John Piotti on the Future of Food and Our Planet

Jennifer (1s): Hey, Monica. 

Monica (2s): Hi, Jennifer. 

Jennifer (4s): How are you? 

Monica (6s): I am so good. We wrapped up our leadership summit on Tuesday and it went really well. 

Jennifer (10s): Oh, my gosh, it was so great. The presentations and the Q and A's were super engaging and the topics were varied yet there were so many themes and connections to all of them, it was so cool.

Monica (18s): Yes. And today we're going to give our listeners a little taste of the summit 

Jennifer (21s): Which I love. So today we have John Piotti, president of American Farmland Trust, who is a keynote speaker at this year's summit sharing about the history of American Farmland Trust and how they are working to combine agriculture and environmentalism for a green future.

John (42s): I'm John Piotti, the president of American Farmland Trust. And it's a real pleasure to be part of this event as someone who has spent my youth outside in the countryside, studied ecology and now for the last 30 plus years have worked with farmers, the notion of biophilic really appeals to me, the love of nature and the connection to it.

The biophilic notion is at the heart of Africa. At every turn farmers are reminded of the complex interplay between multiple elements, sun, soil, water, temperature, pests, predators, so much more. Farmers are stewards of the land. If they are not successful as stewards, they have no hope of staying in business, not long-term and they can only be successful as stewards if they work with nature.

The flip side of that, if farming isn't done well, working in close concert with nature, it can't be sustained. And as I point out later in my talk, if farming can't be sustained, neither can our society. We need farming, not just to feed us, but to heal our wounded planet. Some of you may know American Farmland Trust by our iconic bumper sticker, but there's a lot more to us.

For 40 years, we've been working on critical issues that determine our future. But let's start long before that. I'm going to give you a whirlwind tour of agriculture in America. In 1837, John Deere invented the modern steel moldboard plow and that changed everything. Before then the turf across the Heartland, America was simply too tough to plant what we did once we had the plow.

This marvel of technology is we did what we always do. We overuse it, we cloud and we plowed and we plowed. Now excessive plowing was only one cause of the dust bowl, but it was a big one. And the dust bowl opened our eyes to the need for conservation but world war got in the way and our energies were focused elsewhere.

And then after the war, much of the world faced famine, we applied new lessons of technology and industrialization to that problem. The so-called green revolution. It probably saved a billion lives, but it came with huge environmental costs. Then it was only in the sixties and seventies that we began to realize that these environmental costs were really hurting.

There was an environmental awareness and in the mid seventies, we begin to recognize how that is affecting farmland, both the loss of our farm land and the practices that are occurring on our land. And USDA partnered at that time with the president's council on environmental quality to do something called the national agricultural lands study, the first effort to look at our farmland.

And it seriously questions whether we would have the land and the capabilities to feed ourselves in the future. In this backdrop, this is when American farmland trust was.

AFT was founded by Peggy Rockefeller and impassioned environmentalist, conservationist, and farmer herself, as well as of course a philanthropist. Now AFTs origin stories is fascinating. Peggy at that time, sat on the board of the nature Conservancy, which today does some really great work in agriculture, but it didn't back then. The agriculture community and the environmental community word laws. Now they are still in some ways, but not anything at the level. Like they were back then Peggy and others saw how farming and environmental advocacy could and needed to be viewed as two sides of the same coin. She urged TNC to play that role.

And TNC said, no. She then pitched the idea to some other environmental organizations and they all said no. And then she asked if agricultural groups were willing to take up a environmental agenda and they all said, no. These groups all defined themselves by being against the other side, they weren't going to join in viewing environmentalism and agriculture as two sides of the same coin. The only solution was to found a new organization and AFT was born.

Rockefeller assembled an amazing group of people. It included a future MacArthur genius award winner, another man who became president of the Sierra club and the former chief of USDA's soil conservation service.

The focus of the new organization was on something we call conservation agriculture. This involves two interrelated issues that need to advance more environmentally beneficial farming practices and the need to protect farmland to ensure we have enough of it, not just to grow our food, but to provide a whole range of other services.

We sometimes describe this as saving farmland, both by the inch and by the acre. Now let's jump back to 1980 and consider how different the landscape was in relation to conservation agriculture. There was only one agricultural land trust in the nation. No field of practice. The only people who really cared anything about agriculture were farmers and a few academics.

The local food movement didn't exist. There were very few farmers markets, no CSA’s, no restaurants that showcased local products. On the policy front, there were no programs for advancing farmland protection or better farming practices, except one small program in one state focusing on farmland protection. The primary vehicle for advancing better farming.

The conservation title of the farm bill didn't exist. AFT helped change all of that. We literally created the conservation agriculture movement. We worked at all levels with the municipalities and states as well as the federal government. And we worked on multiple topics that we saw as being interconnected. At the same time that we were getting big time ag groups to think about the environment, we were helping to found gross mart America.

At the same time that we helped 29 states craft new farmland protection programs, we were helping communities do better land use planning and undertaking dozens of what we called community cost of service studies that convinced local leaders that it made good sense to keep and retain farms and open space. On the federal level, we wrote the farmland protection.

We also wrote a conservation title into the farm bill, which is now provided over $115 billion for farmers to do what's right by the land. We'd not be having a conversation today about regenerative agriculture if it had not been for the foundation laid 36 years ago with the conservation title of the farm bill and all the good improvements and refinements that have been made since. In some ways, this is the greatest Testament to AFT's success.

So many groups now embrace the notion that farming and environmentalism are indeed two sides of the same coin and it shows how much things have and yet things need to change more, much more. The challenge of our day is climate and farming has a pivotal role to play. AFT is not alone advancing.

We do have a longer track record and a deeper knowledge than others, and we have a broader perspective. Which when it comes to climate change is critically important because agricultural solutions do not lie just in better farming practices, as essential as those are. American Farmland Trust is the only national group that takes a truly holistic approach to agriculture.

From our earliest days, we've always appreciated how the land, the practices employed on that land, and the people who steward that land are all part of a complex system, but I'm going to start today talking about farming practices. It's what everyone is talking about and for good reason, because our soil has the capacity to hold three times more carbon than our atmosphere.

Now you will hear about regenerative agriculture, which is the term increasingly used. And sometimes you'll hear about restorative agriculture. You'll hear a climate smart agriculture, which is the term USDA is increasingly using and you'll hear carbon. In these terms, they're not exactly the same, but there's a lot of overlap and there's no reason to get hung up on the nuance differences.

The basic concept is the same to use farming practices that maximize environmental benefits, including building soil health and sequestering carbon. What are these products? Well, they include so-called no till and low till where you're having minimum disruptions of the soil. They include active crop rotations.

They include the active use of cover crops, strategies, like alley cropping, where you have crops in one portion of the property and then maybe trees or pastoring in other portions. And for livestock, the notion of intensive rotational grazing, and silvopasture where you have trees interspersed with pasture and more and more, these practices are not new. AFT and enterprising farmers have been advancing them for decades and some have been around for centuries, but society is finally catching up.

I like to say that the world changed on October 6th, 2018. That's when the UN intergovernmental panel on climate change stated that we will never meet, we will never meet the goals of the Paris climate accord simply by reducing emissions, as important as that is. That we also have to put carbon back into the soil and the opportunities there AFT’s research shows that we could put the equivalent of about 85 to 87% of agricultural emissions back into the ground by applying just two regenerative practices: cover crops, and no-till widespread adoption across. That's just on our cropland, which has only 40% of our agricultural land. Taking other steps, other practices on crop land and applying regenerative practices also on pasture and range lands could produce even greater results.

Making US agriculture a net carbon sink. That's great. Finally, some good news around, But we need to be careful here to avoid blind optimism. The interplay between how we farm and the amount of farmland is just one example of the complications here. Now it's absolutely wonderful that farming can both grow our food, and at the same time, provide a central environmental services. What is great? We must remember that we can't maximize food production and environmental benefits on a single parcel. We can optimize striking the right balance between the two, but we can't maximize both. If the goal is to manage land, to maximize food production, there's going to be some sacrifice to environmental benefits and vice versa.

In this way, farming practices are directly linked to farm land law. Every acre of farmland, we are not losing land that could be managed to provide environmental benefits, but we put more pressure on the remaining land to be farmed more intensely since the demand for food's not going down.

So it's a double hit, a reinforcing downward spiral. Now this wouldn't be so big a deal if we weren't losing farmland so fast, but each day thousand acres of America's farmland are paid over, fragmented, or converted to other users equal care that, and really aren't alone, including a lot of intelligent people.

And here are some of the things I hear them say. Well, we have plenty of land. If we just didn't need meat, which raising meat is very land intensive. I hear that. I hear well in the future, it's going to be different. We're not going to need farmland to grow food. There will be vertical farms. There will be other structures that will work for this. I hear that. And then I hear, well, aren't you forgetting the wonders of technology? Aren't we going to increase our productivity so we don't need as much land? Now I can spend a lot of time talking about these three points, including the first one, this point about meat and around which there is a ton of misinformation.

We have to remember that agriculture is a system, an integrated system that relies on both plants and animals, synergistically interacting. True livestock utilize a lot of farmland, but that's a good thing. Because when livestock are managed correctly, they improve that land. It's also true that Americans and people from other developed nations probably need to eat less meat, but I'd also argue that there are billions of people in developing nations who could probably benefit from eating more meat.

The conversation we should be having is about how we raise meat. Now let's talk about the second point. We're not going to need farmland to grow all of our food. Well, in some ways that's true, right? It would be great if every American had a home garden, think what we did with the victory gardens during World War II.

And I love what's happening in the urban environment where we're cultivating smaller plots to grow food, realizing multiple community benefits. I'm also excited by what is sometimes referred to as vertical farming or controlled atmosphere farming. There's a part of me, a part of me that questions farming that is based on so much technology like interior space and in the light.  

Still, It has a place I think for certain crops, but the bottom line. Is that the vast majority of our food will be grown on farmland now and into the foreseeable future. And that's a good thing. That's a good thing from someone who believes in the biophilic perspective, right? Because shouldn't our food be coming from working with nature, not through some technological solution.

Finally, let me talk about the third point here about increased production. Society has seen huge increases in food production in the last hundred years. But the so-called green revolution, as I mentioned before, has also created a lot of problems. That's a trend line that can't continue. We must remember that increased production of the past came at a cost. Skyrocketing increase in the use of petroleum-based fertilizers.

Not exactly a climate smart solution. I have no doubt that will increase productivity, but I question how much we can increase productivity if we want to aggressively pursue regenerative farming as we must. This is because as noted earlier, as you intensify food production, you limit opportunities for environmental benefit.

If we don't set up farmland loss, we would need an unrealistic and environmentally unsound increase in food production to outpace the demand of a growing population, eating a proper diet. Simply put, we can't risk losing more. In fact, let me take this argument one step further and ask this, how much more farmland do we really need, or I could be a little bit more provocative and twist this question around and say, do we have enough farmland today?

Now you may reply. Well, of course we do right after all here in the US we grow far more food than we consume. We're transporting it elsewhere. We're using corn for ethanol, et cetera, et cetera. But what if we were farming differently? How much farmland would we need then? What if there was ample vegetation around every waterway to filter run-off right.

What if we utilized cover crops and crop rotations everywhere. What if we took the marginal land that probably shouldn't be used for agriculture because it requires so many inputs or productivity. What if we had that go back to native Prairie or Woodland our wetlands? What if our goal was carbon neutrality and we were taking seriously regenerative practices and all of this land.

And then what if we wanted to elevate it to another level which we need to do because agriculture has that opportunity to be a carbon sink in a way that other economic sectors don't. 

If we did all these things, would we have enough farmland today? Hey, but wait, there's more right, because I've been talking about the United States and yet these are global issues and they are ever changing issues.

Given the growing population that will be demanding more and more food. And given of course, changes in rainfall and temperature and sea level rise that come with climate change. So how much farmland do we need? It's a basic question that has gone unanswered because it's far more complicated than it is.

Now AFT is positioned to address this issue. It's the next logical step in a big research project that we've had going on for many years. We need a few more years. We need a few more million dollars, but we're working towards, but even though the results are not all known yet, there's a key point that I can make with confidence now.

And it's this: long before we run out of the agricultural land that we are going to need to feed us, we are going to run out of the agricultural land that we need to help heal our planet. In fact, it's quite possible. We might be extremely close to that tipping point. We just don't know. Now my purpose here today was to show our ability to advance regenerative practices is directly tied to the amount of farmland that we retain.

That's one example of the system here, but it's just one system. It just one example, I should say, of that system. Another critical piece that I'll point out is how farmers who work that land are also essential to making sure that the system works. Even if you have enough farmland, the system breaks down if you don't have the people to work it now, this is becoming a huge issue across. And in the US, AFT estimates that almost 40% of our farmland will be in transition away from current ownership in the next 15 years due simply to the age of the farmland orders. Where are we going to find this next generations of farmers and ranchers, folks willing and able to do the work.

And if we don't find them, how much land is at risk of being lost to other uses, escalating a trend in farmland loss, which is already too great. Fortunately, our country is full of would be farmers, both young people and retiring veterans and others who are interested in starting a second career.

It's great. But they often don't have all the skills or the resources to enter the field. And that's why AFT runs programs to support next generation farmers and to lead efforts, to protect farmland. Protecting farmland with a well-structured agricultural conservation easement is one way to make that land more affordable.

So it's a system with many, many connections. Good land use planning, another example, it's critical to ensure that we will have the land we need that it's not just sprawled out with inappropriate wasteful development, and we need innovative models of development, just like we see here so powerfully at Serenbe.

If there's one thing, the pandemic taught us it's that we need more food produced, close to home. We need more community resiliency in our food system. We need redundancy in our supply chains. And if we're serious about that, if we're serious about that, we need more small farms and farm infrastructure close to home, everything from the infrastructure for urban agriculture to support for small farms to local meat processing facilities and the like.

But it's not just about small farms, because if we're serious about carbon sequestration, we need to get the big farms to adopt new practices because that's where the impact. So we need farms of all types and all scales. They all have a role to play and they all can do better by the environment. And of course there is that most direct and tangible connection here, it's to the food that we eat, right?

The sustenance of our very lives and to the value of out farms to provide this full range of environmental services. Be it wildlife habitat, water recharge, open space, pollinator habitat, carbon capture the list goes on. So what does all this mean? Well, to combat climate change, we desperately need to transition to regenerative farming, but regenerative practices by themselves won't guarantee anything.

We will never realize our goal unless we have both sufficient farmland and enough farmers and ranchers suiting that land well. Now we don't know how much agricultural land we need, but we could be getting close to a tipping point where we will not have enough to combat climate change. It's a system with multiple connections.

Not only the connections around farming practices that I've alluded to, as important as they are, but also to connections, to better land use planning, innovative development models, and producing more food locally. Be it in your garden, on the urban plot or in small local farms. But there is realistic hope.

We have for the last 40 plus years developing great tools to protect farmland, to advance better farming practices and to work to keep farmers on the land and attract the next generation. We're simply not implementing these tools at the degree needed, at the scale that's needed. That's our challenge now to scale it up.

But the good news is that we know what to do. Public policy has a big role to play here because we ultimately need on the farming side to be paying farmers a fair price, not just for the food that they grow, but for the wide range of environmental services that they provide. And there’s a sea change here, but I've worked on agricultural policy for my whole career.

And unlike the past, there is now a willingness in state legislatures, in members of Congress to think about agriculture and food issues in a different way, and to take action. Call me naive, but I'm quite hopeful, the next farm bill in 2023 will be transformational. Part of the reason is that the public is increasingly aware that manifests itself in pressure on their elected representatives. It also manifests itself in their consumer behavior. And the public is increasingly willing at times, excited, about using their purchasing dollar to affect real change. Whether that be purchasing products from big companies, like General Mills that have made a commitment to work with farmers who follow regenerative practices, or be that buying more locally via through a CSA or at the local farmer's market, or be at, living in places like Serenbe that really are models of personal behavior that can lead to some of these great outcomes. 

So I am quite optimistic, but I'm most optimistic because of the growing number of people who care about these issues, more and more people who appreciate farming, farmers, and the food, they grow. More and more people who are connecting to nature who are committed to wellness, not just for themselves, but for our planet. In the end, that's what will produce the transformation we need. Thank you for your attention.

Monica (30m 03s): Okay, so there you have it. That was our keynote presentation from the Biophilic Leadership Summit.

Jennifer (30m 10s): I love the way American Farmland Trust looks at farming and agriculture in such a holistic way. I've really never thought about that before. They're working to conserve land, promote the best farming practices and also protect farmers, which I really love. For anyone who feels unclear about what regenerative agriculture really means, that's it: looking at all these things as one whole part, the healthiest. 

Monica (30m 33s): Absolutely. And how we can start being smarter about using agriculture to produce healthier food and solve major climate issues, as well as all the advocacy and policy work that AFT is doing 

Jennifer (30m 40s): So many hopeful takeaways about the strides that AMT has been making to advance these healthier systems.

Monica (30m 46s): And we'll start looking ahead to that farm bill in 2023. 

Jennifer (30m 49s): You bet. You can learn more about American Farmland Trust and get involved by heading to the show notes and sign up for your “No Farms, No Foods” bumper sticker. 

Monica (30m 57s): Alright, talk to you later, Jennifer.

Jennifer (30m 59s): Until next time.