Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:08 Good planets. A hot zone tropic climb, thriving season blowing some breathing trees. Strong sunshine goods are hard to find. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:00:34 Good Planet.
Speaker 2 00:00:35 Hello, case squid listeners. It's every other Sunday again, and you're listening to sustainability now, a biweekly case, good radio show focused on environment, sustainability and social justice in the Monterey Bay region, California and the world. I'm your host, Ronnie Lipitz. We hear a lot these days about food crises and shortages around the world. Some are the result of war, some of hoarding by the wealthy and some because of drought. One of the greatest challenges facing agriculture today around the world is soil fertility. My guest today is Roland Bunch. He has worked in agricultural development for more than half a century in more than 50 nations in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Beginning in 1983, bunch began investigating and disseminating the use of plants that fertilized the soil now called green and your cover crops around the same time. He published the book Two Years of Corn, A Guide to People-Centered Agricultural Improvement, which has since been published in 10 languages and is an all-time bestseller in the field of agricultural development. He's been honored for his work with nominations for the Global 500 Award, the End, the Hunger Prize given by the President of the United States and the World Food Prize. Dr. Roland Bunch. Welcome to sustainability now.
Speaker 3 00:01:54 Thank you.
Speaker 2 00:01:55 Why don't we begin with a brief autobiography. Uh, tell us something about your background, your history, what you've done, what you're doing now, and why you're doing it. I know that's a big order, but I'm sure our listeners would like to hear about it. <laugh>.
Speaker 3 00:02:09 Well, I started working in agricultural development in developing countries way back in about 1967. I've spent a lot of time in the villages during those 60 years or so since then. And, uh, probably the most important things I've done was in 19 74, 75, as some people may remember, the OPEC nations raised the price of, of petroleum by getting together and limiting their supply that doubled fertilizer prices. And I knew at the time that there were about a billion small holder farmers around the world that that depended on chemical fertilizer already. And, uh, couldn't afford it. Once, once the price went up that high, not only couldn't afford it, but it was basically anti economical for them. They, they couldn't make any money growing their basic staples like, uh, maize or, or even potatoes and things like that. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> because, uh, they'd, they'd spend more money on the fertilizer than they, they they'd make on the increase in yields.
Speaker 3 00:03:10 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So I looked into the future. I, I looked at the, what was the likely, uh, supply and demand of, of per petroleum. And I realized that over time, you know, there, it would go up and down, but, but the general gist, the general, uh, uh, tendency was going to be increase increases in price over time. And of course, that's happened in spades. Um, fertilizer's just gone up another, I don't know, 50 to 80% in the last, uh, few years. So I realized that there had to be some sort of alternative and, uh, or at least we desperately needed an alternative. So I tried composting. It was way, way too much work if people were depending on, on local resources because, because, you know, if everybody in the village is, is getting material for a compost, they're gonna be walking three and four kilometers back and forth to every time they haul a, uh, say a hundred pounds of grass or something.
Speaker 3 00:04:15 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, I looked at, um, animal manure. Well, if, if a farmer has the eight or 10 animals it takes to fertilize just two or three acres of land, well, um, they're not poor anymore. <laugh>, those are not poor farmers. You have eight or 10 cattle. So finally we realized in, in, in the early 1980s, that really the only real, uh, solution to this problem was green mineral cover crops. In other words, plants that fertilized the soil. And of course, one of the beauties of these plants is that they can do much, much more than that. And we can talk about that later. But, uh, so since 19, the early 1980s, uh, our organization, the organization I had started in, in Honduras, plus a group of about 14 or 15 Brazilian agronomists that, that realized what the problem was and what they had, somebody had to do something about it, uh, started working with green manure cover crops and have been working with 'em ever since.
Speaker 3 00:05:16 So that's what, 45 years, 40 years of experience. And what we have found is there are well over a hundred Well, uh, that's getting into the technology <laugh>. That's okay. That's fine. And so I've been working on it ever since. Well, and then in 19, in, in, uh, 2010, I did a study for an organization in six different countries of Africa looking at, okay, what's happening with a African agriculture? They wanted to know what they should do. What I realized was that the droughts that everybody was blaming and still blames on global warming were only about 20% because of global warming. And 80% because the soils of small holder farmers had degraded very seriously during the 30 or 40 years before that mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so I, I, I realized, and in Africa, uh, you know, there was, there was just, that meant mass starvation.
Speaker 3 00:06:14 I mean, in Latin America, there were some other solutions. And, and, and frankly, uh, most of the poor in Latin America were already, landless had no land at all. So nothing in agriculture was gonna help them in Asia. There was a tremendous increase in, in, um, employment in the, in the urban areas with all sorts of industries. But in Africa, there was, there was nothing but starvation. And it was being caused not by, not mostly by, by, um, by climate change, but rather by soil deterioration. And, and so I moved to Africa because of that. I mean, I, I'd worked in Latin, I'd lived in Latin America for almost 40 years. I moved to Africa almost without knowing <laugh>. Very many people there. I moved to, to, uh, um, Nairobi. Nairobi. And, and I only had about two or three friends in, in, in <laugh> in the whole country.
Speaker 3 00:07:09 And so, but I moved because I realized that that, um, that there was gonna be mass starvation. And in fact, I wrote an article, uh, a whole chapter of a book, uh, the year later saying this. And of course, nobody agreed with me. Um, but now, you know, we're seeing it. We're seeing it happen. Uh, the number of people, according to United Nations who are in serious need of food aid has multiplied from less than 10 million in, in 2010 to, according to the United Nations, uh, 20 million in 2017. Two years ago it was, it was, uh, um, 40 million. And now this last year it was 60 million. So, and, and, and, and what's happened in addition to that is the World Food Program, who was sort of feeding all these people has run out of food because they've never had, they've never had a deal with these, these numbers mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so within the next two or three years, we're gonna have very, very serious problems. And I predict, again, prediction is a dangerous business, but, but I've been fairly successful at it in the past. Um, I predict that before the end of another decade, we're gonna have well over 60 million people dying of hunger in a, just in Africa alone. And that will be easily the largest, worst famine in world history.
Speaker 2 00:08:33 Mm. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>.
Speaker 3 00:08:34 So that's what I'm working on.
Speaker 2 00:08:36 <laugh>. Well, uh, so couple of questions, right? First of all, um, what, maybe you should explain what, what green manure is. Okay. And for our, for our listeners that that may not know.
Speaker 3 00:08:49 Yeah. And actually we call 'em green manure cover crops to distinguish 'em from green manures, because green manures, in fact, have a long history. Uh, there are, there are writings from ancient Greece and early China saying that, uh, you know, things like alfalfa and so forth could improve the soil. Uh, basically green manures are just, uh, like manure. They're fertilizers, but they're green. That's, that's, it's a very simple. Now, we also have added the cover crops, because cover crops cover the soil. Right. And thereby, uh, control weeds help control weeds. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So these are plants that do both those things. Actually, if I, if that's a name that we in the Brazilians came up with together many, many years ago. And so we continue to use it. But I would add something <laugh>, uh, I would try and figure out some way, something that certainly, at least in the definition of what they are, that they also can overcome the droughts. And that's the most important thing right now for farmers in Africa.
Speaker 2 00:09:48 So, so I mean, these are, these con these are nitrogen containing cover crops. Right? I mean, that's what, that's the important part of them, right? And they're, they're dug back into the soil where they, they decompose and enrich the soil, right? Yes. I mean, that's ba the basic process, and
Speaker 3 00:10:06 Well, that's the way they were used in, in the, uh, temperate climate countries, the wealthy countries, uh, for 2000 years. But it's not the best way to use them in, in developing countries among small holder farmers. Because first of all, digging all that material, you know, 30 or 40 tons of material and digging it under the soil on one hectare Yeah. Or say two or three acres is just an absolutely incredible job. And furthermore, in Africa would be women's work. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and women already have more work in Africa than they really should have to put up with mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, so green manure co we call, that's one of the reasons we call 'em green manure cover crops, cuz we don't dig 'em under. They just stay on top. And in fact, they have other rolls that are very, very important by being on top.
Speaker 3 00:10:53 In other words, they keep a little bit more moisture in the soil. Uh, they protect the soil from, from excessive heat, et cetera, et cetera. So, so there's a whole series of things that they can do, if we can, first of all. Well, and, and the other thing is that, um, green manures in the developed countries in the, in the richer countries, temperate climate countries, they're planted at the beginning of the planting season. And then they're, like you say, they're turned under, and then they people plant their regular crops in, in developing countries. If we do that, we're gonna lose a lot more of our crops to drought and so forth, because we've spent two months of the rainy season letting our greens uhhuh going, digging them under mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So, so we, it, and, and furthermore, we also have a, a very interesting advantage here in the tropics.
Speaker 3 00:11:41 And that is that the sun is more directly overhead. If you, if you look at the tropics, you know, geographically, they're in the area where the sun is at least directly overhead at least, uh, once or twice a year. That means that if you have a tall corn plant and a small bean plant, which of course, those were the basic staples in much of Latin America and even Africa for many years, both of them will get some sunlight because the sunlight's coming from directly overhead. If the sunlight's coming in an angle like it does in temperate countries, uh, then, then the, the maze, the tall maze completely shades the low beans. And the beads don't grow at all. So we have an advantage. We don't have to, to, um, rotate crops. We can inter crop, we can put everything in the same field. And this means that, you know, when we get started, it means we can have two or three crops producing food.
Speaker 3 00:12:32 And we, we give a strong preference to the, the nitrogen fixing plants that, that are good food, that, that produce, uh, that fix a lot of nitrogen. So if they in fact produce proteins, these th this means that these, these plants have another advantage in terms of producing food. But they also are doing what is probably the most important thing in this whole technology or way of working way of doing agriculture. And that is we are basically, as we get more and more plants in the field, many of them, uh, like you say, nitrogen fixing protein producing plants that are edible, um, we're gradually getting closer and closer to imitating the forest. Now, the forest has a whole handful of, of other benefits in addition to those. Um, one is, for instance, it, uh, uh, sequesters a tremendous amount of carbon, right? So that we're putting carbon back in the soil where it originally came from, instead of increasing amount of carbon in the air and causing even more, uh, climate change.
Speaker 3 00:13:41 And they're, they're all sorts of other advantages. I mean, insects, pests are no longer much of a problem. Plant diseases and, and so forth. So, so the, uh, by imitating a forest, um, we are able to, uh, grow our crops and at the same time have all the ec ecological advantages of a forest. Now, uh, one thing we have to do in that case is prune the trees so that the pretty trees don't produce too much shade for all the other plants, including the maze and so forth. So we do have to prune them once a year. But that just means the women, again, have to do less work because they don't have to carry so much, uh, firewood back to the house from way out in the forest. They can just carry it from their fields. Well,
Speaker 2 00:14:27 Let's, let's go back, um, to a question that I, I have, which is how has the soil become so degraded?
Speaker 3 00:14:34 Very good question. And it's also interesting that, you know, along with that question, the question of why is it happening to everybody at the same time, <laugh>, one of the, one of the reasons for that, well, okay, first of all, it's happening because farmers, for 2000 years in Africa, Asia and Latin America kept their soils fertile through a system that we sort of look down on and call slash and burn that system kept their soils fertile for, for, for well over 2000 years, sometimes 3000 years. In other words, it's tremendously sustainable. The problem is that as population increased in Africa over the last 40 years, it, uh, meant that the average farmer had less and less and less land. And that that meant that they couldn't let the forest grow there for, you know, 15 or 20 years, because then they wouldn't have any place, enough place to, to, to grow their food.
Speaker 3 00:15:33 So in order to grow enough food, they had to reduce the, the amount of time the forest was in their fields from usually 15 to 20 years down to 10, to eight to four. And right now, as we speak, that sort of, uh, uh, forest following, I prefer to call it or slash and burn, uh, that sort of forest following is on its deathbed across Africa. Now, one of the reasons that it's so general, and one of the reasons it's so important what the average is bec, is because the vast majority of farm small holder farmers in Africa have that amount of land precisely because of a very, very important and very positive thing that that has always been true in Africa. And that is that whereas in Latin America, maybe 30% or 40% of the people that you know, traditionally were small holder farmers and would still like to be, uh, can no no longer have any land because the large landowners have taken it all over and so forth.
Speaker 3 00:16:25 There's a tremendous inequality in terms of land. I mean, in many Latin American countries, you have, uh, maybe 20 or 25 people who control half the half the agricultural land. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> now in Africa, on the other hand, they have democratic systems in most of the villages where the land is, is distributed by the, the chiefs and the elders. And they, they do a very good job of keeping the land equitably, uh, distributed across the population, which means that in Africa, probably oh four fifths, I don't, I don't know the ac exact figure, but probably four fifths of small holder farmers in Africa have between one half and two and a half, excuse me, between, uh, two and four acres of land. Mm. Wow. Right now. So there's a huge population, a huge population, probably something close to half the population in Africa who are now, uh, in this situation of not being able to, uh, use forest follow or slash and burn agriculture or what they call migratory agriculture.
Speaker 3 00:17:27 Okay. Now, what does that mean? That is very, very important. And it's something that, that the, the, the entire world is pretty much overlooked. That means that since they can't forest follow the amount of organic matter in their soil has dropped from about four or 5% down to less than half percent. One half a percent. And that means in, in, in most of the soils, which are clayish become about as hard as a rock, uh, sci scientific, uh, research in, in Malawi itself, where I live, uh, has shown that in the 1980s, people were getting, uh, were, were, were, their, their soils were able to absorb an infiltrate. Um, about about 60% of all the rain that fell, sometimes 70%. Okay. Today, with the soil, as hard as it is total, very, very seriously deficient in organic matter, the o only 10 to 20% of the rainwater actually goes into the soil.
Speaker 3 00:18:24 What that means is that even though they're getting the same amount of rainfall as they did 30 or 40 years ago, which is in fact the case, global warming has not reduced the amount of rainfall across Africa, which is what everybody believes. What has happened is that, that rainfall cannot get into the soil. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> only one third to one sixth of the amount of water that used to get into the soil with the same amount of rainfall is now getting into the soil. Hmm. And that's why we're having what people see as droughts. There's, there's no water in the soil. There's very little water in the soil because it can't get into the soil.
Speaker 2 00:18:55 Let's say you're going into a village and you're going to, um, you know, work with the farmers, what do you do? Okay. I mean, you wrote this book, what is it? Two Ears of Corn mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Right? And, and, uh, I, I'd like to ask some more about that, but, but when you go into a village, let's say it's, it's one that you haven't been to before, if that's what happens mm-hmm. <affirmative>, what, what do you do? How do you, how do you go about, you know, starting to work with the farmers there?
Speaker 3 00:19:22 Okay, well, one problem is that farmers have been taught so many things that don't work for them, like chemical fertilizer and so forth, that they don't believe you ha you have a credibility gap before you even get to the village. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Okay. <laugh>. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Uh, so what you have to do is show them you have to take them somewhere if po if at all possible, take them somewhere where people are already doing this or have been doing it, hopefully for five or six years, so they're already not having droughts anymore. And you take, you take a group of farmers in Africa, an an average group of small holder farmers to a village where they're getting, uh, you know, two or three tons per hectare, excuse, you know, two or just hear the two or three tons. Don't worry about the measures, but they're getting two or three tons, which is, which is about two to three times what the average small holder farmer used to get on in a good year.
Speaker 3 00:20:09 Okay? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, they're getting two or three tons in a bad year. In a year when there's a tremendous drought and everybody's else's corn maze isn't even producing a third of a ton. You do that. They, they will become convinced, you know, they talk to the farmer a little bit, and the farmer tells 'em, well, yeah, I'm, I'm eating well every year. My family's doing well. The kids can go to school. We, we have a lot of leftover land that we can grow in things other than maze, so we can sell 'em and buy school books and, and, uh, you know, buy some decent clothes for my wife and, and a bicycle, so, et cetera, et cetera. Man, they go home and they wanna do it, and they will listen to everything you say and, and, and, and do it. Now, the second thing is we never ask 'em to do it on all their land, because frankly, a few years in, back in Guatemala in the 1970s, I asked people to do a certain thing.
Speaker 3 00:20:57 It was the wrong thing for their particular situation. And, and, and they went for a year without hardly anything to eat because their, their, their maze didn't grow. So, uh, I mean, I learned the hard way, but, but we never asked farmers to do anything on a large scale. We ask 'em to do it on a small scale, but there's another reason for that, a very important reason. And that is that they learn to experiment. They learn to experiment. And that is extremely important. The, you mentioned the book, two Ears of Corn, the most important messages in that, you know, 200 page book, I suppose, were teach the farmers to experiment and teach them to teach each other. And why is that important? Because that means that even if no other program ever comes to their villages, they are already in charge. They can already handle the two parts of agricultural development that always have to occur together, research and extension. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, they, they're handling the, the, they are developing new technologies by experimenting, and then they're spreading those new technologies to other farmers and other villages and so forth in the area. So they become empowered, if you will, uh, to carry on the agricultural development process by themselves. Now, if somebody else comes and gives 'em some ideas, sure, they can experiment with those ideas too. They will never again try everything, anything out on all their land, because they know that experimentation is extremely valuable.
Speaker 2 00:22:18 Do you comment into conflict with, uh, you and, and, and national development development agencies as a result of doing this?
Speaker 3 00:22:27 Sometimes, I mean, certainly they will say, well, this doesn't work. You know what, what, what you need to increase, uh, productivity is, is fertilizer. So if they're willing to listen, you know, we'll take 'em to a farmer who isn't using fertilizer, but is using these things and is getting better yields than, than the people with fertilizer. And furthermore, spending much, much less money. Um, if they won't listen, then, then we just have to do things our way. They do things their way, and eventually they'll, they'll come around.
Speaker 2 00:22:54 So, I, I did ask you this. I, I did pose this question to you right about, about, um, who you work with mm-hmm.
Speaker 3 00:23:01 <affirmative> mm-hmm. <affirmative>
Speaker 2 00:23:03 And, and, and who, you know, is that the result of experience? What's the, you know, the reason for working with working in one way rather than another with, you know, non-pro non NGOs rather than, I guess with, with other, uh, actors?
Speaker 3 00:23:21 Yeah. We work mostly with NGOs because we can pick and choose which NGOs we work with. Uh, you know, I'm not willing to say that all NGOs do good work. Uh, in fact, some do very poor work. Um, but I am willing to say that by and large, in most countries around the world, with a few exceptions, like perhaps, uh, Vietnam, China, and, and Brazil, uh, the governments are not doing good quality agricultural development work. And sometimes they're not doing any at all. I mean, you know, the, they're, but almost in any country, you can find at least three or four or five NGOs that are doing very high quality work. And during the last 40 years, see, I have done consultancies, uh, often even done, uh, evaluations for something over a hundred different NGOs. And that means that I have a as good an idea of as anybody of which NGOs are doing a really good quality job.
Speaker 3 00:24:15 And you've gotta do a good quality job to get, to get any kind of success. So, so I know which of the NGOs are doing good quality work. I can mention a few if you want. And, and, uh, uh, so we work with them, you know, and the governments will usually not be willing to, uh, take on a new technology until you've proven, you know, among 50,000 or a hundred thousand farmers or something like that, that this works well and works well under the conditions that rain in that particular country. So, so, you know, it, it's gonna be a long time before we can work with very many governments. And, but in the meantime, we're working with the highest quality NGOs that are around, and they're doing a good job.
Speaker 2 00:24:58 Uh, there's still, uh, you know, when, when I look, look around, there's still this sort of push from above, uh, you know, to adopt all kinds of techniques and, and the focus on cash crops, crops for export is even pushed in Africa, I believe. I could be wrong about, right? Yes. Um, and so the, uh, you know, there's, there's obviously a tension there, isn't there, between what's absolutely. What, where the funding is going
Speaker 3 00:25:28 Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:25:28 Right. And the results.
Speaker 3 00:25:30 Yeah. Well, they have more, they have no more room to grow cash drops, and they, uh, uh, than they have, have had in the past to, um, to grow trees. You know, they, they have to dedicate almost all of their land, or at least before we work with them at the, the level of harvest they're getting. They have to dedicate all of their land to food these days in order to be able to, uh, survive. So, so trying to get 'em to grow cash crops is gonna be a very, very difficult, you know, they just aren't gonna do it because they aren't gonna let their children go hungry so they can, you know, buy, uh, sell some cash crops. Partly, that's also because you could say, well, why don't they just, uh, produce some cash crops, uh, make money on those, and then they can buy the food. The thing is, the small holder farmers are not willing to trust their children's lives on the idea that markets are, are gonna be, uh, buying what they sell mm-hmm. <affirmative> and buying at a decent price mm-hmm. <affirmative> and selling them the kind of maze they like to eat. They, they, the markets are risky, and so they, and they aren't gonna risk their children's lives that way.
Speaker 2 00:26:33 Yeah. Uh, the, the reason I bring it up is that, that a years ago I was reading about, uh, agricultural technology in Egypt mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and the, the theme of the particular report was trying to get technology into the hands of small holders mm-hmm. <affirmative> mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know, with the goal of getting them to, to start to produce cash crops, including crops for export. I mean, that's right. It's, it's not just a matter of buying food and markets, it's that governments are looking for foreign exchange and they acquire that, or they hope to acquire that on the recommendation of the, uh, international agencies by growing things that can be exported to Europe. And, uh, do you see that kind of thing happening in Africa?
Speaker 3 00:27:18 Absolutely. Absolutely. And in Latin America and in Asia now in Latin America and Asia, in some cases it's more appropriate. Um, but, uh, it, it, it's just a no-go because of what I said, people are not gonna risk, you know, working with markets that, that, you know, don't guarantee anything. Um, they, they, they, they just feel it's less risk to, to grow maze and feed that to their children. They have, they have total control over it from start to finish. It's quite clear that this whole approach of especially of using fertilizer and so forth, is just not working. Even when cer fertilizers subsidize because of Bill Gates's efforts and so forth to subsidize fertilizer all over Africa, even when it's subsidized by 25, 50%, farmers are not making money off of it very well. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> now, if it's 50%, they used to, but now maybe a few years ago, but now they're losing their crops almost every second or third year to what they call drought.
Speaker 3 00:28:17 You know, they're just losing their crops. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, mm-hmm. <affirmative>, they get one 10th of the, the, uh, yield they normally do. There's no fertilizer on this earth that even when it's subsidized by 40 or 50% is gonna provide a farmer with a profit. If that farmer is losing their harvest every third or every second or third year. It just doesn't exist. And, and so, uh, well, there was a, there was a huge study done by the German government and a number of, uh, together with a number of, uh, German and I think other European NGOs, I'm not sure, but certainly German ones. And they showed that even though Bill Gates has been working in some of these countries for six or eight years, trying to improve the harvest and spending millions, billions of dollars, um, the harvest have gone down. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know, he's failed, he's failed miserably. And, uh, I understand he's now looking for alternatives, but he certainly hasn't come to us yet. <laugh>. So the thing is that, that, um, it's just not gonna work. And, and, and this, this failure of Bill Gates over the last six or eight years, you spending billions of dollars shows that I don't care what you do, if you, if you're depending on chemical fertilizers and traditional, uh, temperate climate technologies, uh, like rotations and stuff, you're just not gonna get there.
Speaker 2 00:29:40 Let's shift to a somewhat different topic. Okay. I mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, we read a lot and hear a lot about feeding the billions mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know, and they're, they're mostly by, by agricultural scientists who are sitting somewhere in the global north Right. Doing calculations. I'm being very cynical here. As you point out, there are a billion, how many small holders are farmers around the world? Is it that many? Is it more,
Speaker 3 00:30:06 Uh, yeah, it would be approximately that because each, each of, each of those people has, uh, you know, five family members. So you've got about five or 6 billion people altogether.
Speaker 2 00:30:15 And, well, anyway, from this, this perspective, this, I guess it's agronomist perspective, those small holders are seen as a problem. Right. There's, I mean, we hear, we hear again and again that small farms cannot address the food need, food needs of the future.
Speaker 3 00:30:32 That's not true.
Speaker 2 00:30:34 Okay. So with
Speaker 3 00:30:34 With the yields, with the yields, we are now getting with farmers who have used these green manure cover crops four or five years, so that they're, they're now quite resistant to drought. The small holder farmers of Africa could field all of Africa Well, and all of Europe. Okay. Uhhuh, I've done the calculations
Speaker 2 00:30:50 Uhhuh,
Speaker 3 00:30:51 That, that, that just is not true. And, and also what people who talk about these things tend to say is, well, the, the problem we're ha we aren't able to get people to use this, is that the small holder farmers are just, uh, traditional. They have all sorts of negative words, traditionalist, uh, ignorant, unwilling to learn, uh, stubborn, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The problem is that the people from the the north are teaching 'em the wrong things. That's the simple truth. And the farmers know it, and that's why they aren't doing it. It's not because they're dumb or stupid or traditionalist. It's because they know better than the, than the, uh, agronomists that under their conditions and with their priorities, there's no way that technology's gonna help 'em.
Speaker 2 00:31:33 And, and what about feeding cities? Can, can small holders do that as well? Feed cities? I'm,
Speaker 3 00:31:39 Well, when I, when I said that the small holder farmers could feed all of all of Africa and all of Europe, that includes the cities.
Speaker 2 00:31:44 Yes. You, you're, you're also a, a advocate of regenerative agriculture, right. You're, you're right. Maybe you can explain to us what that is, and then give us some stories about, you know, successes with regenerative agriculture and let's say greenman or cover crops.
Speaker 3 00:32:00 Regenerative agriculture is, is, is a very simple idea. And that means that while you're producing food, you're also, uh, actually improving the environment. And that's exactly what we do. You know, and there are all sorts of ways to do that, and not just green manure cover crops, but, but, uh, I think our, you know, I'm working with our way of doing it because I think it's by far the, the, uh, best for the small holder farmers in, in so many ways. But yes, we believe in regenerative agriculture. Now, in terms of examples, uh, one of the examples I love is a, uh, woman in Madagascar that, uh, we met one day, uh, she was working with a particular kind of, of cow p, which is just a type of pea, and, uh, it's a very good green manure cover crop if it's used the right way.
Speaker 3 00:32:45 And she, and about, uh, 25,000 people in that particular, uh, group of villages in Madagascar had found the right way. And, and the technology was spreading like mad. And this is what happens with green manures. It spreads. People think that green manures is something really new that never existed before, but in fact, there are about 15 million farmers around the world that are already using them. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and the majority of those farmers are using systems that were developed by small holder farmers themselves. They weren't even developed by agronomists, you know? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Now, there've been a few systems that I've helped develop. There've been a lot more systems that I've discovered around the world that other people have have shown villagers. But the still, today, most of the different ways of using green manures and species that we use were first discovered by small holder farmers somewhere, you know, and they started using, and that's amazing, because up until 30 years ago, they had, uh, like I said, forest following.
Speaker 3 00:33:39 They didn't need green manures, you know, it was only when they had to reduce the amount of forests they had and, and, and abandon very slowly. The, the whole system of, of forest following that green manures were really of much use. But nevertheless, in that time, in, in 30 or 40 years, you know, 15 million people have, have either developed systems or, or learned sy mostly learned systems from other people who did develop 'em. And, and, uh, these systems are, are growing daily mm-hmm. <affirmative> in terms of the number of people who use them. Anyway, back to this woman, uh, she had used a green manure for about five or six years. She'd achieved almost total resistance to droughts. And when I got there, she was trying out on a, on a, a new piece of land she'd bought. She was trying, she was planning them, and she showed me, uh, one field, whereas she had just planted the green manure cover crop for the first year and another where she'd already planted them for six years.
Speaker 3 00:34:39 And the difference was absolutely stunning. That's one of the pairs of pictures I, before and after pictures I have in my book, um, restoring this oil. Um, one in, in one case, there was very little ma there were very few maize plants that were growing much higher than, than maybe a little, a little, little over your waist. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> in the other one. You couldn't reach the top of the maize plants. They were, they were seven, eight feet tall. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, in one ca, in, in, in the first case where they'd only used the green manure one year, the yield was gonna be about one sixth of what it was in the per hec per hector or per acre. About one sixth, what it was in the fields where she'd been growing it for six years. It was, the field in the first place had all, a lot of the leaves were wrapped up, uh, very tightly, which is a symptom of, of, um, of, uh, drought. Yeah. And the other field who leaves, uh, most of the leaves were flat as a pancake. So, you know, those are the sorts of experiences that are occurring all over the world where people are experimenting with these things or have used them for a long time.
Speaker 2 00:35:43 Do you find that these systems are very localized?
Speaker 3 00:35:46 They depend on a whole series of factors that in some situations, in some cases, are localized? Yes. Now what we're doing in Africa is to find, uh, e ecological and, and cultural zones that are as large as possible. So we can work in areas where there's a tremendous amount of possible, of potential spontaneous spread. But yes, and, and it's the, the biggest problem with green manure cover crops is finding out which one is the best for your area. Because that will depend not only on the ecology, like, you know, are you a thousand feet above a thousand meters below sea level, or are you at sea level? That will completely change. Which, which, which ones you can use. Uh, which of these provide food that people like to eat? You know, they have, people have different taste preferences in different places. Some of 'em love lab lab bean, lab lab beans, for instance, which you've probably never heard of.
Speaker 3 00:36:37 And some of 'em absolutely adore them. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I mean, and others will hate 'em. They, they won't touch 'em. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> as far as feeding them. Then you've got market conditions. Where can they sell these? You know, if you, if they can sell their green manures, then that's economically one more advantage in the whole system. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, then there's other things like what are their traditional, well, for instance, they may not be growing maze, they may be growing cassava. So then what do you do if the soil is really, really bad? Then we have to start probably with a, with a, another one you've never heard of called Jack Bean, because it's extremely drought resistant and extremely resistant to poor soils, to degraded soils that have virtually nothing in them. So we'll start with a jack beam for a couple of years, but you can't eat the jack beam. So then what we do is we switch over to the, one of the ones that needs a little bit better, uh, ecological conditions and soil conditions, but that you can eat mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So you start out with Jack Bean, but two or three years later you put in lab lab bean or pigeon p or one of the other ones we use, uh, of the over a hundred species that are used around the world. And, and, uh, you know, that, that turns out to be the best possibility for the farmer.
Speaker 2 00:37:42 So, uh, have you, have you docu, are you documenting these different systems? How, how does that work?
Speaker 3 00:37:47 Absolutely. In fact, I've, I've written the book that I think I can say very clearly, very easily, without exaggerating that, uh, it's the, by far, the, well, it's the definitive description of how green manures are being used around the world by small holder farmers. It's called restoring the Soil. And, uh, it documents, uh, let's see about 130 different systems. Hmm. Using, uh, uh, I think I only wrote about, about 40 different species, uh, because those are the ones that are really the best ones to use almost anywhere. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and, uh, it's, you know, it's on sale. It's, it's, I'm now getting ready to, to write the third edition because two editions are largely sold out.
Speaker 2 00:38:29 So I have this, you know, there are a lot of small holders in California.
Speaker 3 00:38:33 Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 00:38:33 <affirmative>. Right. And I mean, I, I looked up the statistics. There're, there're like 45,000 farms that cultivate an average of 11 acres in California.
Speaker 3 00:38:44 I was totally surprised by that statistic. Totally
Speaker 2 00:38:46 Surprised. Well, you know, I mean, I'm, I'm inferring it from U S D A statistics. Yeah,
Speaker 3 00:38:50 Yeah, yeah. Well, that's fine.
Speaker 2 00:38:51 And a lot of, and a lot of those farms, of course, are hobby farms. They don't, yeah. You know, they don't make a whole lot of money. Uh, but I've been working with, uh, small, with Latino farmers, not too far away. Many of them who, who have maybe, you know, five acres, 10 acres or something like that, and they, and they face similar soil fertility challenges. Okay. So, you know, what should they be doing?
Speaker 3 00:39:18 Well, first of all, let me be honest and, and, and say that I haven't worked in, in temperate countries. And so I, I, I'm at a, a real disadvantage to, to find solutions, uh, because I don't have any experience, and I do believe that farmers are smart. You know, even the poorest, most uneducated farmers in the developing world are smart people. If you don't respect them and don't take into account what they say, you're gonna make tremendous mistakes. You, you, you're just not gonna get anywhere. And that, that is a very important thing for me to have said because, because, uh, I've worked with, well, I've, I've collaborated with, with does well hundreds of organizations, and it's very clear that the ones that don't have any respect for the small holder farmers just aren't getting anywhere. So I would want to go out and talk with these farmers and find out what the problems are, specifically what they think are the possibilities.
Speaker 3 00:40:10 Uh, and of course, I don't, I don't, I also don't believe, and there are some people in development that believe this, although they usually don't do it, but they believe it. In fact, what you ought to do do is go out and just tell, ask the farmers what they need and, and, and give it, get it for 'em. That doesn't work very well either, because there are some things that the small holder farmers don't know because they've had no, no, no way of knowing it. For instance, in most of the developing world, uh, farmers are not aware of the two or three green manure cover crop species that could most help 'em, because they don't even grow in the area. You know? So, so, so if you just go by what the farmers say, you're gonna wind up working with inferior species. I think if I, if I had to go out and, well, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be willing to do it.
Speaker 3 00:40:52 But if I had to go out and just give some advice to small holder farmers without even having a chance to talk with 'em, or get to know their farms, visit their farms and see what's happening, especially right before harvest, so I can see how their crops are doing, um, I would probably say just tell them that, look, there are a number of different plants, different peas and beans, you know, of those types that can fertilize the soil, and that could really help you out by increasing the organic matter content of their soil. That probably, if you're suffering from droughts, it's not because the rainfall has decreased, it's because you don't have enough organic matter in your soils. And furthermore, you want to choose ones that you can eat or sell, because well, that way you make you have more income and, and, and you know, you're, you're gonna be doing better off.
Speaker 3 00:41:39 So if, if it's possible. Now in, in the United States, a lot of these just aren't for sale. You know, people don't even know what a lab lab bean is or a pigeon pee, which is kind of shocking because the pigeon pee, this is one of the ones we use very widely here in Africa, is the fourth most widely eaten grain in the entire world. Rice comes first, wheat comes second, maize comes third, and pigeon P comes forth. And yet most Americans have no idea what what it is. It's eaten all over India, uh, in many parts of China, many parts of Africa, and even in the Caribbean and, and parts of Latin America. That was because the, the people who were brought over as slaves brought some of their sleep seeds, <laugh> mm-hmm. <affirmative> mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and, uh, they planted them in the new world.
Speaker 3 00:42:20 That is probably what I would say, and that's not very helpful. Uh, you know, that I could say a lot of other things that were more helpful if I could get to know their situation better. Okay. I can, I can say more about experimenting too. I would definitely tell 'em to experiment. That's, that's one thing they need to experiment, especially with these plants that can fertilize the soil. You know, it sounds like, well, they're gonna be experimenting, you know, you gotta be a scientist to do that. But in fact, all they have to do is learn to do, learn to, um, use about three simple principles. One is always have your experimental plot, a small experimental plot next to or very near where you're growing your crops in your traditional way, or you're, the way you're doing it presently, so that you can see what the difference is.
Speaker 3 00:43:02 Mm-hmm. <affirmative> secondly, only have one variable. In other words, change only one thing in your, in, in the present system you're using so that you know what it is that made the difference. If, if you have three or four variables between the two plots, then then, then you're not gonna know which of those two or three variables made the difference, if there is one. And then, um, a third thing would be, uh, be sure you measure very well your, your harvests and measure other things like the costs of, of each system so that you can compare 'em a a as well as possible. Um, among the, the results that you're gonna get from these things is, is, uh, not only, you know, more fertilized soils and, and soils that are a whole lot softer, uh, and, and, uh, allow water to penetrate and so forth because of all the organic matter. You're also gonna get the sequestration of carbon in the soil. Uh, you're gonna get, uh, from the trees that you're growing, you're gonna get firewood.
Speaker 2 00:43:59 What kind of trees are, are they fruit trees? Are they, um,
Speaker 3 00:44:02 No, usually, usually there are trees that we have selected because we've done experiments over the years with different trees to see which ones actually increase your yields more. You know, it's not even a matter of how much nitrogen they, they, I mean, scientists have looked at how much nitrogen all these trees, um, fix. But the problem is that, that, uh, a lot of times that nitrogen just never becomes available to, to, to crops. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and we don't even really know why mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, but the, the fact of the matter is we have now tried, oh, at least 60 or 80 different species of trees that farmers say, well, that helps my crops. And we've found two or three that really do a much better job than any others. Then there's other factors we look for in these trees. One is that, that, uh, cattle or other animals can, can eat the leaves.
Speaker 3 00:44:47 In other words, the leaves are edible for animals, because that's often a very, very important factor for smallholder farmers. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, they may only have one or two cattle, but if, if one of 'em dies because there's been a drought and they don't have anything to eat, that is a huge loss to the family, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, if, if in fact you have gla acid of trees on your field, which is the one we, the species of tree, we most like, if you have one or two of those trees, or even probably five or six would be better, then they start producing edible high protein leaves, uh, two to three months before the rains come. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, which means that when the animals are about ready to die, you have a tremendous source of, of, of something for them to eat, and you can save your animals.
Speaker 3 00:45:29 In fact, in the, in the droughty areas of the Sahel, just south of the Sahara in West Africa, um, this was the main reason people wanted glare city of trees was to save their animals, keep 'em from dying. Hmm. So there's lots of different, uh, benefits that these, these, uh, trees do. And one of the, uh, these plants, and one of the interesting things is that with a lot of these plants, you can also eat the leaves. Now, if you can eat the leaves, that means, okay, the hunger season occurs. You would think the hunger season occurs during the dry season, but it doesn't, it occurs while plants are growing, but you haven't gotten to harvest yet. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, that's when the hunger season is really worst. But, you know, two or three months before you get seeds or pods or anything like that, you have leaves.
Speaker 3 00:46:11 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And with many of these people who are cover crops, like the lab, lab I've mentioned, so often you can eat the leaves. Furthermore, because they're leg uses, well, for instance, the leaves of, and this is an amazing fact, but it is a fact. The leaves of lab, lab beans have, well, the lab lab beans themselves are 50%, have 50% more protein than, than our common beans here in the United States. In other words, when they're eating lab lab beans, they're getting 50% more protein per kilo than, than we do with our beans. And it's an African bean, it's one of the outside of soybeans, the finest bean ever discovered by humankind. And it was developed in Africa. One of the ways which, which Northerners have, have followed up Africa is they assumed when they went to Africa as colonialists, that their beans were, were more nutritious than the local beans.
Speaker 3 00:46:59 And so they, they, they kept farmers from growing lab, lab beans, got rid of 'em, and, and, and, and, and forced them to grow European beans, which were, like I say, uh, you know, 60% less, less nutritious than, than the mm-hmm. <affirmative> African ones. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. But anyway, with lab, lab beans, you can also eat the leaves. You can eat the pods, you can eat the green peas, and you can eat the dry beans, whichever you want. And in fact, you can eat leaves and beans, and the leaves will be on the plants within one month after you've planted your new crop. So during the vast majority and the worst part of the hunger season, you can be eating lab, lab beans, and like I say, get the same amount of protein you would from western beans and also dry the leaves and have them available all year round.
Speaker 3 00:47:40 Thi thi think of it, you have here a very cheap, extremely cheap, because it's just a byproduct of growing the lab. Lab beans themselves, you have an extremely cheap year round source of, of very good proteins, but they're also green leaves, so they have dark green leaves, so they have lots of vitamins and minerals, which means you have a almost free source of plentiful, source of proteins, vitamins, and minerals, which is available all year long. Now, that's a nutritionist's dream. Okay. <laugh>, you don't, there aren't very many ways you can get that from one, one plant.
Speaker 2 00:48:14 Are are they available in the United States as far as,
Speaker 3 00:48:17 You know? In some areas, yes. In very small quantities. They wouldn't grow in the northern United States. It would have to be in, in areas like Southern California and Florida and, and probably the southeast.
Speaker 2 00:48:27 Okay. I'm afraid we're out of time. Okay. Uh, but I want to thank you so much, uh, Dr. Bunch for being a guest on my guest on sustainability now.
Speaker 3 00:48:36 Yeah. I'm not a doctor, actually. I have a <crosstalk>. Oh, you're not agriculture, but, but not a, oh,
Speaker 2 00:48:40 Well, it sounds good. All right. <laugh>, next, next time I'll know <laugh>.
Speaker 3 00:48:45 Okay, <laugh>. Well, thank you very much for, for getting the word out about these sorts of things. I think it's really important, and I do hope that California farmers can, can pick up on these things. Uh, they won't be able to learn much from, from, from just what we've said, but, but maybe it'll get, it'll put a, they'll start thinking about it and trying it out.
Speaker 2 00:49:04 Okay. All right. Thanks again.
Speaker 3 00:49:06 Well, thank you. Thank you very much.
Speaker 2 00:49:10 If you'd like to listen to previous shows, you can find them at k squid.org/sustainability now, and Spotify, Google Podcasts, and Pockets among other podcast sites. So thanks for listening, and thanks to all the staff and volunteers who make Case Goodyear Community Radio Station and keep it going. And so until next, every other Sunday, sustainability, now
Speaker 1 00:49:40 Good planets a hot final, separate zones and tropics climbs not through currents and thriving seas. Wind blowing, breathing trees, strong zone, safe sunshine goods are hard to.
