RI Blogs

Keeping it real: organics holds promise that GM crops don't to beat global warming

Asserting organics over GM to fight global warming

Will processor agreements, slide in conventional corn provide organic grain price stability for 2009?

If the ethanol boom that helped to shoot up U.S. corn prices in mid-2008 to $7 per bushel—which then ate away at the economic viability of ethanol production—has gone bust, what happens to the promise of strong $3+ conventional corn for the next several years?

The Carbon Connection: Worldwatch Institute authors join Rodale Institute in answering the climate question with smart food prod

The Carbon Connection: Worldwatch Institute authors join Rodale Institute in answering the climate question with smart food production

Organic food healthier and more intensively inspected—but not magically protected from humans or pathogens

A New York Times story linking organic certification to the tainted peanut plant in Georgia raises an important set of questions which requires distinctions between health, nutrition, safety and risk. Organic food has a head start, and good handling retains this advantage

Organic standards deliver on food quality, bolstering further values from local sourcing, worker fairness and humane treatment

Organic standards require great farming that makes great food, but not everything good is contained in these rules. Humane livestock treatment guidelines are in the works, but fair trade is another label.

Search for peanut salmonella origin highlights microbial side of farming practices

Salmonella contamination at the farm level hasn't been an issue in the past for peanut growers, but the current search for a true source of the pathogen has investigators checking out farm practices. The few organic growers, their conventional counterparts and the researchers who work with them can seize the moment to assess risk factors from field to receiving dock to find the most sustainable way to produce an important and verrsatile food crop.

Cows on grass (intensely) answer the perennials question: How to get more food, sustainably?

By using perennial sod crops (hay, grass and forages) we can save our soils from erosion, give cattle the best food for their four-stomach system and nurture a vast universe of underground biomass that sequesters carbon and cycles nutrients.

Pastured pork dust-up shows growing biomimicry of sustainable food-system champions

Messages from the sustainable ag community to a New York Times OpEd questioning the safety of pastured pork showed some "areas for growth," as well as progress toward positive biomimicry in dealing diversely and synergistically with a perceived threat.

Johanns alarmed over USDA’s organic “niche” zeal, even before it boosts conversion funds. (Oh yes, 2008 organic sales surge.)

On the same day I get word of Senator (formerly Mr. Bush’s Agriculture Secretary) Johanns’ “let’s not get crazy about organic” warning to the National Association of Farm Broadcasters (NAFB) back on April 29, I also get word that this “niche market” (his term) actually grew by 17.1 percent overall in 2008, despite a tough economic environment. And we learn that the USDA restores $50 million for organic conversion via its EQUIP program.

Integrated Practices for Managing Late Blight without Chemicals

Organic growers can use a range of integrated options against late blight to lower their risk and perhaps even get part of crop.

Rodale Institute@COP15: Nurturing organic changes will re-shape ag impact on climate

Tuesday, Dec. 15 – Copenhagen, Denmark: It’s 1 a.m. in Copenhagen and it’s time to sleep.

Rodale CEO Tim LaSalle spoke on two panels at two different events today, and the Institute message that he shared was really well received. Many lined up to speak to us about agriculture and climate. They wanted to know how we address the important role of organic and regenerative systems in climate legislation in the U.S., and how we will follow-up to what happens here at COP15.

I want to write but I really need the rest, so I hope you'll accept some bullet items of particular interest:

Standing-room-only at our event in the Klimaforum., the so-called Peoples' Climate Summit.
The development of relationships with Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy,
which has dedicated lots of resources to agriculture and climate change. They use our data often, and I was able to build further relationships from a conference in Iowa where I met a member of their group.
Interest in having the Institute present our work and ideas to more groups, including Tim being interviewed on German TV.
We’ve met with organic farmers who work with sandy and tropical soils who have seen soil carbon sequestration rates well above 10,000 pounds per hectare per year, reaching 6 to 9 percent soil carbon.
Farmers are exploring the benefits of organic systems based on health, ecology, fairness and care—including certified and non-certified systems. They are reporting on use of insectaries (intentional plant habitat) for beneficial insects, intercropping (of two or more crops growing at the same time), underseeding (following a lead crop with a secondary crop) and mob grazing (high stocking rates of livestock on pasture paddocks for a short time), just to name a handful of the organic practices that are producing exciting benefits.
Connecting with many people working on climate change police that I’ve met in Washington, D.C., and strengthening our relationships for the huge tasks that lie ahead.

Apologies for the brevity of this note. I must try to get more than four hours of sleep tonight.

Best

Eliav

Eliav Bitan is policy and partnerships associate for the Rodale Institute
Other RI@COP15 posts

Background: With big changes in focus, research and engagement, ag solutions to climate change will take off

“Agriculture and Climate, the critical connection” provides an overview on the multiple ways agriculture impacts and is impacted by climate change. It makes the case that sustainable farming systems can reduce agriculture’s GHG emissions and be a primary vehicle to stabilize and reverse climate change, while continuing to provide food, feed, fiber, and energy in a changing climate.

Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), a trade and ag policy nonprofit, says this change will require a shift in focus, research and investment away from industrialized, input and fossil-fuel intensive agricultural practices toward low-input, resilient agricultural systems that increase carbon sequestration in the soil and lessen output of greenhouse gases.

One of those changes is to include more farmers, practical researchers and non-commercial entities, according to IATP’s Jim Harkness. Rodale Institute finds that farmer-to-farmer mediated information, preferably in on-farm field days, is the most effective way to promote organic agricultural practices. The Institute's work in Senegal (story series) shows the many ways that advanced research and best organic practices benefit family farms and communities that they support.

Harkness argues that unless the new Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases adopts a food security component, farmer involvement and multi-disciplinary approaches, it is likely to go the way of focusing on genetically engineered seeds with their dependence on high levels of synthetic inputs.

RI Blogs

Rodale Institute@COP15: Nurturing organic changes will re-shape ag impact on climate

©2011 RODALE INSTITUTE