Rita Bober
Norm Bober
Ken Dahlberg, Chairperson
Maynard Kaufman
Michael Kruk
Jim Laatsch
Lisa Phillips, Treasurer
Michael Phillips
Thom Phillips
Jan Ryan, Secretary
Jon Towne, Newsletter Editor
2016
marks the 40 year anniversary of Michigan Land Trustees of
America. Much of that history is documented in past issues of
this newsletter beginning in 1979 and can be read at
www.michiganlandtrust.org. MLT is a 501c(3) non profit whose
focus has changed from owning and hosting the Land Trust Homesteading
Farm and the Homesteading school on it to Permaculture (hosting a
Permaculture Design Course), funding startup organizations such as
MOFFA, a Kalamazoo community gardens project,Greater Grand Rapids Food
Systems Council, the Harvest Festival at Tiller’s International and
many more. The organization “has money in the bank”, has
quarterly meetings complete with fabulous potlucks and manages to
publish this biannual newsletter. There is always room for new
blood and we may be contacted by the emails on our web page or at the
end of this issue. We always accept new membership as demonstrated on
the last page of this newsletter. Go to the website to contribute
through PayPal. Another way to participate is to submit an
article for this newsletter.
To this issue at
hand: Most people assume the answer to climate change means
reforming transportation and our energy sector to rely on renewable
energy sources, but as Maynard points out, agriculture is part
(actually half) of the cause and must be a major part of the solution.
A Book Review by Maynard Kaufman
THE CARBON FARMING SOLUTION
by Eric Toensmeier
A Global Toolkit of Perennial Crops and Regenerative Agricultural
Practices for Climate Change Mitigation and Food Security (White River
Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2016) 344 pages
text, 50 pages appendices, 84 pages bibliography, notes and
index. $75.00
As far as I know, this is the second large and
comprehensive book to argue the need to restore the excess carbon in
the atmosphere back into the soil and biomass. The first,
Geotherapy, was reviewed in the Spring, 2015, issue of this
newsletter. The author of this second book, Eric Toensmeier,
comes to the idea of carbon farming from a quite different place.
He has published books and articles on permaculture and, while not
neglecting annual crops, he emphasizes the special value of
agroforestry and perennial crops for the sequestration of carbon.
There may be a kind of poetic justice in assigning
the task of carbon sequestration to agriculture because deforestation
and tillage agriculture have caused nearly half of the emissions of
carbon dioxide over the centuries. The burning of fossil fuels in
our industrial era has added the second half. (12)
Agricultural emissions continue today, so the need to change how food
is raised is urgent. Many agricultural soils have lost between
25% and 75% of their organic matter through deforestation and tillage
that oxidizes the organic matter which is 58% carbon. This
gradually reduces the productivity of the soil.
The need to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere is also urgent because carbon dioxide is already
functioning as a greenhouse gas that is warming the planet and melting
the glaciers. At the same time it is no less urgent to reduce
emissions by reducing the burning of fossil fuels. This is the
two-fold challenge: to sequester the carbon dioxide already
causing global warming and to reduce emissions. Today's
generation must take on this challenge if human civilization is to
survive.
If we remember that Michigan Land Trustees was one
of the first groups in Michigan to sponsor a Permaculture Design
Course, in 1985, we can proudly continue to affirm the value of
permaculture. A drive past what was once called the “Land Trust
Homesteading Farm” will reveal the evidence of the permaculture
plantings that Jon Towne has done and continues to do. Many of
the trees that Jon planted have come from Ken Asmus at Oikos Tree
Crops, who is one of Toensmeier's heros (156). If
Toensmeier's book gets the readers it deserves, permaculture will
continue to find more acceptance.
Before we turn to a review of the contents of this
book on carbon farming we must ask whether carbon farming can bring the
parts per million of carbon dioxide down from about 400 today to a
safer 350 parts per million. Toensmeier explained that “as
of 2009, the total excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 200
billion tons” (17). How much of this can carbon farming
sequester? Not nearly all of it. The least that can
be said of the various kinds of carbon farming is that they are no
longer contributing to the problem but are part of the solution in
slowing the process of global warming. Toensmeier clearly shows that
agroforestry can sequester more carbon dioxide than annual
crops. In this respect the book is a correction of the IPCC
(International Panel on Climate Change) which had been skeptical about
the kinds of perennial crops that Toensmeier is promoting (65, 90).
The text of The Carbon Farming Solution consists of
five parts. Part One, “The Big Idea,” reviews the general issues
surrounding climate change, such as those discussed here so far.
Part Two, “A Global Toolkit of Practices and Species,” introduces
different systems, such as Annual Cropping, Livestock, Perennial
Cropping, along with an introduction to Species. Part Three,
“Perennial Staple Crops,” and Part Four, “Perennial Industrial
Crops,” each include seven chapters of different types of crops and
list these crops along with their salient characteristics. These
might include the crop's uses, its yields, how to harvest it, its
carbon farming applications, and how it might be developed. These
fourteen chapters can be considered as reference materials about crops
that could or should be developed in different parts of the
globe. They also illustrate the tremendous range of possibility
provided by new crops and practices.
The final part of the book, “Road Map to
Implementation,” consists of five chapters on the economic and
political aspects of carbon farming. The main point here is that
farmers should be remunerated for the risks they sustain as they invest
in new crops or change their practices in favor of more carbon
sequestration. Farmers may also need help in making the
transition from annual to perennial plants which may take several years
to come into production. Earlier in the book Toensmeier cited
statistics from a study showing that if farmers were paid $100 per ton
of carbon sequestered they would sequester much more than if they were
paid only $20 per ton (36-37). And where would the money to pay
carbon farmers come from? One possibility is a straight tax on
carbon, paid at the point of origin, which would help to “internalize”
the costs of burning fossil fuels which are now “externalized” and make
us all suffer the ravages of climate change (330).
The costs of transitioning to carbon farming are
likely to be greater in temperate regions where industrial modes of
producing annual crops prevail. In many parts of the world,
especially in humid tropical areas, farmers have already grown
polycultures of perennial species, including agroforestry. They have
done so for the sake of higher production and food security. What
may be new to them is the idea of doing it in order to sequester carbon
dioxide (320-321). Toensmeier repeatedly praises “homegardens”
which is a technical term for perennial polycultures designed primarily
for household production and not to be confused with our idea of a
backyard garden. In polycultures, where several species of plants
are grown in the same area, there is likely to be an “overyield”
greater than that of a single species in the same area (67).
Will farmers want to change their ways?
Although they have learned to be conservative and reluctant to change,
they will change when they see their neighbors who have changed enjoy
higher productivity. As carbon farming takes hold it could double
global food production on the same amount of land as restoring carbon
to the soil restores its fertility. This avoids the need to
clear more land for farming (322). Here as elsewhere, carbon
farming embodies the permaculture principle of multifunctionality,
doing several things at once (51-61).
Although our author tries to avoid expressing a
political bias, he seems to favor small-scale, indigenous, subsistence
farming over those who raise food in a capitalistic mode. If
permaculture is multi-functional, those who reduce agriculture to the
sole function of making money are perverting the more generous
possibilities of agriculture.
Toensmeier's book should help Americans to recognize
the role farming can play in the climate change problem. In our
country, where food production has been taken over by corporate powers
and transformed into a commodity, it has been “distanced” from
the 98% of the population who are not farmers. Americans are
generally ignorant about how food is raised and what else farmers could
do by way of carbon farming. This helps to explain why
“geoengineering” (52) is such a popular strategy, for example,
inventing a machine to separate carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere
and burying it deep in the earth. Eaters who learn about
these issues are left with the political task of lobbying for a price
or tax on carbon so money is available to farmers who are willing to
make the transition to carbon farming. Although this will not
solve the problem by itself, it is a necessary part of the solution.
I want to conclude by expressing appreciation for
the patient effort of research it must have taken to write this very
factual book. The author has maintained a calm style of writing,
and even in Part Five, where the issues he discusses are so terribly
important and urgent, his rhetoric is still modest and
restrained. The downside of this is that these final
chapters seem weak because his rhetoric is not as powerful as his
subject.
By bringing our focus to another
book, Rita continues to help us remember what our food and our lives
are connected to.
The Resilient Garden
By Rita Bober
Gardens are designed for good times, times when
everything is going well. But often, things are not going
well. We have health problems or injuries that reduce our ability
to garden, or we are caring for a beloved parent who is slipping into
their last days. A garden can sustain us physically and
emotionally, if only we had the time or health to get out there and
work in it. Sometimes hard times may affect not just us but our
entire neighborhood, country, or planet. It may be that these
times are temporary and require only survival until things get
better. Or they may be permanent, and require a new and different
way of living. In the book, The Resilient Gardener: Food
Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times, the author Carol Deppe
shares techniques on growing, storing, and using five crops she feels
are central to self-reliance: potatoes, corn, beans, squash, and
eggs.
Because Deppe has celiac disease, which is an
intolerance to wheat gluten, as well as sensitivities to soy and dairy
products, I was interested in reading her book because I have similar
sensitivities. Being unable to eat foods with these ingredients
deprives one of the food patterns of our culture. It creates a
kind of personal “hard times.” Through her book, I am learning
alternative food to grow in our garden. Deppe has a PhD in
biology and a BS in zoology. She is an experienced scientist who
researched and developed crops for organic growing conditions.
Take corn, for example. She cooked and
evaluated hundreds of heirloom and traditional corn varieties.
She found there were many flavors that were delicious. Flint corn
can be cooked into polenta (cornmeal mush), while other varieties can
be used for parched corn (a healthful snack and camping food) and
making cornbread, corn cakes, and savory brown corn gravy. Flint
corn varieties recommended include: Narragansett Indian Flint, Rhode
Island Whitecap, Longfellow Flint among others. Flour corns
include: Mandan Red, Tuscarora, and black or blue flour corns such as
Hopi Blue. She has also developed her own seed varieties such as
Magic Manna. She shares how to grow, save, and dry corn seeds and
includes recipes.
In our garden, we have grown dry beans in years
past, but not recently. Deppe describes the bean family and other
legumes as the richest source of protein in the plant world. They
are also an excellent source of fiber and have a low glycemic index
(good food for diabetics). She suggests they are easier to
harvest and thresh than all other grains except corn. These
legumes can be used in a variety of ways such as dry beans, fresh green
shelled beans, bean pods, and sometimes shoots, flowers, tendrils,
leaves, or roots. They can also be used as cover or green manure
crops, and for animal forage, pasture, and hay. Deppe describes
the best ways to prepare dry beans to fit our digestive system.
Flageolet, Black Coco and Gaucho are types of dry beans she
recommends. We tried the Gaucho beans in our garden and they grew
quite well and can be used in a variety of recipes.
Many diet specialists don’t
recommend potatoes. They feel “white” potatoes contain too many
calories and can affect our glycemic levels. Deppe argues that we
need a certain amount of carbohydrates, protein, and vitamin C.
These are all provided in our diet through potatoes. If one needs
to watch their weight, she suggests that potatoes have about the same
or lower caloric density as cooked grains such as rice, pasta, or
bread. Slightly less than ¼ pound of brown rice has 119 calories,
a single piece of bread, depending on the size and recipe, has 80-110
calories. A hundred grams of baked potatoes (a small potato),
however, has only 93 calories and a hundred grams of potato boiled in
the skin has even fewer – 80 calories. However, if we fry our
potatoes, we double the caloric content. So these should only be
an occasional treat.
Protein is the second most important nutritional
value of potatoes. Deppe indicates that, of plant foods, only
legumes provide substantially more protein per unit of dry weight than
potatoes. An all-potato diet would, however, be deficient in
essential fatty acids, vitamin A and some other vitamins and
minerals. So we would need to include other products in our diet
to cover these. Eating too many potatoes at one time can also
cause a high glycemic reaction. Potatoes digest very quickly and
can cause a fast release of sugar into the bloodstream which can affect
diabetics. Thus you will need to take this into account when you
work potatoes into your diet.
Deppe states that there is no such thing as an
all-purpose potato if you want true gourmet flavor and quality.
For baking and mashing, try Butte Russet or Yukon Gold. Yukon
Gold and All-Blue are good for boiled potatoes and Yukon Gold is a
favorite for potato salads. If you want to avoid pesticide
residues from store bought potatoes, growing your own organic potatoes
will give you excellent flavor, are easy to grow and store for
year-round eating.
We often find that the squash we bought at the store
or even the Farmer’s Market doesn’t taste very good. Deppe states
that this is because squash is usually picked immature and is sold
uncured. So growing your own is a great way to get fully mature
squash and to cure them ourselves. Harvest squash when the vines
die down, or the stems are too dry or dead, or when frost
threatens. Curing takes about two weeks to four weeks depending
on the variety. Keep the stem on the squash if you want to keep
it for any length of time. Sweet Meat-Oregon Homestead and
Sunshine F are two squashes Deppe recommends for the serious homestead
food supply. Delicatas, and Small Sugar Pie pumpkins are also
highly recommended. Norm and I grow butternut squash. We
love the flavor and save enough to last the whole winter.
Knowing how to grow staple foods promotes individual
happiness and survival. A community that has many gardeners who
know how to do these things is a healthy and resilient community. It’s
a community able to thrive in good times and survive the rest.
Visit Carol’s Web site at www.caroldeppe.com to
learn more and view her seed catalog. She now has a new book on
growing greens (listed below).
Resources: The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Self-Reliance
in Uncertain Times. Carol Deppe, 2010, Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, Vermont. The Tao of Vegetable Gardening: Cultivating
Tomatoes, Greens, Peas, Beans, Squash, Joy and Serenity. Carol
Deppe, 2015, Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, Vermont.
Adapted from articles originally published in the Lawton Free Reader.
I recently scanned
and uploaded a couple of documents from the mid 1980’s. The first
is Sally Kaufman’s “Homesteading Schools Revisited” a 60 page pdf
of articles and contributions from participants from the 2 homesteading
schools published in 1988. The other is my 1984 permaculture plan
for the Land Trust Homesteading Farm. This was done before the
Permaculture Design Course we hosted in 1985 that I was a “graduate”
of. Both of these can be downloaded along with other good
articles at: http://www.michiganlandtrust.org/ARTICLES.HTM Yours truly, this
newsletter editor, has been diligently planting trees this
spring. I am converting a 5 + acre pasture and somewhat marginal
farmland(probably good blueberry ground though), to zone 4
forests. As a background: We sold our small cattle “herd” and
much of this farm is without a “use” (as if that is necessary). I
have just planted 700 white and red pines on an approximately 20f X 20f
grid. The purpose of this is to plant the beginnings of a tree
overstory very quickly while forming a “template” to more leisurely
plant nut trees and other hardwoods over the next several years.
The field has been unplowed for 30 years with grasses, birdsfoot
trefoil, dewberries and other open field plants including a couple of
species of milkweeds. There are many honeylocust seedlings
“planted” (and fertilized!) by the cattle pastured there until 2 years
ago that I intend to let contribute to the tree overstory. I am
also planning for understory plants like hazelnuts, rubus sp,
dogwoods,serviceberries, etc. A project for the rest of this
century!
MLT Newsletter