Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Feeding the soil and avoiding fossil fuels is the Holy Grail of sustainable farming. Techno-solutions aside, this will entail working with nature by mimicking nature – and harnessing the capabilities of ruminants.
With the potential for woodchip to boost soil health, hold onto water and promote plant growth, it is a small step to look at how to effectively harness that potential for rescuing degraded and damaged soils.
Sustainable farming systems that work in harmony with nature have an essential role to play and farmers want to be part of the movement for change.
Using Forest Research figures, we reckon that planting around 15% of our farm with wood pasture (around a third more than at present) could offset all of our emissions – something which we can definitely achieve without any real loss of agricultural production.
As someone who thinks that small family farms probably are the answer (depending a bit on what the question is) it seems worth stating the case for them, which I do below in the form of some bold declarations that I subsequently try to justify.
Like any other manifestation of culture, fermentation practices must be used in order to maintain relevance and stay alive. We must cherish and celebrate the diversity of fermentation practices around the world, and document and share them.
I believe this situation is applicable to the majority of the world’s farmers – in front of us is a monumental task, we need not only to maintain but to build soil fertility, which we must and can do by commencing a new relationship of the soils under our management, harvesting and growing the body of experience and evidence of the pioneers of soil building both historic and living.
Although urban agriculture has a long history, Barrio Centro is part of a more recent movement to increase food security in underserved, largely ethnic communities while retaining or reclaiming cultural traditions and values that people can share and express through those spaces.
Methane has a role to play in sustainable farming. We cannot let the debate around methane emissions cloud the broader benefits of farming with ruminants…
How people choose to live and what they value are not fixed on tablets of stone, but respond to the circumstances they experience and the stories they’re told. Both are changing.
In the words of Mathieu Hamon, another associate of La Ferme des 7 Chemins, if we are to tackle urgent issues: “We have to move fast but not too fast”. We can build rural resilience together, one act of unsung activism at a time.
The first Native-owned and Native-led land trust is working to empower and equip young Natives to successfully farm kelp.
