“McCain had a problem. The family-run company that supplies a quarter of the world's french fries was facing a potato shortage.
When its top agronomists toured its farmers' fields from Canada to South Africa, they found entire crops failing.
Years of intensive farming drained the fields of their nutrients. Flash floods were waterlogging soils, while droughts were killing off whatever crops survived. Just over a decade ago, McCain was being hit by some of the worst potato harvests since its founding in 1957 and the problem was no longer a one-off.
"It used to be that we would have one or two climate events every 10 to 15 years," said Charlie Angelakos, vice president of global external affairs and sustainability at McCain.
"Then the business started to notice a startling pattern: It was not uncommon to get 10, 12 or 15 climate events in one year, whether that was a drought, fires, or too much rain," he said. "We knew we had to do something."
In 2018, the company conducted its first study into how changing weather patterns were hitting its potato harvest. What it found was startling: Its entire methodology for growing potatoes was wrong and needed to be revamped.
Intensive farming practices that were heavy on fertilizers and pesticides were found to be damaging soil health and were ruled out.
New types of potatoes that could cope with extreme weather events were called for.
McCain hired soil-health scientists to bring nutrients back to the soil naturally.
Even the design of farm machinery was considered -- and tractors were fitted with wider tires to ensure soil was less compacted.
"This is about building a resilient food supply system so that we can continue to operate our business," Angelakos said.
McCain partners with potato growers like John Bubb, a fourth-generation farmer from Shropshire in the heart of England.
McCain asked Bubb to use regenerative agricultural techniques on his farm to boost production and to test how different growing techniques and potato varieties fare in different regions. It wanted his farm to operate as a living lab.
His farm is one of a number conducting trials in the U.K. McCain is running similar trials in Canada and South Africa.
Regenerative agriculture involves less-intensive growing methods to be kinder to the environment. These include no-till farming, in which fields aren't plowed so often, and planting offseason crops to keep the soil bound together during the winter.
Companies such as PepsiCo and Diageo have embraced "regenag" practices, and it is one of the few sustainable practices to be backed by the Trump administration.
Bubb said that when McCain suggested using regenerative-agriculture techniques on his farm, he didn't need much convincing. "There's now a lot of extreme weather -- wet weather, dry weather and our tractors were getting stuck," he said. "We just realized that we really were damaging soil."
Bubb uses a combination of new techniques on his farm. Crops like peas and clover are planted between rows of potatoes to help bring nitrogen back into the soil. Cover crops like winter wheat are grown in the off season, to help bind the soil and stop it being washed away. Wildflowers were planted at the edges of the field to improve biodiversity and get more pollinators into the area. He gets neighboring sheep farmers to bring herds into his fields to trample the soil and eat the leftover plants. They leave behind a vital source of manure.
All of this helps to create better soil, McCain said. More nutrients allow roots to grow deeper, keeping the soil intact during heavy rains. They allow crops to tap deeper water sources during droughts. More nitrogen means more natural bacteria and micro-organisms in the soil, for the potato crops to feed on as they grow.
"The way we are farming has gone back to how my granddad would have done it," Bubb said. "My dad doesn't understand it at all, but my granddad who's not here anymore, he would have understood."
New types of potatoes have also been tried. Longer potatoes with a thin skin that makes them easier to peel, and varieties that crisp up when cooked to produce that perfect fluffy fry, were just a few of the company's criteria.
In Bubb's field, new potato varieties named "11-Z" are in the early stages of their growing cycle. In the company's North American trials, McCain shifted away from the traditional Russet Burbank variety to Dakota Russet, Caribou Russet and Teton Russet potatoes.
McCain said these varieties, plus the work of farmers like Bubb, turned potatoes once wilting under drought and succumbing to disease during floods into much more resilient potatoes. It said they're now able to withstand freak weather and require less nitrogen-based fertilizers to get the same crops.
"That variety piece is one part of the bigger puzzle," said Michelle D'Souza, research and innovation manager at McCain who developed many of the practices used by McCain's partner farmers. "But a variety is only as good as the soil it's grown in."
Bubb said the soil he used to tend lacked life and made poor harvests more likely. Now, he is trying to get more bugs and critters living under his feet. "It's taken us 50 years to get rid of all our worms and it's going to take us quite a few years to get them all back again," he said.
---
Yusuf Khan writes for WSJ Pro Sustainable Business.” [1]
A large portion of Lithuanian land —over 75% of the total farmland—is utilized for high-yield cereal, industrial crop, and commercial livestock production. So, most rich Lithuanian farmers do intensive farming. This way these Lithuanian farmers are turning Lithuania into a desert, destroying nation’s resilience in case of crisis. Most Lithuanian farmers should be punished for enriching themselves and ruining the country.
Intensive agriculture in Lithuania—which covers over 45% of the country's total land area—has shifted heavily toward commercial crop and cereal production. While this boosts yields and profits for large-scale operators, environmental concerns like soil erosion, water pollution, and grassland loss are widely documented issues associated with these practices.
The Lithuanian agricultural sector is highly polarized, consisting of very large-scale commercial agribusinesses alongside thousands of smaller family farms. While intensive farmers focus on maximizing yield, many organizations and government bodies are actively pushing for a shift toward sustainable practices to improve national resilience.
1. Run of Dud Harvests Spurs Search for the Perfect Spud. Khan, Yusuf. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 30 June 2026: B1.
Komentarų nėra:
Rašyti komentarą