By Mark Bittman

New York Times – October 19, 2012

IT’S becoming clear that we can grow all the food we need, and profitably, with far fewer chemicals. And I’m not talking about imposing some utopian vision of small organic farms on the world. Conventional agriculture can shed much of its chemical use — if it wants to.

This was hammered home once again in what may be the most important agricultural study this year, although it has been largely ignored by the media, two of the leading science journals and even one of the study’s sponsors, the often hapless Department of Agriculture.

The study was done on land owned by Iowa State University called the Marsden Farm. On Continue reading A Simple Fix for Farming →

By Christine Clarke, Massachusetts State Conservationist

Thank you Mr. Elmer O. Fippin. Who is Elmer O. Fippin? He was the soil scientist who mapped and wrote the 1903 publication entitled The Soil Survey of the Connecticut River Valley. Thanks to his groundbreaking work more than a century ago, we have the tools today to reduce the effects of drought and increase our ability to feed the world.

In 1899, Congress appropriated $16,000 to the USDA Bureau of Soils to conduct four soil Continue reading Sustainability grows in healthy soil →

By Evelyn Drawec

Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and the author of the foreword for State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet, is calling for some new thinking—and action—regarding world hunger. In his new report, Agroecology and the Right to Food, De Schutter argues that agroecology is the best strategy for tackling hunger.

De Schutter argues that agroecology is the best strategy for tackling hunger. (Photo credit: Bernard Pollack)

The twenty-one page report details agroecology’s ability to provide food for the world’s hungry, outlining policy recommendations that nations can implement in order to help shift their agriculture systems to more sustainable methods.  According to De Schutter, agroecological methods will be increasingly important as climate change takes a bigger hold on sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the developing world. “Agroecology also contributes to mitigating climate change, both by increasing carbon sinks in soil organic matter and above-ground biomass, and by avoiding carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gas emissions from farms by reducing direct and indirect energy use,” says De Schutter.

De Schutter also calls for incorporating individual small-scale farmers into the policy process as a way to disseminate their knowledge and help lift them out of poverty. As illustrated by De Schutter, “We won’t solve hunger and stop climate change with industrial farming on large plantations. The solution lies in supporting small-scale farmers’ knowledge and experimentation, and in raising incomes of smallholders so as to contribute to rural development.”

Small-scale farmers can double food production in a decade by using simple ecological methods, according to the findings of a new United Nations study released today, which calls for a fundamental shift towards agroecology as a poverty alleviation measure.

“To feed 9 billion people in 2050, we urgently need to adopt the most efficient farming techniques available,” says Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and author of the report, entitled “Agro-ecology and the right Continue reading UN expert makes case for ecological farming practices to boost food production →

A partnership between the Stockbridge School of Agriculture and the UMass Dining Services has helped to highlight the role of permaculture gardens in helping to improve the quality of life and of food in the region.   One of the donors to our efforts to grow more food at the local schools promised another financial gift if we could meet the goal of 10,000 views of our new video (posted below).

The opening of the video states….

An editorial the Daily Hampshire Gazette encouraged the local schools to grow more food for their cafeterias because “nothing is more local than produce grown outside classroom windows.”   A project initiated by Ryan Harb, Permaculture Academic Program Coordinator for the UMass Stockbridge School of Agriculture, will plant fruit and nut trees in three of the elementary schools in Amherst this fall and several gardens in the spring.

To help us meet our goal of 10,000 views (we are close) by Sunday and receive a donation of trees for the local schools, please click on the video below and share this with friends….

Thanks for your support!

As many of you know, the Stockbridge School of Agriculture has always offered exciting programs.  However, Over the last couple of months, significant changes have occurred which will make it even better than before. These changes are born out of a committee appointed to review agricultural education at UMass and develop approaches to strengthen all agricultural work at UMass. A refocus of agricultural efforts is now the main effort as a result of this review.

The approach that we began about 1.5 years ago was to elevate the Stockbridge School of
Agriculture to a full academic unit with a faculty, education offered at all levels from A.S. to Ph.D., and research and outreach responsibilities. It was difficult for the University’s system of governance to accept an academic unit with the title of “School” situated within a college, the College of Natural Sciences in our case, since schools usually referred to Continue reading Exciting Time at the UMass Stockbridge School of Agriculture →