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But where Bergen Community College aims to foster new farmers in a suburban-urban environment through vertical farms and hydroponics, Walla Walla’s program will expand upon an existing agroecology curriculum geared toward its rural students, many of whom may be seeking to bring their education back to family farms or other local agriculture.
The need for greater access to land, so that younger generations can have a role in equitable and accessible food production – most particularly in agroecological food production – is critical and demands that we find new pathways beyond ownership to invite their participation. Benton’s assertion of the need to include some ‘high-yield’ (i.e.
Diversity within livestock systems, as with having chickens or small ruminants follow cattle in a pasture-based rotation, also provides multiple benefits, including pest suppression. For example, research demonstrates that genetic diversity within a single-species monoculture may make yields more stable.
Research conducted by the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia further discovered that when GLSA fields are returned to agricultural use, the increased nitrogen levels lessen the need for fertilizers and the naturally enriched soil often produces increased crop yields compared to before the set-aside.
In response, the chapter centers agroecological solutions like enhanced soil health and diversified landscapes. The authors do not discuss the advantages of highly-managed pasture carbon sequestration outweighing the emissions of associated livestock. Fortunately, a focus on agroecological solutions has been gaining some traction.
He used a conventional approach: He diligently mowed his animals’ pastures to control weeds, added lime to make the soil less acidic, and applied fertilizer to boost productivity. Trees, they say, can protect farm animals from wind and sun, prevent erosion, stabilize streambanks, and yield marketable products like fruit and nuts.
More than just an explicit set of production practices, this way of farming is known as “agroecology”, and refers to working with, rather than against, nature. And most estimates have shown that land is a limiting factor if all animal-based protein were to be grazed responsibly on pasture, based on current dietary trends.
It has been argued that taking a lot of care of the systems which grow our food is unnecessary – in the UK many areas of East Anglia have been cropped intensively for decades and still maintain their yields. We have also found that cattle are ideal for grazing our wood pasture sites.
And for agroecological farmers and growers, this poses some difficulty. While Tyfu Cymru has been an important developmental body for horticulture, much more is needed to support agroecological fruit and vegetable production in Wales. Finding appropriate machinery for field-scale organic horticulture is hard.”
xiii] Yields are dropping, with large proportions of the UK’s soils moderately or severely degraded. xvi] Regenerative agriculture is key to flood resilience and prevention of the decimation of crop yields. Because of this lack of confidence, all farming sectors are expecting to decrease production over the next year.
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