Meet Tatenda Mambo. He is a farmer and researcher who wrote this incredible article about the fragility of mainstream agriculture. It makes our work fighting for locally adapted seeds in the Kingston Area even more urgent!
Efficient or resilient: Alberta must find the right balance to protect our food supply
“Last summer, a brutal heat dome knocked out crops across the prairies. But on our experimental farm just south of Calgary, it also gave a measure of hope.
At the University of Calgary’s Simon Farm Project near Blackie, Alta., we’re testing whether the traits found in locally-saved and traditional seed varieties can bring more resilience to our food production in the face of climate change.
It’s part of a larger research effort to help Alberta’s farmers shift their practices and weather the increased drought we know is coming.
The heat showed a difference between the various seed varieties we were testing, and it was staggering.
Most potatoes, kale and other plants from the seed of national distributors succumbed to the heat and withered away. The same plants from the locally-saved seed held on. (bo
This seed was from farmers in the region who had been planting and gathering it for at least 10 years, letting it acclimatize to our conditions. At the end of the day, despite four weeks of no significant rain and 27 C heat, we still got a modest harvest from the locally-acclimatized seed. (bold font is ours btw)
Of course, this is just one extreme summer and the work is ongoing, but the resilience of local seeds has been documented by other researchers. Traditional or Indigenous agricultural practices around the world have shown we can work with nature to produce our food in a manner that can restore and support ecological functions rather than degrade and erode them. And if we go back to incorporate these techniques, we can create a system that is more resilient.
Read the rest of the article here Please share it widely!
