Tag: Biodiversity

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How to Feed 7.6 billion People

Can our current farming systems keep up with a growing population, while also protecting the land we eat from? It’s a tough question, but a study published earlier this year suggest it is possible. The research focuses on farms in the Northern Plains of the United States, specifically those under a conventional corn production system versus those under a regenerative agriculture system. Farms included in the study that were using regenerative agriculture practices never tilled their fields, did not use insecticides, grazed their livestock on the cropland, and grew a mix of cover crop species. The conventional farms included in the study practiced tillage, used insecticides, and left the soil bare after harvest.

Researchers collected soil cores from each farm to determine the amount of organic matter within. This, along with the abundance of pest, yield, and profit were assessed. Yield in this case was the gross revenue. The study found that regenerative agriculture systems had 29% lower grain production, but had 78% higher profits- two times that of conventional agriculture. In addition, there were ten times the amount of pest on fields treated with insecticides, than those that were not. All of this is because regenerative agriculture allows for nature to do its job. Spraying insecticides on a field is not only harmful to the environment, but is ineffective. Insects can adapt to new chemicals and will persist even more when their natural predators are eliminated by insecticides. Biodiversity within cropland can reduce the amount of pest and their persistence. Regenerative agriculture raises organic matter in the soil which in return allows for increased soil infiltration, diverse soil life, less fertilization, and lower input costs. Also, systems that incorporate livestock and cropland can see higher profits from the livestock as they can feed on the cover crops, reducing fodder input and allowing more of the corn harvested to feed humans.  Conventional farming sees smaller profits because of the high seed, fertilizer, and insecticide investments.

Regenerative agriculture has become a sustainable alternative to traditional farming because it provides ecosystem services, while producing higher profits than the more input intensive conventional system. Like many recent studies, the outcomes favor the unconventional farming method and show increased profitability and farm health for those using regenerative agriculture. The abundance of new research in agriculture shows that we can feed the world if we simply change how we grow our food. There needs to be a shift in farming values that prioritize the land, resources, and the quality of food over high yield numbers.

Source: LaCanne, C.E., and Lundgren, J.G. 2018. Regenerative agriculture: merging farming and natural resource conservation profitably. PeerJ 6: e4428.

Photo source:  Flickr

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Data Sharing; How it Helped These Tropical Bears

Although you may never have heard of them before now, Helarctos malayamus better known as Sun bears (yes, believe it or not moon bears exist too),  are the smallest species of bear in the world.  These bears can be found in tropical forest habitats in Southeast Asia, but are sadly on the IUCN vulnerable species list.

Yet another animal attempting to survive in our growing anthropogenic world, the Sun Bear has seen a population loss of over 30% in the last few decades. This decrease is almost entirely in part to deforestation, and researchers at the university of South Carolina have good reason to believe these number aren’t slowing down anytime soon.  Using data captured from 1,463 non-baited camera traps spanning over 31 field sites all within Sun bear territory, the team found that there’s a direct correlation between tree cover and sun bear presence.  The bears were only seen in areas with over 20% cover (over a span of 6km^2 from the camera) and were 146% more likely to be found in areas with 80%+ tree cover then that of only 20%+.

Sleeping Sun Bear
A sun bear snoozes on a tree

A very interesting aspect of their study was the camera traps, which work by turning on and recording every time they sense movement in the area in front of them, weren’t specifically set up to find Sun bears. They were setup for a number of other studies being done on other species. However, the camera data was borrowed and used to collect population information on the Sun Bears which in regards to the other studies, was a byproduct. This reuse of data led to the findings of strong evidence in support of diminishing Sun Bear numbers, and has the potential to do it time and time again with completely different species.

The future implications on this are endless. If studies using camera traps to interpret information on one specific species, were to share they’re data across the world to other researchers attempting to learn something about completely different species found in that area. Then potentially huge knowledge gaps on all types of animals could be filled, and this doesn’t even include the economic proficiency that would come of it.

The overall takeaway is that if so much can be learned about our small bear friends in Southeast Asia using recycled camera footage (and knowledge from experts), who knows what else could be learned about other animals in that footage or other camera trap studies.

Source:

Mousseau T., 2017. Projecting range-wide sun bear population trends using tree cover and camera-trap bycatch data. PLoS One NO 12(9): 56-68.