Before Captain Cook landed, the populous Native Hawaiians were entirely self-sufficient and produced more food using less land than modern Hawaiian agriculture.
Here is a quick tour.
Native Hawaiians developed the ahupua'a system, a geographic unit used to delineate a specific land management and food production area.
Each ahupua'a started as a narrow point high in the the volcanic peaks, spreading wider like a slice of pie as it descended towards the sea.
A single ahupua'a spanned a cross-section of the island’s ecosystems and resources.
The ahupua'a was organized around the flow of water. Boundaries ran along the natural delineation of watersheds. From the top of the system to the bottom, water was treated with the utmost care.
The upper forests were mostly untouched, with a small portion lightly managed and used to produce hardwoods and building materials
Below this area, Native Hawaiians planted agroforestry plots mixing endemic plants with the canoe plants brought by the first Polynesians
Breadfruit trees and coconut trees shaded bananas and noni trees, and sprinkled throughout the agroforest were Kukui trees. Chickens and pigs ate the fallen fruits.
This served as the Hawaiians' perennial source of starches, fats, protein, and medicinals.
In the zone below the agroforestry, Hawaiians grew their most important staple and culturally significant crop: taro
This zone was terraced and irrigated with water from the mountain streams. Water was diverted into the terraced pools, gently spilling from one to the next
Excess water would return to the stream, where it continued towards the sea.
The freshwater would eventually meet the sea and spill into rock-walled fish ponds in the tidal pools. Fish were captured with sluice gates and fattened up in the nutrient-rich brackish water
A recent study concluded that the ahupua'a system could produce 1 million metric tons of food from just 6 percent of Hawaii's land.
That's enough to feed all of the estimated 1.2 million pre-contact Native Hawaiians, or 86% of the current population of Hawaii, 1.4 million.
In contrast, Hawaii's current farmland covers 3x more land than before 1777, and the total food produced through modern methods is only 151,700 metric tons
That's only 15% of what was produced more than 200 years ago by Native Hawaiians on 3x less land without external inputs
The ahuapua'a system was first conceived around the 15th century. It was successfully used for more than 1,000 years to produce a cornucopia of foods, maximize and sustain precious water resources, preserve a rich ecology, and support a vibrant culture.
Today, we go straight for the shiny technological fix; we've lost track of the whole and focus too much on the individual pieces, resulting in fragile agriculture systems
The ahuapa'a is an example of the kind of agricultural ingenuity that is possible in each unique bio-region
The second to last tweet should read: The ahuapua'a system is believed to have been conceived in the 15 century. However, some evidence shows that it was successfully used for over 1,000 years.
Thanks to all who pointed out my math deficiency. I also mix up my colors.
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It's a common belief that cattle cause ecological destruction.
So common that Allan Savory, whose grazing framework has been used to regenerate 40 million acres, once held this belief.
That is, until he came across the work of a little-known Frenchman
Andre Voisin was a French biochemist, farmer, and the originator of the theory of "rational grazing."
He would spend entire days simply observing his cows' grazing patterns, which led to his breakthrough in understanding how grazing can benefit the land.
Drawing on his observations, scientific mind, and study of related disciplines, Voisin developed a set of guiding principles for what he called rational grazing
1)For grass to achieve its maximum productivity, it must be given a recovery period between grazing intervals
The typical coffee farm applies an excessive amount of synthetic nitrogen – between 200 -300 kgs per hectare, a rate on par with high-yielding corn, the crop with the highest nitrogen demand.
But that's not the most surprising part...
Up to 65% of the nitrogen (N) applied on coffee farms is lost to leaching or volatilization.
The N that leaches through the soil profile makes its way into groundwater and waterways, contaminating the farmers' water sources along with surrounding communities.
The volatilization of synthetic N contributes nitrous oxide to the atmosphere.
Nitrous oxide has an atmospheric warming potential 265x greater than CO2.
Coffee-growing regions are already experiencing climate instability.
Who knew coffee was contributing to its own demise?
Coffee trees cover 11 million hectares of land throughout the tropics.
The production of coffee is facing the perfect storm of challenges that may drastically change the daily reality for consumers and farmers alike...
Farmers harvest ripe emerald coffee cherries by hand and meticulously process them until the seed is ready to be roasted.
These farmers do nearly all their work by hand, from planting and harvesting to processing and everything in between (save for mechanized farms in Brazil).
Most coffee farmers get by on razor-thin margins and often sell coffee for less than their production price.
But, the challenge of producing coffee doesn't stop there.
Given its fundamental importance and ubiquity in natural processes, it's assumed that we completely understand water.
It turns out that the universal belief that water has 3 distinct phases is only the tip of the iceberg.
100 years ago, Sir William Hardy, a renowned chemist, proposed a 4th phase of water. He described a structured gel-like phase of water between liquid and solid
This hypothesis was quickly buried in favor of more reductionist explanations of water
Hardy’s proposal remained ignored for almost 200 years until Dr. Gerald Pollack, a scientist and professor of bioengineering came along
Pollack followed his knack for going beyond scientific orthodoxies to discover that Hardy was on to something