In his new book Against the Grain author and journalist Roger Thurow shows how farmers around the world are finding success by returning to regenerative agricultural practices. By farming in a way that works with nature, these producers are able to feed their communities, improve soil health, and restore biodiversity.
Smallholder family farmers, Thurow tells Food Tank, are “on the front lines of this great collision of these two supreme imperatives of humanity: nourishing the planet and…at the same time healing the planet.”
Accomplishing this goal is difficult, however, when many food producers have found that the conventional farming practices that they relied on “had turned against them,” Thurow says. During his years of research and travel, he developed relationships with people whose lands were degrading, water disappearing, pollinators declining, and biodiversity vanishing.
But the changing landscape has never only signaled a worrying future for the health of the planet; it is also a warning for those looking to solve the hunger crisis. “Our quest to end hunger and malnutrition will be unending and wretchedly unsuccessful,” Thurow tells Food Tank, “if we don’t also do something about…healing the land and the planet.”
The future, according to the farmers Thurow has spoken with, “is ugly” if the world stays on its current path. But these producers also know that it doesn’t have to be this way. “There’s not an inevitability,” Thurow says.
Against the Grain spotlights the success stories of farmers globally, from India’s Indo-Gangetic Plain to Africa’s Great Rift Valley, who are rejecting a way of farming that has put them and their communities in such danger. And instead, they are forging a new path forward, often by looking back to traditional practices that have fed the planet for centuries.
These smallholders are planting trees, diversifying their farms, healing the soil, and ultimately nourishing their families while restoring their land. It’s their wisdom and experience that will show the world how to move into the future, Thurow says.
“Hopefully the farmers in the book come out very much as heroes of the story.”
Listen to the full conversation with Roger Thurow on “Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg” to learn more about Against the Grain, the farmers that Thurow has met and learned from, and why Thurow recommends “getting uncomfortable with the notion that we need to do things differently.”
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Photo courtesy of genvessel, Wikimedia Commons
