Tag Archive for: Healthy Soil

What We Can Learn From the California Drought

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Author: Alice Cunningham| Published: February 7, 2017 

Over the past three weeks, continued rain and snow across California has, almost miraculously, lifted nearly half of the state out of drought. That’s a huge improvement from last February, when more than 95% of the state was listed as being in some form of drought. Large parts of the state have been under threat of extreme drought continuously for three consecutive years.

While those of us in California are thankful, counting on unreliable weather patterns to save us isn’t a viable approach to preparing for, or enduring, the kind of crippling drought our state has suffered through.

However, there are some very straightforward steps that can be taken to mitigate against both drought AND flood – two conditions of which California has had its share and which are linked by the extreme weather that accompanies climate change. These measures provide the most important protections that we have against drought and flood. Both are too often overlooked and taken for granted.

The first action we can take is planting trees and increasing forest cover around farmland. Trees help manage water: on average, one large tree can lift up to 100 gallons from the ground and discharge it through the air. Trees sequester carbon, clean water along streams, attract wildlife and prevent erosion through their root systems. They conserve soil by providing nutrients as their leaves and roots decay.

That takes us to our second and most important measure: healthy soil. Its holding capacity is simply remarkable: one percent of organic matter in the top six inches of soil could hold about 27,000 gallons of water per acre, according to the USDA. Increasing organic matter in topsoil increases holding capacity, making it capable of storing 20 times its own weight in water. Healthy soil makes the land itself far more resilient to drought, flood and other forms of extreme weather.

Healthy soil is full of life. Literally. Organic material, microorganisms, bacteria, arthropods, fungi, and air and water – all these things bring life to soil. This life, this fertility, makes it possible to grow plants naturally, without additional fertilizers or other inputs. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N., sustainable soil management can produce up to 58 percent more food than soil managed under prevailing monoculture agricultural practices. And, the kind of healthy soil that makes this fertility possible is also porous, allowing water and air to move through it freely, a property that increases water-holding capacity, improving the land’s ability to better resist drought conditions and better work for us.

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It’s… Alive?

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Author: Terri Gordon | Published: February 21, 2017

It is everywhere, from forest floors to ocean beaches. It is the stuff under our feet, our sidewalks, our roads. It is the stuff we dig in as kids, the stuff we bulldoze to build houses, and yes, the medium we use to grow flowers, trees, and food.

The New Oxford American Dictionary defines “soil” as “ the upper layer of earth in which plants grow.”

Gardeners talk about “rich” or “good” soil, or loam, made up of humus, sand, and clay.

What those who study soil are realizing, however, is that soil is not just sand, clay, and water—it is also a complex matrix of fungi, bacteria, and a number of other microbes. It is a full-on microbiome all its own. In fact, the microbiome is what creates the soil carbon sponge that holds nutrients and water. Without the matrix of microbial life, rain doesn’t percolate; it simply runs off, and the soil lacks fertility. And when we stir up the earth’s microbiome, we destroy it. And we’ve been destroying it since the very dawn of agriculture. This is the message Didi Pershouse will bring to the Healthy Soils Symposium on Feb. 24 and 25 at Antioch College in Yellow Springs. In a pre-conference reading on Feb. 23, she will sign copies of her book, “The Ecology of Care: Medicine, Agriculture, Money, and the Quiet Power of Human and Microbial Communities” at Yellow Springs Library.

Pershouse hails from the state of Vermont, where she practices acupuncture and works, through her Center for Sustainable Medicine, with the Soil Carbon Coalition to study and educate others about those systems that govern human health and the health of Earth—especially where the health of the planet and the health of its inhabitants intersect—because, in truth, the health of one is tied inextricably to the health of the other.

Community Solutions in Yellow Springs, is sponsoring the symposium as part of its mission to “support small communities” and foster their resilience, their ability to weather storms—metaphorically and literally.

“The more we can grow our own food, in our own region, the more resilient we are,” explains Susan Jennings, executive director of Community Solutions. “The more we are able to keep our water clean, and where it belongs—as in, not running off, but really being absorbed into the soil—the more resilient we are. And healthy soils are at the center of that.

“The healthier our soils are, the healthier our food will be; and the more fertile the soil, the greater the output of food we’ll be able to have. And if we are able to cool the climate through carbon sequestration in the soil, then it makes, not just the region, but the planet itself more resilient.”

The symposium begins as a roundtable event on Friday with presenters and participants contributing questions and information in an informal effort to delineate the needs of and progress in the region, as well as a plan of response.

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The Magic of Carbon Farming

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Author: C B Ramkurmar | Published: February 4, 2017 

Farmers have always been life givers, as they work to feed the millions in this planet. The service they provide of growing food for all of us is invaluable. This importance of farming is even greater for economies that are dependent on agriculture as the primary contributor to the economy. Now, this humble age old practice of farming has now taken on a role, that is making climate activists and scientists smile.

Until now, we know farmers who farm fruits, farm vegetables, farm millets, etc. but attention is now going towards farmers who farm carbon! And this is what is drawing the attention of the climate change community.
“There’s a really significant potential for carbon farming worldwide to play a role in reversing the climate crisis,” said Stedman, an agricultural consultant at AppleSeed Permaculture. Stedman explained that plants pull carbon out of the air and bury it in the ground. While this seems like an obvious truth that all of us learnt in school, the problem is when all the carbon is then released to the atmosphere because of the modern farming practices.

All agricultural production has photosynthesis at the centre of it. Plants use sunshine to combine carbon dioxide from the air with water and micro nutrients from the soil to produce plant material that we see growing in farms.

These plants have a root system that is below the ground that we do not see. As the plant grows, it stores some of the carbon it produces below the ground. As farmers till the soil and as live stock grazes, the carbon that is stored in the soil is released into the atmosphere. As much as one third of the Co2 in the atmosphere that is driving climate change has come from land management practices.

On the other hand, carbon can be stored in soils for decades and centuries too, and this process is called soil carbon sequestration. Carbon farming is a process when the rate at which Co2 is removed from the atmosphere and converted to plant matter is accelerated.

This results in reduction of Co2 from the atmosphere. Carbon farming is successful, when the amount of carbon that is removed from the atmosphere by the plants is greater than the amount of carbon that escapes into the atmosphere as a result of farming processes like tilling. So the trick is to now engage in smart farming practices that keeps this formula in mind.

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Carbon Farming – Video

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Published: January 30, 2017 

Some people farm corn. Some farm wheat. Some, like Connor Stedman, farm carbon.

“There’s a really significant potential for carbon farming worldwide to play a role in reversing the climate crisis,” said Stedman, an agricultural consultant at AppleSeed Permaculture.

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Regenerative Soils Act – Vermont

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Published: January 28, 2017 

Soil4Climate today announced that Vermont Senate Bill S.43, “an act relating to establishing a regenerative soils program” — originated by Soil4Climate Advisory Board member and Shaftsbury, Vermont farmer Jesse McDougall — has been submitted to the Vermont Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy. The proposed bill aims to encourage farming practices that improve soil health and to incentivize ecosystem restoration. It will also provide a host of additional economic and environmental benefits, including “increasing the carbon sequestration capability of Vermont soils [and] reducing the amount of sediment and waste entering the waters of the State.” The legislation was sponsored by Senator Brian Campion and co-sponsored by Senators Bray, Clarkson, Pearson, Pollina, and Sears.

Increasing the amount of carbon in soil boosts fertility and its ability to hold water, resulting in less need for fertilizer and reduced water pollution. Importantly, keeping nutrients in soil can eliminate the eutrophication plaguing Lake Champlain and other Vermont waterways. Further advantages include increased biodiversity, enhanced drought resilience and flood resistance, and improved forage nutrition.

The Vermont proposal is precedent-setting in calling for the creation of a Director of Regenerative Soils to oversee the program. Regular soil testing will be used to certify farms showing a steady improvement in soil health (i.e., carbon content) and/or quantity (i.e., depth). This proposed bill follows on the heels of other pro-soil health legislation enacted in recent years in California, Oklahoma, and Utah.

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4 Per 1000 | Soils for Food Security and Climate

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Human activities release enormous quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This intensifies the greenhouse effect and accelerates climate change. The world soil contains 2 to 3 times more carbon than the atmosphere. Increasing this storage of carbon by 4 parts for 1000 in the top 30 or 40cm of the soil could stop the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. This is the proposal of the “4 parts for 1000, soils for food security and climate”.

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Modern Agriculture Cultivates Climate Change – We Must Nurture Biodiversity

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Author: Olivier De Schutter and Emile Frison | Published: January 9, 2017 

As a new year dawns, it is hard not to be dazzled by the current pace of technological change in food and agriculture. Only last month, news emerged of a crop spray with the potential to increase the starch content in wheat grains, allowing for yield gains of up to 20%. This development comes hot on the heels of major breakthroughs in gene-editing technologies – using a powerful tool known as Crispr – over the course of 2016.

A future of continually increasing food supplies and ever more sophisticated manipulation of agro-ecosystems seems to be upon us.

However, there is a risk that these technologies blind us to the very real problems facing modern agriculture – problems that are rapidly undermining the previous round of technological advances.

While global crop yields rose rapidly in the early decades of the “green revolution”, productivity is now plateauing in many regions of the world. A 2012 meta-study found that in 24%-39% of areas growing maize, rice, wheat and soybean, yields either failed to improve, stagnated after initial gains, or collapsed.

Only slightly more than half of all global rice and wheat areas (57% and 56% respectively) are still experiencing yield increases. The areas where yields have stagnated include some of the wealthiest, most industrialised and most hi-tech production systems: more than one-third of the wheat crop in the US (mostly in the Great Plains) is affected, along with more than a third of the Argentine wheat crop, and harvests all across Europe.

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Why Drought-resistant Farming Could Be a Feminist Act in Lesotho

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Author: Ryan Lenora Brown | Published: January 3, 2017

Maleloko Fokotsale’s garden isn’t very photogenic. From a distance, it looks like little more than a jumble of rocks and dirt piled high beside her neat fields in the rolling hills outside Lesotho’s capital.

And it wasn’t easy to build – there were stones to be hauled and trenches dug, dirt and leaves and fertilizer to be layered delicately like sections of a parfait.

However, this “keyhole” garden – so named for its unusual shape, like the body of an open-mouthed pac man – has a crucial advantage over the fields that surround it. It uses far less water to produce a given quantity of vegetables, helping subsistence farmers here to weather one of the worst droughts of the past century, which is now barreling toward its third year across southern and eastern Africa.

But for farmers like Ms. Fokotsale – also the chief of this small village – building a drought resistant garden gave her another, less obvious benefit, too.

Time.

Like most women here, hours of Fokotsale’s days are peeled away collecting her family’s water – wheelbarrows full of it – from nearby streams and wells. So for her, making farming more resistant to drought isn’t only a way to grow more in a parched season – it eases her domestic burdens. And that’s an effect that’s likely to continue long after this drought passes.

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2016 Quietly Ushered in a New Global Era in Climate and Land Use

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Author: Jason Funk | Published: December 27, 2016

Future historians may look back at 2016 as a year that marked a significant shift in the land sector, leading to the acceleration of carbon sequestration around the world. It confirmed and widened the opportunities for countries to sequester carbon through better management of forests, croplands, pastures, and wetlands, while adding to the urgency of this opportunity as a key element of our efforts to prevent disruptive climate change. Fortunately, many countries have begun to take action at a large scale, and others are learning from their examples. At the same time, new resources to spur sequestration are being mobilized at an unprecedented scale. Although the year might be characterized as one of preparation and cultivation, rather than tangible, high-profile outcomes, the seeds of 2016 promise to bear significant fruit in the years ahead.

Global momentum on enhancing forest carbon is unleashed

After years of negotiations, the global climate community has aligned behind efforts to protect and restore forests, which have enormous potential to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Building on initiatives like the Bonn Challenge, the Warsaw Framework for REDD+, and the New York Declaration on Forests, 2015 concluded with worldwide consensus in the Paris Agreement that “Parties [to the Agreement] should take action to conserve and enhance, as appropriate, sinks and reservoirs of greenhouse gases,” including “biomass, forests and oceans as well as other terrestrial, coastal and marine ecosystems.” In 2016, we saw many countries begin to act on this commitment, individually and collectively, with a proliferation of new plans and policies, fueled by growing investments and practical science. More than 120 countries included forests in their commitments, with activities ranging from afforestation in Afghanistan to sustainable forest management in Zambia.

Many countries were already taking action toward reducing emissions from deforestation and enhancing forest carbon sinks, and 2016 gave them an opportunity to secure the gains they had made. For example, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Malaysia have each built a solid foundation for action in forests, by 1) developing monitoring systems that can track fluctuations in emissions from forests, 2) initiating processes for consultation with stakeholders, and 3) establishing official baselines for tracking progress, which have been reviewed by international experts. In 2016, we saw further progress, with nearly a dozen countries submitting forest baselines for formal review – as well as development of recommendations for how to make this process more accessible and streamlined, generated by an expert dialogue in which I played a role as a facilitator and co-author. These baselines and the associated accounting systems, used to track progress, are crucial early steps that set the stage for forest countries to secure financial support and implement policies that can build up forest carbon.

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Replace Dogma With Logic for Better Productivity

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Author: Walt Davis | Published: December 21, 2016

Those of you who have read my ramblings over the years know that I am not a fan of industrial agriculture.

There are several reasons for this position but the main one is that industrial agriculture simply does not work. It is not sustainable, much less regenerative. It produces a lot of product but at a cost that is unacceptably high.

Agriculture, once the premier generator of new wealth in the world, is now wealth-consuming and dependent for its existence on subsidies from outside the system.

The problem goes beyond the cost of products being too high in dollars and cents. In many and perhaps most areas, we are trading our natural resources – top soil, water, biodiversity – for dollars. This is a mining operation, not a growth operation.

In less than two generations, the organic matter content of most of our soils has plunged. It is difficult to find an area that has half of its historic level of soil organic matter remaining. The production practices of what passes as conventional agriculture today: tillage, acid-salt fertilizers, and removal of grazing animals from the farm, guarantee that soil organic matter will deplete rapidly.

Yet it is this soil organic matter that provides the home and food for soil life. It is the soil life, from bacteria and fungi up to earthworms and burrowing mammals that create the conditions that allow soil to take in and hold water and air. Soil life does the heavy lifting of soil formation. Without robust biology, soil productivity plummets, mineral cycling slows as the decay cycle breaks down and both insect and disease damage increases. Attempts to kill these pests with poisons seem to work short-term, but creates the conditions which will cause even worst outbreaks of pests later.

It does not have to be this way; we can have a highly productive and profitable agriculture that is regenerative rather than degrading. The largest problem in bringing about this agriculture is not technology; we know how to make this happen on the land. There are producers all over the world who are highly productive and profitable and at the same time regenerating resources.

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