AT a recently concluded regenerative agricultural workshop hosted by Northern Marianas College-Cooperative Research, Extension, and Education Services, guest speaker Dr. Craig Elevitch discussed agroforestry with island residents.
Elevitch has been a regular partner with NMC-CREES and has led multiple agroforestry workshops on Saipan, Tinian and Rota.
The most recent Saipan workshop was held on April 12 and 13. The session on April 12 featured a regenerative agriculture seminar on the NMC campus. The April 13 session was a practical agricultural session held at a private farm.
According to “Breadfruit Agroforestry Guide,” the free-to-download publication Elevitch co-wrote with Diane Ragone, agroforests “integrate trees, shrubs, and other perennial plants with crops and/or animals in ways that provide economic, environmental, and social benefits.”
At the April 12 presentation, Elevitch said agroforests are agricultural systems that replicate the way plants grow in nature.
These systems help soil retain moisture, are beneficial to microorganisms, and can be productive without the kinds of fertilizers used in commercial agriculture, he said.
Elevitch said in the natural environment, forests will contain multiple canopy layers, different species growing in “very dense” collections, and the ground will be completely covered with either living plants or decaying plant matter.
“The different layers of canopies, the diversity, the bringing together of many species and the density — in other words, a lot of things growing together mimic a natural native forest,” he said. “The structure, diversity and density — it is like a native forest. But it was put here by people.”
He said agroforestry is a modern word that describes food forest cultivation that comes naturally to human beings.
“What we call regenerative agriculture, it’s just the way things were done for generations, for hundreds and thousands of years,” he said.
Elevitch said Pacific cultures have been practicing regenerative farming as part of their culture, adding that agroforestry practices are beneficial to the soil.
“I would like to suggest that the agriculture that is indigenous to the Pacific and all around the world...is a time-tested model that we can follow,” he said. “I’m going to suggest that the knowledge held by the people doing this is the knowledge we need today to turn around our very destructive agricultural systems, and turn them into something that heals the earth and in the process heals ourselves.”