Sítio Caminhos da Floresta is a farm that carries out regenerative agriculture practices, agroforestry systems, environmental education, organic food sales and courses and workshops on vegan and living food following the principles of agroecology.
Some things just don't biodegrade well here, and part of it is that we're still perfecting our composting workflow and making sure our heaps don't overdry and die in our arid environment. We're getting better all the time, and it's a learning process. But in the meantime, I've been doing a lot of research on biochar. Most of the USDA fact sheets only talk about using biochar from wood or agricultural "wastes" like cornstalks, straw, etc. However, I know for a fact that in much of South America it's common to burn animal bones, manure, and more.
So, talk to me about biochar! Do you use it? What do you burn? What have your results been? Do you combine it with other soil remediation tactics (compost, compost teas, etc.)?
@siin Don't have much direct experience with #biochar, but my friend Michael Whitman of BlueSkyBiochar does.
Biochar needs to be inoculated before you add it to the soil or it will suck nutrients out of the soil and into the char instead of the other way around.
So he says a really effective way to use your char is to add a layer on top of your compost pile whenever it's added to. This has the added benefit of capturing the methane and other gases produced by the composting process. And while the pile is cooking, nutrients are getting established inside the char.
WaPo finally posted a modest critique of meat industry greenwashing.
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Under another new California law, companies also must disclose the emissions created throughout their supply chains, and the Securities and Exchange Commission is working on a similar requirement.
It all has big food companies rushing to show progress in cutting emissions, particularly after so many of them promised to zero out their net release of greenhouse gases — known as going “carbon neutral” — by 2050 or earlier, in alignment with the Paris agreement on global warming. In the backdrop is a contentious debate over how those companies should calculate their carbon footprints.
The fight has shifted to an obscure independent organization called the GHG Protocol, a group made up of corporations, scientists and environmental groups that writes accounting rules for greenhouse gas emissions that will guide what climate claims companies can make under new state laws.
Among the companies involved in determining when and how farming and harvesting methods can be used to erase the emissions impact of products like hamburgers and dairy are McDonald’s, Nestlé and the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, to which meat giants Tyson Foods and Cargill belong.
The deliberations of the GHG Protocol, which is managed by the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, are kept confidential. But discord spilled into public in the fall, following its publication of draft guidelines for farm and forestry emissions. Dozens of environmental groups and academics say the rules as proposed would allow companies to declare climate-unfriendly products such as lumber, paper, beef and milk carbon neutral — or even carbon negative — by making modest land use adjustments that don’t truly mitigate the emissions of those products.
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There's certainly going to be more and more tension due to these corporations trying to find better greenwashing, better methods of faking data, more sophisticated bullshit.
A few days ago we welcomed a new addition on the farm. Relampaga (the brown and white cow in the picture) is June's (the black cow) first female calf. She is about 3 years old, and is now a first time mother. We now have three generations out in the field ♥️. She's an attentive mama, and protective of her baby.
We practice calf sharing with our cows, so mama and baby will not be separated for at least the first two weeks as we ease both of them into the milking routine. For now, every day I go out I check on mama, go through the motions of milking and make sure no mastitis sets in. She's going to be a very productive cow!
Once the calf is eating grass, and showing herself to be strong and healthy, we'll start separating her from her mama for about 10 to 12 hour overnight stretches. This will allow a nice bit of milk to build up that we will then take for ourselves before turning baby loose to freely nurse for the remainder of the day.
Now that I have two cows to milk, I'm going to have to get creative with so much milk. I just borrowed the neighbors cheese press, but I think I might also need to sew a strainer bag for making greek yogurt. I'm most excited about the possibility of building up a store of butter. 🤤
I've had cows fairly continuously for the last 11 years, and cannot imagine my life without one.
Hi! I'm Traci. My life story is a winding tale that has brought me here to La Azulita, in the mountainous state of Merida in western #Venezuela. I've been living here, working here, and raising my children here since 2012. I'm originally from Northern #Michigan (USA) and proudly so.
My life partner Michael and I live on a 13 hectare farm in the foothills of the Andes (apx 1300mts), overlooking the Sur de Lago region and Lake Maracaibo. We are passionate about #agroecology, #permaculture, and #regenerative everything. We are currently in the process of reforesting the majority of our property with #cacao, #coffee, and countless other productive #tropical trees. We also raise a variety of animals on the farm, including a small herd of dairy and beef cows, pigs, and a perennial flock of chickens. Michael does the vast majority of heavy lifting, though I am the dedicated milker of cows and cheesemaker. Other than that, I help where I can and document our progress when I have the chance.
Aside from being a "farmer's wife," I am a full time content writer for 16personalities.com. When inspired, I blog about what we're doing here on the farm, digging a little deeper into the philosophies that guide us, our story, strategies, and experiences here in Venezuela.
Other personal interests include #yoga and #wellness, audiobooks, holistic everything, human biology and the human condition in general, languages, and #travel.
I'm not always super active on social media, but I certainly enjoy checking in with the rest of the world through these virtual spaces, so let's connect!
La Ferme du Higas is an agroecological farm in the Toulouse region their produce vegetables, fruits, aromatic plants and eggs following the principles of permaculture and practicing regenerative agriculture.
Contrary to popular dogma, industrial agriculture cannot "feed the world." Below are seven key takeaways from a report comparing the industrial food chain to the smallholder peasant food web.
Peasants are the main or sole food providers to more than 70% of the world’s people, and peasants produce this food with often much less than 25% of the resources — including land, water, fossil fuels — used to get all of the world’s food to the table.
The industrial food chain uses at least 75% of the world’s agricultural resources and is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, but provides food to less than 30% of the world’s people.
For every $1 consumers pay to industrial food chain retailers, society pays another $2 for the industrial food chain’s health and environmental damages. The total bill for the industrial food chain's direct and indirect cost is 5 times governments’ annual military expenditure.
The industrial food chain lacks the agility to respond to climate change. Its research and development is not only distorted but also declining as it concentrates the global food market.
The peasant food web nurtures 9-100 times the biodiversity used by the industrial food chain, across plants, livestock, fish, and forests. Peasants have the knowledge, innovative energy and networks needed to respond to climate change; they have the operational scope and scale; and they are closest to the hungry and malnourished.
There is still much about our food systems that we don’t know we don’t know. Sometimes, the industrial food chain knows but isn’t telling. Other times, policymakers aren’t looking. Most often, we fail to consider the diverse knowledge systems in the peasant food web.
The bottom line: at least 3.9 billion people are either hungry or malnourished because the industrial food chain is too distorted, vastly too expensive, and — after 70 years of trying — just can’t scale up to feed the world.
The results of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD)* point in the same direction
understand it as the IPPC of agriculture, with the difference that it was only hold once, in 2008, partly because the results weren't what BigAg had wished for.
People sometimes come over and think it's weird that we have compost toilets. I personally find it weird that a significant percentage of the world's population excretes body wastes into ~a gallon of clean drinking water and flushes it 6-10 times a day, whilst a not insignificant portion of that same population is facing significant water shortages.
@khthoniaa right? Why can't your washing machine water or dishwasher water plumb into your toilet tank? What harm would there be in that? I guess the risk of a smell, if you don't use the bathroom for a few days and flush any particles out, but some engineer could find a solution for that I'm sure.
poor proles almanac, crime pays but botany doesn't, partisan gardens, propaganda by the seed, menominee food sovereignty podcast.
upstream, emergence magazine, live like the world is dying, future ecologies, last born in the wilderness, from what if to what next - all sometimes cover these topics but aren't as focused on them specifically.
skews pretty white dude but it's what i got right now.
do you have any good one?
also special shoutout to plants of the gods which is in this same space but really specific take on it all - all the episodes are about plants that will get you fucked up in some way
Remember when I posted months ago about putting together a #cacao nursery?
The plants have grown like mad & are slowly finding their way to permanent homes. And they are thriving. It's exciting to see the new growth they put on as soon as they're out of their nursery bags. Some of them are already over a meter tall!
@levampyre honestly, I don't know! We are considered "oceanic, warm, humid subtropical" on a couple of maps. We live at apx 1300m in the Venezuelan Andes. I've always considered it to be a mountainous cloud forest.