Haiti is an amazing test case of the risks and failures of the global food economy.  Yet most recovery funding is being guided toward the same failed models of the past.  Hands That Feed is a non-profit documentary that explores Haiti’s agricultural collapse, its role in the post-quake crisis, and the alternative, grassroots sustainable agriculture-based recovery models that seek to restore Haiti’s food supply and environment.  There are 4 days remaining for the public to decide whether this film is made.

The importance of Hands That Feed was recently written about on Civil Eats, Grist.com, Food First, Elephant Journal, Change.org, and more than a dozen other food, haiti, and social justice blogs.  The film is supported through grassroots funding on Kickstarter, and if it doesn’t hit its goal by Monday, the project simply dies.

Even former president Bill Clinton is admitting the incredible error of the policies he championed in the 1990’s, both in Haiti and globally.  The following video opens with Clinton’s striking admission before the US Senate on March 10th, 2010.  It then goes on the introduce the concept of Hands That Feed:

When will the international aid industry and policy-makers begin to actually act upon the implications of Clinton’s reversal?  This is like turning a battleship.  Yet  Haiti’s strong agricultural traditions and demographics, combined with its ecological imperatives, have made the country a testing ground for emerging, alternative development models – approaches which use sustainable agriculture and agro-forestry as the basis for fostering self-reliance, vibrant rural economies, food security, and ecological restoration.  Despite great efforts in the field, in order to secure the attention and funding required to truly shape a new future for Haiti, I believe it is absolutely critical that these demonstrated successes be brought to global consciousness through successful media.  Thus Hands That Feed.

Furthermore, Haiti stands as an extreme test case of a failed development exercise in America’s backyard.  Yet Haiti’s social and ecological challenges mirror those faced throughout much of the Developing World.  Sustainable food security is the global challenge of the 21st century – the medium through which myriad other crises will be experienced. Haiti’s collapse, and the potential to rebuild sustainably, stands as an unparalleled “teachable moment” for the world that must not slip by.

In my last post I described swidden agriculture, the system of clearing small patches of forest for farming, then leaving them to regenerate forest cover during decades. There are many myths and misconceptions surrounding swidden agriculture, and I wanted to address some of them in the current post. I was inspired to address this topic after seeing a video about the Alternatives to Slash and Burn project in which the Earth Institute participates. This project involves the detailed measurement of social, economic, and ecological aspects of different systems of land use in tropical forest areas around the globe. It is a long-term project, spanning over various decades. So I was surprised to see some of the old anti-swidden agriculture prejudices bandied about by people who should know better. Anyway, I’m going to address some disagreements I have with the Earth Institute’s presentation, not to pick on the Earth Institute but because the presentation touches on many contentious issues surrounding swidden agriculture. I should make the disclaimer that the presentation I saw and critique here was basically a launch for a book called Alternatives to Slash and Burn. I have not yet read this book, so I limit my comments to the video presentation. David Kummer has written a review of the Alternatives to Slash and Burn book. He knows a lot more than I do about the subject, and I feel he gives a fair review, with qualified praise and some critiques that come from his personal experience.

Corn planted in swidden

The Earth Institute conference presents some interesting charts regarding different uses of tropical forest. They compare unused forest, different styles of managed logging, swidden agriculture, intensive and extensive agroforestry plantations, annual cropping, and conversion of forest to pasture. The Earth Institute’s figures on biodiversity indicate that swidden-farmed forest is about as biodiverse as unused forest. Another graphic in the presentation shows the carbon stored in above-ground and below-ground biomass in each system. It clearly indicates that the most carbon is stored in an intact forest, followed by a swidden agriculture forest, and with annual cropping trapping the least carbon above and below-ground. I have a methodological problem with this chart. It’s not incorrect in its measurements, but what it chooses to measure is of questionable value. A forest managed by swidden farmers reaches a high level of biomass after a few decades of fallow. In fact, a forest that was cropped over fifty years ago looks little different than a so-called primary forest. Of course, when that forest is cut and burned by a farmer, much of the carbon stored in the trees and plants goes into the air as carbon dioxide. But this is not really a net emission of CO2, because the carbon released by the burned plants is carbon that was taken from the atmosphere by those plants, and the new forest that is generated after cropping will once again trap the same amount of CO2. The Earth Institute chart looks at average biomass over time, so the swidden agriculture forest comes off as if it sequestered less carbon than an intact forest, but in fact at certain moments the amount of carbon stored in both forests is about the same. The issue is that in a swidden-managed forest, the carbon is in flux, at some times being emitted when the forest is burned, and at other times being absorbed as the forest regrows. An untouched forest, on the contrary, is basically static. Once it reaches maturity, it doesn’t absorb much more carbon than it emits.

It’s understandable that industrial-world polluters that are concerned about global warming would want to minimize carbon “emissions” from tropical forest clearing, but in the case of swidden agriculture, there is really no net emission over time for a given parcel. Likewise, the idea of carbon offsets, whereby an industrial company pays a tropical farmer not to clear forest, is sort of silly in this context. If an industry is burning fossil fuels, then a standing forest doesn’t lessen the CO2 emitted by that industry. Chopping down the forest will emit even more CO2, but leaving it doesn’t absorb CO2. Carbon offsets make sense when it’s a question of replanting forest on non-forest land, because as that forest grows it will absorb CO2 that wouldn’t have been absorbed from the atmosphere otherwise.

There is also a problem in considering logged lumber as a carbon loss. In fact, if a tree is extracted from a forest to be sold as lumber, the carbon captured in that tree remains in the house or table the lumber is used for, and the new tree that grows in its place will absorb even more CO2, so the net effect is that in terms of carbon sequestration, selective logging coupled with swidden agriculture might actually be a better alternative than leaving a forest unused.

Another error that the Earth Institute makes is that it seems to consider different uses of forest as mutually exclusive. But as far as I know, most people who practice swidden agriculture are cultivating a sequence of annual crops followed by plantation crops, which they mix with selective logging, extraction of other forest resources, and hunting and fishing. The Earth Institute correctly calculates that none of these activities alone provides for a very decent livelihood, but the combination of them certainly can. Even in areas where swidden agriculture and other associated forest activities only provide a subsistence livelihood, that is an improvement over the low wages and even debt slavery that prevail in other, environmentally unsustainable systems of forest use.

The Earth Institute does sometimes draw a line between swidden agriculture and other forms of forest exploitation. But this is done almost as an afterthought, and for the most part they lump swidden agriculture together with abusive practices, presenting them all as a continuum of forest use intensity. I have to think that after their long-term, well-done, detailed research in various tropical forests of the world, they know that swidden agriculture is of an inherently different nature from clearcutting forest or converting it to plantations or cattle ranches. Swidden agriculture as it is practiced in most tropical forests today is not just one point on a gradient of forest-degrading production systems; it is totally distinct from any system that permanently replaces forest with other landscape types. This map from the January 2007 National Geographic shows how indigenous areas of the Brazilian Amazon are “islands of pristine wilderness amid destruction”. Though the “pristine” label is a bit romantic, the map shows that the areas of healthiest forest are precisely where people practice swidden agriculture.

The only explanation I can think of for the Earth Institute’s apparent lack of precision is that they think swidden agriculture is not an important phenomenon on the worldwide scale, so it’s not worthwhile to get into detailed discussions of it. The Alternatives to Slash and Burn project focuses on the forest margins in different parts of the world, where agriculture and other uses are permanently replacing forest. Indeed, if the concern is permanent deforestation at the margins of major tropical forests, swidden agriculture is not a cause, so it shouldn’t get much attention. The major causes of deforestation are the other systems the conference focuses on, which involve a permanent conversion of forest to other uses. But I have read statistics to the effect that over half a billion people in the world today make their living from swidden agriculture, so we can’t simply dismiss it as a minor global phenomenon. And given that the Earth Institute and the other groups involved with the Alternatives to Slash and Burn project are looking to promote more sustainable uses of forests, they should be giving some serious consideration to what seems to be the most ancient, long-lived system for sustainably using tropical forests.

The Earth Institute makes clear that the main causes of deforestation are logging and conversion of forest to plantations and pastures, but the general public and even policy makers (those to whom initiatives like the Alternatives to Slash and Burn project are addressed) are not so nuanced in their analyses. In the recent past, in both popular perception and even in concrete government policies, swidden agriculture is often mistakenly singled out as the prime cause for deforestation in the world. An article entitled “How blaming ’slash and burn’ farmers is deforesting mainland Southeast Asia” points out that years of prejudice and international pressure have led many Southeast Asian governments to try to change swidden agriculture communities away from their traditional practices. (There are also other political reasons for governments to want to sedentarize certain populations–permanent villages are easier to tax, easier to provide services to, and easier to keep an eye on). But if swidden-dependent communities convert to more permanent forms of agriculture, they will in fact have a grave impact on the forest. Also, by the scapegoating of small swidden farmers, world society in general is distracted from the preponderant role of large-scale commercial agriculture and logging in the clearing of forest.

A professor of mine who has worked with tribal communities in northern Thailand has done research indicating that certain draconian laws of the Thai government, which prevented these communities from practicing swidden agriculture, had destroyed their livelihoods and increased the incidence of families’ sending their daughters to Bangkok to work in the sex trade. Laos, on the other hand, seems to have some sensible policies that allow tribal people to cultivate a certain amount of forest land in a year, hence allowing swidden agriculture while ensuring that the forest is not over-exploited.

Mosaic (foreground to background) of permanent rice fields, cleared swidden fields, young forest, and mature forest in a tribal area of Laos

The Earth Institute’s Pedro Sanchez makes a frank admission towards the end of his presentation. He says he had initially believed that improving land use productivity at the forest margin would decrease the need for people to clear more forest. But in years of research he has found that to be only partially true. If the land is converted to cattle pasture or soybean fields, productivity rises but few people gain employment. So Sanchez now believes that the important thing is to make sure land use is both productive and labor-intensive. This means that it’s important to promote mixed agroforestry systems, which provide a decent income, demand lots of labor, and also happen to retain intermediate levels of biodiversity and carbon sequestration.

I think this discovery and admission on Sanchez’s part is a good thing, as is the Earth Institute’s increasing focus on landscape-scale management of forest areas (for example maybe it’s not so destructive to convert certain forest parcels to intensive annual cropping if the hilltops and some strategic corridors are maintained in natural forest or other, less destructive land uses). But I worry that by dismissing the importance and sustainability of swidden agriculture, researchers may continue to marginalize this highly sustainable system, as well as missing out on ways of making swidden agriculture more productive and incorporating some of its principles into other farming systems.

Today I received a call from one of our producers in Mexico. It was a sad call. Although they continue to survive, the economic downturn has taken its toll. And our inability, as their importers, to make inroads into the US market for their product has been a major factor. Yet if each of our customers knew their story, tried their product, visited their land, they would all come to the same conclusion that I did the first time I met them. This small company, rooted in its community, is doing the work necessary to save their small corner of the World.

Xoxoc is a producer of prickly pear products in the Hidalgo region of Mexico, an area that was once a major producer of Pulque, a favorite fermented alcohol produced from the Maguey plant. But in the mid 1900’s when beer became popular, the maguey plants were left to die and the local economy along with them. Over subsequent years, many of the region’s men left to look for income elsewhere, and devastating erosion washed away the deserted fields.

Yet in this harsh land, one type of plant survives well – the nopal or cactus. There are over 300 types of nopal, many of them producing a sweet edible fruit. Of these, only nine are considered Xoconostle, the type of prickly pear used in the Xoxoc products. The xoconostle fruit has a higher acidity and the seeds are located in the center of the fruit (as opposed to spread throughout the fruit) making them easier to de-seed. It is the fruit of the xoconostle that the folks at Xoxoc are betting on to save their community and the land.

They cultivate their own xoconostle and they have convinced farmers from three surrounding towns to plant xoconostle, promising to purchase their harvest at a fair price. Their efforts have not only begun to revive the local economy, and bring hope back to the community but it has begun to reverse some of the erosion that has devastated the land. Over the last few years, they have watched the flora and fauna return to their land as they continue to cultivate more xoconostle. And more farmers are turning to this crop for income.

With initial funding from the government they have built a small facility using local materials and labor and relying on the power of the sun and gravity to help process their product. With the help of local women (in a community where there is very little hope of employment), they peel, cut, sun-dry, and cook the xoconostle to prepare it for market.

The Xoxocs of the world are the reason I founded Rooted Foods, an initiative within my import business that recognizes products that are truly rooted in their communities. Visiting them, it is so clear the interconnectedness of our every day purchasing decisions and how they affect the world we live in. Every unit of Xoxoc that is sold in the U.S. brings the company closer to achieving their goal of building a self-sustaining community – economically, socially, and environmentally.

By supporting small companies like Xoxoc through our purchasing decisions, we as consumers are helping to:

Protect Genetic Diversity – small producers around the world grow century-old varieties and heritage breeds that are unique to their environment. With no demand for these products, they are often left to die out.

Promote Cultural Diversity – recipes that have been passed down through the generations are cultural treasures to be preserved and enjoyed.

Provide Healthier and Tastier Food – native foods produced using local naturally grown ingredients are healthy and flavorful, and they often contain medicinal properties that have been lost in the over-bred foods of the western world.

Encourage Sustainable Practices – small producers are more tightly woven into the fabric of their communities and are often the true stewards of the land.

Strengthen Local Economies – small businesses are at the foundation of a thriving local economy. In the case of Xoxoc, there efforts have helped to reduce emigration from the land and immigration to the US. Thus we strengthen their economy while reducing the burden of immigration on ours.

Ensure Food Security – food and water scarcity are serious problems worldwide. Supporting small producers protects communities from global food crises by empowering them to feed themselves. It also reduces the need for poverty-reduction support services.

People often ask me how I reconcile my work as a food importer with my belief in supporting local food producers. I live in the Pacific Northwest and am fortunate that I can get a high percentage of my food from local sources for a good part of the year. But for the items that I can’t purchase locally, I want to ensure that my dollars are going to support small local producers in other communities. Last I checked, prickly pear doesn’t grow near Seattle.

Over 80% of all food products on grocery shelves are produced by a handful of large multinational corporations. Take a few moments to absorb that fact. Very little of what we purchase as consumers actually goes to support the people or communities who supply the resources or is produced in a manner that is restorative to the environment.

We need to flip/flop these statistics. I envision whole aisles of foods that are truly rooted in their communities, produced by independently-owned and dedicated producers somewhere in the world.

Supporting foods that are rooted in their community, regardless of where that community is, encourages healthier, more stable and self-sufficient local economies worldwide. To me, being a food importer and a supporter of local economies is one in the same.

I recently came across a video on “slash and burn” farming, produced by the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York. It made me want to dispel some of the myths surrounding this form of agriculture, but I should start by describing exactly what slash and burn agriculture really is. First off, the term “slash and burn” is inaccurate, because it evokes the image of irresponsible, primitive farmers that don’t think about the environmental impacts of their activities. Other names like “itinerant” or “shifting” agriculture aren’t ideal either, because they evoke unrooted, nomadic farmers, as opposed to the settled villagers that usually practice this farming system. I prefer the term “swidden agriculture”, because it describes the system most exactly.

Swidden agriculture is based on annual cropping cycles separated by long-term fallows. During the dry season, a farmer in this system cuts down a patch of forest, usually not more than a hectare (2.5 acres). Often the farmer hauls off large, valuable logs to sell, and refrains from cutting down certain useful trees like those that bear nuts and fruit. He allows the felled logs and debris to dry for some weeks or months and then burns them, leaving what’s called a swidden. The burn leaves a layer of ash covering the soil, which provides fertility for the mix of crops that are then planted in time for the rainy season. The dense forest growth that preceded the cropped field has kept down weeds, so for one or multiple years of cropping there are few weed problems. Hence the farmer, using little more than a hand axe and fire, prepares a fertile, weed-free field for his crops. He obtains a few years of annual crop harvests from this field before soil fertility drops and weeds invade, upon which the farmer cuts down a new patch of forest, leaving the prior field to naturally regenerate. Farmers practicing swidden agriculture thus employ a long-term rotation between crops, often allowing the forest to regenerate for fifty years or more. In fact, some people believe that there exists very little truly virgin forest in the world, and that what we mistake for virgin forest is actually just forest that was cropped many decades or even centuries ago.

In the tropical world, where swidden agriculture is most common today, the crop mix planted in a recently-felled patch of forest can contain corn, beans, peanuts, rice, taro, yams, and other annual crops, as well as longer-term crops like plantain, manioc, banana, pepper, papaya, pineapple, ranging to perennial tree crops like cacao, rubber, cashew, oil palm, fruits, coffee, and tree species for resin and lumber. This way the farmer gets a few years’ worth of annual crops, then a low-maintenance patch of other food crops, and finally a full-fledged cash tree crop plantation, which eventually gives way to the regrowth of the natural forest (though now this forest is enriched with economically valuable species that can be harvested with little upkeep).

So contrary to the image of primitive Third-World farmers irresponsibly destroying precious forest, swidden agriculture is in fact a highly-managed, sustainable use of forest land. Small villages of farmers can manage hundreds of acres with this system; at any given time the land surrounding the village is a mosaic of cropped fields and forest in various stages of regrowth (with the majority of the land covered by towering, mature forest). Fertility is maintained in the system by the long forest fallow between cropping cycles. During the fallow period the trees that develop on a parcel draw nutrients from deep in the subsoil up into their trunks and leaves. When these trees are burned, the ash left on the ground contains these nutrients, part of which become available for the planted crops, and part of which are leached back into the soil or run onto adjacent land. This is called a vertical renewal of fertility, as opposed to the horizontal renewal common in many other systems, whereby nutrients withdrawn from the soil by crops are replaced with fertilizers or manure imported from off the field. A good review of the concepts behind swidden agriculture is found in this masterwork on Agriculture in the Tropics, edited by Webster and Wilson, and various allusions to vertical vs. horizontal cycling of fertility is found in Mazoyer’s and Roudart’s A History of World Agriculture.

In most densely-settled areas of the world, swidden agriculture long ago gave way to other systems. As one might deduce, swidden agriculture is only sustainable so long as there are 50 hectares or more of forest land per family, so that there can be at least 50 years of forest regrowth between cropping cycles on any given parcel. Once population rises above that level, fallow periods become shorter, allowing less forest regrowth, until eventually the ten years or less allowed between cropping cycles produces only a grassy savanna instead of a full-fledged forest. At that point the forest has effectively been lost, and it makes sense to change the cropping system to one more suited to a grassy savanna. This process took place in Europe just before Classical Antiquity, leaving the dry shrublands of the Mediterranean where oak forests had once flourished. But in other parts of the world, namely those that remain covered in dense forest, the population has never risen above the density that can be sustainably supported by swidden agriculture. In such places as the mountains of Southeast Asia and the inner Amazon forest, over half a billion of the world’s people continue to earn their livelihood satisfactorily and sustainably through swidden agriculture.

In an upcoming post I’ll address more directly some common misconceptions concerning swidden agriculture, and the implications of these misconceptions for sustainable development. For a more nuanced analysis of swidden agriculture than I’ve given here, see the article “Sustainability in Danger? Slash-and-burn cultivation in nineteenth-century Finland and twentieth-century southeast Asia”.

Haiti’s post-quake humanitarian disaster is directly tied to its food supply and the collapse of the rural economy.  But will the long-term recovery model in Haiti simply repeat the mistakes of the past?  Combating the dominant paradigm is an accelerating grassroots movement  – from farmers burning Monsanto seeds to edible schoolyards — seeking to create a new future for the nation; one that will restore both the food supply and the environment.

I’m currently working with a team to produce Hands That Feed .  The documentary film will explore the agricultural collapse in Haiti, its role in the post-earthquake food crisis, and the emerging grassroots development models that seek to restore Haiti’s rural economy and environment.  We stand at a critical juncture for Haiti, as well as at an unparalleled “teachable moment” for the world.  Through this work, I have continued to uncover an incredible, unfolding story of people working at the grassroots level to create a new, sustainable agriculture-based development paradigm.

In the aftermath of the earthquake, the world watched news footage that conveyed looting and wrestling for morsels of food in Haiti.  The result was an unprecedented upwelling of international compassion and support.  Yet the underlying social and political causes of the crisis are not widely covered or known, and it is easy at first glance to simply blame natural events.

But there’s of course a larger story.  The development paradigm enacted in Haiti over the last 30 years – while converting the small country into America’s 4th largest rice export market – flooded Haiti with cheap, subsidized food imports that rapidly changed the face of the largely rural, agriculture-based country.  As economic opportunity dwindled in the countryside, the population of Port-au-Prince has more than doubled since 1989.   The resulting build-up of urban slums, flimsy structures, crime, deforestation for charcoal fuel, and lack of local food supply chains, created the perfect storm when met with natural disaster.  I wrote in detail on this process, based on my work in Haiti after the earthquake, in Why Did the Haitian Earthquake Become a Food Crisis?

Then, there was the humanitarian aid mission.  Groups such as the World Food Program, the Red Cross, UNICEF, the US Military, the Israeli Defense Forces, and many others thankfully did their best to rapidly distribute much-needed food and medical supplies.  Yet the permaculture and sustainable agriculture practitioners had much to teach.  Why should the Red Cross add 20,000 plastic water bottles to Haiti’s waste stream when Port-au-Prince has a fantastic aquifer?  Admitting that refugees will likely remain in the camps a long time, why not build common areas within the compounds where people can graze their animals rather than simply depend on handouts?  Why not compost waste into soil.  And why import so much plastic and wood for shelters when their are endless stands of bamboo?

This amazing NPR video segment from two days ago captures the current status of the food supply: The Problem with Giving Free Food to Hungry People.

GiveLove.org Alternative Shelter Design

The organization Permaculture Relief has attacked a number of these issues and maintains a list of active organizations in Haiti.  GiveLove has been building sustainable refugee shelters using locally available materials.  SOIL , recently covered by Kristoff, is building and distributing inexpensive compost toilets.  Much of this work builds uponthe success of Cegrane Permaculture Refugee Camp, which housed up to 43,000 refugees in Macedonia in 1999 while maintaining regenerative systems and food supply.

Finally, there is the long-term recovery.  Haiti’s population is still 75% farmers, they have amazing year-round growing conditions, and the urban population desperately needs food.  Investing in agriculture should be a slam dunk, right?  Wrong.  The State Department and USAID are pushing the same old dogma which turned Haiti into the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere (and America’s 4th largest rice export market): Invest only in the cities; subsidize the textile industry; and let the countryside collapse, providing a flood of cheap labor for urban industry (and an epic buildup of slums).

All this despite former President Bill Clinton’s groundbreaking admission of failure and need for new policies:

“It was a mistake. I have to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti,” Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 10, 2010. “The country has the best chance in my lifetime to achieve this objective: to build a modern self-sustaining state. But what it means is that we have to think about our roles in a different way, and how we will play them in this reconstruction process.”

But this time, there is a counter-movement, and that’s exactly what we seek to capture.  Andrew Jones, founder of Cegrane (see above), is responsible for developing the permaculture program within Nouvelle Vie Youth Corps, one of the primary subjects of Hands That Feed.  Nouvelle Vie is training, and paying, 30 vibrant young Haitian leaders to go out and teach a thousand Haitians sustainable agriculture skills, build intensive agriculture plots in schoolyards and refugee camps, and teach yoga-based post-trauma breathing techniques.  From this thousand, Nouvelle Vie will recruit a new batch of 100 Youth Corps members, who will then teach 10,000.  And so on, and so forth.  All the while developing Haitian self-reliance both in food supply and leadership.

Is this just “Eco-Imperialism” (a term I recently learned from a conservative blog)?  Not if you ask the Haitian government officials who are begging international donors to stop sending food.  Nor if you ask Jean Ked Neptune, a director at the Ministry of Environment, who is developing programs to employ women as worm composters in refugee camps, despite his department’s virtually absent budget.  And finally, not if you ask the homegrown MPP Peasant Movement.  With membership of 50,000, and a rising star named Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, the group recently led a demonstration of 10,000 peasants who burned early shipments of Monsanto’s “gift” of 475 tons of seeds.  These seeds contain the carcinogenic pesticides Maxim XO and Thiram, which the EPA bars for home gardening in the U.S., and requires commercial farmers to use protective gear.  How many Haitians do you think own plastic goggles, gloves, and protective jumpsuits?  Furthermore, these seeds are hybrids, which means that the traits are not passed on to the next generation through the traditional practice of seed-saving.  You need to purchase the seeds next year from Monsanto, as well as all of the special irrigation, fertilizer, and other expensive inputs required to cultivate these species – which means going into debt.  (But if your neighbors do it, you have to do it to compete – leverage-up or get out.)  These seeds are being distributed through USAID with your tax check.

This harkens back to when the U.S. Pork lobby asked the State Department in the late-1970’s to pressure the Haitian government to order the slaughter of the creole pig, the ubiquitous and locally-adapted Haitian icon which provided both a source of meat and “savings”.  Now Haitians import their meat.

Courtesy Noramise.org

Let’s not have a repeat performance.  Haiti is full of locally-adapted species, agricultural labor, rich land, and hungry people.  Agro-ecological methods are now very highly developed, producing huge yields while restoring eroded soils.  The problem is, they are labor and knowledge-intensive, not capital and chemical intensive, so they don’t make anyone any money.  Even a moderate investment in restoring Haitian agriculture through sustainable methods and domestic skills could easily feed the nation, while making Haiti independent from aid and more protected against future natural disaster.  Let Haiti learn from the past, and the world learn from Haiti.

To help us highlight these groups and this movement, we really need support.  Please check out Hands That Feed, make even a small donation, and forward the link to anyone interested in Haiti, international development, and/or sustainable agriculture.

- posted by Joshua

Like any Top 5 list, this is rough and biased; it is meant to stimulate conversation and to put perspective on the junctures at which we stand today.

The Canal at Bassorah, Sumeria

1. Neolithic Revolution

The last ice age ended 13,000 years ago, leaving behind a warmer environment full of the flora and fauna we know today and starting the Neolithic Period. This environmental shift fueled a 13,000-year explosion of population, technology, and culture. One plant that prospered in the newly warmed climate was wheat. Around 10,000 BC, in Mesopotamia, humankind began mastering cultivation of this plant for bread and ale, and the Egyptians later developed yeasted breads. The surplus calories of the Neolithic Revolution give birth to civilization, and bread and ale become the gastronomic backbone of the West.

2. Fall of Rome

Is it possible that Rome fell because of food? It would appear that “Roman Bread” – the West’s first experiment in a social welfare system – was more economically disastrous than the decadence of the rich. Julius Caesar got the government dole of bread down to “just” 150,000 plebians, about one sixth of the population. Yet after another 50 years, that number had doubled – a third of the population was on the dole! The grain was largely shipped in from government-owned fields in North Africa.

The Romans also had an insatiable desire for Asian products, especially black pepper, which was elemental to Roman foods. Pepper, spices, porcelain, silk, and other items were already contributing to a massive trade deficit (the only thing the Romans had to offer in return was silver and gold) even before the Silk Road was opened to China and the trade winds to India were discovered in the 1st century AD. Roman currency devalued so much that three centuries later, the cost of wheat had increased by over 300,000 times! Roman money eventually collapsed, causing the society to fall back on a barter economy. Yet currency is necessary to support long-distance, complex food supply chains. Roman cities began depopulating, leaving them open to barbarian attacks, which led to further depopulation.

Europe was consequently de-urbanized, and we entered 600 years nearly devoid of technological, philosophical, or cultural innovation.

As a side note, when the barbarians first amassed in the early 400’s at Rome’s gate, what did they demand? Subsidies, land, titles. . . and 3,000 pounds of black pepper!

3. Ploughs and Rotating Beans

In the 6th century, the Northeastern Slavs developed the moldboard plow (the Chinese had already been using them for a thousand years) and introduced the technology to Europe. The plow dramatically increased yields and allowed new land to be brought into cultivation (deforesting Europe). About the same time, Medieval Europe discovered triple crop rotation: grains, beans, and letting fallow. The realization that beans invigorate the soil also spelled increased protein intake and nutrition for Europe. These two discoveries allowed the European population to multiply, and the growth arguably provided the demographic push for the Crusades.

4. The New World

Europeans returned from the Crusades with an invigorated taste for Asian spices, and the Italian traders monopolized this trade during the Renaissance. Determined to break the monopoly, the Spanish, then the Portuguese and the Dutch, sought overseas routes to Asia. These missions were so costly and risky that the richest financiers still had to pool assets and risk together, giving birth to the first corporations.

Colombus did not find black pepper in the Americas, but his discovery brought chillies, peppers, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, cocoa, and many other foods which revolutionized cuisine throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa. They also revolutionized the food supply, as corn and potatoes, for example, grow on rougher, rockier soils than wheat.

500 Years of Population Growth

5. Scientific Agriculture

For 10,000 years, human consciousness was fed by the sun. In the early 20th century, we broke free of that fiery ball and discovered how to fuel ourselves by burning dead dinosaurs. The Haber Process was first developed by Fritz Haber in the summer of 1909, using large amounts of energy to break triple bonds and produce nitrates from the air. Haber and Carl Bosch (who brought the technology to industrial scale) were later awarded the Nobel prize. Artificial fertilizers have brought the global food supply to unprecedented levels, and consequently, our population. Subsequent developments and deployments in biotechnology, fertilizer systems, pesticides, and hybrid seeds, known as the “Green Revolution“, further multiplied yields in Mexico, India, and Southeast Asia. Global population is now more than triple what it was 100 years ago.

In the past 100 years, we have experienced world-changing innovations in a variety of sectors – the nuclear bomb, the computer, space travel. Yet for the majority of history, the innovations of truly continental magnitude were almost always in food. Man was tied to the land, and any increase, even temporary, in the proportion of calories to population, enabled forward leaps in civilizational development and power.

6. Post-Modern Eco-Agriculture?

We now have a global food supply and global food challenges. Driven by increased population, wealth and meat consumption, the UN expects mankind’s food demands to double by 2030. Yet global environmental constraints and regulation are impending. What combination of social and scientific models will arise to meet these wholly new scenarios?

Historical data was drawn from the following sources:
Food in History, by Reay Tannahill
Spice: The History of a Temptation, by Jack Turner
A History of Food, by Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat

Gino wasn’t quite sure of what to make of me. I was definitely different than any other customer he had met. It’s not often that a foreign buyer shows up in the high altiplano city of Juliaca, Peru known for contraband. But even more unusual is a visit from a Gringa decked out in protective motorcycle gear and climbing off the back of a BMW 1200cc.  It was Sunday, and Gino had interrupted his only free day to give me a tour of his company and to meet his community of producers. Since I was traveling by motorcycle (just a passenger) and on a fairly tight schedule, I greatly appreciated the effort. But as I’ve said, his first impression of me definitely threw him.

Gino founded El Altiplano in 1994, with non-profit support, as a way to organize and support the hard working farmers of his region. The company works with over 150 producers of quinoa and kañiwa, hearty heritage grains that have sustained the people of this rough terrain for centuries. Gino has cultivated a strong bond with all of him farmers over the years, and the services he offers have grown and changed in relationship to his farmers’ needs. The company supplies the farmers with seeds and seed selection training, organic certification, the use of farming equipment, training in sustainable agricultural methods, and low interest loans to purchase needed animals and resources.

The producers do not have much land, 7-10 hectares on average, and have historically had much difficulty sustaining themselves. Gino offers them a secure market at higher than market prices along with the training, support, and resources they need to get ahead. Wilfredo Payhuanca Crúz, for example, is a young man who works the land with his brother and parents. With the help of El Altiplano, he was able to leave his dead-end job as a “tricycle taxi” driver and come back to the family land. The family was able to rebuild their home and the farm buildings and purchase ten cows and a multitude of sheep. We piled into Gino’s pick-up and headed off to find Wilfredo in the fields checking on his kañiwa crop. This was my first time seeing kañiwa still on the plant, and I was so excited I took a memory-card worth of photos.

You are probably wondering what kañiwa is and I am happy to enlighten you, since it is one of my new favorite foods. It is in the same goosefoot family as quinoa, which has seeped into American consciousness over the last several years. Yet kañiwa is much easier to process since it is not covered in the bitter saponin found on quinoa (saponin is removed from market-bound quinoa, but the producers eat quinoa prewashed, the ingested saponin lowering their cholesterol and protecting them against diabetes. Concentrated saponin is also used as a natural pesticide.)

Kañiwa is considered more resistant than any other crop to a combination of frost, drought, salt and pests – it is perfect for the 12,000 foot altitudes and brutal climate of the Peruvian Altiplano. The grain is a beautiful deep hue of reddish-brown, and it clings to a brick colored plant in flowering clumps. And although the grains are small, about a third the size of quinoa, they are bursting in nutrition and have a higher protein content than quinoa. I love it in salads, soups, or as a base for fish. But it also comes in flour form and makes rich earthy breads and pastries.

Wilfredo explained how prior to working with Gino, the people of this area had lost the culinary traditions associated with kañiwa, and only continued to grow it as a good source of food for their animals. Now they produce crops for sale, which helps improve the family income. Unfortunately over the past several years climate change has had a huge impact on these lands, with decreasing precipitation, increasing heat, and shorter growing seasons – thus greatly impacting the earning potential of each producer. As I dug my hands deep into the wool of one of Wilfredo’s outrageously puffy sheep, he explained how El Altiplano has helped the family diversify into animal husbandry and offset the impact of climate changes. With a low interest rate loan, they were able to purchase milk cows and sheep for meat and wool. On average they can produce 20 liters of milk a day, bringing in over 20 soles or $7, which is a significant amount of money in their depressed economy.

Wilfredo’s family learned about dairy farming from one of the many technical trainings offered by El Altiplano throughout the year. Another program trains each producer to create fertilizers and pesticides from vegetables and herbs, and discusses crop rotation and how to improve yields. In addition, the producers meet once a month to share ideas and learn practical tips. They must also participate in “etiquette and moral” discussions around personal hygiene, domestic violence, and other challenges that face their community.

After visiting several producers and seeing Gino’s programs in action – fields and fields of quinoa and kañiwa, fat cows and roly-poly sheep, ingenious house-heating technology (a cool concoction of glass windows and tubes), and engaged and energetic producers – I knew that I had found the right company to work with.

As we returned to the production facility, and our awaiting over-loaded motorcycle, I asked Gino if he had ever had a motorcycle-riding, helmet toting, blue-eyed Gringa as a customer. He most certainly had not, but he wouldn’t be where he is today if he hadn’t taken risks, so he was willing to give it a go!

Last week, as we celebrated World Environment Day in the Ecuadorian Amazon, I thought about Mike Cadoux’s recent post, “The Earth Will Be Okay,” in particular the five mass extinctions the planet has already experienced and what a sixth might mean. Like a lot of people who work in conservation, I admit getting wrapped up in the urgency of the climate crisis and overlooking the perspective that massive planetary change has happened before over a much longer timeline. From a scientific standpoint, it’s true that humans are just a blip.

But the view that humans are destructive but dispensable and that the earth will ultimately triumph over its troublesome inhabitants strikes me as a major part of the reason we are facing what is possibly a radical reduction of our own species. What are we talking about when we get beyond the statistics of glacial melting, loss of productive farm land, or sea levels rising and inundating thousands of miles of densely populated coasts?

We’re talking about hundreds of millions of people suffering and dying. Not in the United States or in Europe. Probably not in Australia or New Zealand. But in places like Bangladesh. A one meter increase in sea level will submerge 20 percent of the land and displace 35 million people, many of whom will die in the flooding. How many people there can afford to take the attitude that humans are just a blip?

Dr. Atiq Rahman, Bangladeshi environmental scientist and lead author on the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change, doesn’t refer to what’s happening to his country as a crisis, but a “catastrophe”. It’s not “climate change,” but “irreversible climate destabilization.” Cyclones that occurred every ten years now occur every two or three. Thousands of cyclone refugees camp on man-made island embankments in the sea. Surrounded by water, they have not a drop to drink: freshwater wells have been salinated by seawater from the storm surge.

The water problem may pale in comparison to that of agriculture. Suffering for years from extreme famine, in the last few decades Bangladesh has managed to supply almost all of its own food thanks to improvements in rice production. That vast improvement in people’s lives is threatened because of increased flooding from climate change.

Fellow blogger Mike Cadoux makes the excellent point that for selfish reasons, we need to save our own species, which will thereby help save life on earth. I would argue, though, that selfishness, or more accurately self-centeredness and isolation, are part of the problem. Think about all the ways the U.S. economy and American culture help separate us from the sources of our food, from the sources of our energy, and from each other.  Industrialization and its by-products—the way our cities and suburbs are planned, the conversion of small-scale family farms into large-scale agri-businesses, our suicidal reliance on fossil fuels—have created a society that is so compartmentalized that we have no sense of how many resources we are depleting from the planet. On top of that, we are almost unable to relate to the experience of people who live in less wealthy countries.

Fortunately, we are starting to see changes that will help us re-integrate into the cycle of resource use and replenishment. The sustainble food movement that this blog is intended to help promote is one encouraging sign. New programs through which homeowners can produce and sell renewable energy back to power companies is another. There are many other examples.

But what lies beyond this, if we want to survive, is compassion for other people, our own species. Empathy for their experience, not pity for what they are suffering. A profound acknowledgement that if a family’s land is inundated in Bangladesh, my ship is sinking too. A commitment that, as a fellow human being, I have a responsibility to do what I can to prevent the suffering or death of a member of our species, even if my life and livelihood are not imminently threatened.

Biodiversity, the natural balance of living things, the way Nature intended life to be. .  . Biodiversity can be compared to a beautiful, harmonious symphony, where all the musical notes from the strings, brass, percussion and wind instruments fall into place, complementing each other, working together to create a whole that is a delightful and pleasurable piece to listen to!

Just like music, all the elements of Nature are designed to complement each other and have mutually beneficial effects.  From the birds and the tiniest insects living underground, to the towering trees and the most lumbering of animals, Nature has created a musical symphony composed of millions of parts, each part playing a small but significant role in the harmony of the overall piece.

Sadly as a result of man’s relentless capitalistic pursuit, the music has been interrupted, and is not sounding as harmonious as it should.  Taking just one or a few elements out of the equation means that the natural system cannot function optimally the way it always has, leading to an unstable state of disequilibrium.  A move towards focusing on biodiversity at the source of a food product is a good way of bringing back the harmony.

A fragile biodiversity hotspot

In the Western Cape of South Africa, there is a unique and fragile floral kingdom – one of 6 in the world – which is called Fynbos (meaning “fine bush” in native Afrikaans language).

A Protea tree, part of the Fynbos found in the Cape Floral Kingdom

These plants have adapted over millennia to withstand the unique weather conditions that exist at the tip of Africa –including harsh, windy and dry summers; very wet, cold and icy winters — so much so that these plant species are so well adapted to this microclimate that they are not found anywhere else in the world.  Without a focus on biodiversity, this unique and beautiful ecosystem will most likely vanish in a few generations to come.

Industry certification

One of these Fynbos plants is Rooibos (meaning red bush in native Afrikaans).  Rooibos is used to make the Rooibos / red tea, and Red Espresso® (my company’s espresso-style beverage made from Rooibos tea), and is gaining popularity around the world for its taste and excellent benefits.  Rooibos grows only in the Cedarberg region of the Western Cape, about 400km north of Cape Town, and nowhere else.

A big drive in the Rooibos industry is towards biodiversity certification at source, as the impact of Rooibos farming on the fragile Fynbos, left unchecked, can be irreparably damaging to the area as a whole: not good for the long term future of the industry.

Part of the biodiversity criteria for attaining certification is to ensure open tracts of land in-between farms, where endemic fauna and flora of the area are allowed to flourish.

Biodiversity in action

Here’s a sweet – and unique – example of biodiversity in action from this part of the world!

A certain species of moth lays a single egg in the stem of a Rooibos plant, which matures into a grub that sucks all the nutrients out of the plant, causing it to die.

Baboons (local monkey-like primates), uninhibited by fences and farmed tracts of land on Certified farms, can roam freely along the mountain ranges, and wander around the Rooibos crops to eat the pesky grub that wreaks havoc on a farmer’s crop.

Baboons: an important link in controlling pests in Rooibos fields

Peacefully and freely, the baboons sniff out the infected Rooibos plants and pull out the long tap root from the ground.  The grub makes a tasty, protein-rich snack.  Naturally curbing the spread of these grubs and moths, the biodiversity conscious Rooibos farmers hail the baboons as heroes – no pesticides or other intervention required!  I just love how Nature can solve our problems on her own.

Restoration initiatives to enhance biodiversity

A number of endemic Fynbos plant species in the Cedarberg find themselves on the endangered species list due to generations of relentless and careless farming, harvesting and fires (which are part of the natural regeneration process of the Fynbos species).  One of these is the Clanwilliam Cedar Tree – ironically, this is the tree after which the Cedarberg area was once named, due to their proliferation a few hundred years ago!

The majestic, highly endangered Clanwilliam Cedar Tree

The evening silhouette of the Cedarberg Mountains now shows little sign of these majestic Cedar trees, which once proudly towered over the mountains and plains, each supporting their own tiny ecosystem of animals and insects, and providing a resting place for the beautiful and endangered Cape Leopard.

Every year, in conjunction with businesses and local communities, our nature conservation organisation Cape Nature organizes an official planting day of Cedar Tree saplings back into their habitat.  To co-inside with World Environment Day on 5 June, we headed up North of Cape Town to the Cedarberg to plant the saplings we’ve been nurturing for months from seed, just a little bit to help restore the area back to the way Nature intended it to be.

This is just a small step to ensuring the biodiversity of the area and preserving the diversity and balance of one of the most fragile Floral Kingdoms of the world.

Biodiversity for sustainability.

Encouraging and preserving a biodiverse source, and rehabilitating the source with fauna and flora to allow natural ecosystems to work in harmony.  Perhaps allowing Nature to help us with our commercial pursuits, by encouraging the Natural balance of life to exist alongside our farming activities, will lead us to a cleaner, more sustainable future?