COP 21 ANDRE LEU Regenerative Organic Hi Yield Hi Resilient Farming Systems

COP 21 PARIS. Andre Leu President of IFOAM Organics Int. interview of the benefits of organic farming with soil microbes, producing nutritional high yield, high drought resilient food crops, that additionally mitigate CO2 emissions through soil absorption. Building of healthy soils through composted organic matter and microbes.

They have been actively involved in all of the COPS since Copenhagen onwards, to bring in the concept of soil organic matter, for both mitigation and adaptation in farming. In farming, plants grow and what plants do is they photosynthesize, and when they do that, they take carbon dioxide out of the air, combine it with water and then make glucose and otherorganic molecules. And this is the basis of all life, including us.

As they grow, their roots deposit a large amount of carbon into the soil, and that feeds soil life and develops healthy soils.

What we know when we build up soil organic matter, is that we increase the ability of the soil to capture and hold rainfall, so the scientific studies we have with organic farimc methods, and they are called organic because they build up organic matter which is our primary management technique.

We have many studies to show, that because we build up organic matter and organic farming systems, that we get high yields in drought than conventional systems. 30% more because those systems collapse in droughts. Our systems are resilient.

He also discusses:

• Soil erosion
• Climate change reversal
• Input reduction
• Treating animals humanely
• Compost
• Human Compost