‘Unpredictability is our biggest problem': Texas farmers experiment with ancient farming styles

Farmers in Bangladesh are switching from shrimp aquaculture to growing rice and watermelon during different seasons to increase their incomes and have more consistent harvests as they deal with the impacts of climate change.

Coffee growers in Oaxaca, Mexico, are renovating their plantations into agroforestry systems to adapt to the effects of climate change. The new growing style integrates native trees and shrubs to diversify the fields. This makes the plants more resistant to unpredictable weather, diseases, and pests.

Farmers in Zimbabwe are diversifying their income with beekeeping to offset financial losses from crops underperforming during increasingly severe droughts.

More and more farmers are turning to regenerative agriculture techniques as a way to cut down on costs, increase crop yields, and sequester carbon into soil as a way to reverse the effects of climate change. One farming family in Minnesota switched to no tillage farming and also planted cover crops and used animals to fertilize their land. Some people question their methods, but these farmers saw their cost of production decrease and increased the amount of organic matter in their soil compared with their neighbors.

Seaweed aquaculture is a growing field that scientists are investigating for a number of climate-related uses, from reducing methane emissions in livestock to replacing plastic in packaging. Governments, startups, and researchers around the world are getting into the algae business that is also helping to create new jobs. There are challenges with scaling many of these products, but recent research for many of these initiatives have shown signs of early success.

As concerns about food security grow in Hawaii amidst a backdrop of climate change, Pacific Islanders are leaning into agroforestry as a means to address the problem. Resilient to extreme weather, agroforests allow for multiple plants to be farmed together and can "grow double or triple the amount of plants in the same area of land as mono-culture."

The creation of forest gardens—the modern term for an ancient agroforestry model that mixes shrubs, herbs, vines, fruit and nut trees, and perennial vegetables—are helping supply communities in sub-Saharan Africa with food, medicine, and animal feed. The U.S.-based NGO TREES claims to have created 38,000 active forest gardens in five countries, each comprising about 4,000 trees. This has restored 99,743 acres of degraded land, having reached 56,273 farmers and their families across 174 community projects.

The Food and Agriculture Organization and the Slow Food Coffee Coalition are helping coffee farmers in Malawi adopt agroforestry practices by teaching them new techniques, helping them improve coffee quality, and showing them how to attract international markets. This way, the farmers earn more for their products and benefit the environment with their work.

Ancient farming techniques are helping locals to preserve the environment and agroecology while still managing to sustainably grow food in the midst of climate change and other outside challenges. Moreover, the ancient farming practices are a major attraction for agritourism, helping bring money to local communities.

Farmers around the world are implementing agroecology practices to make their farms more resilient to climate change while promoting climate justice to strengthen farming communities. Agroecology follows 13 principles that include ecological practices, like using organic fertilizers, and political and social values, like embracing land rights.