Day 4: 109 Degrees
Today was a humbling first day in the field — which really amounted to only a few hours of field time, but seems like that was enough for me. I thought I was drinking enough water and doing okay with the heat, but started to feel kind of sick when we got back to the hotel, and by the time I got to my room I felt like I had a fever. I’m feeling fine now but spent most of the afternoon and evening drinking water and resting. This definitely isn’t the first time that I’ve gotten super dehydrated despite my best efforts. Nothing like a little heat exhaustion to throw a wrench in your day!
Despite the weather, today was totally fascinating. This morning, we visited a soil science experiment site where the agronomists are experimenting with different types of crop rotations to see what combinations both improve yield and soil health. There isn’t much to look at right now since they are between planting seasons, but I learned a ton. They have fifteen years of data, which is really impressive — as one of the staff pointed out, the conclusions they would have drawn after half that time are totally different from the trends they’re seeing now. I spent a lot of time kneeling and feeling around in the soil for moisture and organic matter. It was all that lovely rust color I described yesterday, so we all ended up covered in red dust. We also saw a bunch of wild emus strutting around picking at the leftover corn and millet. I would post pictures but everything I have is fuzzy and unimpressive to look at - lots of flat, red land with a couple of blurry bird dots here and there.
Unsurprisingly to me, it looks like the soy and corn intercropped with nitrogen-fixing grass are seeing the highest yields, though there are lots of different factors at play, including drought, pests, genetic selection, etc. If a farmer can improve the productivity of his land and — this is key — maintain that productivity over time with good soil health, there is no need to for him to convert any native vegetation for new land. This is much, much simpler than restoring native vegetation on already-converted land. Up until now, I had thought that restoring degraded pasture meant that the native vegetation was being restored, but what is actually happening is that land is being converted to productive agricultural land. Restoring the native vegetation is a whole other ball game that is much more difficult and costly. Conversion is truly the point of no return for habitats — we have to preserve what is left rather than count on being able to undo the damage at some point in the future. I think there’s a parallel to be drawn with carbon emissions here. The most effective actions we can take are those we can take NOW, rather than counting on future actors to make better decisions than us.
We also spoke a bit about how cattle can assist with managing cover crops on the same land that’s growing the cash crops, though tomorrow is when we are really going to learn about cattle. For example, apparently there is an ideal ratio of grass height to root depth that can be achieved by grazing cattle — if managed correctly, the grazing cattle can actually improve the integrity of the soil by promoting greater root depth, which in turn helps improve soil health. However, if the land is overgrazed, the plants redirect the energy from the roots to replace the lost shoots, which allows the soil to be disturbed more easily. My first instinct was to assume that cattle grazing would negatively impact the soil, so that shows you how much I know!
This is all so much more complex than I realized. The sustainable agriculture movement in the U.S. has often painted a really rosy view of what it’s like to be a smallholder farmer, and imagines a utopian future where small-scale producers live a peaceful and pastoral existence. On the ground in Brazil, the reality is much different. Here, farmers are at the center of so many pressures from the market and the climate and are faced with really difficult decisions on a daily basis. The climate in the Cerrado is unforgiving (see the 109F temperature today!) and becoming more so thanks to climate change. Without appropriate training, staff, or resources, it’s difficult to manage the land in a way that consistently gives acceptable yields. At the global level, we can attempt to manipulate the market forces at play, but ultimately the decision needs to be made by the farmer who is trying to get through a growing season in the black. For the first time, I understand the mindset of someone converting land to survive being squeezed in all these different ways by such pressing concerns. What these producers need is a little breathing room, so that they are able to absorb the financial impact of changes in the climate and market, and withstand the time it takes for regenerative agricultural practices to pay off. We should be able to give that to them, no?
I am so grateful to be learning all of this from my colleagues who are experts in their fields. We had an excellent live translator with us today, and because my colleagues were able to speak in their native languages I was to see just how much knowledge they have. As always, I am super impressed with the science and love to learn as much as I can about it, even after it ceases to be helpful for communications. After our field visit, we went back to the lab of the nonprofit running these experiments (a partner of TNC in Brazil) and were able to really nerd out about data and methodology. I also got a weird little keychain of a worm and some corn kernels from the lab.
Tomorrow is our last day in the Cerrado, and as I mentioned, our cattle deep dive. I’m going to chug another bottle of water and go to bed — hopefully it won’t be as hot tomorrow!
