In the tropics, farmers often slash and burn forests to clear fertile land for crops, but a new method avoids that technique. Inga Foundation video
Rainforests are an important defense against climate change because they absorb carbon. But many are being destroyed on a massive scale.
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<p>In the tropics, farmers often slash and burn forests to clear fertile land for crops. The practice involves cutting down vegetation and burning it. But the soil's fertility does not last long, so the farmers must clear a new patch of forest every few years.</p><p>"People believe it's the only possible way of growing crops," says ecologist Michael Hands.</p><p>But he says there's an alternative. Hands directs the Inga Foundation, which teaches farmers in Honduras and Costa Rica a method called <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ingafoundation.org/alley-cropping/">inga alley cropping</a>.</p><p>The inga is a fast-growing tree with roots that fix nitrogen, so it replenishes the soil.</p>
<p>In alley cropping, farmers plant inga trees in rows. Their shade kills weeds and creates space for planting maize or beans. Then the trees are pruned back so sunlight can reach the crops until harvest.</p><p>"And you can repeat the process the following year," Hands says.</p><p>The ingas' roots keep the soil rich, so the farmer does not need to slash and burn more land. That means less carbon pollution and less labor.</p><p>"It's definitely transforming people's lives," Hands says.</p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/07/farmers-learn-alternative-to-slashing-and-burning-rainforests/" target="_blank">Yale Climate Connections</a>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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Land Loss Has Plagued Black America Since Emancipation, but Collective Ownership Offers a Solution
19 June
Insights + Opinion
Freed slaves harvest land for their own profit on the former plantation of Confederate General Thomas Drayton. ©Corbis / Getty Images
By Julian Agyeman and Kofi Boone
Underlying the recent unrest sweeping U.S. cities over police brutality is a fundamental inequity in wealth, land and power that has circumscribed black lives since the end of slavery in the U.S.
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<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/julian-agyeman-147077" target="_blank"><em>Julian Agyeman</em></a><em> is a Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, Tufts University.</em></p><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/kofi-boone-1113883" target="_blank">Kofi Boone</a> is a Professor of Landscape Architecture, College of Design, North Carolina State University.</em></p><p><em>Disclosure statement: The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</em></p><p><em>Reposted with permission from The Conversation.</em><br/><span></span></p><iframe height="1" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140514/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-advanced" width="1"></iframe>
<p>The "<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/the-truth-behind-40-acres-and-a-mule/" target="_blank">40 acres and a mule</a>" promised to formerly enslaved Africans never came to pass. There was no redistribution of land, no reparations for the wealth extracted from stolen land by stolen labor.</p><p>June 19 is celebrated by black Americans as <a href="https://www.juneteenth.com/history.htm" target="_blank">Juneteenth</a>, marking the date in 1865 that former slaves were informed of their freedom, albeit two years after the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_Proclamation" target="_blank">Emancipation Proclamation</a>. Coming this year at a time of protest over the continued police killing of black people, it provides an opportunity to look back at how black Americans were deprived of land ownership and the economic power that it brings. An expanded concept of the "black commons" – based on shared economic, cultural and digital resources as well as land – could act as one means of redress. As professors in <a href="https://as.tufts.edu/uep/people/faculty/julian-agyeman" target="_blank">urban planning</a> and <a href="https://design.ncsu.edu/staff/kofi-boone-asla/" target="_blank">landscape architecture</a>, our research suggests that such a concept could be a part of undoing the racist legacy of chattel slavery by encouraging economic development and creating communal wealth.</p>
Land Grab
<p>The proportion of the United States under black ownership has actually shrunk over <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/06/19/why-racial-wealth-gap-persists-more-than-years-after-emancipation/" target="_blank">the last 100 years or so</a>.</p><p>At their peak in 1910, <a href="https://psmag.com/news/african-american-farmers-make-up-less-than-2-percent-of-all-us-farmers" target="_blank">African American farmers</a> made up around 14% of all U.S. farmers, owning <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/46984/19353_ra174h_1_.pdf?v=41056#:%7E:text=Land%20ownership%20by%20Black%20farmers,acres%20owned%20by%20White%20farmers." target="_blank">16 to 19 million acres of land</a>. By 2012, black Americans represented just 1.6% of the farming community, owning 3.6 million acres of land. Another study shows a <a href="https://thecounter.org/usda-black-farmers-discrimination-tom-vilsack-reparations-civil-rights/" target="_blank">98% decline</a> in black farmers between 1920 and 1997. This contrasts sharply with an <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/46984/19353_ra174h_1_.pdf?v=41056#:%7E:text=Land%20ownership%20by%20Black%20farmers,acres%20owned%20by%20White%20farmers." target="_blank">increase in acres owned by white farmers</a> over the same period.</p><p>In <a href="https://archive.org/details/timetoact1545usda" target="_blank">a 1998 report</a>, the U.S. Department of Agriculture ascribed this decline to a long and "well-documented" history of discrimination against black farmers, ranging from New Deal and USDA <a href="https://eji.org/news/one-million-black-families-have-lost-their-farms/" target="_blank">discriminatory practices</a> dating from the 1930s to 1950s-era exclusion from legal, title and loan resources.</p><p>Discriminatory practices have also affected who owns property as well as land. In 2017, the racial homeownership gap was <a href="https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/breaking-down-black-white-homeownership-gap" target="_blank">at its highest level for 50 years</a>, with 79.1% of white Americans owning a home compared to 41.8% of black Americans. This gap is even larger than it was when <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/redlining-what-is-history-mike-bloomberg-comments/" target="_blank">racist housing practices such as redlining</a>, which denied black residents mortgages to buy, or loans to renovate, property were legal.</p><p>The lack of ownership is crucial to understanding the crippling economic disparity that has <a href="https://prosperitynow.org/blog/black-and-latino-households-are-short-road-zero-wealth-hollowing-out-americas-historic-middle" target="_blank">hollowed out the black middle class</a> and continues to plague black America – making it harder to accrue wealth and pass it on to future generations.</p><p>A 2017 <a href="https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/one-time-pubs/color-of-wealth.aspx" target="_blank">report</a> found that the median net worth for non-immigrant black American households in the greater Boston region was just US $8, but for whites it was $247,500. This was due to "general housing and lending discrimination through restrictive covenants, redlining and other lending practices."</p><p>Nationally, between 1983 and 2013, median <a href="https://prosperitynow.org/resources/road-zero-wealth" target="_blank">black household wealth decreased</a> by 75% to $1,700 while median white household wealth increased 14% to $116,800.</p>Freedom Farms
<p>Land ownership today could look very different. The idea of collective ownership has a long history in the United States. Even during slavery, a piece of ground was granted by slave masters for enslaved African subsistence farming. The <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/sylvia-wynter" target="_blank">Jamaican social theorist Sylvia Wynter</a> called this land "the plot."</p><p><a href="https://www.aaihs.org/towards-usable-histories-of-the-black-commons/" target="_blank">Wynter has explained</a> how that these parcels of land were transformed into communal areas where slaves could establish their own social order, sustain traditional African folklore and foodways – growing yams, cassava and sweet potatoes. Plots were often called "<a href="https://english.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/DeLoughrey-Yam-Roots-Rot-Small-Axe.pdf" target="_blank">yam grounds</a>," so important was this staple food.</p><p>The connection between food, land, power and cultural survival was subversive in its nature. By appropriating physical space to support collective growing practices within the brutal constraints of slavery, black people also demonstrated the need for common, shared mental space to enable their survival and resistance. Herbalism, medicine and midwifery, and other African American <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807853788/working-cures-/" target="_blank">healing practices</a> were seen as acts of resistance that were "intimately tied to religion and community," according to historian Sharla M. Fett.</p><p>With the end of slavery, these plots disappeared.</p><p>The principles of collective land ownership evolved in post-slavery black America. It was central to civil rights organizer Fannie Lou Hamer's <a href="https://snccdigital.org/events/fannie-lou-hamer-founds-freedom-farm-cooperative/" target="_blank">Freedom Farms</a>, a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07409710.2017.1270647?journalCode=gfof20" target="_blank">cooperative model</a> designed to deliver economic justice to the poorest black farmers in the American South.</p><p>In Hamer's view, the fight for justice in the face of oppression required a measure of independence that could be achieved through owning land and providing resources for the community.</p><p>This idea of a black commons as a means of economic empowerment formed a focus of W.E.B. DuBois' 1907 "<a href="http://scua.library.umass.edu/digital/dubois/dubois12.pdf" target="_blank">Economic Co-operation Among Negro Americans</a>." DuBois believed that the extreme segregation of the Jim Crow era made it necessary to <a href="https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2015/10/07/dangerous-history-what-the-story-of-black-economic-development-means-for-us-today/" target="_blank">ground economic empowerment</a> in the cultural bonds between black people and that this could be achieved through cooperative ownership.</p>
Credit Unions and Co-Ops
<p>The accumulation of wealth was not the only desired consequence of a black commons.</p><p>In 1967, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/30/us/harold-cruse-social-critic-and-fervent-black-nationalist-dies-at-89.html" target="_blank">social critic Harold Cruse</a> argued for a "<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40034433?seq=1" target="_blank">new institutionalism</a>" that would create a "new dynamic synthesis of politics, economics, and culture." In his view, economic ventures needed to be grounded in the greater aspirations of black communities – politically, culturally and economically. This could be achieved through a black commons.</p><p>As the political economist <a href="https://www.jjay.cuny.edu/faculty/jessica-gordon-nembhard" target="_blank">Jessica Gordon Nembhard</a> <a href="http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-06216-7.html" target="_blank">has noted</a> in reference to black <a href="https://www.essence.com/news/bankblack-listing-black-owned-banks-credit-unions-united-states/" target="_blank">credit unions and mutual aid funds</a>, "African Americans, as well as other people of color and low-income people, have benefited greatly from cooperative ownership and democratic economic participation throughout the nation's history."</p><p>The nonprofit <a href="https://centerforneweconomics.org/" target="_blank">Schumacher Center for a New Economics</a> is working to rejuvenate the idea of black commons. In a 2018 statement, the <a href="https://centerforneweconomics.org/publications/proposal-for-a-black-commons/" target="_blank">center proposed to adopt a community land trust structure</a> "to serve as a national vehicle to amass purchased and gifted lands in a black commons with the specific purpose of facilitating low-cost access for black Americans hitherto without such access."</p><p>Meanwhile, shared equity housing schemes and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-29/alternative-homeownership-land-trusts-and-co-ops" target="_blank">community land trusts</a> <a href="https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/working-papers/tracking-growth-evaluating-performance-shared-equity-homeownership" target="_blank">continue to grow</a>, helping black families own property, <a href="https://housingmatters.urban.org/articles/how-community-land-trusts-can-advance-racial-and-economic-justice" target="_blank">advance racial and economic justice</a> and mitigate displacement resulting from gentrification.</p>Digital Commons
<p>The disproportionate effects of the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/racial-ethnic-minorities.html" target="_blank">coronavirus pandemic</a> and unrest over <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/police-violence-pandemic/2020/06/05/e1a2a1b0-a669-11ea-b619-3f9133bbb482_story.html" target="_blank">police brutality</a> have highlighted deeply embedded structural racism. Organizations such as Black Lives Matter and the <a href="https://m4bl.org/" target="_blank">Movement for Black Lives</a> are demonstrating a renewed vigor around collective action and a blueprint for how this can be achieved in a digital age. At the same time, black Americans are also forging a cultural commons through events such as DJ D-Nice's <a href="https://www.oprahmag.com/entertainment/a31860967/dj-dnice-instagram-dance-party-coronavirus-quarantine/" target="_blank">Club Quarantine</a> – a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/adriennegibbs/2020/03/28/dj-d-nice-just-had-the-best-quarantine-week-ever/#2c57f81c47dc" target="_blank">hugely popular</a> online dance party. Club Quarantine's success indicates the potential for using online platforms to facilitate community building, pointing toward future economic cooperation.</p><p>That's what organizations like <a href="http://urbanpatch.org/" target="_blank">Urban Patch</a> are trying to do. The nonprofit group uses crowdsourced funding to build community spaces in inner city areas of Indianapolis and encourage collective economic development that echoes the black commons of years past.</p><p>The long history of racism in the United States has held back black Americans for generations. But the current soul searching over this legacy is also an unrivaled opportunity to look again at the idea of collective black action and ownership, using it to create a community and economy that goes beyond just ownership of land for wealth's sake.</p>From Your Site Articles
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Wine cultivation, typically associated with more southern slopes in France, Spain and Italy, is now taking off in places like Denmark, Sweden (pictured) and the United Kingdom. Jonathan Nackstrand / AFP / Getty Images
By Martin Kuebler
With hotter summers, severe storms and prolonged dry spells in the forecast, the outlook for Europe's farmers is daunting.
<p>Average annual temperatures are expected to increase anywhere from 1 to 5.5 degrees Celsius (1.5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit), with the strongest warming projected across the south of the continent in the summer months.</p><p><a href="https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/cc-adaptation-agriculture" target="_blank">A September 2019 report by the European Environment Agency (EEA)</a> noted that heat stress, extreme weather events like flash floods and hailstorms, and water shortages have already changed growing conditions for several crops in Europe — especially for Mediterranean staples like olives and wine grapes.</p>
<div id="7b57a" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="a3140c63ff0a97771d0ad3f85329d728"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1174945780358008833" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">❓How concerned are you about the impact of #climatechange on #farming in #Europe? #Adaptation will be crucial - fin… https://t.co/XPkbPic6DY</div> — EU EnvironmentAgency (@EU EnvironmentAgency)<a href="https://twitter.com/EUEnvironment/statuses/1174945780358008833">1568963878.0</a></blockquote></div><p>Places in northern Europe, meanwhile, could see agricultural benefits from climate change, including longer growing seasons and a shorter frost period "allowing the cultivation of new crops and varieties," said the report. Suitable cropland around the Baltic Sea could more than double by 2100, from 32% of land area today to about 76%, with certain crops now common to southern Europe taking root further north.</p>
UK, Scandinavian Wines
<p>Those climatic changes have already borne fruit — quite literally. In the northern German state of Lower Saxony, where average temperatures have risen nearly 2 degrees Celsius in the last several decades, some farmers have started cultivating fruits typically found further south, such as apricots and nectarines. And wine cultivation, typically associated with more southern slopes in France, Spain and Italy, is now taking off in places like Denmark, Sweden and the United Kingdom.</p><p><a href="https://www.ryedalevineyards.co.uk/" target="_blank">Ryedale Vineyards</a>, in northeastern England, has been producing British wines since 2006. As one of the UK's northernmost wineries, it relies mainly on hybrid disease-resistant grape varieties more suited to northern Europe's cooler regions.</p><p>The warming trend of the past decades has seen the UK's wine industry quadruple in size since 2000, with English vineyards producing some 13.2 million bottles in 2018. But the changing climate does pose other challenges, including unusual weather patterns and increased risk of disease associated with wetter summers. which have been linked to climate change.</p><p>"Unpredictable weather events, droughts and intense summer storms are a real problem and seem to have increased in frequency," said Jon Fletcher, who runs Ryedale Vineyards with his family. In an email to DW, he listed off the challenges: late frosts, destructive hailstorms and dry spells that can last for months. "This year we have already had the sunniest May on record and no rainfall for two months, so the unpredictable weather continues."</p><p>"Climate change is posing a risk for the sustainability of vineyard management at global scale and, particularly, in Europe," said Josep Maria Sole of <a href="http://visca.eu/" target="_blank">VISCA (Vineyards Integrated Smart Climate Application)</a>, an EU-funded project that aims to help Europe's wine industry develop medium- and long-term adaption strategies. He said wine producing areas will increasingly suffer from intense heat waves and droughts and, in certain regions in Spain, more intense spring frosts, which can damage grapevine buds.</p><p>Blaz Kurnik, an expert on climate change impacts and adaptation at the EEA, said these higher temperatures, especially warmer winters, will also favor the introduction of new diseases and pests, including the olive fruit fly. Increasing swarms are threatening Europe's olive oil industry, responsible for around three-quarters of the world's supply. "In the worst-case scenario, up to 80% of [Italy's] olive trees will be affected by this every year," said Kurnik, adding that flies were also infesting Spain's olive groves.</p>Mango, Avocado and Lychee: Europe's Future Cash Crops?
<p>Italy, which ranks second in the world for olive oil production, saw a disastrous harvest in 2018. Bad weather and frost caused production to drop by 57%, representing a loss of nearly €1 billion ($1.13 billion).</p><p>Sicily is one of Italy's top olive oil-producing regions, along with Calabria and Puglia. But some farmers there have begun focusing their attention on crops native to tropical regions, including mangoes, avocado and lychee fruit. </p><p>Tropical crops were first introduced to Sicily back in the 1970s, but recent years have seen an exponential growth of these crops and the introduction of new species such as papaya, replacing citrus fruits which "are no longer remunerative," said Vittorio Farina, an associate professor in agriculture at the University of Palermo.</p><p>"The favorable climate of many areas in the Mediterranean basin is promoting tropical fruit cultivations," he said in an email to DW. "In fact, the predominant mango and avocado production is concentrated in tropical countries, but recently its cultivation has spread outside the traditional geographical regions to the Mediterranean basin and in particular in Egypt, Israel, South Africa, Europe, mainly Spain and Italy."</p><p>Farina said a succession of milder winters has favored the expansion of mango, avocado and papaya orchards destined for export markets further north, though the corresponding drier summers and extreme weather events remain a challenge.</p><p><span></span>"The problem of the scarcity of water resources for agriculture will increasingly impose the introduction of species with low water requirements," said Farina, suggesting the possible introduction of fruit like the cactus pear. "For most other tropical species, irrigation in the warm months in the dry areas is an essential condition for obtaining a quality product." Farina said they were testing precision irrigation strategies to limit the water footprint of the tropical crops.</p>Finding the Right Solution
<p>Margarita Ruiz-Ramos, an associate professor at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, told DW that new crops were also being tested in Spain, including pistachios. However, she stressed that the priority now was experimenting with different varieties of existing crops that could withstand new growing conditions — such as types of fruit that don't rely as heavily on winter chill to produce spring blossoms.</p><p>"There already is the possibility to adapt the variety without changing the [main] crop in the short to medium term," she said, pointing out that some crops could also shift to other more suitable areas within the same country.</p><p>As part of her work at the <a href="http://ceigram.upm.es/" target="_blank">Research Center for the Management of Agricultural and Environmental Risks</a>, Ruiz-Ramos analyzes crop varieties, planting schedules, soil conditions, irrigation options and many other variables to find the optimum strategy for farmers and "design locally tailored adaptations." The most promising solutions are then tested in the field.</p><p>"It's a compromise between different needs. And that's why it's not so obvious as to just bring in some African crops," she said. However, she didn't rule out the fact that dramatic temperature changes could one day lead growers to take a chance on non-native crops.</p><p>Yves Madre, a co-founder of <a href="https://www.farm-europe.eu/" target="_blank">Brussels-based think tank Farm Europe</a>, said the EU's farming sector needs to be more open to new breeding techniques that would introduce drought and disease-tolerance genes to existing crops, which can include genome editing.</p><p>With more innovation and investment, he said the EU would be able to meet its goals in terms of food security and growth, especially in rural areas.</p>From Your Site Articles
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A worker at a flower farm in Kiambu County, Kenya, piles up roses to be dumped on March 24, 2020. Patrick Meinhardt / AFP / Getty Images
By Peyton Fleming
Gerison Ndwiga, a small rural farmer in Kenya, felt the economic sting of COVID-19 just days after the government announced a curfew and travel restrictions in late March.
<p>For Ndwiga, who grows vine ripe tomatoes and exotic French beans 75 miles north of the nation's capital, the pain was double: He couldn't transport his tomatoes to Nairobi and traders stopped exporting his beans to Europe.</p><p>Within days, he made a tough choice: he left more than 16,000 pounds of ripe beans in the ground unpicked – a loss he estimated at more than US$4,000. "I didn't pick anything because there were no flights in and out of Nairobi," Ndwiga said, noting that most Kenyans have no interest in buying his long skinny beans known as haricot verts.</p><p>COVID-19 is eating away at most sectors of the world's economy. But in Kenya, which has enjoyed a booming <a href="https://www.economist.com/special-report/2020/03/26/many-of-africas-economies-are-doing-well" target="_blank">trade relationship</a> with Europe in recent years, the global lockdown has hit small and large commercial farmers especially hard. Europeans are noticing this as favorite roses and passion fruits are hard to find in stores. Meanwhile, Kenyan producers are pivoting at jet speed to develop new markets closer to home, creating new revenue streams and new outlets for small farmers like Ndwiga trying to sell their crops.</p><p>"After decades of high dependency on exports, the opportunities for tapping local and regional markets are becoming clearer, especially as African economies and income levels grow," said Jane Ambuko, associate professor and Head of Horticulture at the University of Nairobi. "Exports aren't going away, but growing domestic markets opens new frontiers for trade while supporting our local populations, many of whom are small farmers."</p>
<p>Kenya's horticulture industry is a much-heralded success story. Fresh produce and flower exports that totaled $68 million in 1991 sprouted 20-fold to <a href="http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-03/19/c_138892693.htm" target="_blank">$1.37 billion</a> by 2019, much of it from roses, avocados and French beans. Every day, dozens of airplanes filled with cut flowers, fresh fruits and vegetables take off from Nairobi, most of them heading to Europe. Three million Kenyans were directly involved in growing and processing those crops.</p><p>When Europe closed its borders and economy in March, the flights – and exporters' lifeline – snapped shut.</p><p>"The last two months have been really tough," said Frank Obure, general manager packhouses at AAA Growers Ltd., Kenya's third largest exporter which provides premium roses, fruits and vegetables all across Europe. Obure has wrestled with worker layoffs, cancelled deliveries, rotting crops, safety protocols and devastating rains. "I've never been through an experience like this before."</p><p>How bad has it been? Before the pandemic, AAA Growers was exporting 1.4 million flowers every week. When Holland's vast flower markets were shuttered, shipments dropped to virtually zero. Millions of roses that should have been adorning homes across Europe on Easter Sunday were wilting instead at two flower farms near Mount Kenya.</p>
<p>"We're harvesting and throwing, harvesting and throwing. Upwards of 250,000 stems a day are going into the bin," Obure said, estimating overall flower losses at 70 to 80 percent.</p><p>Fruit and vegetable exports have also been hurt, although not as badly since some fresh produce can be redirected to local markets – at substantially marked down prices.</p><p>All told, with produce exports down by 70 to 75 percent, Kenya's horticulture industry is losing about EU $3 million a day, according to Industry trade group <a href="https://www.coleacp.org/?lang=en" target="_blank">COLEACP</a>. But that figure does not account for thousands of small growers like Ndwiga who have been largely cut off from export markets and Nairobi's informal urban markets due to travel bans. </p><p>Due to paperwork limitations, Ndwiga, who owns 10 acres, says he can only get into Nairobi once every two weeks to sell his tomatoes in informal markets. "I'm selling many of my tomatoes locally at village prices because they're getting overripe." he said, noting that prices are half what he'd fetch in Nairobi.</p><p>Ndwiga's predicament is common, say local industry experts<strong>.</strong> "For bigger companies whose trucks are registered, they don't have problems moving produce into Nairobi, but the small farmers who don't have the necessary paperwork, they're the ones who are suffering the most," said Emmanuel Oriedo, a food and farming system consultant who works with small farmers.</p>
Uncertainty and Hope
<p>To be sure, the situation has improved the past few weeks, particularly as flight restrictions to Europe are loosening a bit and more passenger planes are being converted to carry cargo. But major obstacles remain, including in-country transport bottlenecks and prohibitively high air freight costs. Shipping costs to Europe are averaging $2.80 to $4 per kilogram, more than double previous rates.</p><p>Companies are not sitting and waiting. AAA Growers is scrambling to sell more produce locally through popular Nairobi retailers like Carrefour, Quick Mart and KFC. The company's 'sell-local' efforts began last year, and it gained urgency when COVID-19 hit. Local sales now total 12 to 15 tons a week. </p><p>TwigaFoods, which sells all of its fresh produce within Kenya, responded to COVID-19 with a new e-commerce push. In late April, it launched a <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/28/goldman-backed-ventures-jumia-and-twiga-partner-on-produce-in-kenya/" target="_blank">partnership</a> with e-commerce company Jumia to deliver bundles of fruits and vegetables directly to people's homes. The effort is aimed at affluent Nairobi customers who want to avoid buying at more expensive supermarkets.</p><p>"We'd been thinking about the idea and we were starting to see more home deliveries (due to COVID-19)," said TwigaFoods CEO Peter Njongo. "For now, it's something we'll do in Kenya. We'll see how it works."</p>From Your Site Articles
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A field of organic lettuce grows at a sustainable farm in California. thinkreaction / Getty Images
When the coronavirus pandemic hit, the future of the Cannard Family Farm—whose organic vegetables supplied a single Berkeley restaurant—was looking stark.
<p>Ross Cannard is the son of an iconic leader in the local organic movement in California. "Iconoclastic," Ross says with a chuckle. Bob Cannard built his 30-year career by rejecting organic certification in favor of his own "better than organic" breed of "natural process agriculture," enriching the soil on his Green String Farm with crushed rock and compost.</p><p>He and his son have long sold the fruits of their labor to the famous restaurant Chez Panisse, where, since 1971, chef Alice Waters has pioneered an elegant cuisine based entirely on fresh, local foods straight from the farm.</p><p>But in March, the stay-at-home order hit, and the restaurant closed.</p><p>"You're a farmer. Plants are already in the ground," says Evan Wiig, director of membership and communications for the Community Alliance with Family Farmers. "You make plans months and months in advance. You can't just turn on a dime."</p>
<p>Waters was worried about the vulnerable situation her workers and producers were finding themselves in. She rushed to establish a subscription CSA, which stands for community supported agriculture, offering weekly food boxes that could be picked up at the shuttered restaurant, filled with goodies from her regular producers like Cannard.</p><p>"I'm trying to connect our network with the people who would like to have that food in their home," she said on Michael Dimock's podcast, <a href="https://www.rootsofchange.org/flippingthetablepodcast/available-episodes/" target="_blank">Flipping the Table</a>, on March 26. "We can sort of skip the restaurant for now. … We could help people do the cooking in their own kitchen."</p><p>Cannard augments that market with his own local CSA, setting up a farm stand in the parking lot of Baker & Cook, a café in nearby Boyes Hot Springs, now serving only takeout. Along with produce, Cannard has his olive oil available, as well as wine from a friend's vineyard, and flowers from another local farm. Friends and neighbors are among his 100 or so customers.</p><p>This CSA model, where buyers invest in a farm's annual production upfront in exchange for a regular share of the harvest, is built on long-term relationships between farmers and consumers. It's those relationships, farmers say, springing from the fertile soil of Sonoma County, that are making survival possible. New local grassroots networks and nimbler digital marketplaces, too, are popping up to provide critical lifelines. And despite the strange, isolating atmosphere created by the coronavirus, the region is now bursting with spring growth.</p>
Building Food Communities
<p>Family farms in California and across the country have been hit hard by the impact of the coronavirus on their markets. But in the health-conscious Bay Area, where celery was already one of the first groceries to disappear from the produce rack, demand for fresh local produce has shot up. The challenge is in redirecting food from farms to new customers.</p><p>Sonoma County has historically been an agricultural region. When the organic food movement sprang up in the 1970s, this area was one of its early proponents. The first farmers markets and CSAs appeared in the 1980s and flourished, but the burgeoning network was later eclipsed by an inflated wine industry, much of it owned by distant corporations.</p><p>According to a 2018 crop report, 60,000 acres have gone to grapes, with only 500 acres in food crops. Land prices have skyrocketed, the cost of labor has gone up, and increased regulations have all made it harder to run a viable business here. Many farmers had turned to "boutique" specialty crops for restaurants.</p><p>"Farmers are always in an uphill battle, especially ecological farmers," says Wiig of the Community Alliance with Family Farmers. "I often hear them say, 'I'm working my butt off and hoping for the best.'" That's even more true now, as the pandemic strangles economies the world over.</p><p>For farms with existing CSAs, Wiig says, this is a really good time. "In the beginning of March, most CSAs were struggling to fill boxes. Now some now have waiting lists, some in the 100s."</p><p>But for those who didn't have CSAs established, Wiig says, this is a really tough time. "We've been able to keep farm markets open as essential businesses, but crowds have decreased with people afraid to go out, and sales are down."</p><p>Community Alliance was quick to jump in, becoming a "matchmaker" for producers and buyers on its website. They're also providing all kinds of information for farmers about how to start and run a CSA, including useful software, relevant legislation, available funding sources, and a series of four webinars showcasing successful farms.</p><p>Farm Trails, a local nonprofit with 250 farmer members, also leapt into the fray. The organization has been building relationships between farmers and consumers for 47 years by organizing farm visits and hosting educational events. Two days after the shelter-in-place shut down regular sales outlets, Farm Trails had put up a new page on its website and invited its members to post their offerings.<span></span></p><p>"We know our farmers well," executive director Carmen Snyder says. "We did outreach to them to see what they had. Spirit Works had plenty of alcohol, so they started making lavender sanitizer, giving it away to first responders and health care workers, and selling the rest at the local hardware store."</p><p>In the online marketplace's first two days, web traffic on Farm Trails' site went up 1000%.</p><p>"Many people have been on the fence about CSAs," says Sonya Perrotti, who runs the 1-acre Coyote Family Farm in Penngrove. "This was the push." While she has always sold most of her produce in a CSA, Perrotti benefited from the new digital marketplace. She has now sold out of her 100 shares and plans to expand.</p>
Scaling Up Support
<p>F.E.E.D. Sonoma, a food hub that aggregates produce from dozens of local farms, was another quick responder. When the pandemic hit, it went from serving Bay Area restaurants to building a cooperative of farmers, filling food boxes for distribution at F.E.E.D.'s Petaluma warehouse and other drop spots in the county.</p><p>"Our local food system is extremely diverse," says co-founder Tim Page, who has the energy of a visionary combined with the skills of a businessman. "We have a ton of small farms but we don't have the infrastructure to support them. That is what F.E.E.D. is trying to establish." Since converting the restaurant supply business to a CSA, it has gone from 90 boxes to 450. Ultimately, the goal is 1,800 or more.</p><p>"I grew up in L.A.," Page says. "Every single farm is gone. The same thing will happen here if the general public does not understand the importance of it.</p><p>"That understanding was on display at the Sonoma Farmers Market, which now operates with strict restrictions and safety precautions because of the virus. "We think F.E.E.D. is going to save us," said Candy Wirtz, co-director of Paul's Produce, a well-established farm in Sonoma, as she weighed out my purchases. The CSA model could be transformative for Paul's and other farms across the country.</p><p>Subscribing to a CSA is a lifestyle change for consumers, to be sure. It means eating what's in season and learning to cook unfamiliar vegetables. But it's a change that many people are making now because of the stay-at-home orders. "People just have to learn to cook again instead of eating out," says Judith Redmond, part-owner of Full Belly Farm near Sacramento.</p><p>In light of this newfound commitment to CSAs, Perrotti, of Coyote Family Farm, says: "My hope is that this solidifies instead of going back to the way things were. I hope the importance of local farming stays at the forefront."</p>Farms With Futures
<p>To help small farmers stay in business during the crisis, Community Alliance is also advocating for stimulus dollars. "Most often subsidies go to a small number of the largest farms, or to buy food that goes to food banks from far away, while local farmers can't sell their food," Wiig says. "We want food banks to buy from local farms."</p><p>This seems like a win-win. Millions of tons of food is being plowed under as 60 million people are now going hungry, 17 million of them since the pandemic began, according to Feeding America, the national network of food banks.</p><p>But it's complicated. David Goodman of the Redwood Empire Food Bank puts it plainly: Local food is too expensive. "We distribute nine and a half million pounds of produce annually," he says. "It costs about 9 cents a pound, 3 cents to transport. With 82,000 people to feed, it would be a luxury to think of tending to local needs by buying locally."</p><p>That reticence is partly because the food bank system is tangled in bureaucracy. The USDA decides what to purchase and from where. Because of the distances between sites, the federal agency has tended to favor foods with long shelf lives, such as canned and processed foods, and long-lasting produce like apples and potatoes. "If local food is what we need, there has to be a plan," Goodman says.</p><p>Such a plan might be where short-term disaster relief meets long-term resilience. Michael Dimock is president of Roots of Change, a nonprofit organization that advocates for transforming California's food system. To get serious about preparing the food system for future disasters, Dimock says, the government needs to be involved. Roots of Change is now advocating for a tax on sugary beverages to help foot the bill.</p><p>Dimock says the state needs a paradigm shift for farms to remain viable in the face of multiplying disasters to come—not only pandemics, but fires, floods, and other symptoms of climate change. "How bold will people get in the months ahead to demand real change? My hope is they will get more radical."</p><p>Food is fundamental. While farmers have yet to face the full economic impact of this pandemic, their collaborative efforts, along with local grassroots networks, could mark the beginning of a new economy laboring to be born.</p>
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David Abazs, a farmer in northeastern Minnesota, has created a site-specific farming calendar based solely on natural events. youtu.be
As the climate warms, growing seasons are becoming more erratic. That uncertainty makes it harder for farmers to decide when to plant and harvest crops.
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<p>"We cannot rely, 'Oh, May 1st, we plant lettuce.' It just doesn't work that way anymore," says David Abazs, a farmer in northeastern Minnesota.</p><p>So instead Abazs is basing his decisions on natural signs of seasonal change, like when robins arrive in spring, the marsh marigold first flowers, or snow buntings migrate.</p><p>He's matched up records of those natural events with 30 years of his own planting and harvest data. That's allowed him to see which events are good signposts.</p><p>"So when the dandelion flowers, we might be planting potatoes and transplanting lettuce," he says.</p>
<p>After a few years of experimenting, Abazs has created a site-specific farming calendar based solely on natural events. This year, he plans to rely on that instead of traditional dates.</p><p>He's optimistic that the approach will help him maintain good harvests in a changing climate. And he says the process has been rewarding in other ways, too.</p><p>"It forces me to observe," he says. "And what's better for farming than for a farmer to be observant?"</p>
<p class=""><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/05/farmer-creates-a-nature-based-crop-planting-calendar/" target="_blank">Yale Climate Connections</a>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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Plants growing inside of a greenhouse nursery. pixinoo / Getty Images
Indoor farms can grow vegetables close to cities, where there are lots of people to feed.
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<p>Farming indoors can also extend the growing season in cold climates and protect crops from damage during extreme weather.</p><p>But growing food indoors is energy intensive, so it can produce a lot of carbon pollution.</p><p>"Lighting is a big factor," says Erico Mattos of the <a target="_blank" href="https://glase.org/">Greenhouse Lighting and Systems Engineering Consortium</a>. "You have the heating and cooling systems, ventilation systems, all the systems that you have to control. So it's really important for us to reduce this energy demand."</p>
<p>Mattos's group is working to reduce the energy used in indoor farms and greenhouses.</p><p>"The challenge is, how can we still provide all these inputs that the plants require, the crops require to grow, but using energy with the most efficient way as possible?" he says.</p><p>Researchers are tackling the problem from multiple angles. For example, they're designing high-efficiency LED lights and they're experimenting with ways to optimize specific crops' growth with customized lighting, ventilation, and humidity controls.</p><p>Mattos says these technologies and systems will help make greenhouses and indoor farms more cost-effective and better for the climate.</p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from </em><a href="https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/05/researchers-aim-to-cut-the-energy-footprint-of-indoor-farms/" target="_blank"><em>Yale Climate Connections.</em></a></p>From Your Site Articles
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A woman shops at a local farmers' market during the COVID-19 crisis. BakiBG / Getty Images
By Paolo Mutia
As the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps across the globe, it has exposed and exacerbated how the corporate, industrialized food system is harming people and our planet.
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<p>Family farmers across the country, many already on the brink, have lost markets and are struggling to survive. Simultaneously, food workers, from farmworkers to slaughterhouse workers and grocery workers are on the frontlines of this crisis, facing huge risks to their health with little to no protection. And as unemployment skyrockets, more Americans than ever lack access to nutritious food.</p><p>It's clear that supporting a healthy, sustainable and just food system is crucial to overcoming this crisis and building a better future for all of us.</p><p>That's why the next stimulus bill must support the farmers who need it most: small family farmers, organic farmers and producers of color who usually supply <a href="https://civileats.com/2020/03/17/small-farms-also-struggle-as-restaurants-shut-down-due-to-coronavirus/" target="_blank">restaurants</a>, foodservice companies and other buyers whose demand has dropped off dramatically during the pandemic. It must also protect and support food workers who are among the most vulnerable to COVID-19 and help ensure that the growing numbers of people reliant on food assistance, and all of us, have access to healthy, fresh food.</p><p>The last coronavirus aid package included $23 billion for agriculture, which predominantly is going to the largest industrial farms, and it could happen again. Friends of the Earth is fighting to ensure the next stimulus bill doesn't bail out Big Ag, but instead supports and protects family farmers, frontline food workers and others who need it the most.</p><p>Here are three ways you can help support a resilient and regenerative local food system that can strengthen our communities' health, our local economies and our environment:</p>
1. Sign Up For a CSA Membership.
<p>Purchasing a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share is a great way to access fresh, healthy, often organic, foods while supporting local small farmers that the Trump administration is leaving behind. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/dining/csa-farm-food-delivery-coronavirus.html" target="_blank">Many farmers are adapting</a> to the current crisis with more direct distribution models, from classic CSAs to custom-built boxes, no-contact drive-thru pickups, deliveries, and more.</p><p>By signing up for a CSA you can <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/dining/csa-farm-food-delivery-coronavirus.html" target="_blank">avoid going to a busy supermarket</a>, and your share can be picked up or delivered. You can <a href="https://www.localharvest.org/csa/" target="_blank">find your local CSA here</a>.</p>2. Shop at a Local Farmers' Market.
<p>Farmers markets serve as a direct channel to sustainable, healthy, locally sourced fresh fruits and vegetables and other food staples within your community. Many farmers markets remain open as <a href="https://civileats.com/2020/03/19/the-fight-to-keep-farmers-markets-open-during-coronavirus/" target="_blank">an essential service</a> during the crisis, <a href="https://civileats.com/2020/03/19/the-fight-to-keep-farmers-markets-open-during-coronavirus/" target="_blank">thanks to the efforts of local farmers and their allies.</a></p><p>Many farmers markets are instituting strict rules to keep customers safe. Coupled with a shorter supply chain than most supermarkets, farmers markets are a safe choice for meeting your family's food needs during this crisis. <a href="https://www.doubleupfoodbucks.org/national-network/" target="_blank">Double-Up Food Bucks</a> and other programs under GusNIP, which doubles the value of federal nutrition (SNAP) benefits, are also still being accepted for purchasing fresh produce at participating farmers markets, CSAs, and grocery stores. Here are some tips to help you <a href="https://civileats.com/2020/03/30/how-to-support-farmers-and-safely-shop-at-farmers-markets/?pico_action=checkout_f30ec05d-3c4e-4963-95bf-92288f13287e&pico_custom_price=1&pico_ui=login_link" target="_blank">plan your trip to any farmers' market</a> and safely shop!</p>3. Tell Congress to Support Family Farmers, Food Workers and Healthy, Sustainable Food for All.
<p>Amid the terrible impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, it's clearer than ever that we need to move towards a regenerative, resilient and just food system. Building strong and equitable local food economies make our food system more resilient to shocks and crises.</p><p>For those of us with the ability, we can make daily choices about where we shop. But what is truly needed is a shift in the public policies to make it easier to grow and access healthy, sustainable and local foods. For too long, our policies have led to increased corporate consolidation that has devastated farmer livelihoods and harmed food workers and rural communities. In the US, farm bankruptcies were up 12% last year, and farm debt is at an all-time high.</p><p>As farmers face the new crisis of the pandemic, we must come together to demand that <a href="https://foodtank.com/news/2020/04/covid-19-stimulus-bailout-for-corporate-agribusiness-or-a-lifeline-for-our-food-system/" target="_blank">federal stimulus funding</a> and future farm policies support small and mid-scale farmers across the country who are supporting resilient and regenerative local and regional food systems.</p><p>Congress must ensure that fruit and vegetable farmers have the support they need to keep producing healthy food instead of subsidizing unhealthy factory-farmed meat and processed foods. At a time when our healthcare system is in crisis, it is more important than ever that Americans have access to healthy food. People with diet-related conditions like heart disease and diabetes are at greater risk of COVID-19 complications.</p><p>The next stimulus package must also do better for food workers and families in need. Farmworkers and other food chain workers, already some of the lowest paid and least protected workers, are also on the frontlines of this pandemic — and are incredibly vulnerable to COVID-19. Congress and the administration must ensure safe working conditions and a family-supporting livable wage. And families across the country need assistance to ensure they can continue accessing and purchasing healthy foods.</p><p>With your help, we can support and protect some of the most essential heroes of this crisis — farmers and food workers — while ensuring a resilient, regenerative, healthy and equitable food system for all of us. </p>
<p class=""><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://foe.org/three-ways-to-support-a-resilient-and-just-food-system-during-the-covid-19-pandemic/" target="_blank">Friends of the Earth</a>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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Sheep rest in the shade of sun-tracing photovoltaic panels installed at Solarpark Rodenäs on May 18, 2009 in Rodenas, Germany. Bert Bostelmann / Getty Images
By Lynn Freehill-Maye
When Jackie Augustine opens a chicken coop door one brisk spring morning in upstate New York, the hens bolt out like windup toys. Still, as their faint barnyard scent testifies, they aren't battery-powered but very much alive.
These are "solar chickens." At this local community egg cooperative, Geneva Peeps, the birds live with solar power all around them. Their hen house is built under photovoltaic panels, and even outside, they'll spend time underneath them, protected from sun, rain, and hawks.
<p>Geneva Peeps is one of the many experiments in agrivoltaics, or co-locating solar panels and food production, being undertaken around the United States. The practice had already been happening in countries like the United Kingdom and Uruguay. Over the past few years, more pilot programs have been set up in states like New York. And with photovoltaic capacity projected to more than <a href="https://www.seia.org/solar-industry-research-data" target="_blank">double (again) over the next five years</a>, some developers are exploring whether agrivoltaics may ease concerns about farmland being given over to solar production.</p><p>"You're seeing farmers sell off land and transition it to solar," says Greg Barron-Gafford, an associate professor at the University of Arizona who studies the impacts of large-scale land-use change. "Our hope is this could allow us to keep more food production in areas that need energy production."</p>
Finding the Right Pairing
<p>Agrivoltaics doesn't just include chickens. Other livestock also can roam around solar panels, and some researchers are experimenting with planting crops, too. </p><p>Animals that graze around solar fields offer several benefits, proponents of agrivoltaics say. Not only does their manure enrich the soil, their munching keeps plants from growing too tall and shading the panels. Another win: They lower vegetation maintenance costs, reducing the need for lawn mowers or landscapers.</p><p>Pilot agrivoltaic programs have tried many grazers – with varying success. The chickens at Geneva Peeps, for example, aren't grazing powerhouses. Founder Jeff Henderson admits that he still has to fire up the lawn mower sometimes.</p><p>When solar panels are elevated for them to roam beneath, cows do better, as shown in a <a href="https://ag.umass.edu/clean-energy/current-initiatives/solar-pv-agriculture" target="_blank">University of Massachusetts pilot</a>. But the higher materials cost of raising panels has kept "solar cattle" from taking hold yet. Goats have been tried, too, but they sometimes jump on panels and chew wires.</p><p>The winner among livestock so far has been calm, eat-anything-and-everything sheep. In fact, most of the members of the American Solar Grazing Association, founded in 2017, are shepherds. (Honeybees can be part of the mix with sheep, too.)</p><p>Researchers, like Dr. Barron-Gafford at the University of Arizona, are also studying <a href="https://uanews.arizona.edu/story/agrivoltaics-proves-mutually-beneficial-across-food-water-energy-nexus" target="_blank">how well crops grow under panels</a>.</p><p>Dr. Barron-Gafford noticed that in the desert, saguaro cactuses spend their first 10 to 15 years growing in the shade of mesquite trees. Surmising that shade from solar panels could benefit crops, too, he has studied how agrivoltaic setups affected food yields and water usage in dryland areas. Among his findings: Chiltepin pepper plants yielded three times as much fruit, and tomatoes twice as much, under photovoltaic panels. They required less irrigation, and temperatures under panels where crops were growing were lower, too.</p><p>"You're seeing more and more solar installations out in rural areas," Dr. Barron-Gafford says. "We're seeing here that putting solar overhead can provide a consistent energy source, can reduce the water you need to use, and that food is giving back to your solar by helping keep it cool [through transpiration]." </p>
Seeking Common Ground
<p>Still, tensions remain between solar and agriculture. Farmers who lease the land they grow crops on often worry about their landlords renting it out to someone else, including solar farms. And rural residents may want to see their area hold onto its farming heritage. A California developer, Cypress Creek Renewables, riled up rural New York in 2016 when it mass-mailed farmers seeking leases on 20-plus acre fields.</p><p>Lewis Fox, co-founder of the American Solar Grazing Association, has found that involving animals helps solar skeptics lower their defenses. He'll bring lambs to a project open house and find locals open up a bit more. Often, he says, they find it reassuring that local land can stay in agriculture, even if solar is added.</p><p>"Solar in general is unfamiliar to people, and if you hear there's a large development coming to your town, people naturally get defensive, a little suspicious," Mr. Fox says. "There's support, but also a lot of concern. Once people come out to a site and see it being grazed, it kind of clicks. A well-managed grazing program on a site is very productive. It's not just throwing a few sheep out and letting them go wherever for a season. We can raise a lot of meat on an acre of raised panels. It's a serious form of agriculture."</p><p>Still, Mr. Fox has seen friends in the dairy industry lose leased land. Agrivoltaics can't ease all those tensions, he concedes. "I don't think setting up grazing contracts is going to paper over issues of people losing leased land," he says. "It's definitely important that developers are good actors working in ethical ways."</p><p>Another key to being received better, some solar developers say, could be not to "co-locate" solar and agriculture on the exact same parcels of land. "Instead of 100 acres of prime farmland, we should work with four farmers and use 25 acres of marginal farmland each," suggests Bill Jordan, founder and CEO of Jordan Energy & Food Enterprises LLC, an Albany-based company that specializes in on-farm photovoltaic placement. </p><p>Mr. Jordan argues that solar can actually help save farms more easily if panels are situated on the property's wetter, hillier farmland, or on roofs. "There's a lot of solar going in – it could push farmers out of farming, or diversify the family farm," he says. </p>
First Came the Chickens
<p>Mr. Henderson didn't know about agrivoltaics when he founded Geneva Peeps in 2015. His goal was simply to help local families raise chickens. Backyard coops aren't allowed in the Finger Lakes town of Geneva, New York, but he found industrial-zoned land where they'd be permitted. </p><p>Forty families now share weekly chicken-care shifts of 10 to 15 minutes. Ms. Augustine pedals over for her shift, and with her bike helmet still on, checks the hens' food and water. In return, she and fellow members get a dozen or more eggs at a time. </p><p>The year after launching, Mr. Henderson installed 44 kilowatts' worth of solar panels, both powering the operation and producing excess for the grid through net metering. There wasn't enough room on the chicken coops to install rooftop panels, but he did have more than an acre of land – more than 180 egg-layers really needed. Mr. Henderson wasn't aware of any similar farms combining solar and chickens, but he figured the project could be a local sustainability model. </p><p>"We knew they could all coexist together because there's no reason you can't have solar panels and chickens," Mr. Henderson says. "One of the hopes is this will give people an idea of a way you could do it."</p>From Your Site Articles
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Alley farming at the Center for Urban Agriculture at Fairview Gardens allows for multiple crops to be planted alongside each other, maximizing the most efficient use of land. Citizen of the Planet / Education Images / Universal Images Group / Getty Images
By Tim Radford
Forget about organic farming: get the best out of the best cropland, return the rest to nature and still feed the world. It could work, say researchers.
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<p><br/></p><p><span></span><em>This story originally appeared in</em> <em><a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/" target="_blank">Climate News Network</a></em> <em>and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.</em></p>
<p>Once again, scientists have demonstrated that <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-04/iifa-rlt041420.php" target="_blank">humans could restore roughly half the planet as a natural home</a> for all the other wild things, while at the same time feeding a growing population and limiting climate change.</p><p>That doesn't mean it will happen, or could be made to happen easily. But it does yet again address one of the enduring challenges of population growth and <a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/humans-drive-sixth-mass-extinction-wave/" target="_blank">the potentially devastating loss of the biodiversity</a> upon which all individual species – humans more than most – depend to survive.</p><p>The answer? Simply to farm more efficiently and more intensively, to maximize the yield from those tracts of land most suitable for crops, and let nature reclaim the no-longer so productive hectares.</p><p>Even more effective would be to release as much land as possible in those regions that ecologists and biologists like to call "biodiversity hotspots," among them the forests where concentrations of species are at their peak.</p><p>European researchers argue, in a study in the journal <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-0505-x" target="_blank">Nature Sustainability</a>, that as less land was cultivated, but more intensively, the greenhouse gas emissions from farming would be reduced: so too would water use.</p>
<p>"The main questions we wanted to address were how much cropland could be spared if attainable crop yields were achieved globally and crops were grown where they are most productive," said <a href="https://iiasa.ac.at/web/home/research/researchPrograms/EcosystemsServicesandManagement/Folberth__Christian.html" target="_blank">Christian Folberth, a scientist with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis</a> (IIASA) in Austria, who led the study.</p><p>"In addition, we wanted to determine what the implications would be for other factors related to the agricultural sector, including fertilizer and irrigation water requirements, greenhouse gas emissions, carbon sequestration potential, and wildlife habitat for threatened species."</p><p>The problem is enormous, and enormously complex. Cropland farming alone – forget about methane from cattle and sheep – accounts for 5% of all greenhouse gas emissions from human activity. Worldwide, about 70% of all the freshwater taken from rivers and aquifers goes into irrigation.</p><p>Human populations <a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/population-boom-adds-to-city-threats/" target="_blank">continue to soar</a>, while <a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/rising-urban-space-demands-squeeze-out-farmers/" target="_blank">cities continue to expand</a> across the countryside. By the end of this century, there could be <a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/un-population-growth-data-is-bad-news-for-climate/" target="_blank">more than 9bn people</a> to be fed.</p><p><a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/heat-hits-wheat-yields/" target="_blank">Global heating driven by fossil fuel investment</a> continues to increase, and this in turn <a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/lethal-dangers-of-lower-fruit-and-veg-yields/" target="_blank">threatens to diminish harvest yields</a> across a wide range of crops, along with <a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/under-nutrition-will-grow-in-warmer-world/" target="_blank">the nutritive value of the staples themselves</a>.</p>
Nature under threat
<p>At the same time, both <a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/a-third-of-plants-and-animals-risk-mass-extinction/" target="_blank">climate change driven by global warming</a> and <a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/humans-put-conservation-reserves-at-risk/" target="_blank">the expansion of the cities and the surrounding farmlands</a> continue to amplify the threat to natural habitats and the millions of species – many yet to be identified and named by science – that depend upon them.</p><p>And this in turn poses a threat to human economies and even human life: almost every resource – antibiotic medicines and drugs, food, waste disposal, <a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/wild-plant-ancestors-need-more-protection/" target="_blank">fabrics</a>, building materials and even fresh air and water – evolved in undisturbed ecosystems long before <em>Homo sapiens</em> arrived, and the services each element provides <a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/entire-wild-systems-at-risk-from-rising-global-heat/" target="_blank">depend ultimately on the survival of those ecosystems</a>.</p><p>So the challenge is to restore and return to nature <a href="https://www.half-earthproject.org/" target="_blank">around half the land humans already use</a>, while at the same time feeding what could be an additional 2bn people, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions but still <a href="https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/?menu=1300" target="_blank">sustaining development</a> in the poorest nations.</p><p>Dr Folberth and his colleagues from Slovakia, France, Belgium, Spain and the UK are <a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/win-win-way-to-aid-food-security-and-climate/" target="_blank">not the first to argue that it can be done</a>, and not just by <a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/climate-crisis-needs-radical-food-changes/" target="_blank">changing the planetary lunch menu</a>.</p><p>The scientists looked at the data for 16 major crop species around the world to calculate that at least in theory – with careful use of the right crops on the most suitable soils, and with high fertilizer use – about half of the present cropland now cultivated could still deliver the present output.</p><p>That is, the land humans occupy is not being managed efficiently. If it were, the other half could be returned to wilderness, and <a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/conservation-pays-its-way-handsomely/" target="_blank">conserved as natural forest, grassland or wetland</a>.</p>Climate benefits
<p>If humans then thought about how best to slow biodiversity loss, they would do almost as well by abandoning farmland in those places where there was the greatest concentration of wild things – tropical rain forests, estuary floodplains and mangrove swamps, for instance. And just returning 20% of farmland to nature everywhere else would still reduce human farmland use by 40%.</p><p>In return, fertilizer use would remain about the same, but greenhouse gas emissions and water use would fall, while more land would become free to sequester atmospheric carbon.</p><p>There would be costs – nitrogen pollution would go up in some places, and many rural farmers would become even poorer – so more thinking needs to be done. The point the European researchers want to make is that, in principle, it should be possible to feed people, abandon farmland to the natural world and <a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/european-union-helped-to-cool-2003-heatwave/" target="_blank">reduce emissions</a> all at the same time.</p><p>"It shows that cropland expansion is not inevitable and there is significant potential for improving present land use efficiency," said <a href="https://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/news/2019/0520-mobersteiner.html" target="_blank">Michael Obersteiner, another author, now at the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford</a>.</p><p>"If the right policies are implemented, measures such as improved production technologies can be just as effective as demand-side measures like <a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/less-meat-for-rich-can-cut-heat-and-hunger/" target="_blank">dietary changes</a>. However, in all cases, such a process would need to be steered by policies to avoid unwanted outcomes."</p>From Your Site Articles
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Janel Bodley tamps down soil around a freshly planted hemp clone at Wild Folk Farm in Benton. Ben McCanna / Portland Portland Press Herald / Getty Images
By Tom Levitt
The future of food doesn't have to include animals. At least that's what Miyoko Schinner believes. "A lot of farmers see us as a threat," Schinner said of her Californian plant-based dairy company, Miyoko's Creamery.
<p>Experts have said we have to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/10/huge-reduction-in-meat-eating-essential-to-avoid-climate-breakdown" target="_blank">substantially reduce our meat production</a> and consumption to avoid dangerous levels of climate change and improve population health. As people become increasingly aware of the environmental cost of raising livestock for food, plant-based diets are being embraced by the mainstream and alternative milks have gone from fringe request to <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-13/move-over-soy-coffee-shops-can-t-keep-up-with-oat-milk-buzz?sref=sGsy0HYh" target="_blank">flying off the shelves</a>. Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/feb/25/celebrities-promoting-veganism-damages-farmers-mental-health-says-nfu-river-phoenix" target="_blank">livestock farmers fear a war on their very ways of life</a>.</p><p>But a change in tides doesn't have to spell the end of meat and dairy farmers' livelihoods, Schinner and others argue. She is among a wave of business owners intent on helping farmers transition to more environmentally friendly types of agriculture.</p><p>"We want to help bring farmers along with the change we think is necessary to tackle climate change and reduce the environmental footprint of farming," said Schinner. She's on the hunt for a dairy farm in California that will work with her company to ditch cows and grow plants for vegan products instead. Miyoko will provide financial support for the farm to convert to growing potatoes and legumes which the company will use to produce vegan cheese. The farm owner will also be paid for taking part in helping to research and development new plant-based products.</p>
<p>The Swedish oat-milk brand Oatly was one of the early corporate pioneers of this farmer transition movement when it <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/aug/26/wow-no-cow-swedish-farmer-oats-milk-oatly" target="_blank">began supporting</a> a dairy farmer named Adam Arnesson to switch to growing more oats in 2017. Oatly used the oats to make a specially branded line of its milk and other animal-free dairy products. The company monitored the reduction in climate emissions from the farm as it completed the transition: Arnesson decreased his emissions and increased his profits.</p><p>"The big change is that we now can feed over 200 people with food on our farm compared to 60 when we started, and that our climate emissions have reduced to half per produced calorie," said Arnesson, who is now part of a bigger <a href="https://uniseco-project.eu/case-study/sweden" target="_blank">Sweden-wide project</a> focused on transitioning farmers towards more plant-based food. </p><p>He said his farm still had a small amount of livestock but a much greater diversity of crops now. "The challenge [for me] is to maintain a truly sustainable farm and of course include other important values like biodiversity, social and economic factors. I hope and believe more farmers will follow."</p><p>Oatly said at the time it <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/aug/26/wow-no-cow-swedish-farmer-oats-milk-oatly" target="_blank">wanted</a> to be a "catalyst" for helping farmers move away from animals to plant production, after having previously had a fractured relationship with the farming community in Sweden and around the world. </p>
<p>The project is changing perceptions of a company previously <a href="https://www.thedrum.com/news/2018/10/17/after-angering-swedish-dairy-industry-oatly-brings-controversial-ad-campaign-the-uk" target="_blank">seen by some as "anti-farming,"</a> Oatly's sustainability director Carina Tollmar told HuffPost. "We've now got a new project helping 10 other farms diversify and had 100 farmers expressing an interest in being involved. It was a positive surprise that so many wanted to be involved with an Oatly project. We want to help farmers."</p><p>Arnesson agreed: "Oatly is a very different food company, they are definitely interested in supporting the transition and they have been very important to me in sharing risks and offering long-term agreements," he said.</p><p>Similar initiatives are cropping up across the U.S. The <a href="https://www.qai-inc.com/certification-services/transitional.php" target="_blank">Certified Transitional program</a> developed in part by Kellogg's Kashi brand has been designed to support farmers to transition from conventional to organic methods of farming. Organic farmers are <a href="https://www.ams.usda.gov/grades-standards/organic-standards" target="_blank">not allowed</a> to use chemical pesticides, antibiotics or growth hormones on their farms and no chemicals can be used on the land for three years before the farm can be certified organic. The program enables farmers to label their produce with a transitional mark in the meantime, which helps them claim a premium from the market to support their conversion.</p><p>Kick-starting their <a href="https://thetransfarmationproject.org/" target="_blank">Transfarmation Project</a> this May, the nonprofit Mercy for Animals will partner with a handful of companies (not yet named) to support factory-style chicken producers to shift away from animal farming. Half a dozen poultry farmers will be awarded money to convert the large barns in which they currently house thousands of birds so they can be used for growing hemp instead. The temperature-controlled chicken sheds present ideal growing conditions for hemp without the need for a costly change to the existing infrastructure.</p>
<p>The NGO is <a href="https://thetransfarmationproject.org/" target="_blank">championing the success</a> of former chicken farmer Mike Weaver in West Virginia, who is now using barns that formerly housed 45,000 chickens to grow industrial hemp. Weaver says, compared to raising chickens, his hemp plantation uses around half the water, employs five times as many people, and will be much more profitable once once he's fully scaled up.</p><p>"The narrative is that we [animal rights and environmental campaigners] are coming in and taking away jobs and livelihoods," Leah Garcés, president of Mercy for Animals, told HuffPost. "It is a very negative view. We just want to create a better and more compassionate food and farming system."</p><p>It makes sense for farmers to get involved with changes in the food system, said Sanah Baig, chief of staff at The Good Food Institute, given concerns about the contribution of livestock farming to <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jonathan-safran-foer-meat-climate-change-vegetarian_n_5d949669e4b0e9e7605598ad" target="_blank">climate change,</a> as well as the growth in sales of alternatives to animal products. The global plant-based meat sector is <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/beyond-meat-ubs-plant-based-meat-market-85-billion-2030-2019-7-1028367962" target="_blank">predicted to be worth</a> $85 billion by 2030, a huge jump from sales of less than $5 billion in 2018.</p><p>"Diversification has always been a fact of life for farmers as markets and consumer preferences have evolved," Baig told HuffPost. "Now, they increasingly have to think about how they can maximize the land, resources, labor and markets they have access to in order to keep their businesses thriving while also demonstrating that they can be a key part of the solution to climate change." </p><p>It's a lot for farmers to take on, which is why Miyoko Schinner wants to show both consumers and farmers that food companies can be friend, not foe, in making a transition to more planet and animal-friendly farming. "We want to help them take part in the new food economy," she said. </p>
<p class=""><em>This story originally appeared in <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/" target="_blank">HuffPost </a>and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration committed to strengthening coverage of the climate story. </em></p>From Your Site Articles
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