Tag Archive for: Biodiversity

Soil is the Solution

/by

It’s easy to take soil for granted. That is, until you lose it. The dirt beneath your feet is arguably one of the most under-appreciated assets on the planet. Without it, life would largely cease to exist while, when at its prime, this “black gold” gives life.

In nature, plants thrive because of a symbiotic relationship with their surrounding environment, including mircroorganisms in the soil.

The rhizosphere is the area immediately around a plant’s root. It contains microorganisms that thrive on chemicals released from the plant’s roots. These chemicals, known as exudates, include carbohydrates, phytochemicals and other compounds.

In exchange for the exudates, the root microbiome supplies the plant with important metabolites for health, which, along with exposure to pests and pathogens, helps plants produce phytochemicals.

A well-fed root microbiome will also supply plants with ample nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) — the three ingredients that also make up most synthetic fertilizer (NPK).

Unfortunately, while nature’s system results in handsome rewards, including more nutritious foods and less environmental pollution, modern-day farmers have largely become stuck in a cycle of dousing crops with synthetic chemicals tthankshat destroys the soil and, ultimately, the environment.

Why Synthetic Fertilizers Are Ruining the Planet

Synthetic fertilizers make sense in theory, and they do make plants grow bigger and faster. The problem is that the plants are not necessarily healthier. In fact, they miss out on the symbiotic relationship with their root microbiome.

Because they’re being supplied with NPK, the plant no longer “wastes” energy producing exudates to feed its microbiome.

Therefore, it receives fewer metabolites for health in return. The end result is plants that look good on the outside but lack minerals, phytochemicals and defenses against pests and disease on the inside.

Further, as reported by Rick Haney, a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) soil scientist, less than 50 percent of synthetic fertilizers applied to crops are used by the plants. Haney told Orion Magazine:1

“Farmers are risk averse … They’ve borrowed a half million dollars for a crop that could die tomorrow. The last thing they want to worry about is whether they put on enough fertilizer. They always put on too much, just to be safe.”

The excess fertlizer runs off into the environment, with disastrous effects. As fertilizer runs off of farms in agricultural states like Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri and others, it enters the Mississippi River, leading to an overabundance of nutrients, including nitrogen and phosphorus, in the water.

This, in turn, leads to the development of algal blooms, which alter the food chain and deplete oxygen, leading to dead zones. One of the largest dead zones worldwide can be found in the Gulf of Mexico, beginning at the Mississippi River delta.2 Fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico have been destroyed as a result.

KEEP READING ON MERCOLA

UCSC study shows how urchin-loving otters can help fight global warming

/by

Author: Guy Lasnier

Can an abundance of sea otters help reverse a principal cause of global warming?

A new study by two UC Santa Cruz researchers suggest that a thriving sea otter population that keeps sea urchins in check will in turn allow kelp forests to prosper. The spreading kelp can absorb as much as 12 times the amount of CO2 from the atmosphere than if it were subject to ravenous sea urchins, the study finds.

The theory is outlined in a paper released online today (September 7, 2012) in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment by lead authors UC Santa Cruz professors Chris Wilmers and James Estes.

“It is significant because it shows that animals can have a big influence on the carbon cycle,” said Wilmers, associate professor of environmental studies.

Wilmers, Estes, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and their co-authors, combined 40 years of data on otters and kelp bloom from Vancouver Island to the western edge of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. They found that otters “undoubtedly have a strong influence” on the cycle of CO2 storage.

Comparing kelp density with otters and kelp density without otters, they found that “sea otters have a positive indirect effect on kelp biomass by preying on sea urchins, a kelp grazer.” When otters are around, sea urchins hide in crevices and eat kelp scraps. With no otters around, sea urchins graze voraciously on living kelp.

Kelp is particularly efficient at sequestering CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has increased 40 percent since the beginning of the industrial revolution, causing global temperatures to rise, the authors write.

KEEP READING ON UCSC NEWSCENTER

Dirt First

/by

Author: Kristin Ohlson

Rick Haney, gangly and garrulous, paces in front of a congregation of government conservationists, working the room for laughs before he gets to the hard data. The U.S. Department of Agriculture soil scientist points to an aerial photograph of research plots outside his facility in Temple , Texas. “Our drones took this shot,” he says, then shakes his head. “Kidding. We don’t have any drones.”

Forty sets of shoulders jerk in amusement. Paranoia about the federal government is acute in Texas, and Haney’s audience—field educators from the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), part of a corps of around six thousand that works directly with farmers nationwide—hail from around the state. They’re used to suspicious scowls from farmers, who are as skeptical of the feds as they are of the outsiders who dwell on the downsides of agriculture. For the most part, the people in this room are both: feds and outsiders.

But what if those downsides—unsustainable farming practices—are also bad for a farmer’s bottom line? It’s the question Haney loves to raise during training sessions like this one, which the NRCS (today’s iteration of the Dust Bowl–era Soil Conservation Service) convenes around the country as part of a soil health campaign launched in 2012. Haney is a star at these events because he brings the imprimatur of science to something many innovative farmers have already discovered: despite what the million-dollar marketing campaigns of agrichemical companies say, farmers can use less fertilizer without reducing yields, saving both money and landscapes.

“Our entire agriculture industry is based on chemical inputs, but soil is not a chemistry set,” Haney explains. “It’s a biological system. We’ve treated it like a chemistry set because the chemistry is easier to measure than the soil biology.”

In nature, of course, plants grow like mad without added synthetic fertilizer, thanks to a multimillion-year-old partnership with soil microorganisms. Plants pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and create a carbon syrup. About 60 percent of this fuels the plant’s growth, with the remaining exuded through the roots to soil microorganisms, which trade mineral nutrients they’ve liberated from rocks, sand, silt, and clay—in other words, fertilizer—for their share of the carbon bounty. Haney insists that ag scientists are remiss if they don’t pay more attention to this natural partnership.

“I’ve had scientific colleagues tell me they raised 300 bushels of corn [per acre] with an application of fertilizer, and I ask how the control plots, the ones without the fertilizer, did,” Haney says. “They tell me 220 bushels of corn. How is that not the story? How is raising 220 bushels of corn without fertilizer not the story?” If the natural processes at work in even the tired soil of a test plot can produce 220 bushels of corn, he argues, the yields of farmers consciously building soil health can be much higher.

KEEP READING IN ORION MAGAZINE

‘Carbon farming’ is used to restore overgrazed rangelands

/by

Author: Madison Dapcevich

BILLINGS, Mont. — When it comes to farming, John Brown’s approach is more sustainable to crop diversification and better provides for carbon sequestration.

“As I was holding this handful of seeds, something shifted in me. I asked myself: why am I addicted to monoculture?” says John Brown, who has been farming since the 1970s. “It’s not just about what happens to corn and soybeans, but about what happens to our body when we only eat these crops? What happens to our culture and society when we only see these crops?”

Homegrown Prosperities, a carbon sequestration initiative led by the Northern Plains Resource Council, is underway. This grassroots conservation and family agriculture group organizes Montana citizens to protect water quality, family farms and ranches, and the state’s unique quality of life. This project aims to explore how soil health is the base of ecological, social and economic well-being, while connecting and supporting producers in the forefront.

“Agriculture, as it is turning out, is one of the best ways to draw out carbon from the atmosphere and put it back in the soil where it came from, and even enhance it,” Brown says.

The process of carbon sequestration, or “carbon farming,” is a technique that restores overgrazed rangelands into fertile fields by using photosynthesis to pull in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in the soil, while releasing oxygen. This sequestration, coupled with crop diversification and green waste composting, is an innovative approach to no-till agriculture.

KEEP READING IN AGWEEK

Conservation in the Age of Climate Change: Saving the Cows—and Grasslands—of Rural Zimbabwe

/by

Author: Judith D. Schwartz

Sianyanga is a small community far from any paved road in Matabeleland North, Zimbabwe’s poorest province. The village, part of the Hwange Communal Lands, comprises about 150 households — one household being six or seven family members living in a group of small, thatched huts. From the 1990s until about 2010, along with problems endemic to the region, including hunger and lack of clean water, the people of Sianyanga bore an added affliction: biting ants, or izinyebe, that thrive on bare soil.

These weren’t just annoying bugs that nipped a little. Balbina Nyoni, a single mother who has spent her whole life in the area, told me that being rushed on by izinyebe is like having boiling water poured on the skin; the onslaught has sent men to the hospital. The ants were known to gouge out the eyes of baby goats, killing them in minutes. People who lacked shoes, as Nyoni did, wrapped their feet in plastic to avoid getting stung. Being bitten could mean losing toenails, so open shoes were of no use. Plus, the ants ravaged low-growing staple crops such as groundnuts and cowpeas.

In September 2014, I toured Sianyanga with a group of community leaders. I was there to see the results of a seven-year effort to restore a landscape beset by desertification and drought. An older man paused in a grassy meadow and said, “This used to be so bare you could pick up a needle from the land.”

Thousands are leaving drought-ridden areas for places with more water, prompting fears of unrest in a nation already politically and economically fragile.

A few moments later we were on a narrow path when Balbina grabbed my shoulders and shouted, “Look! An ant!” I had to crouch down and squint to see it scuttling in the reddish dirt. Balbina told me that the ants have recently become quite difficult to find.

It was only then that I noticed that the women were all wearing sandals.

The izinyebe were a symptom of a broader problem affecting both Sianyanga and much of the world’s arable land: desertification, a process in which poor land management, overgrazing, and development combine to disrupt the fragile water cycle of semi-arid areas. Shade trees are cut down, natural grasses are removed for crops, and the soil dries up from the direct exposure to the sun. Once-fertile soil becomes inert dust, unable to sustain life. It primarily affects grassland ecosystems, which represent a significant portion of the world’s land mass; it is an important factor in poverty, conflict, and internal and international migration.

KEEP READING ON PACIFIC STANDARD

Good News: A Clear-Cut Rain Forest Can Have a Second Life

/by

Author: Jesse Greenspan

Conservationists who work to save rain forests typically focus on pristine stands—the dwindling number of patches where the buzz of chainsaws has yet to echo. But even clear-cut land may warrant protection. Mounting evidence shows that, under the right circumstances, heavily logged tracts can regrow to host nearly as much biodiversity as unspoiled Amazonian wilderness.

A study published in March in Tropical Conservation Science offers the latest look at the biological value of so-called secondary forests. An international team of ecologists and volunteers spent a year and a half identifying every bird, amphibian, reptile and medium-to-large mammal they could find on some 800 recovering hectares within Peru’s Manu Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Their final count of 570 species amounted to 87 percent of those known to exist in neighboring old-growth, or primary, forests and included many imperiled creatures, such as shorteared dogs and giant armadillos. The team even found what could be new frog species.

The Manu study area represents a “best-case scenario” for secondary forest biodiversity, says Andrew Whitworth of the University of Glasgow in Scotland, who conducted the study in partnership with the Peruvian nonprofit Crees Foundation. Success is more likely at Manu because a longtime hunting and logging ban is in place, and animals can easily wander in from the extensive old-growth zones nearby.

SOURCE: “HOW MUCH POTENTIAL BIODIVERSITY AND CONSERVATION VALUE CAN A REGENERATING RAINFOREST PROVIDE? A ‘BEST-CASE SCENARIO’ APPROACH FROM THE PERUVIAN AMAZON,” BY ANDREW WHITWORTH ET AL., IN TROPICAL CONSERVATION SCIENCE, VOL. 9, NO. 1; MARCH 2016 Graphic by Amanda Montañez

KEEP READING IN SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN

Organic techniques can help conventional growers boost margins

/by

Can farmers make more money by growing food using regenerative, or agroecological, practices?

Yes, say the innovators behind the Agricology, a UK-based website launched last November, to help farmers transition away from conventional farming practices. Agricology, an online resource, translates scientific research into practical farming advice to help farmers increase food production while maintaining biodiversity.

So it’s in the UK. And it’s designed for farmers. Why should consumers care?

Because in a world where the population is growing, biodiversity is shrinking, modern farming models are polluting the environment and producing pesticide-contaminated nutrient-poor food, and global warming threatens us with extinction, consumers—the people who choose which food to buy and which to reject—hold if not all, at least most of the cards when it comes to reversing these trends.

WATCH THE VIDEO ON FARMERS WEEKLY

Is Climate Change Putting World’s Microbiomes at Risk?

/by

Author: Jim Robbins

In 1994, scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory moved soil from moist, high-altitude sites to warmer and drier places lower in altitude, and vice versa. In 2011, they returned to the sites and looked again at the soil microbes and found that they had done little to adapt functionally to their new home. That’s a bad sign, experts say, for a world convulsed by a changing climate.

“These microbes have somehow lost the capacity to adapt to the new conditions,” said Vanessa Bailey, one of the authors of the study, published this month in PLOS One. That not what scientists anticipated, and it “calls into question the resilience of the overall environment to climate change,” she said. “Soil is the major buffer for environmental changes, and the microbial community is the basis for that resilience.”

As snow and ice melt, it’s fairly straightforward to grasp what climate change means for the future of, say, polar bears in the Arctic or penguins in Antarctica. But it’s far more difficult to understand what is happening to the planetary microbiome in the earth’s crust and water, a quadrillion quadrillion microorganisms, according to Scientific American. Yet it is far more important, for microbes run the world. They are key players that perpetuate life on the planet, provide numerous ecosystem services, and serve as a major bulwark against environmental changes.

Researchers say that as the planet warms, essential diversity and function in the microbial world could be lost.

But they can also cause serious problems — as the world’s permafrost melts, microbes are turning once-frozen vegetation into greenhouse gases at a clip that is alarming scientists.

KEEP READING ON YALE ENVIRONMENT 360

Freebee: How bees can help raise food security of 2 billion smallholders at no cost

/by

What do cucumbers, mustard, almonds and alfalfa have in common? On the surface very little. But there is one thing they share: they all owe their existence to the service of bees.

For centuries, this tiny striped helper has labored the world’s fields without winning much recognition for its many contributions to food production. Wild bees, in particular, seemed doomed to slog in the shadow of their more popular cousin – the honeybee – whose day job of producing golden nectar has been far more visible and celebrated.

But bees of all stripes are finally getting their moment in the sun with the publication of a paper that quantifies, for the first time, just how much our crop yields depend on the work of pollinators who unknowingly fertilize plants as they move from flower to flower.

And in doing so, they may have a key role to play in improving the production of some 2 billion smallholder farmers worldwide and ensuring the food security and nutrition of the world’s growing population.

The paper, published in the magazine Science, makes the case that ecological intensification – or boosting farm outputs by tapping the power of natural processes — is one of the sustainable pathways toward greater food supplies.

KEEP READING ON FAO

Regenerative Farming — One Solution That Solves Many Problems

/by

We face a number of very pressing problems in the world today. Water scarcity is getting worse as aquifers are drained faster than they can be refilled. Soil erosion and degradation is also rapidly worsening. Ditto for air and water pollution.

Land is turning into desert at a rapid clip, and with it, we’re losing biodiversity of both plant and animal life. Manure lagoons from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) pose hazards to the environment and human health.

Everything is getting more toxic, and according to scientists, we may have less than 60 years’ worth of “business as usual” before we reach a point at which nature will no longer sustain us on any front, be it water, air, or soil quality.1

Modern Farming Has Proven Itself a Failed Experiment

These environmental problems, which have all been either caused or made worse by modern farming practices, have also led to a distinct reduction in food quality and safety. Nutrition has declined and toxicity has escalated, thanks to the excessive use of agricultural chemicals.

Agricultural overuse of drugs, especially antibiotics, has also led to the development of drug resistant disease,2 which has now become a severe health threat.

Modern farming practices have also been accused of contributing to global climate change — a controversial and hotly contested issue if there ever was one. However, let us not lose sight of what’s really important.

Regardless of whether manmade climate change is real, or whether the climate shifts are the result of wholly natural warming and cooling cycles, the fact remains that our weather and environment are changing, and these changes pose challenges to our food security and survival.

Moreover, these challenges must be addressed with genuine, long-term, and sustainable solutions. We have to learn how to overcome droughts, floods, and various temperature fluctuations.

KEEP READING ON MERCOLA