Day 3: Diversity - an important way forward

Hello from the last day of Agri4D, where diversity is strength!

It's been more than two full days of intense conversation, it feels like my brain is a chaotic ecosystem, full of a diversity of different ideas, analyses and perspectives on how regenerative agriculture can meet future challenges, all competing with each other for my attention.

But if there's just one thing I would take from the entire conference it is how diversity means strength and means resilience. Diversified livelihoods, diversified agricultural land, a diversity of methodology. From Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted of CGIAR in the morning I heard about how a diversified diet is a great way to meet the challenges of both malnutrition through lack of food and also health problems because of an oversupply of sugars and fat. And in a later session I heard about how solar panels can be part of a diversified income to support farms in the UK - as long as the challenges of public support and long-term biodiversity monitoring can be met.

I even saw how the carbon storing biochar can be made out of a diversity of biomass, from sugar cane waste to sewage! “Does the biochar process sterilise the sewage?” I asked cautiously before daring to touch the samples the speaker had brought.

And forgive me for over sharing, but I also personally used a new invention that takes human liquid waste and through soaking it into pellets makes this other very common by-product into a potential agricultural resource.

(I think this is the first report I've started to use contractions in, which is probably my brain's way of signalling that it is full up!)

What happens at Agri4D does, however, definitely not stay at Agri4D. The last session asked how the lessons and knowledge from this conference can go further and cause more change in the wider world. One journalist on the panel noted that you can't make news out of all science”; scientists also know that often their research would lose too much nuance if it was reduced to 1:30 minutes. And I can personally say I spoke to one early career researcher who was actively looking to get their SLU thesis published as a news article.

In a few day's time I will also publish a longer blog post, reflecting on more general lessons and also specific takeaways from the conference. I hope your brain will have room to read it!

Greetings from Loukas, 
Master's student at SLU