More Good News on Food

Low-input farming projects, not reliant on chemical fertilisers and pesticides, have brought significant increases in food production in Africa, south-east Asia and South America, according to a UN report.  Small-scale farmers can double food production within 10 years in Africa by using ecological methods rather than chemical fertilisers. In a review of agroecological farming projects, which focus on a minimal use of external inputs, like chemical fertilisers, in favour of controlling pests and disease with natural predators, mixed crop and livestock management and agroforestry (interplanting of trees and crops), the report found average increases in crop yield of 80 per cent in 57 less-industrialised countries. In Africa the average increase was 116 per cent....  Conventional farming relies on expensive inputs, degrades soils, fuels climate change and is not resilient to climatic shocks. It simply is not the best choice anymore today.  Schutter said in the long run agroecological farming would build long-term resilience for countries and make them less reliant on expensive imports based on oil and gas, chemicals and pesticides.
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/805229/agroecological_farming_can_double_food_production_in_africa_over_next_10_years.html

Like to Eat?

If you like to eat, we best do something about our 'lifestyle" in North America.

The UN on Thursday expressed alarm at a huge decline in bee colonies under a multiple onslaught of pests and pollution, urging an international effort to save the pollinators that are vital for food crops. Much of the decline, ranging up to 85 percent in some areas, is taking place in the industrialised northern hemisphere due to more than a dozen factors, according to a report by the UN's environmental agency. They include pesticides, air pollution, a lethal pinhead-sized parasite that only affects bee species in the northern hemisphere, mismanagement of the countryside, the loss of flowering plants and a decline in beekeepers in Europe.  "The way humanity manages or mismanages its nature-based assets, including pollinators, will in part define our collective future in the 21st century," said UNEP executive director Achim Steiner.  "The fact is that of the 100 crop species that provide 90 percent of the world's food, over 70 are pollinated by bees," he added.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/global-warming/UN-alarmed-at-huge-decline-in-bee-numbers/articleshow/7676603.cms

Remember my post on the fertile soils (terra preta)  created by First Nations people in the Amazon?  The same soils that have maintained their fertility for  hundreds of years without fertilizers made from oil while being fantastically productive?  We could create the same kind of soils in Canada. and farm and garden organically.   Then, perhaps we wouldn't destory the ecosystems upon which we depend.  Our survival will be measured and secured by these kinds of step - seemingly small, labour intensive, steps that one can take ina community garden.

"But in a sense they are an indicator of the wider changes that are happening in the countryside but also urban environments, in terms of whether nature can continue to provide the services as it has been doing for thousands or millions of years in the face of acute environmental change," he added.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/global-warming/UN-alarmed-at-huge-decline-in-bee-numbers/articleshow/7676603.cms








 

Terra Preta

Perhaps 100 million people lived in the Americas before Columbus and before contact. What on earth were all those people doing? In the Amazon, they created soil. Soil in the Amazon is typically orange bauxite - incapable of supporting crops - terrible stuff if you are a farmer silly enough to clear the land. (The nutrients in a rain forest are held in the vegetation.) Some anomalies exist though - large patches of something called terra preta show up where indigenous populations had their cities. Those black soils are prized by farmers as they are highly productive. When archaeologists analysed terra preta they discovered it is full of pre-Columbian ceramics, charcoal, and lots and lots of microbes. In other words, terra preta was created hundreds of years ago - and has maintained its productivity over that huge length of time.

This is good news. For one thing, we can learn from "los indios" how to create soil instead of destroying it. (Agribiz tends to "mine" soil and therefore destroy it.)  Secondly, bio char soils sequester carbon.

The charcoal, acting a lot like humus, had been colonized by myriad microbes, fungi, earthworms, and other creatures; these soil organisms produced carbon-based molecules that stuck to the charcoal, gradually increasing the soil's carbon content. ... Crops have been shown to grow 45 per cent greater biomass on unfertilized terra preta soil versus poor soil fertilized with chemical fertilizers. Page 70, Organic Gardening, Dec/Jan 2011

So if we create bio char from organic waste that goes to landfills now, we help sequester carbon while we farm organically and increase crop yields.  A triple win!  And a solution to one of the problems created by peak oil.  Chemical fertilizers are made from oil - and now we don't need them!