Life on Land

The female farmers of Makueni County in southeastern Kenya rarely expect to triumph over their parched, unpropitious soils. A pick, a spade and a jovial, no-nonsense, will-to-survive scarcely seem sufficient for a transition to greener prospects. In addition, the need for cash frequently robs these hardy women of their men’s presence; casual labour in economic hotspots, or other work in livestock and poultry trading, is the norm. Producing the food thus rests on the shoulders of the women, many of whom are subsistence farmers or smallholders burdened with increasingly unproductive land. Severe land degradation coupled with drastic changes in climate has meant that many frequently face food shortages.

The White House has been spewing some pretty foul policy lately. It can be difficult to identify something hopeful about our struggling planet. Maybe the fact that the hole in the ozone layer is actually shrinking!

The Dr Pepper Snapple Group/Keep America Beautiful Park Recycling Infrastructure Grant Program opened its 2018 application process today, offering new opportunities to make recycling convenient for communities across the country. Applications are open for submission at kab.org/parkrecycling through Feb. 16, 2018.

Not many executives can say that in their first week on the job they – literally and figuratively – pulled on their boots to help restore a vacant lot in the South Bronx into a community garden. But doing just that is how I quickly began to understand and experience the Timberland philosophy of being an “Earthkeeper.”

Adapting to a changing climate relies on knowledge, experience and accurate weather forecasts. In the rugged northwest of Viet Nam, female farmers have been learning how to obtain and use forecasts with help from the World Agroforestry Centre.

Look inside the Kohler Waste Lab, where we’re asking how industrial waste can be kept out of landfills and transformed into something of value. The Waste Lab’s sole purpose is to imagine and create new uses for clean manufacturing waste. Currently we’re working with foundry dust and sand, green cull, and enamel powder to make kitchen and bathroom tile. But that’s just the beginning. Explore the lab and see what we’re working on at wastelab.kohler.com.

In this issue: World Agroforestry Centre's scientists presented their research findings on the impact of agriculture on climate at COP23; Tony Bartlett discusses the effects agroforestry has had on Northwest Viet Nam; and ICRAF works with Indonesian farmers to cultivate sandalwood as part of the Indonesia Rural Economic Development project. Plus, upcoming events, new videos and publications, and more.

What will the highways of the near future look like? This road project aims to create "a corridor that reconnects and restores us."

The Arbor Day Foundation in partnership with Neat Streets Miami, the Miami-Dade County Parks, Recreation, and Open Spaces Department, FedEx and Verizon will be gifting trees to area residents affected by Hurricane Irma. The distribution event will take place during Florida’s Arbor Day weekend on Saturday, January 20, 2018, at the North Park Trail, 780 NW 127 Avenue, Miami, FL, 33182, from 9:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m. Miami-Dade County residents will be able to select from a three-gallon fruit or other native trees, while supplies last.