From small farmers, tales of adaptation in face of climate challenge
In agriculture, technology can deliver solutions. So can simple, low-tech practices. Our writer shares how, globally, those are helping some farmers to hold their ground – and describes where she found the spirit of innovation in action.
Whitney Eulich believes in thinking big by focusing on the small.
“I’m often looking for … people who are, on a small scale, providing solutions to a big issue that’s unfolding,” she says.
As the Monitor’s Latin America correspondent and editor for the region, she recently contributed to a report on how farmers are adapting to a changing global climate. The idea grew out of a fellow staffer’s coverage of the recent COP27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
Whitney’s piece of the broader story included tracking down farming innovators – and contributing writers – from well beyond her Mexico City base. That had her talking to a woman in the Peruvian Andes whose community had begun to graze alpacas at ever greater altitudes during hotter and hotter dry seasons. It meant pulling in a Guatemala freelancer’s reporting on a local organization that was reintroducing techniques that had been all but forgotten.
“What we say in Spanish, casera solutions, homemade solutions, that were really creative and surprising and interesting,” she tells the Monitor’s Clay Collins on our weekly podcast, “Why We Wrote This.”
The global agricultural system means knock-ons can be dire – as when war triggers faraway food shortages. “But at the same time, that very interdependence and globalization, I think, is actually quite heartening,” Whitney says. “Because it also is what spreads [solutions].”
Episode transcript
[MUSIC]
Clay Collins: Welcome to “Why We Wrote This.” I’m this week’s host, Clay Collins.
Farming is among the most basic and essential relationships that people can have with the planet, and it’s adapting, by necessity, to meet changing climate conditions. Our guest for this episode is Whitney Eulich, the Monitor’s Mexico City-based Latin America editor and writer. She recently co-bylined a story on global innovation and adaptation in agriculture. Whitney, welcome.
Whitney Eulich: Hi. Thanks for having me.
Collins: So you’re both the beat reporter and the assigning editor for a pretty vast region. What does that work entail, day to day?
Eulich: I guess I have multiple hats, and sometimes I wear them at the same time. I’m sort of overseeing the region and keeping an eye on what’s happening across Latin America. If there’s something that we want to cover, I either reach out to a correspondent or freelancer based in that country, or write it myself, or team up with a writer somewhere else and we write it together. The stories that I am not reporting and writing myself, I then will edit and usher through our [Monitor] journalism process.
Collins: When you refer to “the Monitor process,” you’re talking about finding stories that are Monitor stories. So how do you do that?
Eulich: I’m always looking for a different way into a story, something that will be distinct. And when big news happens, whether it’s an election coming up or protests that are happening, I’m often looking for examples of solutions: people who are, on a small scale, providing solutions to a big issue that’s unfolding. Or maybe it’s looking at a specific segment of a protest to illuminate the bigger issues that are taking place in that country or some of the history that’s at play. So those are some of the things that I think about.
Collins: And this global report that you participated in recently. Can you tell us about the genesis of that story in particular?
Eulich: So Taylor Luck, who is our reporter based in Jordan, was looking at a lot of climate change-related stories. And one that came up was about adapting to climate change by farmers and the agriculture industry. And so his editor reached out to me to ask if I had seen anything interesting happening in Latin America. So I started digging around on that and found some interesting examples. One that stood out to me right from the start was in Peru. Potato farmers were moving up to higher altitude because it was too hot to grow where they normally had been growing in the mountains. So I reached out to several freelancers. And unfortunately, people were either tied up or were not familiar with this. But through that process and through digging around, I found a woman who had grown up in an alpaca-farming family. And she sort of had a similar situation, where her family and her community in general was moving to higher and higher altitudes with the alpacas to graze them during the dry season when it was getting really, really hot. So she was talking to me from 16,000 feet above sea level using a Wi-Fi satellite connection, which I just thought was so incredible that we could be talking when she was somewhere that I would think was so, so off the grid.
I also, you know, in the process of looking for examples, I turned to one of our freelancers in Guatemala, Sandra Cuffe, because climate change has played a pretty big role there in recent years, particularly with migration. There’s historically a dry corridor in Central America where farmers have struggled because of drought related conditions. But in the past year, it’s been the other extreme, which is too much rain and flooding and erosion. So she had some really interesting examples that she had found in her reporting there. A community organization that was going to different farming communities in the highlands, and reintroducing or reminding some of the farmers of techniques that had been used long ago that had been either left by the wayside or forgotten. What we say in Spanish, casera solutions, homemade solutions, that were really creative and surprising and interesting.
Collins: We think of innovation, especially in the West, as being foremost about tech solutions. But you’re talking about a lot of really micro, low-cost practices. Do they have any social complications?
Eulich: In many different communities in Latin America, something that is changing is something that’s quite universal, actually. You know, a lot of families that grew up farming for generations, they look at their children and they say, my goal is for you to either get out of here or to keep studying or just work in an office. So there have been, I would say, a few generations of trying to push people out of doing this kind of work, which with that comes a loss of transfer of information and skill. It was interesting talking to the woman in Peru, because she said during the pandemic, a lot of youth who had left the mountains were coming back. And there was sort of this momentary hope that that this younger generation would then stay and pick up this work. But because of the challenges with climate change and moving the herds higher, that means that you’re also away from home for longer because you have to hike higher up into the Andes and you might be gone for three or four months, whereas before you could maybe come home every night. And she said that that initial hope of the younger generation sticking around didn’t actually pan out.
Collins: When you think about regionally specific skills and practices, can local answers offer global solutions?
Eulich: I think sometimes local answers can offer global solutions. Some solutions are incredibly localized. In the story, we had the example of the Berber farmers and their watering system. And that’s something that has been happening for generations and generations and is deeply embedded in the culture. I don’t know if that’s something that you can pick up and move somewhere else. But other solutions – unfortunately, with climate change, the challenges of drier conditions or wetter conditions are becoming more and more common – and certain solutions, you know, whether it’s going to your corner store and getting a soda bottle or a water bottle and recycling that as a tool on your farm. You know, that’s something that seems like it could really be replicated elsewhere. And it’s low cost. The fact that a lot of these, you can take them and tweak them and try and adapt them elsewhere, is in part the beauty of globalization. Right?
Collins: The global food system seems so fragile sometimes. We saw how a reduction in Ukraine’s grain output hit parts of Africa that are already perennially stressed. Did reporting this innovation story make you feel hopeful at all?
Eulich: I would say yes. When the conflict with Russia and Ukraine first started, it was a little bit scary, this idea that one conflict could affect everyone so much. But at the same time, that very interdependence and globalization, I think, is actually quite heartening. Because it also is what spreads these ideas, and allows us to share in that way as well.
Collins: That’s great. Thank you so much for sharing with us, Whitney. We really appreciate your being here today.
Eulich: Thanks for having me.
Collins: Thank you for listening. To find a transcript, and our show notes, which include links to Whitney’s stories, go to CSMonitor.com/WhyWeWroteThis. This episode was hosted by me, Clay Collins, and co-produced by Jingnan Peng and Samantha Laine Perfas. Our sound engineers were Jeff Turton and Alyssa Britton. Original music by Noel Flatt. Produced by the Christian Science Monitor. Copyright 2022.
[MUSIC]
