When I started Tree-Nation, the first project's focus was to fight #desertification. We started in possibly one of the most difficult places on earth to plant trees: Niger. This African country has 2 deserts: the Sahara in the North and the Sahel in the South. Trees don’t grow easily in these very arid conditions, yet this is also one of the places where trees are most needed Trees can stop the desert, bring food, fodder, and medicine, and also increase general FoodSecurity as they are more resilient than crops to droughts and floods.
When considering to add more projects our focus shifted naturally to the Tropical zone, the land comprised between the 2 tropics (i.e.: near the equator). This is where trees can absorb lots of CO2 faster. Trees grow fast and tall in these tropical ecosystems, quickly capturing lots of CO2 in the process. Reforestation projects located in this zone were ideally placed to fight climate change. Add to this that tropical forests host 85% of all terrestrial biodiversity and that this is where most of the world’s deforestation takes place. This all made perfect sense so it became our main focus.
Over the years our mission became global. We wanted to plant anywhere it would be useful, which pretty much means almost everywhere. We started projects in Europe, even if there is no specific deforestation threat in most European countries. In general when a country has an efficient governing infrastructure, sort of, there are basic laws to prevent heavy deforestation and to protect our forests. To be clear we did cut down 2 third of our trees during the Middle Age. For example, Ireland wasn’t the green grassland we picture today but a land of vibrant forests (1). But in our modern times, there was no urgency.
I was always happy to plant in new locations but it wasn’t really the focus as we could plant more trees and capture more CO2 in our tropical projects. However, this changed recently.
Some years ago, I became aware of a phenomenon I realized I didn’t pay enough attention to before. It’s always harder to spot a problem when its character is itself literally small and vanishing. Some scientists coined a name to it: the insects' apocalypse. If you are starting to imagine a horde of insects invading our cities and home, well don’t! The apocalyptic issue is the disappearance of insects. I am, like most, not a big fan of #insects, yet we need to admit they serve a purpose. In fact, they are essential to our ecosystems. Without insects the world would not “work” and our ecosystems would collapse. Many insects, like bees, for example, are pollinators. This means they help most flowers, and many trees and crops species to reproduce by carrying the pollen around. Pollinators provide an ecosystem service as they are key to the production of our natural resources. If the insects disappear, so will our ecosystems.
It is indeed an apocalypse.
Besides pollination, insects play another essential role in oxygenating the soil and producing natural #fertilizer by breaking down the organic matter like leaves and grass. We can picture them as a natural fertilization system for our land.
It may be doubted whether there are many other animals that have played so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly organized creatures. Charles Darwin, (referring to earthworms)
But here is the thing, in Europe, in North America and basically, in every developed country, we have switched to what we call modern agricultural practices. We call them “modern” but we could just call them foolish because they simply don’t work! We make extensive use of chemical pesticides and chemical fertilizers. To be fair they do have an immediate effect: use them and at first and your crops will grow strong. But the next year, if you are willing to get the same results you’ll need a bit more pesticides and a bit more fertilizers. Why? Because the insects will either die or flee away from the chemicals. As you lose the natural soil improvements brought by the insects you’ll need to compensate with more chemicals. The remaining insects will over the years become more resistant to pesticides anyway needing you to pour more and more.
The near systematic use of monoculture farming in our modern agriculture is another part of this same problem. Biodiversity and monocrops don’t get along well. It can’t be “diverse” and “mono” at the same time. A field with one species of food crop will necessarily host fewer insects as this habitat is less diverse and rich for the insect's needs. This in turn will leave the soil poorer, depleted of nutrients, and unable to support natural healthy growth for the crops, eventually forcing farmers to make more extensive use of chemical fertilizers to encourage plant growth.
We started having extensive use of chemicals after WW2 in Europe and North America and have never stopped since. Needless to say, eating chemicals meant to kill life, is part of our daily diet. It’s omnipresent in what we eat today, which is extremely scary, but not the topic of this writing so I won’t go further.
Counting the bugs. Entomologist Terry Erwin fogs trees with insecticide to collect insects in the rainforest canopy in Peru. He recorded about 1,200 separate species in just 19 trees. (2)
There are very few studies on insect populations' evolution over the years, yet the few ones (3) made have a clear result: we lost 76% of our insect population in the last 30 years (4)(5). If you want a visual image of this, if you are old enough you may remember a car trip you took about 20 years ago and when reaching your destination the car hood was just full of bugs. Today you may have a few bugs here and there.
Biologist Arnold van Vliet count the bugs on cars
Meanwhile, other scientific studies estimate that when we reach a loss of 90% of the insect population, there will not be enough pollinators to sustain the ecosystem. It has a name: the insect apocalypse. But we could perfectly call it the ecosystem apocalypse or simply the apocalypse.
Decline in insect populations – is silence spreading over the land? (6)
My apologies if I just ruined your day. Let’s keep on.
Simply put, we need to change the way we do agriculture. It’s not sustainable for our insects, our health, and our planet. Bio agriculture may be better but the root of the problem is elsewhere. Aside from insects, our agriculture fields are missing something: trees. A functioning farming ecosystem should necessarily include crops, insects, and trees. Remove the trees and/or the insects and it doesn’t work well. Hence the need to compensate for this by adding chemicals. Having trees and crops together has a name: agroforestry. Some say this is the most ancient science in the world, but one we lost knowledge about. And one we are progressively starting to learn more about again.
When you think about an agricultural field your mind may picture a field with no trees. You were born in this landscape, so it only feels natural. Take a plane, look out the window and you can see land extend to the horizon with only a mosaic of color-changing farming terrains but no trees in it. There are no trees so those big tractors can make their way more easily. Modern agriculture has therefore very large fields with no trees.
Where we plant in the Agroforestry in Bourgogne project
I wanted to do my homework so I went and checked how our agriculture fared when chemicals did not exist. Let’s go back to the Middle Age. Crops production wasn’t that great. And looking at old paintings and embroideries, I could notice that even back then, there were no trees in the fields. It surprised me at first as I genuinely expected the problem started with industrialization. But it was in fact logical even back then: the plow and other agrarian tools would destroy any chance for a tree to take roots. Still, the painting revealed a simple and known fact: fields were much much smaller. Only with the appearance of modern tractors, we started to unite smaller fields into bigger ones. And those smaller fields had trees on their borders. So the ratio of trees vs empty land was not that dramatic. Insects could still thrive where the trees were.
Now the good news. There is a way to change this. It’s called #agroforestry. We can add trees to a crop field and yet sufficiently spaced, to let tractors navigate. Trees bring nutrients to crops, restore the soil, clean water and serve as a habitat for pollinators. But also, trees can act as natural pesticides and fertilizers so it can help remove farmers' dependence on chemical products and bring radical benefits to the ecosystem.
We need to make agroforestry our new agriculture. This is a radical and massive shift that we want to help get started.
Studied since the ’70s, agroforestry hasn’t spread due to the lack of awareness, expertise, and financial assistance. That’s Tree-Nation is well-positioned to help.
The less dependence on costly chemicals and the more diverse farm outputs (including production of fruits, nuts, etc.) will improve farmers’ economic conditions. More productive, less expensive, and more resilient, agroforestry benefits farmers as well as the environment!
I believe this entrusts our project with an important double mission, the one to help avoid a catastrophic loss of our biodiversity and a way for us to build the sustainable future of our food chain.
Maxime Renaudin
Tree-Nation founder
Sources:
1. http://www.rohanlon.org/downloads/O%27Hanlon%20Forestry%20Source%20June%202012.pdf
3. https://e360.yale.edu/features/insect_numbers_declining_why_it_matters
4. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/aab.12410
5. https://www.lexpress.fr/actualites/1/actualite/apocalypse-des-insectes-le-tresor-des-entomologistes-de-krefeld_2087236.html
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