Our current agriculture system is one of the leading climate-polluting industries and is responsible for a third of global gas emissions. It has depleted our natural resources with its extensive use of chemicals, machinery, and monoculture. We currently have less than 60 years of topsoil left (Reuters), and this is alarming because it’s the topmost layer of soil where 95% of food grows. (The Guardian)
The current agriculture system is also highly unequal. In a global food economy characterized by monopolies and economies of scale, many formerly agrarian countries across the world have become import-dependent consumers, foregoing their focus on local productivity and self-sufficiency. At the same time, we will need 60-70% more food by 2050 to meet future global demands. (FAO)
We must seriously rethink our agriculture systems in this decade to ensure that they work for the planet -- especially in the face of population increase and its accompanying increase in food demand.
Farms Not Arms (FNA), an actor of the UN Decade, is a design collective doing just that. They began working together to build a long-term, scalable solution for food security, climate change, and social cohesion.
FNA started working in Lebanon, a country with a multitude of complex, intertwined problems that are on the brink of financial and economic collapse, hosting the highest percentage of refugees in the world and is undergoing a massive food security crisis. Due to different policies that the government has been pursuing since the end of the civil war in 1990, Lebanon favoured imports over local production despite having the ability to grow locally. It currently imports 80% of its food (UNHCR), and when the currency devalued, this imported food became much more expensive and unattainable by the majority of the population.
They launched a design and systems thinking project to first look at problems that communities are facing in Lebanon and understand the local systemic factors, with this. These insights lead the on-building process.
Through this design process, they built a regenerative agricultural model that produces 3 times more food in any given space while fighting climate change by restoring soil health and increasing biodiversity. Their model also includes a community center where people can learn necessary regenerative agriculture skills and produce value-added products from the cultivated crops. Their solution is designed to be scalable, locally directed, and self-sustaining, ultimately creating an ever-expanding network of farms which contribute to a healthier planet.
In 2021, they launched Turba Farm as a women-led, regenerative organic farm in Zahle, Lebanon, based on this model. Turba, the Arabic word for soil, encompasses their values and focus of placing soil health front and center to heal our land, our communities, and our planet.
At Turba Farm, local and refugee women are at the forefront of restoring and cultivating the land. Their aim is to build social cohesion and create an inclusive space where host communities and refugees can work together and bond over food.
Their farm design is centered around regenerative agriculture with the goal of building a food forest as a self-balancing ecosystem. They include practices such as no-tilling, planting on raised beds, incorporating organic compost and manure, crop rotation, cover cropping, companion crops and more. They grow a wide array of crops that are enough to cover most, if not all, the yearly local diet, compared to the few crops that characterize monoculture. They intensively intercrop various plants on different levels, grouping ones that work synergistically. In doing so, they are building soil organic matter, increasing life in it, restoring its fertility, stopping erosion, and creating natural pest control.
Another huge focus is on increasing biodiversity and restoring native species. They are part of a newly formed seed saving network of local farms working together to save and propagate heirloom seeds of different grains, chickpeas, wheat, beans, and vegetables. For instance, they grow ancient heirloom wheat and chickpeas, both of which are native to the Middle East but are currently being imported. By planting a lot of diverse crops, herbs, flowers, and trees, they are attracting different pollinators, bees, ladybugs, insects and birds to the farm, which is, in turn, building a diverse ecosystem.
Their vision is to scale this farming model to create systemic change, both on the natural ecosystem and the local agricultural system, to achieve local food sovereignty while building dense, carbon-capturing food forests.
By growing food locally according to their model, they are increasing organic, high quality local food production in Lebanon by growing food more efficiently, nutritiously and in harmony with nature, while revitalizing the agriculture sector and repositioning it as a key cornerstone of the national economy.
They are also reimagining agriculture from one of the leading climate-polluting industries to one of the most potent solutions to mitigate climate change, restore soil, increase carbon sequestration, and preserve ecosystems.
Finally, in a post-pandemic world with increasing conflict, tenuous global supply chains, and exacerbated and palpable effects of climate change, the transition to a regenerative and localized food system is of crucial importance. The model that FNA has built and is applying at Turba Farm can be an important agent of change in the years to come to build food systems that work for everyone while actively restoring the planet.
This article is originally by Jehane Akiki of Farms not Arms.
The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030, led by the United Nations Environment Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and its partners, covers terrestrial as well as coastal and marine ecosystems. As a global call to action, it will draw together political support, scientific research and financial muscle to massively scale up restoration. Find out how you can contribute to the UN Decade. Follow #GenerationRestoration.