Con ganadería regenerativa, los suelos fijan carbono y aumenta la productividad

08/03/2023/by Argentina Gob

Regenerar es una palabra que proviene del latín y significa dar nueva vida a algo que se degeneró para restablecerlo o mejorarlo. Así lo define la Real Academia Española (RAE). Este concepto fue aplicado para diseñar el pastoreo en la unidad productiva “Nueva Palmira” del INTA Rafaela, Santa Fe, con muy buenos resultados. Este trabajo es fruto de un convenio de colaboración e investigación con Perennia Nodo Ovis 21 Santa Fe. Un adelanto de la Jornada Regional de Manejo de Pastizales Naturales, organizado por el INTA, que se realizará el 24 de agosto en San Cristóbal, Santa Fe.

De acuerdo con Virginia Mazzuca -extensionista del San Cristóbal, Santa Fe-, “el pastoreo planificado con manejo hístico apunta a mejorar todo el ambiente del sistema ganadero pastoril”. Según detalló, “se busca reestablecer la fertilidad natural de los suelos, al tiempo que mejora la biodiversidad con la aparición de nuevas especies.

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Are Corporate Claims of Regenerative Agriculture Real?

06/10/2021/by Gemma Alexander

Regenerative agriculture could save the world. Or at least it belongs in the toolbox to help reduce and reverse climate change. EarthDay.org chose it as a major theme for their 2021 campaigns because so few people are familiar with this important strategy.

But like so many good ideas, corporate marketing teams are already coopting regenerative agriculture into a meaningless buzzword. What is regenerative agriculture really? And how can you as a consumer separate the green from the greenwashed?

Regenerative Agriculture

Like other sustainable agriculture movements, regenerative agriculture focuses on the health of the soil. Conventional, agrochemical-based farming methods’ impacts on soil health are well documented: erosion, diminished tilth, and destruction of microbiotic communities.

Globally, more than 90% of conventionally farmed soils are thinning and a third of Earth’s soils are already degraded. Sustaining soil is not enough – it’s necessary to regenerate it.

Soil Schism

While everyone can agree that soil restoration is at the heart of regenerative agriculture, it is a fairly new movement that lacks the widely recognized standards of organic farming. The new system, Regenerative Organic Certified, is still fine-tuning its standards and has only issued a handful of certifications. There are two competing approaches to regenerative agriculture.

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Ditching Meat Isn’t the Answer for Climate Change. Better Farming Is.

05/17/2021/by Kyle Jasater

Suddenly, meat is out in the high-end food world. Eleven Madison Park, a New York City restaurant with three Michelin stars, recently announced that when it reopens after a pandemic-forced hiatus, the menu will be vegan. The cooking site Epicurious is no longer publishing new beef recipes, and the San Francisco restaurants run by another three-Michelin-starred chef, Dominique Crenn, went meatless a little over a year ago. Meat-substitute brands like Impossible Foods (which raised $200 million its latest round of venture capital funding last year) and rival Beyond Meat (which recently struck high-profile deals with Subway and KFC) are booming.

At first glance, this seems like good news. Many of these restaurants cite boosting sustainability and reducing their carbon footprint as reasons for their decisions; forcing the food system to reckon with how commercial meat production contributes to greenhouse gas emissions is a noble goal. But rejecting meat outright is unlikely to bring anywhere near enough consumers on board to solve the underlying environmental problems plaguing our food system.

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3 Big Myths About Modern Agriculture

04/19/2017/by Regeneration International

Author: David R. Montgomery | Published on: April 5, 2017

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research.

One of the biggest modern myths about agriculture is that organic farming is inherently sustainable. It can be, but it isn’t necessarily. After all, soil erosion from chemical-free tilled fields undermined the Roman Empire and other ancient societies around the world. Other agricultural myths hinder recognizing the potential to restore degraded soils to feed the world using fewer agrochemicals.

When I embarked on a six-month trip to visit farms around the world to research my forthcoming book, “Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life,” the innovative farmers I met showed me that regenerative farming practices can restore the world’s agricultural soils. In both the developed and developing worlds, these farmers rapidly rebuilt the fertility of their degraded soil, which then allowed them to maintain high yields using far less fertilizer and fewer pesticides.

Their experiences, and the results that I saw on their farms in North and South Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Ghana and Costa Rica, offer compelling evidence that the key to sustaining highly productive agriculture lies in rebuilding healthy, fertile soil. This journey also led me to question three pillars of conventional wisdom about today’s industrialized agrochemical agriculture: that it feeds the world, is a more efficient way to produce food and will be necessary to feed the future.

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Vital Changes to Farming Practices Remain a Tough Sell

12/19/2016/by Regeneration International

Author: Lisa Nikolau | Published on: December 9, 2016

Environmentalists have long been pushing for the use of regenerative agriculture, an alternative approach to farming they say can help the world’s poorest farmers and fight global food insecurity. Some experts say the biggest limitation of the approach may be just convincing enough of the world to adopt it.

Proponents of regenerative farming say the root of the world’s food insecurity problem is the way we grow food. According to the the U.N.’s 2013 Trade and Environment Review, the most widely used farming system is responsible for 43 percent to 57 percent of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions and results in the loss of 50 percent to 75 percent of cultivated soils’ natural carbon content.

The loss of vital nutrients in soil is due in part to overuse of pesticides and chemical fertilizers. The additives can also reduce resilience to flood and drought by removing the protective barrier provided by organic carbon.

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Where There’s Muck, There’s Money

12/18/2016/by Regeneration International

Author: Dave Chambers | Published on: December 14, 2016

Spier, in Stellenbosch, has earned R204,000 in carbon credits for reducing its carbon dioxide output by practising “regenerative farming”.

Twenty-seven farmworkers have shared half the money, receiving an average of R4,000 each.

“The farm has acquired the credits for sequestering 6493 tons of carbon dioxide in its soil, which is cultivated in as natural way as possible by using regenerative farming practices like high-density grazing,” said Spier livestock manager Angus McIntosh.

“This is a technique that involves frequent stock rotations aimed at using livestock to mimic nature by restoring carbon and nitrogen contained in livestock and poultry urine to the soil profile.”

The credits were bought by a South African bank, brokered by Credible Carbon, a business that facilitates carbon-trading through credits earned for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and global warming.

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