Using Regenerative Agriculture to Heal the Land and Help Communities: Q&A With Kaleka Founder Silvia Irawan

In Seruyan, a regency in Indonesia’s Central Kalimantan province, independent smallholders are trialing regenerative agriculture strategies in their oil palm farms in an effort to shift away from environmentally degrading monoculture practices and restore ecosystems.

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Towards a Unified Approach to Prioritization of Regenerative Agricultural Practices Across Cropping Systems

Prioritizing field practices according to their contribution to regenerative efforts, in a structured and standardized manner, can enable efficient resource allocation and higher adoption rates. However, it is remarkably hampered by the diversity of production environments and their respective best management practices. This paper proposes prioritizing regenerative practices using a multicriteria assessment method informed by expert knowledge. To develop it, we mined and synthesized knowledge from eleven experts for three diverse cropping systems, showing that the prioritization of practices varies greatly across production environments.

The Regenerative Agriculture Solution with Dr. Andre Leu

Go Natural Education interviews Dr. Andre Leu, co-author of The Regenerative Agriculture Solution. Published by Chelsea Green, this book describes a revolutionary approach to building soil, creating climate resilience, and supporting human and planetary health.

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The Fight To Preserve Mezcal’s Tradition

As I traveled around Mexico I witnessed wild agaves that scattered country sides slowly disappearing. I’ve witnessed Trees being pulled down as armed personnel block traffic to ensure they gather and collect what was being cut down. My concern for agave spirits is the preservation of its biodiversity, ensuring we can preserve agaves in the wild for its rich flavors that embody terroir, its genetic diversity and look at new sustainability methods to ensure minimal amount of energy and waste is created.

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Herbicide Is What’s for Dinner

It is harvest season, and the high-clearance sprayer is on its way to desiccate a field. Desiccation may be the most widespread farming practice you’ve never heard of. Farmers desiccate by applying herbicide to their crops; this kills all the plants at the same time, making them uniformly dry and easier to cut. In essence, desiccation speeds up plant aging. Before desiccation, crops would have to dry out naturally at the end of the season. Today, there are examples of desiccation being applied to every type of conventional crop in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom.1 Chances are that most of what you ate today was harvested using a desiccant, but you’d never know.

Coffee Agroforestry Holds Promise for Smallholder Growers in Malawi

Malawi — In the villages below Nyika Plateau in northern Malawi’s Rumphi district, coffee rules. It’s one of the most common bushes in the region, grown in back and front yards or in open fields where, elsewhere, maize would have been cultivated. Here, coffee shares space with banana and other fruit trees around fishponds and water holes, and scales up steep slopes among natural foliage. “Basically, the project was meant to integrate agroforestry into coffee production to enhance climate resilience and quality of coffee. Agroforestry has many benefits both to farmers as well as the ecosystem,” says Manvester Ackson Khoza, the SFCC’s national coordinator in Malawi and its international councilor for Southern Africa.

Estimated Animal Agriculture Nitrogen and Phosphorus from Manure

Animal agriculture manure is a primary source of nitrogen and phosphorus to surface and groundwater. Manure runoff from cropland and pastures or discharging animal feeding operations and concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) often reaches surface and groundwater systems through surface runoff or infiltration. Permitting discharging CAFOs to limit nitrogen and phosphorus discharge to surface waters, and implementing best management practices outlined in a manure management plan are critical steps to protecting water quality.