TUESDAY, JAN 24, 2023: NOTE TO FILE
Module 3-1
Introduction
Contents
In many ways, healthy local food is one of the best entry points into building sustainable communities, whether in an urban, peri-urban or rural area. Food invites us to think about our health, our local economy and our relationship with the land. As a basic need almost as important as clean drinking water, making sure we design resilient, productive, and regenerative food systems is the basis of a thriving community and region. This section is an introduction to ecological solutions to embed sustainability in farming practices and the important role of agriculture to mitigate the ravages of Climate Change in a regenerative manner. Given the proximity of agriculture and its interface with wilderness, it makes sense to explore solutions that are mutually beneficial and reinforcing to each other, such as, the care of land and forests and the bioremediation of waters.
[I posted the following to the course forum as one post per module is expected:
Until a couple of years ago I lived in Tucson, Arizona in the US desert Southwest that averages 280 mm (11") of rain per year which affects food production in the region, especially as the river that used to flow year around stopped flowing a hundred years ago. Before Indo-European colonialists came, the area supported farmers and perhaps 200 foragers who also lived by raiding the settled agrarians.
In Tucson there is a Transition Town movement, e.g. Envision Tucson Sustainable group [I am using bold to indicate a link which doesn't show on my screen]. The Tucson metro-area has >1 million people dependent on truck/plane delivered food and 330 miles of Central Arizona Project (CAP) canal water pumped uphill via 14 pumping stations powered by the Navajo coal-fired electric power plant from the Colorado River at Lake Havasu. The Colorado is a major river which no longer flows to the Gulf of California due to water diversion.
Local productivity includes mesquite tree beans gathered and ground up for an annual Mesquite pancake event some Tucsonians can be fed by. Without truck deliveries and CAP water, the Tucson area, which supported about 2,000 people 300 years ago prior to development, groundwater pumping, river cut down, and end of potential to irrigate land in the valley by diverting flow (when it was year around), may be able to support a sustainable population of 500 resilient humans due to severe degradation of environmental productivity, e.g. local extinction of Bighorn Sheep prior to current attempt to reintroduce them.
Welcome to the Anthropocene. The University of Arizona at Tucson has a large School of Sustainability and local wealthy (who enjoy mesquite pancakes annually) contribute substantially to the Tucson Watershed Management Group that promises to make the river flow again. The only industrial farming is on the local Tohono O'odham Nation tribal lands who sued for rights to CAP water, some of which was used to recharge the aquifer that has been pumped down over 350 feet, a short-lived practice that ended recently due to lack of Colorado River water (Most goes to California and Arizona gets some only because the governor, when the dam was being built, called out the state's National Guard to train cannons on Parker Dam during construction to press demands for some of the water). The Envision Tucson Sustainable members debate whether the Tucson area can support 2 million people sustainably (projected population by 2050). Some think it can only support 1.5 million.]
In the content it's introduced the context for this Module, whilst the subchapter 'Context' delves deeper into the context of the whole earth systems thinking related to agriculture and food in order to develop the rationale for embracing ecological solutions compared to other lesser sustainable solutions. Thereafter, the various whole systems regenerative thinking approaches that contribute towards sustainable agriculture are outlined before unpacking a few of the more relevant approaches. This follows with some applications and integration of sustainable design solutions. Sustainable Food Systems are then explored to show the interaction between farmers and consumers. A design process with case study examples is provided before the concluding remarks.
Context
The emergence of formal cultivation of land, and hence the term agriculture, was heralded as one of civilisation’s greatest inventions. And indeed, the yield of surplus production was a huge asset that led to the ensuing development of early settlements into market towns and eventually into cities. However, the growth of these early settlements was generally in accordance with the surrounding available food producing land plus food derived from conquests. The inability to sustain these food supplies often led to the downfall and shrinkage of these early settlements. In modern times, the lands surrounding urban expansion is often under speculation and lost to market gardening. The survival of these cities is only possible through the global economy which moves mountains of food from far off farms to urban areas. Furthermore, the cost of food transportation is a major contributor to food miles and GHG emissions, whist the development of transport networks and the maintenance thereof is an increasing burden upon the taxpayer.
The dominant agricultural methodology from its inception to the current has been the initial clearance of virgin land and subsequent tillage of such land by breaking open the soil to facilitate the planting of seeds. Initially, the tillage was done with handheld and animal drawn implements, which is still undertaken to this day in many third world countries. The onset of the Industrial Revolution saw human and animal power being replaced with steam and later fossil fuels at an industrial scale [with an eight-fold increase in human populations].
However, put simply, whilst this tillage method of agriculture facilitated civilisation, in hindsight, it has come at a significant environmental cost [i.e. the number one driver of species extinction in the Anthropocene mass extinction event]. More specifically, the organic carbon or humus that was originally in the undisturbed soil was exposed to the elements as tillage broke open the soil, thus allowing the drying out and erosion of the humus, which eventually evaporates into CO2 and is a major contributor to the global CO2 emissions. Furthermore, since the end of the First World War when large stockpiles of chemical weapons were left over, this surplus was soon reconstituted into the initial chemical fertilizers, notably, the primary macronutrients comprising Nitrogen (N) [via Haber-Bosch process for turning natural gas into ammonia and other nitrogenous fertilizers, which allows for an increase in food productivity that currently supports (unsustainably) 4 billion people], Phosphorus (P) and Potassium (K), also known as NPK, to feed the soils whose constant tillage had depleted the humus. The initial success of these chemical fertilizers was apparently quite significant, but perhaps because it was applied to humus depleted soils, thereby showing improved production yields. However, the folly of the extensive use of these chemical fertilizers and the ensuing use of pesticides and herbicides, has left a trail of destruction in the once fertile soils [prior to any form of cultivation], so much so, that the health and wellbeing of nature and human civilisation is compromised. It suffices to state that without humus, the soil has no life, thereby rendering the soil infertile [The Central Valley of California is the USA food basket, a major producer of foods on arid (now irrigated) soils that never contain significant amounts of organic matter much less humus]. Sadly, farmers are continually depleting vast tracts of agricultural land (in the Central Valley, all irrigation water adds salts, resulting in soil salinization, which over a few centuries will render the area non-productive much as the formerly Fertile Crescent area was millennia ago), and in desperation, are applying an ever-increasing cocktail of genetically modified seeds, chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, in an attempt to sustain yields, but with limited success [long term despite turning vast amounts of fossil fuels into vast amounts of food produce in the 20th and 21st centuries faster than population could grow...for a time, hence limited success as will increasingly become apparent to posterity]. And in so doing, these farmers are further adding to the global CO2 emissions.
The environmentally negative aspects of modern conventional agriculture, which was also referred to as the “Green Revolution” [selection of cultivars able to maximally turn fossil fuel inputs, direct and indirect, into vast quantities of food faster than human populations could grow... for a time], is cause for concern, especially with respect to the contribution of GHG emissions as illustrated in Figure 1.2 wherein half of the current excess CO2 in the atmosphere comes from the destruction of soils. This evidence is due to the linear and wasteful [use of fossil fuels] approach of the Green Revolution. Most of the developed first world adopted the Green Revolution and exported this approach to the third world, albeit, with limited success. This so-called Green Revolution has become somewhat of a misnomer in the current era when “green” refers to something that is generally sustainable [some note the increase in green as observable in satellite imagery in recent decades due to expansion of irrigated industrial food/fiber production worldwide as evidence of greener...for a time, i.e. industrial agriculture, that may be able to support a human population of 9-10 billion for a time, is not remotely sustainable, and sustainable methods will come, methods able to maximally support 600 million humans worldwide].
At this point, it is worth noting the agricultural methodologies that feeds the world. About 30% of world food production is fed to 1,8 to 2,8 billion people by the Green Revolution / conventional agriculture that is delivered through an industrial food chain [this claim is not cited and cannot be other than to permaculture sources that do not publish in science-evidence-based journals because science is not a valid way of knowing]. Meanwhile, some 70% of food is produced through the peasant food web for 4,5 to 5,5 billion people. Despite the promise of the Green Revolution to feed the world, this is not possible given the consequences for the environment and the need to stringently curb GHG emissions. Similarly, the peasant food web [no fossil fuel inputs used?] that produces 70% of the food should not adopt unsustainable methods of agriculture that contributes to GHG emissions.
An interesting and often overlooked aspect in food is that of vitality. A good measure of plant vitality is in Brix units, which measures the sap density of fruits and vegetables. Brix units [% dissolved solids in a liquid] for many fruits and vegetables have been calibrated over several years and can be used a measure of plant health and vitality, and in some cases, to determine the selling price. For example, the sugar cane industry uses the sucrose content, which is the sap density, to determine the selling price that sugar mills offer for delivered sugar cane. Another example are retailers who market quality before quantity and will therefore pay farmers a higher price for fruit and vegetables with a high Brix measure [low water content]. Those plants that are grown in humus rich soils naturally have a high Brix measure.
In order to mitigate the negative Climate Change impact of world agriculture, the vision is to create a resilient food supply system by supporting local farmers undertaking a sustainable / regenerative method of agriculture. This vision can achieve two outcomes, firstly, it promotes agro-ecological methodologies that regenerates the humus in the soil and sequestrates CO2, and secondly, it reduces the food miles or distance from farm to fork, both of which make a big contribution towards mitigating Climate Change. This vision calls for a paradigm shift in agricultural development, from a “green revolution” to an “ecological regenerative” approach. This implies a rapid and significant shift from the linear-based conventional, monoculture-based and high-input-dependent industrial food production towards a closed loop system of regenerative agriculture wherein local farmers produce not only food but also provide ecosystem services to conserve the wildlands and promote biodiversity.
Module 3, lesson 2
