Adi (Aditi Mukherjee) of Not Same, Equal. interviewed with 'The Asian Curator' for DesignIndia Magazine at the end of 2020. Published in issue #124 you may read the interview above, or click here to subscribe to the magazine.
]]>Background
In over 200 years of British colonization, India faced a systemic extraction of wealth, imperial land taxation, regulated market pricing for raw materials, numerous famines, and the death of millions.
Economist and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen wrote in his book Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (1981) that the famines in the British era were not due to a lack of, but due to the inequalities in food distribution. He linked the disparity to the undemocratic nature of the British Empire.
Upon India's independence in 1947, a socialist-dirigisme took a strong political hold which shaped the principal policies of the Government and played a direct role in indicative planning, state-directed investment and use of market instruments such as taxes and subsidies.
For the 74 years since Independence, India has gone through cycles of growth, and yet its farmers have never had the same opportunities as everybody else in the nation. Over the following sections we will look at the history of farming in India, and the context under which it has continued to function.
Post Independence + Green Revolution
When India became independent in 1947, 90% of its population lived in 600,000 villages and depended mainly on subsistence agriculture. For the few centuries prior, Indian agricultural practices had remained unchanged under colonization, without any technological or scientific advantages. The farmers used indigenous seeds and animal-powered energy. With the partition, India, Pakistan, and present-day Bangladesh all lost their ability to feed their citizens, with each having to import expensive grain.
Faced with post-colonial social inequities, the Indian Government passed land reforms that broke up large imperial farms and gave the land to the peasants who worked on them. These new landowners were now responsible for feeding the nation. They were encouraged to adopt new agricultural practices that increased food yields, but few had the education or money reserves.
Around the same time in 1954, the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration started the Food for Peace program, which aimed to use food grain surplus in America to further foreign policy and American exports of agricultural products globally.
In 1955, the Govt. of India passed the Essential Commodities Act (more on this later), and in 1956, it started importing wheat from the United States. This further depleted national reserves and none of this was sustainable. To save reserves but increase the yields of cereals grown within the country, Indian stakeholders came together with the donors to "modernize" Indian agricultural technology and practices.
The Govt. of India was aware of the work being done by Dr. Norman Borlaug with wheat in Mexico. Since time was of the essence, he was invited to help Indian agriculture increase its yields. This time of transformation was called the Green Revolution. While Dr. Norman Borlaug's methods resulted in high yields of food-grain, their success hinged on the adoption of modified foreign seeds, heavy use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, large-scale irrigation, and mechanization; resulting in unintended long-term consequences.
The green revolution was mainly applied to three states of India, Punjab, Haryana, and parts of western Uttar Pradesh. These were the plains, and the farmers here were made responsible for producing enough wheat and rice to feed everybody. The narrow, alien genetic base of the wheat and rice strains introduced by Dr. Borlaug didn't play well with indigenous seeds in the field, so the revolution promoted their monocultures. These resulted in reduced genetic bio-diversity, depletion of soil nutrients, and an increase in soil toxicity, making it unproductive over time.
The not-so-very green revolution converted forest land to agricultural land. It increased dependence on mechanization and promoted overgrazing. The adoption of modified varieties of foreign seeds also resulted in ever-increasing pesticide use which leached toxins into the water-table and food-chains. Plus, introducing rice strains to terrains not naturally suited to them increased the need for artificial irrigation systems, compounding groundwater depletion.
By taking on debt to chase crop yields, farmers sometimes had no other choice but to sell their lands, or in extreme cases, commit suicide.
The Essential Commodities Act
In 1955, during the time of massive food scarcity and when the country was dependent on imports and assistance (such as wheat from the US under the Food for Peace program), the Govt. of India legislated the Essential Commodities Act aimed to stop any hoarding or proliferation of black markets. It was a way to ensure all people could access and purchase food rations at affordable prices. Since then, the Government has used this law to regulate the production, supply, and distribution of a whole host of commodities that it declares essential.
Today, however, India no longer faces scarcity in food yields. The Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food, and Public Distribution show in their 2020 report that production of wheat has increased ten times (from less than 10 million tonnes in 1955-56 to more than 100 million tonnes in 2018-19), and the production of rice had increased more than four times from 25 million tonnes in 1955-56 to 110 million tonnes in 2018-19. Additionally, the production of pulses has increased by 2.5 times, from 10 million tonnes to 25 million tonnes. India now exports several agricultural products. With these increased yields, the Govt. has had to involve itself in storing surplus in its own (often mismanaged) warehouses. The EC Act appears to have become out-of-date.
The Agriculture Produce Market Regulation Programme (APMCs)
The concept of a regulated agricultural produce market in India also dates back to the British colonial era. Raw cotton being the first farm-product to attract the attention of the British Government. Anxious to ensure Indian raw cotton would continue to be available to Manchester's textile mills (UK) at reasonable prices, the British rulers established regulated markets.
This model became precedent for states all over the country, and during the 1960s and 1970s, most of them enacted and enforced Agricultural Produce Market Regulation (APMR) Acts. Any assembly for primary wholesale was brought under the purview of these Acts. Well laid out market yards and sub-yards were constructed, and, for each market area, an Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) was constituted to frame the rules and enforce them. Thus, organized agricultural marketing came into existence through regulated marketplaces built on the market models of the British colonial era. India does not, and has never had a common national agricultural produce marketplace, agriculture has always fallen under the purview of the individual states.
There are two principles on which APMCs should operate:
Each state that operates APMC markets (mandis) establishes its markets in various places within their state's borders, geographically dividing it. There are approximately seven thousand regulated APMC markets in India and 120 million farmers. Farmers may only sell their produce via auction at their regional Mandi to licensed traders operating within. Wholesale and retail traders (e.g., shopping mall owners) and food processing companies cannot buy farm produce directly from the farmer. They must go through a Mandi. If a farmer ever attempted to sell their produce outside of the APMC Mandi or stocked their produce, they would be violating the law of the land.
Since the APMCs have held continued power over a farmer's right to sale and the sale price for over 70 years, the farmers have been at the grace of every agent there. APMCs are state-controlled and different states have different rules by which they operate their mandis, charging various fees and taxes. Compounded with the deteriorating condition of perishable produce, the final amount a farmer may receive usually falls below the Govt. recommended minimum support price.
Minimum Support Price
Between the years 1950 and 1964, when the nation faced food insecurity and the farmers were working to increase their farm yields, food commodities' prices fluctuated. When the results were low, the prices soared, and when they were good, the prices fell. The farmers worked so hard and yet faced difficulties in making their ends meet. To help them, the Food Grain Price Committee was set up in 1964.
The Govt. of India believed that farmers should get at least as much money for their produce that they break even. For the first time in history, in 1966-67, the Committee declared a minimum support price (MSP) of wheat and paddy.
The MSP was not a law but a recommendation by the Govt. and it continues in the same manner today. While the recommended Minimum Support Price is the same across the country for each crop, it cannot be enforced. Under this system, even if the price falls in the market, the Government of India promises to procure the crop at the MSP from the farmers so as to shield them from losses.
Inequities & Challenges
Since the central Govt. cannot enforce the MSP, the state-run Mandis have free rein to set their preferred rate. Everything depends on the benevolence of the intermediaries running operations. As you may see the state-run Mandis, and the rules around essential commodities along with assured procurement at MSP by the Central Govt. has created a largely opaque and complex market system with the state market agents on the top pulling strings between the farmers on one side and the Central Govt. on the other.
Punjab and Haryana are two states (from the green revolution) that have continued to produce mostly Wheat and Rice, and their commodities rank high on the essential commodities list. The farm + trader communities from these two states have benefitted consistently from the assured procurement at a guaranteed price scheme of the Govt. In contrast, farmers from the rest of India have had to primarily rely either on the smarts of the traders at their state Mandis or the grey trade areas outside of them.
The lack of a transparent national price discovery mechanism and platform has kept farmers literally in the dark and this opacity across state Mandi operations has been harmful to the farmer, who has always been vulnerable to the negotiation power of the APMC network. Despite yields & produce prices rising steadily in retail, farmer incomes haven't increased.
eNAM
In 2016, the Govt. of India introduced an electronic National Agricultural Market platform to create some national transparency around how state Mandis are pricing their produce; the platform was launched to connect all the APMC Mandis and their member farmers and traders. Unfortunately, today, only 1000 APMCs from the 7000 in the country are registered, and eighty percent of trade in agricultural commodities is done offline. The underlying opacity of market information has worked against the farmer's financial interests for as long as India has been independent, if not longer.
Observations & Reforms
The Standing Committee on Agriculture (2018-19) noted that the APMC laws are not being implemented in their true sense and need urgent reformation.
The Standing Committee (2018-19) also recommended that the central Government constitute another Committee of Agriculture Ministers of all the states to arrive at a consensus and design a legal framework for agricultural marketing. Seven Chief Ministers were invited to set up a high-powered committee in July 2019.
The most recent laws passed by the Govt. of India in 2020 consider these studies and expert recommendations over the years to rectify the compounded damage caused to farmer livelihoods by all preceding dirigiste policies. It appears that the Central Govt. has realized that depending on the states to reform their APMC Mandis, is only causing delays and further hurting the farmer, and so the new laws aim to create a secondary marketplace where the states have limited power.
The three farm acts of 2020 are as follows:
This amendment will free up the farmer to stock his produce without any limit until they can get the price they want and be free to grow various crops in rotation to create a stocked inventory of high-value crops.
Conclusion
We believe that these new acts increase competition. Creating a secondary marketplace will hopefully also push the APMCs to become more efficient in providing cost-effective marketing services. We are also convinced that for farmers selling their produce outside the APMC markets, the prices prevailing inside the APMC markets will serve as a benchmark, helping in better price discovery. This positive effect is already being experienced by cotton farmers selling in the open markets of Guntur, Andhra Pradesh.
We also see, that a secondary, direct marketplace allows farmers to shift their thinking from quantity per hectare to value per hectare. An impetus for creativity, innovation, and bio-diversity. This new space gives each and every farmer in India to take pause and begin healing their soils.
Finally, we hope that these acts serve the Indian farming community by bringing them unhindered market access, enabling them to practice soil-sovereignty, grow valuable produce, charge what they deserve, and build their direct customer base. We believe that a right to market access is a right to livelihood and India deserves all of its citizens to have equal rights to make valuable-living.
UPDATE
Apologizing to the country, the Prime Minister of India on Friday, November 19, 2021 announced a repeal of the three new farm laws following the nearly year-long protests by farmers mainly from Punjab and Haryana.
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References:
EXPRESS WEB DESK (2021, December 9). Farmers end year-long protest: A timeline of how it unfolded. The Indian Express.
MINISTRY OF LAW AND JUSTICE,. (2020, September). THE ESSENTIAL COMMODITIES (AMENDMENT) ACT, 2020 (NO. 22 OF 2020). http://egazette.nic.in/WriteReadData/2020/222038.pdf
MINISTRY OF LAW AND JUSTICE. (2020b, September). THE FARMERS’ PRODUCE TRADE AND COMMERCE (PROMOTION AND FACILITATION) ACT, 2020 (NO. 21 OF 2020). http://egazette.nic.in/WriteReadData/2020/222039.pdf
MINISTRY OF LAW AND JUSTICE. (2020b, September). THE FARMERS (EMPOWERMENT AND PROTECTION) AGREEMENT ON PRICE ASSURANCE AND FARM SERVICES ACT, 2020 (NO. 20 OF 2020). http://egazette.nic.in/WriteReadData/2020/222040.pdf
Staff, S. (2021, February 7). Andhra Pradesh: Cotton Farmers In Guntur Avail Benefits Of Open Market, Prefer Private Traders To Traditional Buyers. Swarajyamag. https://swarajyamag.com/insta/andhra-pradesh-cotton-farmers-in-guntur-avail-benefits-of-open-market-prefer-private-traders-to-traditional-buyers
Nobel Prizes 2020. (1970). NobelPrize.Org. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1970/borlaug/lecture/
Making Sense of the New Farm Laws. (2020, December 4). [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so0qbBvaX2g&feature=emb_title
Hits and misses of the new farm laws: Off the Cuff with Shekhar Gupta. (2020, December 16). [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9xgLWDRrls
The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020. (2020, September 20). PRSIndia. https://www.prsindia.org/billtrack/farmers-empowerment-and-protection-agreement-price-assurance-and-farm-services-bill-2020
]]>What is regenerative agriculture?
The practice of regenerating soil so that it builds high-quality topsoil, retains more rainwater, increases biodiversity, and sequesters carbon from the atmosphere, is called regenerative agriculture.
The aim is holistic land management promoting the welfare of all life. By working with the carbon-cycle and understanding sequestering techniques, farmers build up carbon in the soil, making all produce more nutritious and the soil more resilient. Carbon sequestering techniques hold dual-positivity; not only do they help reverse climate change, but their practice also feeds the soil.
“Regeneration is allowing nature to do its work. Being marginalized may sometimes be an advantage because it means having a bit more freedom. Forgotten species, foods, and people are true leaders, as they’re resilient and constantly adapt, while big companies turn farmers’ nourishment into raw material for their own needs" – Vandana Shiva
Some of the techniques being used for regenerative agriculture are as follows:
1: Till-less farming
Tilling is a way of processing the soil typically before planting new crops, to mix organic material back into the ground and break down weeds. However, tilling releases carbon from the soil back into the atmosphere. By practicing minimal or no-till techniques, carbon remains underground, enriching the soil while eliminating greenhouse gas release.
One such initiative, the Saguna Rice Technique (SRT) pioneered by Shekar Bhadsavale, a California-educated progressive farmer from Neral, is a form of zero-till conservation agriculture, which has been accepted by over 1,000 farmers in several Indian states.
Certain principles are used in this no-till agricultural technique, such as the insistence to leave all roots and a small portion of the stem in the beds for slow rotting. Or that only manual labor be used to control weeds with absolutely no plowing, puddling, or hoeing. These principles result in crops getting ready for harvest up to ten days sooner than usual.
Additionally, this system of no-till farming also increases organic carbon in the soil with an improved fragrance and soil productivity, a significant increase in water holding capacity, and the reduction of treacherous labor on the farmer’s part.
“A one-percent increase in soil organic carbon in one acre is equivalent to storing 18 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide underneath our ground. Agriculture can provide a better solution to the climate crisis than some other sectors if done right,” – Emmanuel D’Silva, agriculture and environmental scientist from Mumbai who previously worked at the World Bank and now works closely with Shekar Bhadsavale
2: Composting
Composting uses animal, plant, and food waste to make nutrient-rich compost for the soil microbiome. With animal manure and tree-fall occurring naturally on farms, composting can replenish organic material in the soil easily. When added on top of fields or mixed with the soil, compost reduces the need for chemical fertilizers and enriches the soil without releasing greenhouse gases.
Shivansh Farming is one such composting initiative started by the Hans Foundation in India, with a mission to identify high impact solutions for small-plot farmers worldwide. They recognize that most farmers that work on previously-colonized lands, such as in India, enter never-ending debt cycles due to the high cost of farm inputs. Shivansh Farming’s techniques offer a clear path to farmers to quickly revive the soil’s natural fertility by employing ancient no-cost practices that sustained civilizations for hundreds of generations, such as composting.
3: Intercropping, Perennial Cropping, Crop Rotations, and Agro-Forestry
We must understand that regenerative farming techniques have never existed outside the context of indigenous intellectual property. Native populations the world over have actively sustained their soils and communities for centuries using regenerative techniques. A newfound interest in these systems must not lead to isolated ego-centric “innovation” without deference to the communities that developed them.
For instance, Indigenous Americans have always planted more than one crop together, a practice known as intercropping. The methodology involves a synergy in which each plant complements another’s needs, improving their health and growth collectively. The Iroquois in the Northeast, for example, cultivated corn, beans, and squash together so that the corn stalks served as a natural trellis for the beans to grow on. The beans captured and deposited nitrogen into the soil, and the squash vines created a natural ground cover, helping maintain soil moisture and preventing weeds.
“To be connected is to walk in beauty.” – Spirit Farm, Navajo Nation New Mexico
Spirit Farm is a demonstration farm started specifically for natives in one of the poorest counties in the United States: McKinley County, New Mexico. Spirit Farm was developed using Indigenous Regenerative Intelligence. It uses only natural practices including microbiological composting, to heal the high desert southwestern soil and reclaim traditional farming and establish resiliency in the Navajo way of life.
By considering crops and trees as soil-beneficial entities, traditional practices create a holistic and spiritual approach to land management and productivity.
4: Intentional Grazing
Another soil beneficial regenerative practice is the technique of rotating lands for grazing. When eaten, grass grows back fuller sequestering more carbon from the atmosphere. This knowledge allows farmers to choose feasting lands for their livestock carefully. The vegetation gets time to grow back, develop stronger, with longer root systems that enrich the soil, improve water retention, and increase carbon and nutrition in the ground.
Why Regenerative Agriculture?
By serving the soil, regenerative agriculture techniques pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, where it is harmful, and deposit it into the soil, where it is beneficial, thus effectively solving the climate crisis (which is essentially a human-made carbon imbalance). The time to merely decrease greenhouse gas emissions has passed; regenerative agriculture eliminates greenhouse gasses by using the land itself.
By investing in the soil, regenerative agriculturists help make food more nutritious, fiber beneficial for the climate, and the land more biodiverse.
The need of the hour is conscious decision-making. To buy produce that enables life, as opposed to harming it. Choosing to grow our own food, purchasing locally and seasonally produced food, and consuming soil-beneficial products such as those made with natural fiber and natural materials are decisions that when compounded, can create a massive impact quickly.
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References:
1. Jalshakti, & Bhadsavle, C. H. (2018). SUCCESS STORY SAGUNA RICE TECHNIQUE – SRT. http://jalshakti-dowr.gov.in/sites/default/files/SRT_Success_Story_2018.pdf
2. Regeneration International. (2019, May 9). New Project in Carbon Farming Launched in India. https://regenerationinternational.org/2019/05/09/new-project-in-carbon-farming-launched-in-india/
3. Inside Navdanya Farm – Regenerative Agriculture Gathering. (2018, November 14). Seed Freedom. https://seedfreedom.info/regenerative-agriculture-gathering/
4. Video Manual. (2020, September 21). SHIVANSH FARMING. http://shivanshfarming.com/video-manual/
5. Covenant Pathways. (2020, December 14). Native American Agriculture | Regenerative Farming. https://www.covenantpathways.org/
6. https://www.covenantpathways.org/spirit-farm/. (2020). Covenant Pathways. https://www.covenantpathways.org/spirit-farm/
7. The Indigenous Origins of Regenerative Agriculture. (2020, October 12). National Farmers Union. https://nfu.org/2020/10/12/the-indigenous-origins-of-regenerative-agriculture/
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What is Design?
In 1964, British mechanical engineer and Professor of Design Research at the Royal College of Art, Bruce Archer, argued that for any activity to qualify as “Design,” two things¹ needed to be present:
He meant that for anything to qualify as Design, there needed to be a plan for it, and the plan had to be something observed in a scientific investigation, able to hold cultural, and societal meaning in the future.
In 1992, Donald A. Schön, a philosopher and professor of urban planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology spoke about the relationship between form and material, and said — “Design is a reflective conversation with the materials of a design solution.”²
Then, seeing that the definition of design was mostly led by individual designers and philosophers themselves, in 2009, Paul Ralph and Yair Wand from Sauder School of business set out to create a formal definition of the discipline.³ and they formulated:
“Design activity is a process, executed by an agent, to generate a specification of an object based on: the environment in which the object will exist, the goals ascribed to the object, the desired structural and behavioral properties of the object (requirements), a given set of component types (primitives), and constraints that limit the acceptable solutions.”
Design can thus be summed up as a process of making decisions so as to achieve a function or goal. This brings us to the next stage of discussing design responsibility, good vs bad Design
Good Design / Bad Design
Reflecting on my experience with products that function beautifully, a few come to mind. The traditional Sari that serves to clothe generations without requiring any alterations. Or a more modern invention, the menstrual cup, that has single-handedly normalized period blood and eliminated waste. And even digital products like Google Maps, and Spotify which have become the go-to for way-finding and music. These products seemed to be so well designed that they are seamlessly intertwined with peoples’ lives, positively impacting individuals and their communities.
Unfortunately, on the other end of this spectrum, poorly planned and dysfunctional products appear to be just as impactful, but the damage they cause compounds over time, and can be slow to notice.
The single-use plastic coffee pods, for instance, have created tremendous waste and pollution (more here). Fleece jackets, practically a uniform in some places, shed tons of synthetic micro-plastics in our natural resource systems (in fact the older a fleece, the more it sheds). Bottled, and tetra-packed water have colonized peoples’ natural reserves and pollute the planet with even more plastic (take action here). All these products while intending to make things convenient for people, end up instead causing devastating harm. They are evidence that the quality of their designs could not be measured by the intention of their makers, but by the impact of their plans itself.
We see that in the end, if a design execution ends up furthering marginalization, oppression, and exploitation, the intention behind the execution ceases to matter in the face of its impact. Good design will always be good impact.
Designers have a solemn responsibility to create for (inevitably shared) outcomes. Designers must be willing to face the question, of help or harm, and then have the courage and integrity to stop the harm (however unintentional) from existing.
Decision-making / How to make a plan
Late Prof. M. P. Ranjan (1950 - 2015) taught me one of my earliest lessons in design integrity (in 2002) at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad in a course that covered decision-making.
Prof. Ranjan presented decision-making within a framework⁴ called the Three Orders of Design:
The first order of Design is recognized by all people and is the most commonly discussed attribute of any product. This is where material, structure, and technology drive decision-making, helping shape the form that we eventually see and appreciate in the product. We can understand the product as an honest expression of the material & structure used, transformed into something unique and functional. The material’s appropriate transformation occurs by the designer who understands its properties, appreciating its limitations and possibilities.
The second order of Design is influenced by utility and feeling, which are parameters determined by the marketplace and the culture in which it operates. Here, utility and aesthetics are informed by the culture and economics of the land. Trends determined by intangible cultural attributes help the designer assess needs, utility, and the price that people are willing to pay for a specific offering. Independent of its cost, the value of the Design is measured by feeling and utility. We can examine this order clearly when we compare similar objects across different social and cultural institutions. The 1976 Ikea POÄNG armchair ($129) vs. the 1956 Eames Lounge chair ($5,495) illustrates this order quite well.
The higher values of our society shape this third order of Design. The designer shapes their product using the philosophy, ethics, and the spirit of a culture. At this level, the value of a product unfolds through the meaning it provides, the identity it allows people to imbibe, and the stories it enables. Here, deeply held meanings become integral to the form, structure, and essential features defining the product, making it identifiable as being from a particular community of people. These key features represent the equity of the form, motif, or character of the product, usually supported by stories and legends about their origin, providing meaning to the lives of the people for whom they are made.
Planning, then executing for a united and sustainable future
We need to recognize the characteristics that all three Design orders bring to our locality's products. Only then can we learn to make good design decisions that increase benefits at each stage of production, marketing, and use.
By understanding products around us by their material, purpose, function, and impact we will begin to appreciate the value they bring to their intended user, enabling us to address that value with better materials, better systems, and better impact.
To build a resilient, united, and sustainable global future, we, the people of the world have to be able to understand each other. By spending the time to learn why someone lives the way they do, learning about the products that bring them meaning, we can build a consciousness that is less inclined to dismiss, inspired instead to create new avenues for shared value.
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References:
1. Archer, L. B. (1965), Systematic Method for Designers. London, The Design Council.
2. Schön, D. A. (1992). Designing as reflective conversation with the materials of a design situation. Knowledge-Based Systems, 5(1), 3–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/0950-7051(92)90020-g
3. Ralph P., Wand Y. (2009) A Proposal for a Formal Definition of the Design Concept. In: Lyytinen K., Loucopoulos P., Mylopoulos J., Robinson B. (eds) Design Requirements Engineering: A Ten-Year Perspective. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 14. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-92966-6_6
4. Ranjan, M. P. (2009). The Three Orders of Design: Lessons from Northeast India. DESIGN FOR INDIA. https://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2009/02/three-orders-of-design-lessons-from.html
]]>‘Circularity’ is the principle that each element on a chain serves as raw materials or input for the next. Circular-design uses this life principle to create product-systems that generate, preserve, and compound value, without creating waste or dead-ends. This principle of circularity can be seen most intensely in Earth’s Carbon Cycle.
]]>‘Circularity’ is the principle that each element on a chain serves as raw material or input for the next until the chain closes its loop. Circular-design uses this principle to create product-systems that generate, preserve, and compound value, without creating waste or dead-ends. Circularity can be seen most intensely in Earth’s Carbon Cycle.
Forged by aging stars, carbon is the fourth most abundant element available in the Universe. It forms the building block of all life on Earth and is found stored in rocks, the ocean, the atmosphere, plants, soil, and deep underground in fossil fuels.
Carbon flows between each reservoir via an exchange called the carbon cycle. With both slow and fast-paced components, the processes that remove carbon from one state add it back to another.
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Carbon cycles from the atmosphere to the lithosphere using rain. Carbon in the atmosphere combines with water from rain to form carbonic acid. When it falls to the surface, the acid dissolves rocks (chemical weathering) and releases calcium, magnesium, potassium, or sodium ions.
Once in the ocean, the calcium ions (carried there by rivers) combine with bicarbonate ions to form calcium carbonate, a process done mostly by calcifying organisms (such as corals) and plankton. After they die, these organisms sink to the ocean floor, creating layers of shells and sediment, fusing into rock over time, and storing carbon as stone.
While approximately eighty percent of carbon-containing rock forms this way, the rest results from living things embedded in layers of mud over millions of years, creating oil, coal, and natural gas.
Slowly, the lithosphere returns carbon to the atmosphere via volcanoes. When the plates beneath our land and ocean surfaces collide, one sinks beneath the other, melting the rock above. The molten rock recombines into silicate minerals and is released along with carbon dioxide when the volcano erupts. The gas escapes to the atmosphere; the fresh silicate rock covers the land, beginning the cycle again.
1,000 to 100,000 million metric tons of carbon move through the fast carbon cycle every year. The fast carbon cycle mainly consists of plants and phytoplankton that absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it into their cells. They combine energy from the Sun, carbon dioxide from the air (CO2), and water from the Earth to form sugar (CH2O) and oxygen.
Plants use the sugar they make for the energy they need to grow. Animals and people eat the plants (or plankton) to break down the plant sugars and gain the energy stored. When plants and plankton die, the decay combines their sugars with the oxygen in the air to release as water, energy, and carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere.
The fast and slow carbon cycles usually maintain steady carbon flow between the atmosphere, land, plants, and ocean carbon stores. But when disturbed, the effects ripple through all of them. While volcanoes emit between 130 and 380 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, humans, on the other hand, emit about 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year (thanks to burning fossil fuels). That is 100–300 times that of volcanoes. Of course, this problem further compounds by the fact that humans are also very busy clearing forests.
By removing forests, we eliminate the vast carbon absorption and storage capacities of our land. We then replace the dense forest vegetation with crops or pasture, comparatively processing far less carbon. Doing this also exposes the soil below, resulting in the carbon stored there (from decayed plant matter) to vent back into the atmosphere.
While fossil fuels (which take millions of years to accumulate) are essentially a part of the slow carbon cycle, by burning coal, oil, and natural gas, we accelerate this process, moving all this extra carbon into the fast cycle.
Unfortunately for us, CO2 is what controls the Earth’s temperature. Scientists have calculated that carbon dioxide causes about twenty percent of Earth’s greenhouse effects; water vapor accounts for about fifty percent, and clouds account for twenty-five percent. The rest is accounted for by small aerosol particles and other minor greenhouse gases like methane.
“Carbon is the currency of life. The rapid formation of carbon-rich topsoil is the greatest priority and opportunity of our time” – Dr. Rattan Lal
One way to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide is to increase global carbon storage in our soil. When plants (such as grasses) absorb carbon from the air for photosynthesis, not only do they use it for their growth, but they also use it in symbiosis with micro-organisms in the soil, making carbon bank deposits in exchange for various microbial nutrients.
The organic matter from the biomass of plant roots, the agitation of grazing animals, and the manure that they leave behind all adds carbon (and other nutrition) for the soil microbes to convert into complex yet, stable carbon compounds. Collectively called humus, these carbon compounds are the backbone of building new soil, and the process of storing them is called carbon sequestration.
As seen in old-growth forest soils and the un-plowed American prairies, soil can reach over six feet deep, indicating no limit to the soil volume that can build over time. Therefore, managing pastures in similar methods can play a vital role in this process of global land carbon sequestration.
Much like houseplants that have growth spurts when pruned, grasslands also withstand grazing and benefit from it to grow back stronger. Fossil records show us that grasslands and ruminants co-evolved fifty-five million years ago, with one side doing the grazing and the other side being grazed. With every bite, cows trigger the plant to exchange carbon compounds with soil microbes for rapid regrowth nutrition. The grass’s photosynthesis rate goes up, which grows more grass (biomass), and removes more carbon from the air, to deposit into the soil.
Any grazing action pushes grass back to its growth stage. As long as the grass grows actively, it continues to remove carbon from the atmosphere, sequestering it into the ground. This carbon pathway supports healthy underground ecosystems in a positive feedback loop. It builds organic matter, creates humus, and deep, fertile, well-functioning soil.
Roaming, grazing animals sequester carbon and provide us with nutritious, functional, and versatile by-products, such as milk, and wool. In old-world civilizations, such as in the Native American and Indian Cultures, grazing animals such as cows hold sacred space for this very reason. They are nature’s perfect beings, transforming energy from the Sun into nutrition for the land and everybody on it.
Understanding natural carbon cycles makes it easier for us to make carbon-friendly decisions instead of making accidental choices that abuse the planet’s natural flow. Purchasing 100% grass-fed, free-range animal products or biodegradable and chemical-free products can quickly compound and significantly catalyze positive impact in the face of global climate change.
To learn more about thriving soil cultures watch:
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References:
Riebeek, H. (2011, June 16). The Carbon Cycle. Retrieved September 01, 2020, from https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/CarbonCycle
Page, C. (2018, February 14). Carbon Mooooves. Retrieved September 01, 2020, from https://www.smilingtreefarm.com/blog/carbon-mooooves
Stebbins, G. (1981). Coevolution of Grasses and Herbivores. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, 68(1), 75-86. doi:10.2307/2398811
Gustavus Adolphus College. (2018, October 2). Rattan Lal, Ph.D. Presenting at Nobel Conference 54 [Video]. YouTube. from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mbSzIojsRQ
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