https://phys.org/news/2024-05-soil-kansas-tribe-shifts-regenerative.html
'When one of the elders in the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska asked if he
could keep bees on the reservation, Tim Rhodd's answer was straightforward:
"Absolutely."
Soon, the bees started buzzing in the alfalfa fields. Then they started
pollinating.
Then they all died.
"Once we started looking into it, we found there was a chemical (class) called
neonicotinoid that caused the death of these bees," said Rhodd, the tribe's
chairperson. "That was the very, very first part of what I had seen that we
were doing things wrong."
Facing the reality that their soil was contaminated—and the realization that
the same harmful insecticides that killed the bees would be bad for them,
too—the Ioway started questioning their farming practices.
After receiving a grant in 2019, the tribe switched its farming operations from
monocropping—growing one plant in the same soil, year after year—to
regenerative agriculture, a process designed to promote biodiversity and soil
health by minimizing disturbances and maintaining living roots as much as
possible.
By caring for a rotation of diverse crops throughout the year—rather than
controlling the soil year-round for just one seasonal crop—farmers eliminate
the need for herbicides and pesticides.
Moving away from monocropping is as much a challenge to standard practice as it
is a physical feat. The so-called Green Revolution in the 1960s changed
industrial farming to address food shortages by ushering in the extensive use
of fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. Working to improve the yield of a
single crop became the norm, thanks in part to profitability and operational
efficiency.
But monocropping has been shown to damage soil health, and farmers' reliance on
pesticides and herbicides can harm pollinators and water supplies while insects
and weeds rapidly develop resistance to the chemicals.
"Just monocropping, eventually you use up all of your nutrients," said Olivia
Brien, tribe member and its director of communications. "And what happens is
that you run out of the nutrients to grow good food, so then you'd have a
desert. It becomes a desert."
The tribe's Ioway Farms operation has implemented regenerative practices and
indigenous methods across 2,400 acres of row crop production and 2,500 acres of
pastureland in rural northeast Kansas, near White Cloud. The tribe runs Ioway
Farms along with several other ventures—including a bee farm, a seed company, a
hemp farm and an orchard that includes pears, peaches, plums and apples.
The farm generates vital revenue for the tribe and helps the Ioway, also known
as the Báxoje, reconnect with their culture—and the land. The tribe found
historical evidence that diverse irrigation processes mimicking a more natural
system had been in place on the land within the past 200 years.'
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
