sustainable agriculture

From the ground up.

We all eat food. Most of us every day. Most of us several times a day.

Food is undoubtedly one of the most constant and impactful aspects of our lives.

And the ways that we produce — and consume it— are impactful as well.

We all know about climate change. Agricultural activities (crop, livestock and fossil fuel) contribute approximately 25% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions — yet around 1/3 of all food is wasted.

15% of the world’s land surface area has been degraded by soil erosion and physical and chemical degradation, while even more is at risk.

Industrial agriculture is using more and more toxic chemicals to control weeds and pests, which put the environment, agricultural workers and consumers at risk.

Farmers now earn less in every dollar that we spend on food, despite rising costs of living, as big companies squeeze (and squeeze).

Rural communities are collapsing, the quality and diversity of food that we produce (and thus eat) is constantly decreasing, neoliberal policies have seen small farmers displaced coupled with a rapid rise in the rate of rural-urban migration.

The rural poor are poorer than ever before, food security issues are rife and malnutrition is one the rise.

Meanwhile, both producers and consumers are disenchanted and dissatisfied with the current state of the industry and the way it’s structured.

In short, many aspects of the way that we produce and consume food is not sustainable.

Something (i.e. a lot of things) needs to change.

Sustainable Agriculture Isn’t Simple

But it’s necessary. Very necessary.

Defining Sustainable Agriculture

I’ve defined sustainable agriculture before but I’ll do so here again, so that we’re all on the same page.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why Sustainable Agriculture Should Support a Green New Deal

January 16, 2019

Why Sustainable Agriculture Should Support a Green New Deal

“For Sale” signs have replaced “Dairy of Distinction” on the last two dairy farms on the road I drive to town. The farm crisis of the 1980’s that never really went away has resurfaced with a vengeance. In 2013, aggregate farm earnings were half of what they were in 2012. Farm income has continued to decline ever since. The moment is ripe for the movement for a sustainable agriculture to address the root causes.

Just as in the 80s, a brief period of high commodity prices and cheap credit in the 2010’s resulted in a debt and asset bubble.

Then prices collapsed. Meanwhile, ever larger corporations have consolidated their dominance in the food sector resulting in shoppers paying more, and a shrinking portion of what they pay going to farmers. At first this mainly hit conventional farms, but in 2017, processors started limiting the amount of milk they purchased from organic dairies and cut the price paid below the cost of production. As a result, family-scale farms of all kinds are going out of business. Reports of farmer suicides are increasing dramatically. Despite the shortage of farm workers, their wages remain below the poverty line. People of color and women are often trapped in the lowest paying food system jobs and many are forced to survive on SNAP payments. The tariff game of #45 is only making things worse. The farm consolidation that has taken place has grave consequences for the environment and for climate change as well. The newly passed Farm Bill barely touches the structural and fairness issues that led to this on-going disaster for family-scale farms and the food security of this country.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A fixed meat ration is not the path to sustainable food systems

November 15, 2018

A fixed meat ration is not the path to sustainable food systems

“We should eat less meat in order to save the planet”, has almost become a dogma. There is no doubt that industrial animal production is harmful for animals and nature. But the framing of the path to a sustainable agriculture system in terms of how many grams of potatoes, wheat and meat per day we should eat is to start in the wrong end of the stick. Instead we should focus our interest into the transition to a sustainable and regenerative food and agriculture system. Such a system would exclude or substantially reduce those foods which are wasteful regardless if those are eggs from caged hens or asparagus flown from one side of the globe to the other. With the right design animals, especially ruminants such as cattle, sheep and goats, can be companions in this transition rather than a problem.

The article Options for keeping the food system within environmental limitspublished in Nature 10 October 2018 has the following key messages according to the lead author, Marco Springmann:

Climate change cannot be sufficiently mitigated without dietary changes towards more plant-based diets. Adopting more plant-based “flexitarian” diets globally could reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of the food system by more than half, and also reduce other environmental impacts, such as those from fertilizer application and the use of cropland and freshwater, by a tenth to a quarter.
In addition to dietary changes, improving management practices and technologies in agriculture is required to limit pressures on agricultural land, freshwater extraction, and fertilizer use.
Finally, halving food loss and waste is needed for keeping the food system within environmental limits.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

One Size Fits None: Excerpt

September 26, 2018

One Size Fits None: Excerpt

Ed. note: This post is excerpted from the forthcoming book One Size Fits None from the University of Nebraska Press and is reproduced here with permission. You can find out more about the book here.

Introduction

I’m in western South Dakota, rolling across the prairie in a blue 1970s-era pickup truck, when I first see them. Buffalo—faraway brown dots on a hillside that become massive bodies outside the passenger window as we approach them, their faces accented with beards and curved black horns. They are primeval, ancient, mammothlike. They have a wise look about them, but also a wildness, as when they flash the whites of their eyes, spin around, and gallop off, showing us they’ll never be completely tamed.

I’m at Great Plains Buffalo Company, a ranch where Phil and Jill Jerde and their children raise more than a thousand grass-fed buffalo. These buffalo will eventually be slaughtered, providing consumers with meat, but they are much more than food sources. They are the keepers of this grassland. With their hooves they aerate the soil and push seeds into it. With their waste they fertilize it. Through their grazing habits they encourage the growth of grass instead of woody plants. They maintain symbiotic relationships with birds and insects. They make the prairie function in a way it hasn’t since their ancestors walked it, before we converted the Great Plains to corn and soybeans.

The buffalo show us what the prairie once was and how humans have changed it—to some, destroyed it—and this in turn is a reminder of all the landscapes we’ve changed. “Wrong side up,” said a Sioux Indian who watched a white sodbuster rip the grassland open with a plow.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“Sustainable Agriculture and Healthy Food Consumption Behaviors Go Together”

April 20, 2018

“Sustainable Agriculture and Healthy Food Consumption Behaviors Go Together”

Interview with Professor Jules Pretty, author and academic whose work focuses on sustainable agriculture and the relationship between people and the land.

The Importance of Tree Crops in Sustainable Agriculture

November 27, 2017

THE IMPORTANCE OF TREE CROPS IN SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

Tree Crops are the most common perennial agricultural method. More specifically, orchards are one of the most common and successful forms of perennial agriculture. A well-maintained peach orchard will give you a steady crop for up to 20 years. An apple orchard can last up to 50 years and well-maintained pecan tree may very well continue to produce for up to 150 years. Our agricultural systems have been designed almost exclusively for staple annual crops. However, transitioning into perennial agricultural systems that can produce food staples is one of the challenges we´ll face in the coming years in order to create a sustainable form of agriculture.

THE FUNCTIONS OF A TREE

A perennial agriculture system based on the cultivation of tree crops offers a number of advantages over the traditional annual agriculture methods of staple carbohydrates such as corn and wheat. While these systems to take several years to get established, once production has begun the main body of work is maintenance and harvest. Tree crops such as fruit and nuts, then, can become a staple of our diet without having to till the soil year after year.

Permaculture asks us to find several functions for every element. Trees are perhaps one of the most useful elements in any permaculture design. Some of the functions of a tree agriculture system include:

Harvest: From fruits to nuts to edible leaves and shoots to mushrooms, there are a number of food products that trees can provide.

Mulch: The leaf fall from deciduous trees provides some of the best mulch material for your farm and is fundamental in building overall soil health.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Connor Stedman: Carbon Farming

October 10, 2017

Connor Stedman: Carbon Farming

Sequestering atmospheric carbon through natural means

Climate change remains a hotly debated topic. But a scientific fact not up for dispute is the pronounced spike in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere over the past two centuries.

There’s a building urgency to find solutions that can manage/reverse that spike — a process known as carbon sequestration. But how to do that on a planetary scale? It’s a massive predicament. And most of the ‘solutions’ being proposed are technologically unproven, prohibitively costly and/or completely impractical.

Enter carbon farming. It uses nature-based farming practices to park gigatons of carbon in the soil, rebuild soil health and complexity, and revitalize the nutrient density of the foods that we eat. It is quite likely the only practical — and best — way to sequester carbon at massive scale, as well as reap a multitude of by-product benefits.

In this week’s podcast, field ecologist and agriforestry specialist Connor Stedman explains the science behind the carbon farming process:

For the last few million years of the Earth’s history, when there’s been this cycle of glaciers advancing and receding in the northern hemisphere, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has gone between about 180 parts per million and 280 parts per million. That is the band in which all of human history has happened, up until the last 200 or 300 years.

Now the concentration of carbon dioxide is about 407 parts per million, almost 50% higher than the upper end of that historical normal. Carbon dioxide is one of a number of greenhouse gases that hold heat in the Earth’s atmosphere, rather than it being fully reflected back out into space

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Cuba’s sustainable agriculture at risk in U.S. thaw

March 28, 2016

Cuba’s sustainable agriculture at risk in U.S. thaw

Organic farm, Alamar. Melanie Lukesh Reed/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

President Obama’s trip to Cuba this week accelerated the warming of U.S.-Cuban relations. Many people in both countries believe that normalizing relations will spur investment that can help Cuba develop its economy and improve life for its citizens.

But in agriculture, U.S. investment could cause harm instead.

For the past 35 years I have studied agroecology in most countries in Central and South America. Agroecology is an approach to farming that developed in the late 1970s in Latin America as a reaction against the top-down, technology-intensive and environmentally destructive strategythat characterizes modern industrial agriculture. It encourages local production by small-scale farmers, using sustainable strategies and combining Western knowledge with traditional expertise.

Cuba took this approach out of necessity when its economic partner, the Soviet bloc, dissolved in the early 1990s. As a result, Cuban farming has become a leading example of ecological agriculture.

But if relations with U.S. agribusiness companies are not managed carefully, Cuba could revert to an industrial approach that relies on mechanization, transgenic crops and agrochemicals, rolling back the revolutionary gains that its campesinos have achieved.

The shift to peasant agroecology

For several decades after Cuba’s 1959 revolution, socialist bloc countries accounted for nearly all of its foreign trade.

The government devoted 30 percent of agricultural land to sugarcane for export, while importing 57 percent of Cuba’s food supply. Farmers relied on tractors, massive amounts of pesticide and fertilizer inputs, all supplied by Soviet bloc countries. By the 1980s agricultural pests were increasing, soil quality was degrading and yields of some key crops like rice had begun to decline.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Study Indicate That Organic and Sustainable Agriculture Can Feed the Planet

March 15, 2016

Fresh produce

STUDY INDICATE THAT ORGANIC AND SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE CAN FEED THE PLANET

The never ending debate as to whether organic food production could actually feed the globe is back at the debate table. And the data culled for this latest report suggests that turning to increased organic food production to feed the globe isn’t really a far-fetched idea. Washington State University researchers have concluded that feeding a growing global population with sustainability goals in mind is possible. Their review of hundreds of published studies provides evidence that organic farming can produce sufficient yields, be profitable for farmers, protect and improve the environment and be safer for farm workers. Critics have long argued that organic agriculture is inefficient, requiring more land to yield the same amount of food. The review paper describes cases where organic yields can be higher than conventional farming methods.

The report, Organic Agriculture for the 21st Century, authored by Washington State University Regents Professor of Soil Science and Agroecology John Reganold and doctoral student Jonathan Wachter, looks at the efficacy of organic and non-organic farming according to the four pillars of sustainability: economics, environment, productivity and community well-being. Organic production currently accounts for only one percent of global agricultural land, despite rapid growth in the last two decades.

Organic agriculture, sometimes called biological or ecological agriculture, combines traditional conservation farming methods with modern farming technologies. It emphasizes rotating crops, managing pests naturally, diversifying crops and livestock, and improving the soil with compost additions and animal and green manures. Organic farmers use modern equipment, improved crop varieties, soil and water conservation practices, and the latest innovations in feeding and handling livestock. Organic farming systems range from strict closed-cycle systems that go beyond organic certification guidelines by limiting external inputs as much as possible to more standard systems that simply follow organic certification guidelines.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Has ‘organic’ been stripped of its meaning?

February 1, 2016

Has ‘organic’ been stripped of its meaning?

The term ‘organic’ has come to be understood by most consumers as ‘grown without synthetic chemicals’, which to most people’s surprise, does not always mean that farming practices are sustainable. The Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Platformdefines sustainable agriculture as “the efficient production of safe, high quality agricultural products, in a way that protects and improves the natural environment, the social and economic conditions of farmers, their employees and local communities, and safeguards the health and welfare of all farmed species.”

Yet some organic farmers are participating in farming practices that, while still compliant with organic regulations, are not reflective of the sustainable farming practices and values on which organic agriculture was originally premised. Environmental damage, inefficient nutrient utilisation, heavy reliance on input substitution for pest and weed management, high energy use, limited cropping rotations and collapse of farmer co-operatives have been reported on organic farms spanning countries across the globe, including the Netherlands, Egypt, China and Brazil.

Some researchers argue that the rapid increase of international trade in organic products has resulted in complex regulatory systems that inadvertently lock out small-scale producers, particularly in developing countries, to market access and trade. Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) offer an alternative organic certification scheme that puts sustainability and small-scale producers back at the fore of organic production.

Shifts in organic agriculture

The organic agriculture movement began as a sustainable and fair alternative to industrial food production. Through its creation of alternative models of production, distribution and consumption, organic production prioritised sustainable practices that maintained a positive impact on biodiversity and resource conservation through small-scale production, crop diversification and the minimisation of external inputs. This organic system was embedded in local co-operative markets in which farmers and consumers actively participated, creating transparency and consumer trust.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A STEP TOWARDS TRANSFORMATION

April 12, 2015

A STEP TOWARDS TRANSFORMATION

In Reading, the United States’ second poorest city, the residents’ group Permacultivate is practicing and preaching local food production.

As you enter the 2,500-foot greenhouse, you immediately notice the large 300-gallon plastic tanks to the left. A few steps closer, you can see the tilapia swimming around and realize that water is circulating to nourish the vast beds of basil, lettuce, tomatoes, and other starter plants. In the heart of Reading, Pennsylvania, the second poorest city in the United States, the Reading Roots Urban Farm project was hatched by a small group of local residents committed to charting a sustainable course for their post-industrial city.

“Five years ago a group of us got together and envisioned an effort of bringing together people around food and community. We have been evolving ever since,” says Brian Twyman, a lifelong Reading resident and social worker by trade who is passionate about exposing urban youth to ideas about the food and waste system. He credits Neil Brantley as the major catalyst for Permacultivate. Neil was the type of visionary that spreads positivity in all he touches, combined with an incredible talent for transforming the urban landscape with a minimal amount of resources. Brantley wanted to empower people through increasing their food security. The two teamed up as guerrilla gardeners who scoured the city, reclaiming blighted parcels by cleaning them up and turning them into open community gardens and green spaces. Early on, they weren’t worried about property rights – they wanted action.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The state of our soil

January 28, 2015

The state of our soil

Jointly published by the Heinrich Böll Foundation and theInstitute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, the Soil Atlashighlights the current state of our soils and the ways in which we are draining this precious resource:

“We are using the world’s soils as if they were inexhaustible, continually withdrawing from an account, but never paying in.”

Soil is an ecosystem in itself, made up of mineral particles, water, air, plant roots, organic matter, earthworms, lice, spiders and of course microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi. The failure to protect our soils has led to the loss of around 24 billion tonnes of fertile soil each year. Without fertile soil, we risk failing to ensure that everyone has the right to adequate food.

The Soil Atlas uses infographics to present an in-depth and accessible look at the current global situation of our soils and the challenges we face in maintaining them. It includes the impact of industrial farming and the overreliance on fertilisers, which have resulted in long-term damage to the soil. But it’s not too late: farmers can adopt methods that have been used by smallholder farmers throughout the world for centuries to restore soil that has been degraded.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Pesticide Free Farming

January 28, 2015

Pesticide Free Farming

A revolutionary experiment in sustainable agriculture is showing impressive results in south India.

Around two million farmers in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh have ditched chemical pesticides in favour of natural repellants and fertilisers, as part of a growing eco-agriculture movement.

The sustainable techniques are spread through a network of women’s self-help groups, and over 10 percent of the state’s farmland is now being cultivated without chemical pesticides.

Farmers make natural pest repellents from ingredients such as neem tree leaves, chilli and cow urine – which is over 70 percent cheaper than using chemicals.

They also promote beneficial insects, use compost, and plant crops that fix nitrogen into the soil. Since it began in 2004 the scheme has improved soil health and biodiversity, reduced costs and upped yields.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

4 Innovative Community Food Projects Empowering Low-Income Residents

January 7, 2015

4 Innovative Community Food Projects Empowering Low-Income Residents

There are many community food organizations working hard to create a more sustainable and equitable food system. Through urban farms, school gardens, school lunch programs and more, these groups are alleviating food insecurity and building food justice in America. WhyHunger, which supports community-based organizations that seek solutions to underlying causes of hunger and connect people with quality food, has been documenting these community members’ stories through its project, Community Voices.

These projects have been made possible in part through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Community Food Project, which funds projects to increase food security. Here are four stories of organizations working to empower low-income communities with access to fresh and healthy food:

Community Services Unlimited

Community Services Unlimited (CSU) has been serving South Los Angeles for decades through its food justice efforts. CSU now has a number of programs. The first, From the Ground Up, is a youth training internship developing leaders in food and social justice. Another is Growing Healthy, which works with younger children to teach them nutrition and the basic tenets of food security and food justice. The third program is the Home Garden project, which encourages, educates and provides resources for residents wishing to grow their own food. And lastly, there is the Village Market Place, a social enterprise program that puts all of CSU’s other three programs to work in the community.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Food Safety Modernization Act – An Assault on Sustainable Agriculture?

December 4, 2014

Food Safety Modernization Act – An Assault on Sustainable Agriculture?.

The sustainable agriculture movement, and its complementary local food movement have become, over the past several years, one of the fastest growing and most concrete demonstrations of a cultural challenge to American values of consumerism, corporate power, and the belief that complex technology is always better than simple.

Concerned over a possible threat to their dominance, and to the broader challenge to consumerism that this movement represented, the corporate (pseudo) food industry has responded with every strategy in its book, including greenwashing, coopting the local image, and legal and regulatory assault on the movement rising in opposition.

The Food Safety Modernization Act, overhauled supervision of food safety under the FDA for the first time in 70 years, and arose in part out of public concern over the repeated examples of widespread food borne illnesses. These illnesses, which included a number of deaths, were usually the result of contamination of vegetables or meat with fecal bacteria in factory operations, and were hard to trace and control because of the national distribution of produce and hamburger. These outbreaks helped the food movement, since it made eminent sense to many people to know where their food came from, to insure its quality.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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