Poughkeepsie Farm Project A farm-based non-profit organization

1. As you find your seat, please take a minute to write down the ingredients in the meals you have eaten over the past 24 hours, using the groups provided.

2. Poughkeepsie Farm Project A farm-based non-profit organization Growing City Seeds: A new Community-PFP Collaboration

3. Growing City Seeds In the summer of 2011, the PFP partnered with the Cary Institute to write a grant that would: • Support the development of a plot for youth at the Fallkill Garden site • Provide support for educators who want to use the garden • Host community events to encourage gardening and healthy eating • Create a second community garden with a youth plot in Poughkeepsie based on an open space map and lead contamination data

4. What is biodiversity? • The total variation and richness found among all living organisms (plants, animals, fungi, microorganisms) • We can talk about: • Genetic diversity • Species diversity • Functional diversity • Ecosystem diversity

5. Who lives here? From Kareiva & Marvier, 2010

6. Who cares? • Genetic diversity ensures the ability of a community to withstand changes

7. Genetic Diversity 1 million died

8. Who cares? • Genetic diversity ensures the ability of a community to withstand changes – Emerald ash borer example • Ecosystem services – direct (food, fiber, timber) and indirect (water purification, climate regulation, pollination, intrinsic benefits)

9. Shade Grown Coffee • Increased bird, butterfly, and invertebrate diversity in shade grown coffee • Fewer chemical inputs, less energy, less erosion • Improved health for workers • Organic coffee does NOT equal shade grown coffee

10. Who cares? • Ecosystem services – direct (food, fiber, timber) and indirect (water purification, climate regulation, pollination, intrinsic benefits) • Genetic diversity ensures the ability of a community to withstand changes – Emerald ash borer example • Diverse communities may reduce your exposure to disease (dilution effect hypothesis)

11. What happens when you remove species from an ecosystem one by one? Keesing et al, Proceedings Roy Soc B, 2009

12. The current biodiversity crisis: One extinction happens somewhere every 20 minutes… …caused by human actions.

14. Causes of Extinction: major cause is habitat loss

15. How does this relate to food & farming?

17. How did we get from A to B? A B

18. What was the Green revolution?

19. The Green Revolution • Monocultures • Use of modern machines & infrastructure (watering systems) • Synthetic chemicals – fertilizers & pesticides • Hybrid seeds Credited with “saving” over a billion people from starvation

20. Why did this start in the 1950s? • After WWII, there was a surplus of ammonium nitrate = main ingredient in explosives, and a great fertilizer! • Corn needs a lot of fertilizer, and hybrid corn needs more • Hybrid corn was introduced in the 1930s but didn’t increase the yield until it was married to synthetic nitrogen • The Haber-Bosch process for fixing nitrogen is estimated to sustain 40% of the world’s population • More than half the world’s nitrogen is now man-made

21. World Grain Production The benefit: Increasing Yields The drawbacks… Fig. 10-17, p. 218

22. Is the world really “hungry”…? • Currently, world agriculture produces 17% more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70% population increase • There is currently enough food in the world to provide everyone with at least 2,720 calories per day • However, close to 1 billion people are considered “hungry”, or malnourished; most of those are in Asia and Africa. • The United Nations has adopted a goal of halving the numbers of undernourished people by 2015; as of 2009, the number of undernourished people has actually increased instead

23. Global Fertilizer Use:1961-63 vs. 1997-99

24. Source:  Compiled from Landsat Thematic Mapper satellite imagery, Iowa Dept. of Natural Resources.

25. Drawback: Pesticides, Fertilizers • Examples: Atrazine, DDT, Roundup, pyrethoid • Genetically engineered crops and pesticides – “Roundup Ready”

26. What happens to the fertilizer the plants don’t use? • Most farmers use more than 180lbs of fertilizer per acre (only need ~100 lbs) • What happens to excess? • evaporates and contributes to acid rain; • evaporates and becomes nitrous oxide which is a greenhouse gas; • runs off into the water Des Moines: blue baby disease

28. Global Impacts of Livestock • Produces 18% of greenhouse gas emissions • Uses 30% of the Earth’s total land surface • Example: Latin America pastures have replaced 70% of former Amazonian forests A double quarter pounder: used 3000 liters of water

29. Worldwide Picture • As income increases, meat consumption also increases • 80 % world’s food supply is industrialized agriculture (20% subsistence)

30. Why does industrial agriculture continue?

31. What this means for you and me…

32. Alternatives • Genetically Modified Foods - ? • Seeing the farm as an ecosystem: modifying farming practices • Seed saving

33. Amount of GM in the US • Soybeans – 93% • Corn – 86% • Cotton – 93% • Rapeseed (canola oil) – 93% • Tomatoes- taken off the market • Fish (salmon was the first approved) No labeling is currently required in the U.S.

34. Solution: Agroecology • Recognize the farm as an ecosystem: emphasis on adapting farm design and practice to the ecological processes already occurring in the fields and landscape • Focus on high crop diversity • Use an assortment of legumes (nitrogen!) and grasses • Use of animals to create small amounts of fertilizer • Use wetlands to reduce runoff and eutrophication • Use integrated pest management • Reduce tillage

35. Benefits of Organic Food • Biodiversity is higher on organic farms • Crops often do better because natural predators are left to eat the pests • Less energy and fewer chemicals are used on organic fields

36. What you can do: Buy local, buy organic, ask questions