There's more than just organic agriculture and products, regenerative agriculture is an increasingly used term, but what is it exactly? What constitutes regenerative practices?
Regenerative Agriculture is a system of farming that enhances ecosystem services and improves watersheds. Regenerative Agriculture aims to enrich our soils and capture the carbon in the soil and aboveground biomass. Intercropping is a form of regenerative agriculture practice where you grow two or more crops in proximity. When using the method of intercropping the goal is to have more of what you're growing on a certain amount of ecological piece of land. You'd have a greater yield of crops than using the single crop method. That's why farmers use intercropping to really enrich the soil and its microorganisms. - Za'Nedra Hills, 10th Grade Regenerative agriculture is made up of many different things, some of those things being the use of cover crops and intercropping patterns, as well as not using tillage. These agricultural practices improve soil health and cause there to be more diverse soil microbes. In contrast, there are 5 core principles to regenerative agriculture that consist of minimizing soil disturbance, maximizing crop diversity, keeping the soil covered, maintaining living roots all year, and integrating livestock. The practices relate to them because they all improve the soil and keep the earth healthy as well as us. Once we get the chance we will try our best to instill these practices in our community gardens and parks by using crops and plants that work together and cause these positive effects on the gardens. - Angel Espiritu, 10th grade Regenerative Agriculture is a system of farming that increases biodiversity, and improves the health of soil. In many ways it improves water sheds, carbon sequestration, and enhances ecosystem services. Practices that are used in Regenerative Agriculture include recycling as much farm waste as possible, and adding composted material from sources outside the farm. Tillage also known as (Till) is a practice used in farming that has been used to prepare seed beds. Despite the practice, many farmers decide not to use tillage as a method of preparing seed beds because of how it affects the soil. Tillage breaks up soil structure and destroys residue, which helps cushion the force of pounding raindrops. Therefore, farmers prefer (No Till) to leave plant residues on the ground, which can help keep the soil moist, and protect against evaporation caused by the sun and wind. All in all no tillage improves the health of soil and is a great practice for Regenerative Agriculture. -Daniel Finis Perez, 10th grade Regenerative Agriculture is a system with practices that increase biodiversity, enriches soil and overall improves an ecosystem. It also is used to capture carbon from the soil and biomass as well as more resilience to climate instability and keeps a healthy ecosystem. Regenerative agriculture improves biodiversity, especially in the soil. Many cover crops planted can help organisms come together by releasing sugar from their roots. This also pumps energy into the soil, providing more nutrients. In the winter, cover crops like oats and rye will die but will also drill compacted soil. This process is called Bio-drilling. After drilling into the soil, new plants can be grown in their place and when the roots start to grow, it will follow the network that the cover crop made. -Marvin Lopez, 10th grade
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What is sustainability? How does it relate to the food system and community health?
On this planet we have many resources that help us in our daily lives and we don't even realize it. As soon as the resources are gone we realize what we just lost and how we took it for granted but there is always something we can do to stop wasting the things we need. Sustainability is if we can do little things in our community we can make our resources last as long as we can make them. Some of those things are eating locally, maintaining a healthy diet, eating more plant based foods and paying attention to the production process of food. If people try this and stick to it we could have a lot more resources for future generations of people, which is one of our goals for this community and we hope to make it a community that can sustain its own health through local and healthy food. - Angel Espiritu, 10th grade Sustainability can be defined as the avoidance of the depletion of natural resources in order to maintain an ecological balance. Sustainability is critical to one’s health. In most cases we tend to consume certain foods that have been manufactured or “processed” that has affected its quality or nutritional value. In today's society we buy what we want or what we've been persuaded to, however we never really asked how fresh it is, how pure or clean, and how free of dangerous chemicals? According to “The Pleasures of Eating,” an article that discusses sustainability, Wendell Berry states “The passive American consumer, sitting down to a meal of pre-prepared or fast food, confronts a platter covered with inert, anonymous substances that have been processed, dyed, breaded, sauced, gravied, ground, pulped, strained, blended, prettified, and sanitized beyond resemblance to any part of any creature that ever lived.” As much as we like our pre prepared or fast food, it isn't sustainable nor healthy at all, and it’s better to be avoided. “There is, then, a politics of food that, like any politics, involves our freedom. We still (sometimes) remember that we cannot be free if our minds and voices are controlled by someone else. But we have neglected to understand that we cannot be free if our food and its sources are controlled by someone else. The condition of the passive consumer of food is not a democratic condition. One reason to eat responsibly is to live free.” Some ways we can eat more responsibly is by simply finding ways to maximize efficient use of natural resources. Eating locally, maintaining a healthy diet, and paying attention to the production process are all ways we can better our health and be more sustainable. At MSBF our goal is to create a community that can sustain its own health and wellness through local, culturally-appropriate, nutritious, & transparent food. - Daniel Finis Perez, 10th grade When I think of sustainability I think about maintaining a certain level of things. In this case we'd be sustaining a healthy diet for ourselves and our community. When tying this to our wonderful organization you can understand that's why we would like to give the South Berkeley community sustainability because it is the home of many wonderful people and they need to maintain a healthy diet so they can continue to thrive and grow together as a community. It'll be a community movement to start maintaining this dream of ours but it has to start somewhere. Sustainability really focuses on meeting the needs of the community and the people in it. We can improve so many people's lives by bringing sustainability into it. That's why we'd like to build a community garden and a space for the residents to feel safe and at home. -Za'Nedra Hills, 10th Grade |