The Brown Revolution: A Sustainable Response to the Global Food Crisis and Viable Options for the Small Scale Farmer.

Based on FAO studies 25,000 million tons of topsoil are lost each year destroying as much as 37,000 sq miles of arable land.  The term “Brown Revolution” was coined by Howard G. Buffett based on research ECHO and others are doing and refers to using biological systems to both increase soil fertility and agricultural productivity through building soil ecology. Through the use of multiple crop rotations, Green Manure Cover Crops (GM/CCs), intercropping with highly productive legumes in a minimal soil disturbance system that enhances the maintenance of mycorrhizal fungi we are looking at cropping systems that are both economically profitable and environmentally beneficial on a sustainable basis. Ninety percent of farmers in the world work on less than 5 acres of land and are classified as small scale farmers.  Forty-three percent of these small scale farmers are women and the vast majority of small scale farmers have little or no formal education and have little or no access to credit or crop insurance.  Due to farming heavily weathered soils and negative farming practices, most small scale farmers are net consumers instead of net producers. Modified Conservation Agriculture systems are resulting in significantly increased productivity while building soil productivity in a way that can be replicated by small scale farmers.  Intercropping with legumes GM/CCs that both produce a crop and add as much as 500 lbs of N per acre while suppressing weed growth, ECHO research in South Africa is demonstrating low capital input cropping systems that are resulting in small scale farmers increasing their yield while building topsoil for future production.