It's not often thought that agriculture, and specifically food production, has a huge impact or has great potential for meaningful solutions on climate change. However, after some great documentaries and ENVR course discussions to #UnleashValues - I am convinced this is a field (no pun intended) worth diving into!
As someone who values biodiversity both intrinsically and for its functions, envisioning farming practices that can foster biodiversity and contribute to climate change targets, seems like the ultimate win-win. For example, poly-culture farms! Farms that grow multiple species of food, use livestock to their advantage, or practice integrative pest management. I think of it as the "fruit salad" of farming - a little bit of everything, for one healthy tasty outcome! However, when government subsidies target mono-culture farms, required to produce crops or livestock and reliant on pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, (genocides!), these visions feel out of reach.
In acknowledging that subsidies for integrative biodiverse farming cannot come out of thin air, what I think needs to happen is for these government subsidies to undergo a slow, transparent shift, from one farming type to another to allow the farming community the time to accept the idea, and learn the practices. To aid in getting farmers on board with evolving their practices to follow these subsidies, I think educating farmers on the human health and ecosystem resilience of poly-culture farming would be an impactful place to start! 🌿🐣
I love thinking about biodiverse farming practice as a fruit salad approach is so creative! I love this idea and I also hope that going forward the farming industry will be able to accept change and that society can take to chance to invest in these kinds of sustainable farming options. Great work!
Hi Megan! I loved your inclusion of the pun! I really liked the visual you bring in with the 'fruit salad' approach - it puts things into perspective! I agree with you that when you are a farmer, changes to your farms, and style of growing may seem impossible or extremely difficult to do. I think you phrased it really well that "when government subsidies target mono-culture farms, required to produce crops or livestock and reliant on pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, (genocides!), these visions feel out of reach." I also think you make an excellent point by saying that it may have to be a gradual shift but would certainty have a big impact!
Hi Megan, I want to start by saying that your analogy is great! I actually brought up the case of the Biggest Little Farm to my parents, and they replied to me that they're not really going to be the norm because their production will be outcompeted by the conventional farms. I don't want to believe that though, hopefully in the future we can see more little farms that take the "fruit salad" approach!
Thanks for sharing Megan! I definitely stand with you in terms of further education for farmers. If they had better education on what their farming needs, we could see less waste (overwatering, overfertilizing) and better yield even :)
Great post Megan! I think you’ve summed up the only real way to get big farmers on board with regenerative practices really well. I’m usually pretty skeptical, but I did find the work done by the conservation agronomists and the NRCS in Kiss the Ground promising.
Fire pun my dude! Education is certainly a great place to start, I'm curious whats going on in ag programs around the country... is the scholarship starting to support a push to perennial polycultures?