton, canola, sugar beet and alfalfa crops, used to feed factory farm animals, to produce highly-subsidized yet inefficient biofuels and to make processed foods.
The perpetual cycle of planting mono-crops, saturating the crops and fields with toxic chemicals, tilling them under and replanting them destroys the soil and degrades the land by depleting soil nutrients and causing erosion. Overgrazing pastures instead of managing livestock herds holistically, using a system of planned rotational grazing, is equally destructive.
Destruction of land and soil by poor farming isn’t inevitable, said John Liu, who also spoke at the Savory conference. Liu told the audience we have to connect economic growth to ecological restoration—and “restoring ecological function is the only way we will survive.”
How do we do it? In large part through “regenerative agriculture,” in combination with reducing fossil fuel emissions and reversing global deforestation.
Can we do it? By all accounts, yes. But as Savory cautioned, regenerative agriculture represents a small minority, probably 3 – 5 percent, of today’s global agriculture. Sadly, 90 percent of farmers, policy-makers and the public still believe in an agricultural model based on chemistry, technology and faulty policy. “We’re not even at the table,” Savory said.
But we could be. One of the key ways to do that, Savory said, is to convince consumers, who far outnumber producers, that agriculture has to change. Organic Consumers Association recommends consumers do that by boycotting GMOs and factory-farmed foods, in keeping with the advice on our popular bumper sticker: “Cook Organic not the Planet.”
Our failure to do so will not only lead to hunger and poverty, but it will represent a huge missed opportunity to reverse global warming.
Beyond ‘sustainable’
Let’s face it. “Sustainable” is not a sexy word. It suggests a relationship that is merely maintained—plodding along on an existing plane.
It’s time to move beyond the notion of “sustainable” agriculture to a model of agriculture that restores and rejuvenates soils, farms, economies and communities.
So what is “Regenerative agriculture”? Dr. Christine Jones, who founded Amazing Carbon, describes regenerative agriculture as a diverse set of farming practices that replenish and reactivate the soil. “When agriculture is regenerative, soils, water, vegetation and productivity continually improve rather than staying the same or slowly getting worse.”
The key to regenerative agriculture is that it not only “does no harm” to the land but actually improves it, using technologies that regenerate and revitalize the soil and the environment. Regenerative agriculture is dynamic and holistic, incorporating permaculture and organic farming practices, including conservation tillage, cover crops, crop rotation, composting, mobile animal shelters and pasture cropping, to increase food production, farmers’ income and especially, topsoil.
Regenerative agriculture leads to healthy soil, capable of producing high quality, nutrient dense food while simultaneously improving, rather than degrading land, and ultimately leading to productive farms and healthy communities and economies.
What makes up healthy soil? According to Jones, healthy topsoil is composed of weathered rock minerals, air, water and living things such as plant roots, microorganisms, insects and worms and the organic materials they produce.
There are six essential ingredients for soil formation, Jones says:
1. Minerals
2. Air
3. Water
4. Living things in the soil (plants and animals) and their by-products
5. Living things on the soil (plants and animals) and their by-products
6. Intermittent and patchy disturbance regimes (such as planned grazing or slashing)
Unlike mono-crop agriculture which relies heavily on chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, erodes the soil through excessive tilling, and doesn’t protect the with cover crops, regenerative agriculture produces healthy soil, while at the same time producing food (both plant and animal-based). Because regenerative agriculture doesn’t strip the soil of nutrients and leave it depleted, food grown in that soil tastes better, and has a higher nutrient content.
Can regenerative agriculture save the climate?
Healthy soils not only produce healthy food, healthy economies and healthy communities, but as it turns out, healthy soil just may be the best tool we have to reverse global warming.
According to a recent study by the Rodale Institute, if regenerative agriculture were practiced globally, 100 percent of current, annual carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions would be sequestered.
The Rodale Institute has been conducting its Farming Systems Trial (FST) since1981. It’s the longest-running test comparing organic and conventional cropping systems. Data from the test shows that organic, regenerative agriculture reduces CO2 by taking advantage of natural ecological systems to extract carbon from the atmosphere and sink it into the soil. According to the data, soil managed organically can accumulate about 1,000 pounds of carbon-per-acre foot of soil each year—equal to about 3,500 pounds of carbon dioxide-per-acre taken from the air and sequestered into soil organic matter.
While commercial agricultural practices are some of the largest contributors to global warming, regenerative agriculture practices are carbon neutral and actually reverse climate change. Carbon-rich soil doesn’t need synthetic fertilizers. This leads to further reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, as both the production and use of fertilizers generate CO2.
Transitioning on a global scale
Regenerative agriculture practices rely on knowledge and care, rather than expensive farming equipment, seeds, fertilizers and pesticides. While in the short term, they may produce slightly lower yields than conventional, chemical-intensive crops, over time they produce higher yields which lead to greater financial security for farmers, especially in communities that are economically dependent on agriculture.
More and more small-scale farmers are using regenerative practices to cultivate land and grow food. The movement has a strong collaborative voice in places like Australia and the UK, where innovative farmers are sharing their knowledge both informally, and in structured courses and workshops.
Regenerative farming is also practiced widely across the U.S. by many local, small-scale farms, though they may not be using the term “regenerative agriculture.” Farms like Polyface Farms in Virginia, Jubilee Farm in Washington State, and the Marin Carbon Project in California provide good models for how organic, regenerative farming can lead to prosperous and healthy communities.
But if we’re going to restore the world’s vast tracts of degraded lands, and avert a climate disaster, we’re going to need to transition on a global scale from today’s dominant chemical-intensive, mono-crop system to a regenerative model of agriculture. And that will require the support of political systems that currently favor and promote the destructive models of farming over the regenerative model.
Consumers can, and must, play a role in pushing governments to make this transition. We have the power to reverse the trend toward chemically grown, biotech crops by creating demand for healthy foods produced using regenerative practices. We do that by choosing locally, organically grown foods until the market for highly processed packaged foods, and foods that are produced on factory farms—foods that support unhealthy farming practices—shrinks and farms practicing regenerative agriculture fill the void.
Sources:
Regenerative Agriculture United Kingdom
Department of Land & Water Conservation, New South Wales Government
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Michael Graham Richard (@Michael_GR)
Science / Climate Change
April 24, 2014
Public Domain Public domain
In our fight against global warming, we have an unlikely ally. Who? The tiny salamanders that roam the forests of most of the world! In North-America, they are actually the most abundant vertebrate, and they eat a lot of insects. This is helpful because this prevents these insects from eating as much of the leaf litter on the forest floor. If this leaf litter is left alone long enough, part of it will turn into humus (just one “m”, not hummus), a process that sequesters carbon in the soil.
Because salamanders eat so many insects, they actually help increase the rate at which forests sequester carbon. How much exactly is what was recently determined in a study that looked for the first time at the impact of our little amphibian friends.
The 2-year study used enclosure in a North California forest to monitor the impact of salamanders of the leaf litter that can be found on the forest floor. At the end of the experiment, the salamander enclosures contained roughly 13% more leaf litter on average than those in enclosures without salamanders. The invertebrate samples show that the salamanders suppressed numbers of beetle and fly larvae, and beetle, ant, and springtail adults.
What does this mean? This is over 170 pounds of extra carbon sequestered thanks to salamanders per forest acre over the course of a single rainy season. That’s a lot! And it highlights why we must protect amphibians better. They are facing all kinds of challenges that are putting a lot of pressure on them, including habitat destruction and climate change itself.
Deforestation may have far greater consequences for climate change in some soils than in others, according to new research led by Yale University scientists—a finding that could provide critical insights into which ecosystems must be managed with extra care because they are vulnerable to biodiversity loss and which ecosystems are more resilient to widespread tree removal.
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The degradation of soils from unsustainable agriculture and other development has released billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere. But new research shows how effective land restoration could play a major role in sequestering CO2 and slowing climate change.
The world’s cultivated soils have lost 50 to 70 percent of their original carbon stock.
by judith d. schwartz
In the 19th century, as land-hungry pioneers steered their wagon trains westward across the United States, they encountered a vast landscape of towering grasses that nurtured deep, fertile soils.
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ttps://www.azpm.org/s/15996-harvesting-the-rain/
The arid climate in Tucson limits rainfall to approximately 12 inches per year, more than half of which falls during the annual monsoon.
Photo: Steve Riggs
Landscape designer, Logan Byers
Many locals have become passionate about harvesting that rain. Logan Byers is one of them. She is a local landscape designer, and sees the connection between life and rain.
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Agriculture is destructive, but doesn’t have to be. Livestock could help tackle climate change, desertification and rural poverty
Holistic management, with its counterintuitive claim that more, rather than fewer, cattle can improve the land, has been around for decades – a kind of perennial cattleman’s quarrel, and a thorn in the hide of ranchers and anti-ranchers alike.
The use of livestock as a tool for restoration has been scoffed at by scientists, reviled by vegetarians and those who blame cows for climate change, and a flashpoint for tension over how to conserve land in the American West.
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NAIROBI, 17 jul 2013 (IPS) – La iniciativa de Reducción de Emisiones por Deforestación y Degradación de Bosques (REDD) parece ser una estrategia para combatir el cambio climático que se ajusta perfectamente a las necesidades de África. Pero también recibe muchas críticas.
La deforestación y la agricultura son responsables de una parte significativa de las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero de África, aunque el continente no está entre los principales contribuyentes al recalentamiento planetario. Conservar e incluso extender la cubierta forestal africana –la cuenca del río Congo contiene el segundo mayor bosque tropical del mundo- reduciría las emisiones y, a la vez, absorbería carbono atmosférico.
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The following paddock layout offers a useful way of integrating trees into a grazing enterprise on sloping country. The aim of this approach is to minimise the impacts on production during the establishment phase, while offering significant benefits to both landscape and livestock once stock are reintroduced.
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Pasture cropping founder and Gulgong farmer Colin Seis with the new handbook.
June 17, 2013
First hand farmer accounts of experiences with pasture cropping have been released in a handbook by grass-roots Landcare network, Gecko ClaN.
The collection of interviews with seven farming families from throughout the North-East was commissioned by Gecko ClaN Catchment Landcare Network, and compiled by Albury journalist Kim Woods.
Pasture cropping is a technique of sowing zero-till annual crops directly into living perennial pastures.
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A team of ranchers in South Dakota are using holistic management techniques to regenerate our ailing grasslands and fight climate change
Dusk in Western South Dakota. A half-hour ago, at sunset, the world here made its last pulse for the day: birds hurried between fence posts, mosquitoes emerged from the shadows and feasted furiously, the sweet clover turned iridescent yellow in the late light. Now, the movement has ceased. Even by day it is a quiet landscape, inhabited primarily by meadowlarks and grasses. But as night draws its blue self over this place, the silence is profound.
On this particular 8,000-acre section of the Plains there is a single light in view, coming from inside a trailer. Bustling about camp are three men — cowboys, you’d probably call them. They certainly look the part, dressed in boots and wide-brimmed hats, one of them splitting old fence posts with an axe to build a campfire, another working on some beef for dinner. They call this pasture Horse Creek for the water running down its center, and on it they have 1,100 yearling cattle.
And yet, for these men the bovines are only a means to a greater end. According to the unofficial ringleader, Jim Howell, their goal is nothing less than helping the world to avert a looming global catastrophe. What they’re doing here is not just herding cattle; they are starting what they call “The Brown Revolution.”
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http://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change.html
Le Nazioni Unite stanno prendendo molto seriamente le minacce poste dal cambiamento climatico, in particolare per quanto attiene all’accesso al cibo, alla pace e alla sicurezza internazionale. Presso la sede Onu a New York si svolge infatti il 14 febbraio il meeting Food security and nutrition: scaling up the global response, organizzato in collaborazione con Fao, Ifad (Fondo internazionale per lo sviluppo agricolo) e Programma alimentare mondiale per promuovere un’azione congiunta per rispondere alla sfida dell’accesso equo al cibo a partire dagli impegni presi alla conferenza Rio+20 del giugno scorso.
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