What if I say that there is a scientific approach to agriculture that can solve the food crisis and have been overlooked for 30 years already? And what if I say that the basics are so easy to understand and to apply that you and me can do it? You wouldn’t believe it, right. Well, here is some food for thought. 

We shouldn’t feed plants, but we should feed the soil. It is as simple as that. Mainstream agriculture considers the soil as a substrate for plant roots. You add the necessary minerals to the substrate, so that the plants can suck up the “food” from the water present in the substrate. Also organic agriculture thinks according to these lines. They consider the compost heap as the digester to produce fertiliser, and the compost as food for plants. Wrong, a slowly growing network of adepts to the new paradigm in Canada and France says so. In fact, the compost heap is a very energy and humus inefficient way of producing nutrients for the soil. The soil itself is far better in doing it. Why? Well because that is what a soil is supposed to do normally in forest ecosystems. It digests ”food”, like branches and leafs, into bio-active and nutrient rich humus, and the plants feed on the humus. 

Professor Lemieux from the Laval University in Canada is a forest scientist, and is mainly responsible for the new paradigm change. He wondered why podzol soils, the soils originally under coniferous forests were rich but very fragile after transforming them into agricultural soils, and why the soils under broad leaf forests were among the best agricultural soils in the world, also after long term use. 

His theory is that the “leftovers” after the soil has “eaten” the organic materials contain more stable humus molecules, in the form of aromatic carbon rings, if the food was from broad leafed hard wood, then when it was material from conifers. These ring-shaped humus molecules can hold large quantities of water, more than clay molecules, and are home for bacteria that bind nitrogen from the atmosphere and even for enzymes that transform inactive phosphorus into bio-active one. The lack of phosphorus availability has always been thought as the Achilles’ heel of organic agriculture, as it is present in compost only in very low quantities. Forest soils though are very rich in phosphorus but also in nitrogen, and it seems that no scientist until now really bothered to question why this was so. 

Several teams of Lemieux tested his hypothesis in different climate regions and soils during more than 20 years of research. He found that, if you want to use soils for agricultural purposes, the best food for the soil was simply shredded branches spread on the soil in a layer of 3 cm thick, once in the 3 to 5 years. He called this the Ramial Chipped Wood Technology (RCW). Branches, just after they have lost their leafs contain the most interesting organic substances of the tree, like sugars, enzymes, proteins, and not entirely polymerised lignine (wood). It is the best food for the soil, and yet presently mostly burned as residue of forestry and landscape management.   

After the RCW treatment, the case studies showed that no additional fertiliser was needed, production rose significantly, and irrigation was no longer needed due to the enormously improved water retention and decreased evaporation. 

Depending on the decomposition rate, for the first treatment an application consists of about 200 to 300 m3 wood chips per hectare. Then after 4 to 5 years a smaller quantity is used to keep the layer thickness 2 to 3 cm. In case forests are not close, one should consider to (re)plant tree hedges. To produce sufficient wood chips for fertilisation of one hectare of crop land, one need about 400 meter of hedges, preferably hard wood like oak. 

To imitate forest conditions in agricultural soils is a true revolution. At the moment, farmers just getting used to another way to conserve the soil: Conservation Agriculture (CA). In this type of agriculture crop residues are left on the soil and deep ploughing is considered bad for the soil structure and not necessary. Lemieux gives in fact the theoretical basis for Conservation Agriculture, adding one important element: wood!
 
To know more about RCW in practice you can visit Jacky Deputy, a French farmer, who regularly gives workshops on the subject. See his presentation on our website:
http://www.rebelfarmer.org/ferme-du-pouzat.html

See an interview with him on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coSnb27ZtqA


Other links:

“The hidden world that feeds us: the living soil": article with theoretical basis of RCW technology
http://www.crdi.ca/uploads/user-S/10753309691The_hidden.doc

“Regenerating soils with Ramial Chipped Wood”: article describing the application of RCW
http://www.sbf.ulaval.ca/brf/regenerating_soils_98.html

Video: RCW explained by a representative of the RWC “movement” in France (In French)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTAIF2RYWcU&feature=related

Yesterday I went to see the movie “There is a problem with cow nr. 80” (1). A French movie, by Dirk Barrez, about the insanity of the liberalization of agricultural markets causing millions of small farmers around the world to stop their livelihood because they cannot face the foreign competition. In short: big farmers are taking over, Monsanto and Round Up are coming in, destroying soil and human health, and finally people move to cities hoping on a better chance there. The film was shown as part of the AlimenTERRA festival in order to debate this issue with a larger public. Conclusion of the debate: each country should have the right to protect their farmers. Unfortunately I was too tired of listening to the movie that I couldn’t speak properly French anymore. So I put something on this blog instead.

RebelFarmer is concerned with keeping rural communities on the countryside. Communities that can earn a living not only with agriculture, but moreover with the management of natural resources in general: safeguarding biodiversity, producing renewable energy, gathering and processing forest by-products, soil and water conservation, landscape maintenance etc. etc. If they would be properly paid for doing that, a whole lot of people would not have to find their luck in cities. But they aren’t.

Ofcourse we need more campaigns to promote family scaled ecofarmers to produce for local consumers. Ecofarmers are one of the few rural businesses that get a little bit money, as part of the premium price, to take care of the environment. But with all the campaigns in the world, you would not be able to convince all consumers to pay this premium price. There will remain many people that oppose to organic farming. And many will say they can’t afford to pay the premium price.  However, if you ask people if they would allow the government to take measures in order to have a sustainable countryside and agriculture, without Monsanto and RoundUp, I am optimistic about reaching a majority saying yes.

Current EU hectare payments (“direct payments”) are unequally sponsoring intensive-large scale farms. Although the EU needs to “decouple” its agricultural support from the distorting effects on the world market, they still cause overproduction in Europe and dumping practices in developing countries that try to build up their own agricultural sector. About 30% of the total EU budget, more than 30 billion Euro, goes to European hectare payments each year until 2013 (In 2009: 42,8 billion). What else can we do with this money? Just to mention a few possibilities:

Improve soil
Agricultural soils in Europe have dangerously low humus contents and are eroding (4). Although some scientists still believe that agricultural production on sterile substrate with mineral fertilization is the future, many recent studies show that a good soil is a far more easy, less risky and cheaper solution to fertilize plants. Massive mulching and composting to improve humus content of agricultural soils is therefor necessary. But farmers are not willing to apply this obvious method, because it makes the production process more expensive, and the negative results of the present tillage practices will only show up later. Why not give farmers the ability to buy more compost and apply non-tillage techniques?

Terracing and maintaining dry walls
Terraces are in decay everywhere in Europe, they are overgrown with bushes and walls are falling down. It causes loss of biodiversity and a well-appreciated cultural heritage in general, fire risks in Mediterranean countries and increased risk on floods in the Alps region. Farmers don’t have interest in terraces at this moment. But saving terraces with new techniques, and making them more accessible, would create an enormous future availability of new high quality farm land. 

Ponds and wetlands on agricultural lands
They are badly needed for amphibians and birds. But ofcourse take space or cause water damage to crops. Why not compensate farmers to maintain such nature areas?

Natural plot borders
They are needed for young birds to flee too when the grass is mowed, for wild flora to grow, for insects (who eat bugs who eat crops!), and finally for filtering run off water. Why not compensate for each meter “nature”?

Hedgerows
These old suppliers of biomass and handicraft material are standing in the way for modern farmers, and take space. But they are needed for many bird species and mammals (many of them eating mice!).

Old breeds and varieties
Besides they are nice or taste nice, we need their genes for later crossing. Even GMO projects need them. Gene banks turned out not to be able to guarantee the saving of all the stocked genes.

Consumer groups
Why not paying some people to organise local marketing, for a better balance between of local offer and demand?

Farm experiments and research
Farmers themselves have a seriously underestimated intuition and ideas on what could be good for their land, crops and animals. They should get much more the ability to initiate and participate in agricultural research.

The EU does move already in that direction; things like “second pillar” subsidies and “agri-environment” measures”, and “cross compliance”, on which I will not elaborate here. But they do not currently result in something significant, let alone stopping polluting agriculture and rural exodus. EU citizens find a lively and sustainable countryside extremely important (4). So let’s give the EU another push by demanding that the direct hectare payments should be transformed within the ten year coming into measure payments to help farmers maintain soil fertility and biodiversity, two of the most precious resources of our planet guaranteeing the productivity of the future!

Links:
1. “Vache numero 80 a un problem”

2. Explanation about the EU Agricultural Budget

3. European Soil Bureau

4. Research on European citizens support for agriculture and rural development

Today I called Stoyan, the chef cook of the Kovatsj Farm Restaurant, situated in the Strandzha Nature Park, Bulgaria, to ask about some "Scheisse". He has about 200 buffaloes on his farm. The first thing he did when I visited him earlier this year to ask if he could roast a lamb for the tourists of our Shepherd Tour, he let us taste his fresh buffalo milk cheese to proof his culinary qualities.  Now I asked his cooperation in a composting project and inquired about the availability of the buffalo dung.

What is so interesting about composting?

Well, suppose compost was all around and plenty available, it can give you a marvelous highly productive substrate for making an organic vegetable garden anywhere you want, even on the worst soils and in the smallest places. See for example the lively discussions about so-called raised bed agriculture on one of the more than  600.000 google links: www.raisedbedgardeningtips.com.

Another interesting thing about compost is that is gives back humus content to the arable lands that is alarmingly decreasing everywhere in the world. The carbon molecule strings of humus are little wonders in maintaining water for the soil and offering a favorable living place for micro-organisms that help the plants in getting their food. Unfortunately, by tilling the land, and exposing it to water and wind, the humus content is mineralised, which makes the land even more sensitive to erosion. Besides erosion, this humus depletion contributes significantly to the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere!

But the most intriguing about compost is the following. While it is expected that the costs of the fabrication of nitrogen in artificial fertilizer will rise enormously because of the high amount of energy that is needed, and given the fact that with the current use rate of phosphates its sources are depleted this century, we have to seriously ask ourselves if we have to return to compost as main nutrition for agricultural plants.

Now the secret: where to get those enormous amounts of compost?

Ofcourse we are pooing ourselves a lot. But unfortunately we do not really have influence on what people drop in the sewers. So in fact, besides the occasional emptying of car batteries, the sludge is polluted with medicines and hormones, impossible to remove, we really don’ t want to have in the food cycle. All the sludge in the world would even not be enough to maintain soil fertility.

The problem is that we need digesters that are able to eat things, that we cannot eat ourselves. Traditionally: cattle. Here we have a bit more control: we can use the compost of organic cattle, like Stoyan’s buffaloes. But unfortunately this is still not enough! And we don’ t want to have more cattle in the world. Burping cows are one of the largest contributors to the greenhouse effect.

Now I found something else. A lot of trees standing in the way and wood digesting bacteria!

The Strandhza Nature Park in Bulgaria has a lot of forest but also about 8000 ha of pastures. These meadows were once used by more than 100.000 sheep in a transhumance culture that flourished until the WWII. And before that by natural grazing animals. Since thousands of years the ecosystem adapted to this grazing regime, and as a result a type of flora developed, unique for Bulgaria, and Europe. But like elsewhere in Europe, intensive agriculture took over and the pastures are gradually overgrown by pioneer shrubs and forest.

In Eastern Europe, it is estimated that about 30% of the traditional agricultural land lay fallow. Nobody is interested to plant something, or to use the grass because the farming in isolated areas, on mountainous land turned to be not profitable for the small farmers and for the old collectives that are left on their own after the collapse of the communist system.

Our Shepherd Tour, walking with the shepherd in Bulgaria, an attempt to pay the shepherd by means of tourism, had a lot of difficulties to make progress because so many trees and sharp bushes stood in the way. Our shepherd casually notified me after one week walking that 4 of the 110 sheep, that we started off with, were missing. I suspect that some of them unfortunately could not escape from the raspberry bushes …

Taking biomass from abandoned lands in Europe is not worth the trouble for cattle breeding alone. But it seems that it is useful for other things: tourism, rare flora, sheep and dog genes, vultures and….compost!  

The pioneer in using woody biomass for making compost was Jean Pain, a forester in the south of France in the 60’s and 70’s. He had similar problems with abandoned land. In his case the dry bushes caught easily fire and destroyed 100’s of hectares of forest each year.
He discovered a method to digest wood chips by cutting them in little slices and put them in a huge pile. An old documentary describing the process has been put on you tube, a must see for compost freaks!
Jean Pain Method documentary part 1

Essentially it is not composting, but digesting. Composting transforms biomass mostly into CO2. Compost is the residue. Digesting can ideally transform 30% of the carbon content into biogas. And you end up with the same amount of compost. With a pile of 40 ton wood chips he produced sufficient methane gas for his household and to drive his 2CV for 18 months.

I say ideally, because with the legendary, open air  “Jean Pain Method”, considerable amounts of methane might escape into the atmosphere, something that we also nowadays try to avoid. So now there is a smart company who has built a concrete tank around the pile, connected some water tubes and computers, patented it and sells the technology as “BEKON Dry Fermentation”.

I will take the fancy brochure of this company to Stoyan and the mayors of the municipalities in Strandzha Nature Park, to impress them with the high tech opportunities for these deprived areas. But probably we will end up by building an old fashion compost pile with RebelFarmer volunteers next year. And hopefully we can borrow the tractor of the collective to get those nasty bushes out!

Nature Farming links
-EU Soil Thematic Strategy (2003): Nature and extent of soil erosion in Europe
-European Environment Agency (2004): High Value Nature Farmland, characteristics, trends and policy challenges
-Seminar presentations (2004): Abandoned lands in the new members states and candidate countries of the EU and the EU Common Agricultural Policy

Composting links
- The Cornell Institute Composting Homepage
- The Science and Engineering of Composting
- The Practical Handbook of Compost Engineering
- The Digestion Archives

Biogas links
- www.builditsolar.com
- www.sare.org

The biggest producer of Camembert, The Lactalis group, is forced by the French consumers, to return to the original quality definition of the Normandian Camembert, the last camembert that just until March this year, was supposed to be made of raw milk. Lactalis is the number two milk processing company in the world, with over 30.000 employees (1).

Earlier this year they successfully lobbied within the Normandian AOC quality committee to accept their new technology consisting of moderate heating and "laboratory made” types of bacteria. Lactalis came up with this high tech solution because they found it too risky to sell raw milk cheese in supermarkets because of possible Listeria poisoning. Now the brand new factory has to close its doors because French consumers are not eating it (2).

Reducing substantially the varieties of bacteria and fungi’s in our food will ruin our immune system, especially the ones of our children. (for example one GMO type instead of 100's of local types in one cheese). This is the view of the famous Pasteur Institute (3) expressed in a movie made especially about raw cheeses in France “Ces fromages qu'on assassine! ” (These are the cheeses we kill!) and a radio programme on a conference about the beneficial effects of bacteria in food on the immune system.  How many people died of Listeria in raw milk cheese? I have heard about one case that triggered the whole anti-raw milk movement in France. Probably there are a few more, but how many people in the future will have allergies (or die) because of a not properly functioning immune system? ? At the moment 25% of the French population suffer from some kind of allergy. Recent studies show, like was found in the Pasteur Institute, that raw milk (products) for children in cities are the one of the most efficient and practical means to build a good immune system! (4)

Luckily the French consumers got back their senses, and decided en masse not to buy the new product. Probably more because a typical  produit regional was in danger than because of health reasons, but àla! The workers of the closed factory are said to be able to continue working in one of the other many factories of Lactalis. This news will certainly reinforce the Slow Food network in France who has been fighting hard for Lait Cru, and managed to gather 20.000 signatures for the European Union in order to raise awareness on this issue (5).

1) http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camembert_de_Normandie
2) www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/2008/09/27/lactalis
3) Documentary of Joël Santoni and Jean Charles Deniau with Périco Légasse and Erik Svensson. See:  http://programmes.france3.fr/documentaires
4) Doctor Dominique Angèle Vuitton, Emeritus Professor in Immunology of the Université de Franche-Comté and Xavier Bertrand, Microbiologist in the “Service d’hygiène hospitalière et d’épidémiologie moléculaire" of the CHU in Besançon cited on the French radio: www.canalacademie.com/Fromages-au-lait-cru-amis-ou.html
5) www.slowfood.fr

What is so serious is not only that the bees themselves are dying off without a smoking gun present, but that most people have no idea of the role they play in the food supply at large."If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man." - Albert Einstein.
Various explanations for the bee die off include pesticides, GM Crops, shift of the earth magnetic field or bee diseases but the bottom line is no one knows. Those with influence, step up and vigorously demand a prominent forum, and with loud voice, get people to put energy and resources into this issue!!
Short video: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/silence-of-the-bees/full-episode/251/

Multinational agricultural “engineering” companies, like Monsanto, want to safeguard their investment in the development of new varieties of animals and crops, by patenting their “invention”.
This economic reality has been backed up by governments around the world in accepting patents on life forms. But now these companies are asking patents on crops that you might grow in your own back garden! The European Patent Office has recently granted a patent to a brocoli and tomato variety obtained by conventional crossing techniques.
A global action platform has been formed:
www.no-patents-on-seeds.org
Network in France: www.semencespaysannes.org

Millions of farmers around the world practice what is often called organic agriculture and over a billion people get most of their food from these farms. Although only a small portion of these farms are certified as "organic" by outside agents and little of the food they produce is labeled organic, the global market for organic foods is growing -- as are the pressures for certification. Some argue that this organic market boom presents a big opportunity for small farmers, but there are clearly many challenges, and some fear that the existing organic certification systems are in fact doing the reverse -- setting the stage for big agribusiness to take over. Now these tensions are coming to a head with seeds.

Most of the world's organic farming is based on the wealth of seed diversity that farmers have created and sustained through generations of local seed exchange and improvement systems and traditional knowledge. But, today, new regulations governing seeds in organic farming, more attuned to the needs of seed corporations than seed savers, are popping up everywhere, with potentially devastating consequences for farmer seed systems.

Click here to read the briefing: www.grain.org
Network in France: www.semencespaysannes.org

A French producer of organic seed of old races cannot longer sell them legally because of the impossibility to register them all according to the new EU legislation. It is very expensive and the seed are not “stable” enough.

Strange: the fact that they are not stable genetically is the main reason why we have agro-biodiversity…..
But this year they lost a trial against the French state. This means in fact that all producers of local races and varieties are in trouble and hence the agro-biodiversity!

See more info on the website of this producer:
www.kokopelli.asso.fr
EU regulation: www.organic-europe.net