8
Restoring Our Farms and Rural Economies

Almost lost among the more than 7,000 islands of the Philippines is the little 150,000-acre island of Guimaras, with its 130,000 residents. The Azgar family farm sits on a hill in the village of Sebaste, overlooking the tranquil turquoise waters of the Guimaras Strait. The Azgars are among the pioneers of restorative agriculture, which is revolutionizing ranches and farms of all sizes around the globe, already accounting for billions of dollars.

As recently as the early ‘90s, the Azgar farm, despite a location that has all the usual ingredients of paradise, was a site of devastation. It was surrounded by dry, barren land—the legacy of slash-and-burn clear-cutting of the once-lush forest. Now, thanks to a project funded and managed by the U.S.-based charity, Save the Children, the Azgars are in paradise again. Since 1992, the Azgars’ farming practices have been a contributing factor in restoring the forest and watershed, restoring the health of their farm, restoring the health of nearby fisheries, all while restoring 114the finances of their family and community. Though they currently refer to their style of farming as “agro-forestry,” it’s more accurately called restorative agriculture, since not all agro-forestry starts with debilitated land and brings it back to life.

By restoring the watershed, the Azgars are reducing the silt that washes off the hills and kills nearby reefs and mangroves, which are critically important nurseries for sea life. The Philippines had 1,125,000 acres of mangroves at the beginning of the twentieth century, and just 375,000 acres at the end of the century. The Azgars are thereby contributing to the restoration of local fisheries for their nonfarming neighbors, most of whom use small sailing or paddled boats, and thus can’t go far afield.

Of more immediate importance to the Azgars, their assets have swelled from 5,000 pesos (U.S.$100) to about a million pesos. They’ve leveraged these newfound assets as collateral for loans that enabled them to diversify, such as by purchasing beehives to pollinate crops and trees while producing honey. The mahogany trees they planted will be har-vestable around 2006, when they thin out the crop and add yet another revenue stream.

At over 75 million citizens, the Philippines has the fourteenth largest population in the world, and is doubling its numbers every 30 years, because the country also has the highest fertility rate in Asia. This population explosion has already surpassed the capacity of Philippine fisheries. Former fishermen are desperately invading the jungles in search of food and livelihoods, with disastrous results for wildlife, rivers, and farmers (without forests, cloud creation is crippled, causing local droughts).

The Azgar farm is thus the essential model for a nation that already went from 75 percent forest to 25 percent forest last century, and where the pace of destruction quickens every year as hunger increases. The restorative agriculture model is, quite literally, the key to the Philippines’ future as a viable country. Globally, it’s hardly a unique situation.

THE SCOPE OF THE AGRICULTURAL RESTORATION INDUSTRY

Rural economic revitalization is mostly about farm restoration, which includes a number of restorative aspects, such as rebuilding soil quality, increasing economic viability, and integrating with the natural environment.

This restoration industry also extends to rural redevelopment and integration of rural lifestyles and economies with encroaching suburban-urban lifestyles, and with the effects of globalization. As with all of the restoration industries, there is significant overlap with other industries, such as watersheds and ecosystems.

I identify three basic forms of restorative agriculture:

1. Integrating conventional farming or ranching with other aspects of restoring the natural environment (ecosystems, watersheds, or fisheries). An example is fencing streams to keep cattle out, thus allowing passive restoration of the stream, or actively restoring the stream by planting the bank with native shrubs and trees.
2. Integrating conventional farming or ranching with restoration of the built environment (brownfields, infrastructure, heritage, and disaster/war). An example would be remediating the contamination of leaking underground storage tanks (USTs), using a portion of the property to create a wetland for revenue-generating tertiary sewage treatment.
3. Converting existing farms or ranches from unsustainable usage to modes that remove contamination (herbicides, pesticides, etc.) from the soil, increase soil flora and fauna, rebuild depleted topsoil, restore the biodiversity of the property, and/or contribute to the restoration of surrounding ecosystems. Switching a conventional farm to organic techniques is restorative agriculture.

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

According to a May 2000 report by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI),¹ almost 40 percent of agricultural land worldwide is seriously degraded, casting doubts on its food production capacity for the future. Soil depletion has already drastically reduced productivity on 16 percent of farms around the globe.

The depletion is not evenly spread, however: nearly 75 percent of agricultural land in Central America is heavily degraded, as revealed by IFPRI’s innovative maps (based on satellite and other data). The causes are also varied: The Central American problem mostly stems from erosion due to the widespread modern practice of tilling, which allows the soil to blow or wash away. In Asia, the main problem is salinization due to irrigation. In Africa, the soil lacks nutrients, due to a combination of overuse, lack of access to fertilizers, and interruption of the natural systems that replenish the soil.

As a result of projected population increases, we’ll need to increase grain production by 40 percent in the next 20 years, so the prospect of decreased production makes the outlook especially grim. According to Ismail Seragldin, World Bank vice president and chairman of a consortium of international agricultural research centers (of which IFPRI is a member), “The results of this innovative mapping raise all kinds of red flags about the world’s ability to feed itself in the future.”²

But the news wasn’t all bad: “It’s not necessarily irreversible. Careful land management can restore soil health,” said Phil Pardy, senior researcher on the IFPRI project, in a Reuters article.³

Modern farmers suffer from (and cause) a wide variety of problems, many of which are reaching crisis proportions. In some cases, these challenges are converging to make farming all but impossible. A short list of challenges includes:

• Overdependence on near-monopolistic agricultural product distribution firms that control prices Soviet-style. This discourages innovations by masking the financial pain of irresponsible practices. The immense political power of these firms has—with token exceptions—shielded them (so far) from federal antitrust action.
• Federal subsidies that encourage unsustainable farming practices (inappropriate crops, overly intensive land use, etc.).
• 117Increasing dependence on nonlocal, undependable, expensive water supplies, due to watershed destruction.
• Loss of topsoil due to the antiquated practice of tilling, combined with other forms of poorly designed, energy-intensive land management.
• Overdependence on expensive pesticides and artificial fertilizers.
• Overdependence on a few plant and animals species with insufficient genetic diversity to withstand disease and climate change. Humans used to farm or collect over 10,000 plant species; now, 120 species provide 90 percent of our food.

The War Between Agriculture and Conservation

For decades, farming and ranching have been among the primary enemies of wildlife, though not necessarily by intention. Poorly designed environmental initiatives have unnecessarily positioned conservationists as the natural enemies of agriculture. The fact is that, despite their barbed wire, their damming of streams, their campaigns to exterminate wolves, bears, coyotes, prairie dogs, and so on, most farmers and ranchers are much greater lovers of nature than are many city-based environmentalists.

On May 8, 2001, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and Future Harvest, the Washington, D.C. based agriculture organization, released a study showing that almost half of the 17,000 major nature reserves worldwide are actually under heavy agricultural use. To anyone who has visited the much-touted high-biodiversity conservation areas of the developing world, the report came as no surprise, but it was subduing nonetheless.

Some observers viewed that IUCN report as another nail in the coffin of the “hot spots” strategy for conserving biodiversity, and it probably would be, if not for the rise of restorative agriculture and “wild farms.” Trying to find a workable approach despite the miniscule funding and political support available to conservation, British ecologist 118Norman Myers devised the idea of focusing conservation efforts on the 25 “hot spot” areas of the world that contain the highest levels of biodiversity. This “would go far to stem the mass extinction of species,” he told Nature in 2000.⁴

Unfortunately, it turns out that over a sixth of the world’s population— in excess of a billion people—lives in these hot spots. These people also tend to be among the most impoverished, meaning that wildlife conservation is seldom a factor, much less a priority, in their decisions. “There’s no hope of conserving biodiversity that way,” said Jeff McNeely, the World Conservation Union’s chief scientist. “Hot spots are where people live, too.”⁵ And the IUCN report concurs: “Endangered species, essential farmlands, and desperately poor humans often occupy the same ground. It is unrealistic to expect isolated protected areas to carry the full responsibility for conserving biodiversity.”

The Beginning of the End of the War

The IUCN report went on to recommend a combined farm/ecosystem restoration approach unfortunately labeled “ecoagriculture” (the “eco” label is the kiss of death to many projects and concepts: “restorative” agriculture garners far more support from political leaders and farming communities). Restorative agriculture is turning these “problem farmers” into part of a strategy for actually expanding these hot spots. In border areas of the Sahara (a biodiversity hot spot in pun only, though the region does have many unique species), it’s already been documented that small farmers are responsible for pushing back the expanding desert through their replanting of native trees.

In Costa Rica, ecoagriculture (also called “agroecology”) has already been proven: it restores farmers’ incomes, restores their soil, and restores populations of endangered species (including native pollinators), in one fell swoop. Integrating such projects with other forms of restorative development—such as government initiatives to restore watersheds, to decentralize/defossilize/reconstruct power grids, and/or to revitalize fisheries—would expand these restorative agriculture pilot projects from isolated learning experiences, to high-profile international models.

Combined with the related, nascent “wild farms” movement, which uses the restoration of surrounding wildlife habitat to restore the productivity of agricultural activities, the next step is obvious: a formal recognition of—and commitment to—restorative agriculture on the part of independent farmers, agribusiness, academia, government agencies, and NGOs.

When not excessive, and when sufficient recovery time is allowed between burnings, even slash-and-burn agriculture can actually increase species diversity, by creating a greater variety of microhabitats. For instance, seedlings of the endangered, commercially valuable big-leafed mahogany require a cleared, sunny area within the jungle canopy. The clearing enables them to reach a sufficient height before having to compete for sunlight with faster-growing trees. Similarly, many animals depend on plants that grow primarily in disturbed areas: witness how often we see deer, rabbits, and woodchucks on the edges of roads and farms.

One method of increasing farm productivity (by reducing waterlogging and erosion from flooding) and the health of our ecosystems and waterways is by converting key portions of farmland back to wetlands. The current, antiquated method of engineered flood control, the levee system, only channels excess water to downstream communities (flooding them instead), and spreads tons of gravel and sand over towns and farms when the levees break. Wetlands adjacent to farms actually solve the problem, because a single acre of wetlands can absorb up to 1,660,000 gallons of floodwaters. These revived wetlands have many fringe benefits for agriculture, such as encouraging native insect, mammal, and bird species that prey on pests.

The cost of this kind of farmland-to-wetland restoration is about $1,000 an acre. Restoring 13 million acres—the amount of wetlands needed to naturally and permanently control flooding on the entire Mississippi—would thus be $13 billion. That’s just two-thirds the value of the damage done by a single flood in 1993.

The United States does have such a program, but it needs better funding. Although 150,000 acres were restored to wetlands under the program in 2000, the U.S. House of Representatives cut the program back to 15,000 acres for 2001. As a result of the reduced funding, over half a million acres of former wetlands are backlogged in the program, awaiting restoration to their natural state. Many more acres would be back-logged, but farmers know the funds are limited, so many don’t bother registering. When you consider that Congress has spent over $30 billion 120paying farmers not to grow crops, cutting back on this program seems especially ludicrous.

Now that ecological restorationists are showing how restorative agriculture can save family farms and provide vital connectors and buffers for wilderness areas, the formula for the future health of agriculture is clear: restorative agriculture, integrated with restoration of the rest of the built and natural environments.

Restorative Agriculture (Nonintegrated)

In a moment, we’ll examine the manifold opportunities restorative agriculture has for integration with other restorative industries. But even without such expansion of the concept, restorative agriculture is well under way, often under the guise of organic farming (and ranching, such as organically raised cattle and bison).

The $7.7 billion organic food industry is the fastest-growing category of supermarket products and is a subset of the $20 billion U.S. natural food industry. Organic foods increased their annual growth rate to 24 percent in the most recent eight years and are projected to continue or increase that rate of growth (stimulated by disasters like Mad Cow Disease) for at least two more decades. Organic farming restores soil that has been depleted and poisoned by tilling, herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, and harsh artificial growth stimulants like ammonia.

ORGANIC FARMING IS NOT NECESSARILY RESTORATIVE AGRICULTURE

Turning a forest or wetland into an organic farm is not restorative agriculture; it’s just a greener form of new development. Organic farming only qualifies as restorative when a conventional farm with toxic and/or debilitated soils is converted to organic production. Conventional farms can also qualify as restorative, when, for example, they integrate their lands with ecosystem restoration. In all forms of restoration, there are degrees of “restorativity”: Thus, a conventional farm that converts to organic and integrates with ecosystem restoration would rate higher than a farm using either practice alone.

What’s more, organic crops and meat sell for higher prices and often cost less to produce (especially in developing countries, where poisons and stimulants are often unaffordable). And organic crops are often sold locally to individuals, restaurants, and health food stores, which boosts margins further. These end-user sales frequently lead to even more revenue opportunities, such as for processed foods (jams, cider, etc.), services (B&Bs, corporate retreats, etc.), and specialty items (mushrooms, herbs, handicrafts, etc.).

Even land grant colleges—notorious laggards regarding agricultural innovation—have finally smelled the compost and are teaching organic techniques, led by trailblazers like North Carolina’s Center for Experimental Farming Systems. Some 7,800 farms in the United States are now certified organic, and many more are pursuing certification.

Restorative Agriculture (Integrated)

As farmers and ranchers grow more desperate to earn a living, and as they see their quality of life diminish, several restorative development industries are converging with the farming and ranching industries. This convergence is spawning a trend towards rural economic revitalization and farm/ranch restoration, which is currently distributed very unevenly around the United States (and even more unevenly around the world).

Here are five of the more common examples I’ve encountered of restorative industries that are converging with the trend towards restorative agriculture (and with other types of rural land use).

1. Restorative agricultural plus ecosystem restoration Several projects, most of them mislabeled “conservation,” are involving farmers and ranchers in mutually beneficial prairie, wetland, and endangered species restoration efforts:

• Beef ranchers in Arizona and New Mexico teamed up with Defenders of Wildlife in the Wild Country Beef project, designed to encourage the highly endangered Mexican (White) Wolf to recolonize the area.
• The Predator Friendly Wool certification program in Montana and Idaho rewards ranchers for raising sheep in a way that allows the restoration of coyote, mountain lion, wolf, and bear populations.
• 122On the shores of fabled Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, the Aymara people are restoring tortora reed beds. These will restore the lake’s water quality, restore breeding grounds for the lake’s fish, and provide food for their cattle.
• The reversion of coffee plantations in many parts of Latin America from the use of ecologically disastrous shadeless coffee plants back to shade-dependent coffee is a form of restorative agriculture. [Shadeless coffee was forced on developing countries by well-meaning development banks that, as usual, forgot to think through the collateral effects of their policies.]
• The Wildlands Project (www.twp.org) envisions farms and ranches as “green corridors” that restore wildlife by allowing migration. A restored 500-acre valley farm might have little ecological value by itself, but it can ignite a resurgence of wildlife on 500,000 mountain acres by connecting two 250,000-acre forests, or by connecting both to a river.
• The Community Baboon Sanctuary in Belize is a well-established attraction. It shows how mutual benefits can accrue when farms are integrated into the surrounding ecosystems. Belizeans voluntarily set aside or restored riverside trees and vegetation, thus allowing black howler monkeys to forage from forest to river. The income from tourists wanting to view the monkeys up close has become an important supplement to these Belizeans’ agricultural incomes.

2. Restorative agriculture plus watershed restoration Watershed restoration benefits farmers and ranchers in a variety of ways. The most obvious is that it helps ensure reliable water supplies; it also reduces flooding, encourages native insects that are predators on crop pests, beautifies the area to enhance quality of life, buffers damaging winds, and increases wildlife for better hunting and fishing.

An Audubon-California project helped ranchers restore native species of grasses. This restoration was ostensibly done for the sake of biodiversity, but the native species do a better job of retaining water and soil, and also, it turns out, provide livestock feed that is more dependable and nutritious. Native perennial grasses tend to have deep roots that bring up subsurface water to form clouds (via transpiration) during dry times, thus benefiting farmers throughout the area with more rainfall.

3. Restorative agriculture plus public infrastructure restoration

Smaller farming and ranching operations are increasingly looking to revenue diversification—something other than taking a job in a local 123factory—as a strategy for retaining their land and restoring their shrinking incomes.

One of fastest growing and most restorative of these diversification strategies is energy-related. Power utilities, responding to increased public demand for (and legislation demanding) “green” energy, are leasing agricultural land. Often, these land parcels are depleted tracts that desperately needed a break from agriculture to restore their topsoil and soil ecosystems (worms, fungi, bacteria, etc.). Placing wind turbines and/or solar arrays on the land allows the soil this restorative vacation, and generates more reliable revenue than farming or ranching.

According to a report from the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) in Washington, D.C., entitled “The 2002 Farm Bill: Revitalizing the Farm Economy Through Renewable Energy Development,” “developing our nation’s on-farm renewable energy resources has the potential to boost farmer income, create jobs in rural communities, diversify our nation’s energy market, and protect our environment.” The report suggested that Congressional reauthorization of the Farm Bill should encourage farm-and ranch-derived bioenergy (such as methane and ethanol), as well as wind, solar, and geothermal energy.⁶

Energy isn’t the only aspect of infrastructure restoration that can be integrated with restorative agriculture, though. As we saw in Chapter 6, water utilities are increasingly incorporating watershed restoration and management into their traditional realm of municipal infrastructure (water mains, sewers, treatment plants, etc.).

4. Restorative agriculture plus fisheries restoration This combination can benefit farmers directly and indirectly. The collapse of ocean and river fish stocks is stimulating the fast-growing aquaculture industry, providing dramatic revenue diversification opportunities for “regular” (soil-based) farmers and ranchers.

Fishery restoration can also benefit farmers in less direct ways. Oregon’s Salmon Safe program, for instance, trains farmers in how to reduce agricultural runoff to rivers, a major element in salmon restoration efforts (and an element that overlaps with watershed restoration). The practices, such as planting cover crops and restoring natural buffer strips along streams, also revitalize soil quality, enhance wildlife, and restore the natural aesthetics (and value) of the land. The program certifies farms, enabling them to put the Salmon Safe label on their products to attract ecologically conscious consumers.

5. Restorative agriculture plus heritage restoration The past two decades have seen the rapid growth of three forms of tourism: eco-tourism, heritage tourism, and agritourism (B&Bs on working farms and ranches). Organic farms and those integrated with ecosystem, watershed, and/or fisheries restoration are often able to offer the double-barreled attraction of eco-agritourism.

Other rural properties are able to do even better. If the land is the site of an historic battle or other important event, or if an old or architecturally significant house, barn, silo, etc. is on site, and the landowners restore these assets, they can combine agritourism with heritage tourism, and maybe with ecotourism as well. For farmers and ranchers who find the hospitality industry an attractive form of revenue diversification, such triple-barrelled restoration can add powerful competitive advantages.

Restorative Agriculture Comes of Age

The 2002 Farm Bill mentioned earlier funded many forms of farm restoration (along with copious quantities of wasteful, non-ecologically-sound subsidies). Much of it focused on conservation of both wildlife habitat and farmland (protecting it from development), but restorative activities were the focus of at least five key sections: the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program, the P.L. 566 watershed program, the Grassland Reserve Program, the Conservation Security Program, and the Forestry Programs. Properly implemented, the bill’s impact could be tremendous, because agricultural land accounts for about half of all land use in the United States: some 907 million acres of watershed.

In a lovely convergence of ecosystem restoration and restorative agriculture, there’s a fast-growing interest in restoring native pollinators. 125Over 90 percent of the world’s food crops depend on pollination by insects, bats, and birds. Habitat destruction and pesticides have wiped out many native pollinators, making us dependent on commercial hives of European honeybees. But 75 percent of these hives have been lost to those same pesticides, as well as to parasites like ear mites, other forms of pollution, and “killer bee” invasions. Restoration of native pollinator species has become crucial to the future of world food production, and nothing will accomplish this faster than restoration of wetlands, forests, and other native ecosystems bordering our farmlands. Recent research is finding that some native bee species are even more efficient pollinators than European honeybees, and that butterflies are second only to bees in this capacity.

Restoration ecologists are working with farmers and ranchers worldwide to reestablish wildlife habitat along creeks, re-create ponds, and restore native ground cover. A plethora of for-profit suppliers support them, from native plant nurseries to specialized equipment rental firms. Some fast growing firms have invented ecological restoration technologies, such as the Truax Company, which manufacturers a special drill for installing native trees, wildflowers, and grasses without tilling.

The list of farm-related restoration professions, needs, and solutions can and does fill many books. Broadly-focused supportive organizations like the Bioneers are being joined by farm-focused newcomers. Meanwhile, restorative farmers like Joel Salatin in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley keep innovating: he claims his system of rotational grazing restores up to an inch of topsoil every year.

ISSUES AND INSIGHTS

1. Genetically engineered crops The danger here is not genetic engineering itself, but the fact that (mainly) U.S. and British government agencies have allowed politically connected firms to rush untested products into production. The level of research into the possible negative effects on human and wildlife health of these crops barely qualifies as rudimentary, 126even though everyone acknowledges that recapturing errant genes would be next to impossible.

We’re so impressed with our relatively simple mapping of genomes that we’ve forgotten that the complexity of gene interactions is an area of ignorance thousands of times greater. It’s like naming the animals and plants in a wetland, and claiming that as a result of this list of labels, we now understand the chemical triggers, community dynamics, succession cycles, and species relationships that comprise a swamp.

2. Agriculture’s resistance to change “New ideas don’t win, really. What happens is that the old scientists die and new ones come along with new ideas.” Max Planck’s hoary wisdom certainly applies to agricultural engineering.

Long since no-till agriculture (planting without plowing) was shown to be more efficient in most situations, many U.S. agricultural colleges are still telling students to plow. Likewise, organic agriculture has been conclusively proven to be more cost-effective than conventional techniques in many developing countries (as mentioned earlier), but you’d never know that from looking at today’s agricultural college curricula.

Every time an agricultural college graduates someone from a lesser-developed region (many aspiring farmers come to the United States for training), that college inflicts topsoil loss, muddy rivers, dead reefs, and fossil fuel use on an already-struggling country for three decades or more. The prestige of a U.S. diploma makes it difficult for local people championing more enlightened practices to challenge the diploma’s holder.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

According to The 2002 Farm Bill: Revitalizing the Farm Economy Through Renewable Energy Development referred to earlier, renewable energy generation can be a major factor in the restoration of private farm profitability, help restore planetary health, and boost U.S. national security via diversified energy sourcing. The report pointed to the 2002 Farm Bill as the best opportunity to link agriculture and sustainable energy production.

This is one of the most natural weddings that could take place, as farmers have the solar real estate, the wind, and sometimes the geothermal 127assets to eliminate dependence on foreign oil, with proper development. They also have tremendous amounts of waste biomass, in the form of crop residues such as corn, rice straw, and sugar cane, plus animal waste. Besides energy, these materials can produce many chemicals currently created from petroleum.

Farmers aren’t waiting for the legislation, though. In Iowa, for instance, 115 farmers and ranchers are already paid $2000 per wind turbine per year to lease a quarter-acre of their land. The wind energy projects are already generating $2 million in tax dollars per year for these hard-hit agricultural counties, along with over 40 new jobs.

These days, trucks are running around farm country emblazoned with business names of a type never before seen, such as “Creative Habitat Corporation,” “Ecological Restoration, Inc.,” “Marshland Transplant Aquatic Nursery,” “Bitterroot Restoration,” “Applied Ecological Services,” “Prairie Restorations, Inc.,” and “Spence Restoration Nursery” (its slogan: “Creating Hope for the Future”). As we’ve seen, these are by no means the only professionals whose financial futures are deeply embedded in the restoration of rural economies.

The theoretical underpinnings of restorative agriculture have yet to be fomulated. A step in the right direction is a new mathematical model for conservation forecasting, developed jointly by researchers at Texas A&M and the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences. The model purports to predict which conservation and restoration policies are likely to have the best success. The research team included members from a restorative agriculture project in Costa Rica that was funded largely by McDonald’s (and run by Conservation International), known as The Amisconde Initiative, which blends sustainable agriculture and restoration of degraded lands. Such new tools have only recently started emerging, though, so restorative agriculture remains a nascent industry.

We’ve now surveyed four restoration industries, which comprise most of what we consider the natural environment: ecosystems in general, watersheds, fisheries, and agricultural lands. We’ve seen that the soil of farms using large amounts of pesticides, herbicides, and petroleum-based fertilizers has become toxic and largely lifeless. In other words, many of our farms could be considered brownfields: contaminated properties.

By shocking coincidence, brownfields restoration just happens to be where we’ll begin our exploration of the other major frontier of the Restoration Economy: restorative development of the built environment.

A SMALL SAMPLING OF OPPORTUNITIES

Business and investment

There is a vast inventory of exhausted, eroded, and/or salinated farmland on the market. The fire-sale prices these often unattractive properties fetch provides a treasure trove of opportunity for those who wish to get into restorative farming. It’s also an opportunity for restorative real estate development, which can be combined with restorative agriculture, especially when the property is close to a population center, beach, or other economic magnet.

NGOs and other nonprofits

Probably no other restorative industry has more potential for improving the success of ecological restoration projects than does restorative farming. The opportunities for conservation NGOs to grow into this area—and to tap the vast public funding available for agriculture-enhancing projects—are tremendous. A whole new realm of resources and synergetic projects can thus become available, ranging from land donations/trusts and wildlife corridors to tax breaks, water rights tie-ins, and access to well-funded government and university research facilities.

Community and government

For lesser-developed countries (and their rural communities) that have a “wealth” of ravaged land and poorly educated citizens, along with a dearth of economic alternatives in a high-tech world, restorative agriculture offers dramatic development potential. It’s the only strategy that can actually increase a country’s inventory of arable land.

¹ “40 Percent of Food Land Degraded, Study Finds,” The Toronto Star, Business Section, May 22, 2000.

² Ibid.

³ Ibid.

⁴ Norman Myers, “Biodiversity Hotspots for Conservation Priorities,” Nature, February 24, 2000.

⁵ “People vs. Nature,” New Scientist, February 26, 2000.

⁶ “The 2002 Farm Bill: Revitalizing the Farm Economy Through Renewable Energy Development,” [Report] Environmental and Energy Study Institute, Washington, D.C.