Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Unless land management strategies are overhauled to reduce the gap between forestry and agriculture, it will be impossible to feed and nourish the human population without further damaging the environment and forests, according to scientists.
The primarily low-tech, shovel-ready, affordable solutions that we need already exist in every nation and region. We don’t need to invent new techniques. We simply need to identify, publicize, replicate, and scale up currently existing best practices utilizing farmer-to-farmer education and training, with major support and funding from the public and private sectors.
Three sites were selected for continued field research into growing industrial hemp in North Carolina for 2019. Set in the rolling hills of Anson County, near Charlotte, hemp is a potential boon to a place where commodity crops and forestry are four of the top five industries. Certified hemp seed was drilled onto plots of seven acres, four acres, and nine acres, at a rate of 100 pounds per acre.
But as I sit in the dirt, smelling the thyme and tomatoes and basil, hearing the bumble bees in the oregano flowers, I am humbled and grateful to be a witness to the power of life.
As part of CAWR’s Stabilisation Agriculture Programme, I recently visited Chimanimani district in Zimbabwe to initiate comparative research on how conventional and agroecologically managed landscapes coped with the impacts of Cyclone Idai in March 2019. Idai deposited the total annual rainfall in the first twelve hours alone – yet sat over and devastated Chimanimani for three days.
Clearly, mainstream meat production needs much improvement. But this is precisely why faux meats are such a distraction. They get people like Bill Gates and other techies all excited. This siphons the energy, media attention and money away from the work that really needs to be done to fix agriculture. We need all hands on deck to transform mainstream agriculture from extractive to regenerative.
With factors as precarious as climate, failing infrastructure, increased global population, pollution, and excessive groundwater pumping, it is no wonder that the concern for water scarcity has garnered the attention of authorities across many agencies and sectors.
It has been said that how we produce and consume food has a bigger impact on well-being than any other human activity. Indeed, until the grand food bargain came along, limits to food were an unchallenged fact of life. Coping with the scarcity of food structured daily living around the natural rhythms of seasons, plants, and animals. In geologic time, the transition from food scarcity to abundance was like flicking on a light switch.
Some of our most cherished sustainable farming practices – from organic agriculture to the farm cooperative – have roots in African wisdom. Yet, Black farmers experience discrimination and marginalisation worldwide. Author, activist, farmer and founder of Soul Fire Farm in New York, Leah Penniman is committed to ending racism and injustice in our food system.
As Australians grapple with the consequences of the fires in upcoming months and embark on the necessary journey of regenerating themselves and their land, I hope they will look to nature – and farmers like Colin, Eric and others – for inspiration.
While there are more women in agriculture than ever before, that doesn’t mean they don’t face discrimination. To this day, the industry is very much a boys’ club. This is a central contribution as to why women haven’t pursued careers in agriculture in the past.
Two groups on the West Coast, Chico Flax in the Sacramento Valley of California and Fibrevolution in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, are now leading the revitalization of the flax textile industry in the region. Groups in other regions of North America, such as the Cleveland Flax Project in the Rust Belt Fibershed, are also doing this work.
