How Fermentation's New Heyday Is Benefitting Human and Planetary Health

LANDSCAPE NEWS ! Menu

How fermentation’s new heyday is beneﬁtting human and planetary health

A revival of ancient food preservation methods is boosting immune systems and reducing food waste

Fermentation, a process of breaking down chemicals, has been used as a food preservation technique for centuries and is now attracting new enthusiasm from consumers across " #  the globe. Jim Fischer, Flickr

29 April 2020 Join GLF Bonn Digital Conference 2020: Food in the time of climate crisis, 3–5 June, for the latest ideas and advancements on the future of food.

In early March, Filipino writer and plant-based cook Mabi David plunged her hand into a vat of a

Natasha Vizcarra bright red purée, Chinese cabbage, julienned carrots and radishes, and chopped green onions. She was mixing a fresh batch of kimchi, a fermented side-dish from Korea. Sharp scents of ginger, garlic and hot pepper wafted in the air as a crowd of vegetable farmers watched and jotted down notes.

David was teaching the class in Bauko, in the Philippines’ Mountain Province, where the high altitude and low temperatures allow farmers to grow temperate weather crops – like cabbage, carrots and salad greens – in the country’s hot and humid climate.

Like other Asian cuisines, Philippine cuisine is rich with well-loved fermented foods, turning local fruits, vegetables and seafood into dishes and condiments such as pickled green papaya and permutations of fermented rice, ﬁsh and shrimp pastes. Many evolved decades before the age of refrigeration, subsequently passed on from generation to generation.

Farmers harvest vegetables in Bauko, Philippines. Leocadio Sebastian, Flickr

But David is expanding traditional practices by borrowing from other Asian cuisines to take advantage of new market demands for fermented foods as well as reduce food waste; as the Korean migrant population in the Philippines has grown since the 1990s, so too has Filipinos’ taste for Korean food. “We wanted to introduce [di!erent] fermentation techniques to help the farmers deal with surplus harvest,” says David.

Barely a week after the kimchi-making class, however, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreaks a pandemic on 11 March. A few days later, the Philippine government placed Manila under lockdown, keeping people home from shopping in stores to avoid infection. By late March, lower demand for their produce began forcing farmers to give away much of their harvests or dump them by roadsides.

Had David’s students explored kimchi-making as a side-business much earlier, tons of produce would not have gone to waste.

Fuzz and funk in the fridge

Now back in warmer Manila, David is staying home due to COVID-19. Somewhat ironically, she deliberately eats foods teeming with bacteria, fungus and mold.

Delicate, white fuzz grows on a tray of soybeans in David’s cold oven. This would turn into a beautiful slab of tempeh, a high-protein meat-alternative. She uses an incubator to grow filamentous fungi called koji, which she uses to make miso, a traditional Japanese seasoning. Various strains of lactobacilli flourish in her homemade sauerkraut, and diverse microbes make her kimchi fizz and pop. Sometimes she keeps a stash of cashew-nut cheese.

“I have at least 18 di!erent jars of fermented food in my fridge,” she says. “I don’t keep much fresh produce in there.”

Read more : What fermented foods can do for you

Fruits and vegetables sit fermenting in jars. Tinekex3, Flickr

Evident in people like David, there has recently been a renewed interest in ancient ways of preserving food and drink, to prolong shelf life – and, quite possibly, one’s health.

This has perhaps been spurred by a recent surge of research in the human body’s microbiome, or the 100 trillion microbes that live in and evolve with each human body. In 2012, the Human Microbiome Project’s ﬁndings underscored these microbes’ role in keeping humans healthy and resilient.

But just what is the connection between fermented foods and drinks, and the trillions of bacteria, viruses, fungi and protozoa that live in and on our bodies?

Full body experience

The average human adult carries around 1 to 2 kilograms of microbes in his or her digestive system. These microbes allow us to digest our food and absorb nutrients that otherwise would not be available, as well as produce vitamins and anti-inﬂammatory compounds that regulate some of the immune system’s responses to disease.

In a healthy gut, a certain population of bacteria – a type of microbe – helps digests fats, but it may not always be the same bacteria species getting the job done.

Tempeh, a vegan protein made of fermented soybeans. Ivan Lian, Flickr

When a healthy gut’s microbe balance gets out of kilter, consequences can range from no obvious side e!ects to illness or even death. For example, taking too many antibiotics can decimate some microbial species in the gut, allowing a particular bacterium, Clostridium di"cile (C. di!), to grow out of control. This releases toxins that attack and irritate the intestinal lining, causing diarrhea and stomach pain. A severe C. di! infection can starve and dehydrate a person to death.

A curious cure transplants feces from a healthy person to the gut of a C. di! patient. The procedure is considered experimental but has cured 80 to 90 percent of patients with recurring C. di! infections. The theory is that the fecal sample from a healthy person repopulates the patient’s gut with the needed diversity of bacteria, forcing C. di! to back down.

To head o! any major imbalance, people like David consume fermented foods or drinks every day to keep their microbiomes thrumming with diverse species of beneﬁcial bacteria. “Doing this makes me feel that my body has a ﬁghting chance against disease,” she says.

The old is new

Fermented foods like kimchi, sauerkraut, tempeh and fermented drinks like kombucha are experiencing a heyday in the West, packaged beautifully and lining shelves of high-end health food stores, and ubiquitous across menus of hip restaurants. But this is all part of their new life.

When Chinese laborers were building the Great Wall in the 7th century, they added rice wine to cabbage to preserve the vegetable for eating in the winter – the earliest form of sauerkraut, later becoming a staple in Germany.

Gimjang, the traditional practice of making kimchi, is listed as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage. wsyelake, Flickr

Kimchi and the yearly tradition of its making, called gimjang, dates back to the 13th century. Gimjang happens around November when families gather together to make large quantities of kimchi to last throughout the winter – a tradition still in practice today.

Tempeh originated on the Indonesian island of Java and was mentioned in records dating to 1815, though research suggests the fermented soybean cakes have been around since the 1600s.

The fermented milk drink keﬁr probably originated from the Northern Caucasus region of the former Soviet Union. Records mention it as early as 1884. The word keﬁr comes from the Turkish word keyif, which means, “good feeling.”

Kombucha tea plunges even farther back, traced to 220 B.C. in northeastern China before it became popular in Japan, then Russia, then Germany and eventually the whole world.

Mara King, a chef who is writing a book about Chinese fermentation, remembers when she ﬁrst heard of kombucha. This was in Hong Kong, where she grew up. “My mom was into it in the late 1980s, I think, when it was a trend,” she says. “The ladies she hung out with were like, ‘This is a weight-loss drink!’” A decade later, kombucha became her gateway into making all sorts of fermented foods, further spurred by the works of food writer and a self-described fermentation revivalist Sandor Katz.

“I think fermentation is fascinating because you change the ﬂavors of the foods with techniques that on one hand are super simple, but on the other hand are scientiﬁcally incredibly complex,” she says.

King’s earliest memory of fermented foods comes from Fanling, Hong Kong, when she was playing near her grandfather’s house around the age of 5 or 6. Someone nearby was making soy sauce, and she distinctly remembers the smell. “It’s really earthy, the same way that soy sauce is umami and fills your mouth with flavor,” King says. “The smell of it just filled my sinuses with flavor.”

She would go on to co-found a pickling company in 2012 andmake an eight-part documentary with Katz in 2016, The People’s Republic of Fermentation, in which they explore an astounding array of fermented foods in rural China, most of which were new to them. She’s now following up on that project through research for a forthcoming book. “I’m ﬁnding actual written recipes that date to 2000 years ago,” she says.

A variety of miso, which takes a minimum of six months to ferment and can then last in airtight containers for more than a year. MK Photography, Flickr

State of the art

King worries that these old fermentation traditions are at risk. “These small villages that we traveled to in southwest China are very indicative of the rest of the country and probably India and other places. As soon as the kids were over the age of elementary school, they had to go to another town for high school,” King says. “When they’re adults, they go to the city and then to factories for work. So the next generation that should be learning these practices, they are all dispersed in the city. It’s only grandmothers and very young children left in the villages.”

But she is also seeing more and more signs of reawakened interest. Young Chinese people who go back to their villages for one reason or another have begun documenting fermentation and cooking practices. “They have become internet sensations,” King says. “Many people are following them and watch how they grow food, how they cook, how they do di!erent things.”

King follows food blogger Dianxi Xiaoge, who has over 11 million followers worldwide and is known for her soothing food videos in rural Yunnan. She had been working in Sichuan as a policewoman but returned to her village in 2016 to take care of her sick father. She started making food videos that same year to make some money.

Though the ﬁrst year was di"cult, her food videos rapidly rose in popularity the next few years. A video of her making and cooking hairy tofu has been viewed 21 million times. King sees Dianxi Xiaoge’s work as valuable documentation of culture, tradition, and food preparation in Yunnan.

Fermentation has been merging with other modern realms as well. Young researchers in Indonesia are developing a method to use toxic wastewater from soy production in manufacturing bio-fuel and leather tanning. Fermentation has inspired sculptors and other artists. Fermentation dyeing, an old artistic technique, is experiencing a renewal.

Another popular item on health food store shelves are bottles of probiotic pills containing thousands of beneﬁcial bacteria, but take note: King thinks it’s naïve to take pills over consuming fermented foods and drinks.

“The kinds of ferments that mankind has been cultivating for many centuries are far more complex. Take for example, a Greek yogurt or Bulgarian yogurt. You go to a small village and you ﬁnd a culture of their yogurt which they have been recreating for many years,” she says. “It’s its own very complicated biome, similar to as if you are in a healthy piece of nature in a forest, and all of the di!erent things growing there are super diverse. These healthy cultures that we have been using for many centuries have the same kind of diversity within them.”

As for David in the Philippines, she’s using technology to keep her students’ fermentation fervor burning. She intends to continue teaching kimchi-making to farmers, perhaps when in-person classes are safe again. In the meantime, she keeps in touch with former students through social media and texting. Students attempting their ﬁrst ferments send her pictures and questions, and she a"rms that yes, the fuzzy stu! is normal, and yes it will smell a bit funky, and yes it good for your health. “I’ve become a dial-a-fermentation-friend!” she says.

" # 

% Copyright policy: &

cooking coronavirus COVID covid-19 disease food food systems food waste

GLF Bonn 2020 health immunity nutrition planetary diet planetary health sustainable food

Sustainable lifestyle wellness

+ View Comments

Sign up for the GLF newsletter Be part of the change. Connect with us. Landscapes highlights - once a month in your inbox

[email protected] SIGN UP " # ' ( ) * +

JOBS GLOBAL LANDSCAPES FORUM CONTACT US The Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) is the world’s largest knowledge-led platform on integrated land use, dedicated to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Climate Agreement. The Forum takes a holistic approach to create EVENTS sustainable landscapes that are productive, prosperous, equitable and resilient and considers ﬁve cohesive themes of food and livelihoods, landscape restoration, rights, ﬁnance and measuring progress. It is led by the Center for International PARTNER Forestry Research (CIFOR), in collaboration with its co-founders UNEP and the World Bank and Charter Members. Charter SPONSOR members: CIAT, CIFOR, CIRAD, Climate Focus, Conservation International, Crop Trust, Ecoagriculture Partners, The European Forest Institute, Evergreen Agriculture, FSC, GEF, GIZ, ICIMOD, IFOAM - Organics International, The International Livestock Research Institute, INBAR, IPMG, IUFRO, Rainforest Alliance, Rare, Rights and Resources Initiative, SAN, Think Tank for Sustainability, UNEP, Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation part of Wageningen Research, World Farmer Organization, World Agroforestry, World Bank Group, World Resources Institute, WWF International, Youth in Landscapes Initiative (YIL)

FUNDING PARTNERS

Global Landscapes Forum The views expressed in this site are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the Global Landscapes Forum. This site is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). | Global Landscapes Forum is governed under CIFOR’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. We use cookies on this website to give you a better user experience. By continuing to browse the site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Learn more Accept LANDSCAPE NEWS ! Menu

Big insurance urges government and private sectors to invest in protecting biodiversity

One-ﬁfth of all countries at risk of natural collapse, says new Swiss RE report

Mangrove forests have been reported to bu!er areas against various storms - a valuable ecosystem service. Jakub Hałun, Wikimedia Commons

4 November 2020 Recently, one of the world’s largest insurance companies released MOST POPULAR a report warning that a ﬁfth of countries worldwide are at risk of ecosystem collapse as biodiversity declines. Which landscapes should we restore ﬁrst?

Natasha Vizcarra The report from the Swiss Re Group highlights the need for nature-based Newly seeded with $14 billion, insurance solutions, creating new business opportunities for insurance that could Africa’s Great Green Wall to help strengthen the resilience of a!ected regions. The Swiss Re Group is one of see quicker growth SHARE the world’s leading providers of reinsurance and insurance. Reinsurance is From West Africa, here comes " Facebook essentially insurance for insurance companies, who purchase insurance to share or the next miracle grain: fonio transfer some of the ﬁnancial risks they assume in business. # Twitter What are – and aren’t – nature- The report comes on the heels of last year’s seminal Intergovernmental Science- based solutions? $ Linkedin Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) report and this 5 books to raise your climate % Email year’s Global Biodiversity Outlook 5 from the U.N. biodiversity agency, both consciousness in 2021 warning that nature’s ecosystems are declining at rates that are unprecedented in & Print human history, with accelerating rates of species extinctions.

The report translates the ﬁndings of these reports into their implications for countries and businesses, seeming to signal a long-awaited bridge between environmental protection and big players in the private sector.

Swiss Re analyzed studies and global environmental data sets to come up with their Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (BES) Index. The index revealed insights such as:

Developing countries that have a heavy dependence on agricultural sectors, such as Kenya or Nigeria, are susceptible to shocks from a range of biodiversity and ecosystem loss 39 countries have fragile ecosystems on more than a third of their land 55 percent of global gross domestic product depends on high-functioning biodiversity and ecosystem services Major economies in Southeast Asia, Europe and the United States are exposed to declining biodiversity and ecosystem services

“We’ve been hearing that the ﬁnance and insurance industry is getting more involved in environmental issues and interested in the issue of natural capital,” says Terry Sunderland, Professor in the Faculty of Forestry at the University of British Columbia and Senior Associate with with the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). “I think it can only be a good thing.”

The alley cropping of soybeans and walnut trees on a farm in Missouri, USA. This technique may improve crop production while providing conservation beneﬁts. Jim Jones, National Agroforestry Center

Natural capital refers to Earth’s stock of natural resources, which includes air, water, soils, geology and all living organisms. Some natural capital provides humans with free goods and services, often called ecosystem services. The Swiss Re report focuses on biodiversity and ecosystem services on land, which are categorized into provisioning services such as food and water; regulating services such as ﬂood and disease control; cultural services such as spiritual and cultural beneﬁts; and supporting services, such as nutrient cycling.

Programs protecting the natural environment have historically struggled to ﬁnd consistent funding to support climate and sustainable development. Researchers have found that there is a disconnect between global ambitions for sustainable development and ﬁnancial realities.

“It’s a nice change that the report is not coming from the big environmental nonproﬁts, as it usually does,” Sunderland adds. “Businesses and other actors in the private sector are more likely to pay attention to this report.”

The company will be using this proprietary index in making decisions in underwriting and asset management. Clients will have access to the index through CatNet, the company’s online natural hazard information and mapping system.

Oliver Schelske, Swiss Re Institute’s Natural Assets and ESG Research Lead and principal, explains for example that a manufacturer whose production depends on the availability of water could use CatNet to look up how their location ranks in water scarcity. They then are able to review and potentially adjust their production according to these ﬁndings.

In a much larger scope, the company thinks of the index as a way to help achieve the U.N.’s global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). “This is an opportunity to support biodiversity and support the United Nations in reaching new biodiversity targets,” Schelske says.

“This important piece of work provides a data-driven foundation for understanding the economic risks of deteriorating biodiversity and ecosystems. In turn, we can inform governmental decision-making to help improve ecosystem restoration and preservation,” said Swiss Re’s CEO Christian Mumenthaler in a statement. “We can also support corporations and investors as they fortify themselves against environmental shocks.” Insights from Swiss Re’s index are nothing new for environmental researchers who have been studying Earth’s ecosystem for decades. “Tell us what we don’t know,” Sunderland says. “However, I don’t want to dismiss the report because I think it is a start of a way of ﬂagging these issues before they become catastrophic events. That’s the value of it.”

' Copyright policy: (

biodiversity ecosystem services insurance private sector

+ View Comments

Sign up for the GLF newsletter Be part of the change. Connect with us. Landscapes highlights - once a month in your inbox

[email protected] SIGN UP " # $ ) * + ,

FUNDING PARTNERS

Africa’s Great Green Wall is o!cially 4% – and uno!cially 18% – complete

New report says more funding is needed to complete the Sahel restoration initiative

The Great Green Wall aims to restore 100 million hectares of Sahelian landscapes. Courtesy of Makewaves " # 

10 September 2020 Now in its second decade, the ambitious African Union–led restoration initiative known as the Great Green Wall has brought close to 18 million hectares of land under restoration since 2007, according to a status report unveiled by the UN Convention to Combat Desertiﬁcation (UNCCD) at a virtual meeting on Monday, 7 September. Natasha Vizcarra Approximately 4 million hectares of degraded land have been rehabilitated within the initiative’s “strict intervention zones” – 4 percent of the Wall’s ultimate target of restoring 100 million hectares.

“In contrast, when considering all lands restored in the wider Great Green Wall region the total area restored reaches nearly 17.8 million hectares,” says the report. This wider area includes landscapes involved in other related regional initiatives as well as 12 million hectares under restoration in Ethiopia alone.

The main obstacle for quicker progress is lack of funding from public and private sectors, says the report.

The Great Green Wall initiative was designed to combat widespread land degradation and extreme poverty linked to recurrent and severe droughts in the Sahel, a region running the continent’s width from the Atlantic Coast to the Red Sea on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. It was conceived some 30 years ago and formally launched in 2007.

The initiative’s vision is to restore degraded lands across 100 million hectares of the Sahel with a mosaic of green and productive landscapes. This in turn could transform the lives of millions of people living on the frontline of climate change.

Read more : Here stands the Great Green Wall – a 3-part series

The initiative’s restoration process is designed to create job opportunities for local communities. Courtesy of Makewaves

“Frankly, this is a great initiative that has not had the great investments that it should have had,” said UN deputy-secretary general Amina Mohammed. “This is a program 50 years on. We ought to be seeing something very di!erent. Now is the challenge: step up and give with urgency.”

Between 2007 to 2018, the Wall created over 350,000 jobs and around USD 90 million in revenues, says the assessment. The restored area will sequester over 300 tons of carbon dioxide by 2030, which would represent roughly 30 percent of the envisioned target.

To reach the initiative’s restoration goal of 100 million hectares of land by 2030, the involved countries need to restore, on average, 8.2 million hectares of land every year at an annual ﬁnancial investment of USD 4.3 billion. The initiative also aims to create 10 million jobs in the process.

While the COVID-19 pandemic seems to have spared the African continent when it comes to infections, it might be more consequential for African economies. Mohammed, together with other country representatives, called on investors not to abandon funding for the Wall at this crucial time.

“We really are in the midst of the most signiﬁcant health and economic crisis of in all of our lifetimes – really uncharted waters,” Mohammed says. “How we respond today will shape the lives and livelihoods of individuals and communities for generations to come.”

“Financing income-generating activities linked to the land, typically the main asset the poorest people have, is perhaps, the most cost-e!ective way to pursue peace, security, development and good health,” said Ibrahim Thiaw, executive secretary of the UNCCD.

“What’s more, the achievements reported here are from the Sahel where soils are not very rich. This suggests restoring land has the potential to transform lives worldwide and to mitigate the global environmental threats we face today,” he added.

" # 

% Copyright policy: &

Africa African Union degradation desert desertiﬁcation drought great green wall

landscape restoration restoration Sahel U.N. Convention to Combat Desertiﬁcation UNCCD

+ View Comments

Sign up for the GLF newsletter Be part of the change. Connect with us. Landscapes highlights - once a month in your inbox

[email protected] SIGN UP " # ' ( ) * +

FUNDING PARTNERS