Tag Archive for: Healthy Soil

4 Per 1000 Signatories Meet for 1st Time at Cop22

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Published: December 14, 2016

More than 200 organizations have already signed the “4 per 1000 Initiative: Soils for Food Security and Climate,” representing important progress for soil, agriculture and climate.

Bringing together civil society, nations, international funds and organizations was a challenge; bringing together 200 of them around a table on the question of agriculture and soils was a victory. The 4 per 1000 Initiative, launched by French Minister of Agriculture Stéphane Le Foll one year ago during the COP21 Paris climate conference, has since grown in notoriety and united for the first time its 200 members – including 37 countries – November 17th in Marrakech.

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Soil: Keeping Nutrients in Food and Carbon in the Ground

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Author: Lyndal Rowlands | Published: December 13, 2016 

Healthy soil not only makes food more nutritious it also helps keep carbon out of the atmosphere by storing it underground.

Yet around the world over 500 million hectares of soil has become degraded – leading to the loss of valuable nutrients as well as the release of carbon, speeding up the process of man-made climate change.

Climate change then in turn, affects crop productivity creating a negative cycle for farmers, Lucrezia Caon Global Soil Partnership Consultant at FAO told IPS.

“If we degrade soil they admit carbon dioxide (CO2), that fosters climate change, and climate change effects crop productivity,” she said.

IPS spoke to Caon at an event ahead of World Soil Day, which is marked on December 5.

The event focused on the special role of pulses in preserving soils.

2016 is International Year of Pulses, following on from 2015, which was the International Year of Soil.

Pulses include peas, beans, chickpeas and lentils. They are particularly popular in South Asia and Latin America.

Pulses are generally more popular in developing countries than developed countries, Caon noted.

“Seventy five percent of pulses are consumed in developing countries and only 25 percent in developed countries,” she said.

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The Regeneration at Studio Hill: A Slideshow

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Published: December 5, 2016

I had the pleasure of presenting the story of our farm—from it’s roots as a dairy in the ’30s right up to it’s current iteration as a regenerative farm—at this year’s Vermont Energy & Climate Action Network (VECAN) Conference at the beautiful Lake Morey Resort in Fairlee, Vermont.

I was joined in our workshop by Didi Pershouse of the Soil Carbon Coalition and Andrea Colnes of the Energy Action Network. Our session was put together by Paul Cameron.

Our workshop presented the side of climate change that you don’t often here in today’s discussions: hope and practical action. Didi did a wonderful job explaining and demonstrating why it is vital for us to include soil as an ally in our fight against climate change—carbon sequestration, water retention, etc.

I focused on presenting the practices we employ on our farm to sequester atmospheric carbon into the ground: management-intensive grazing, perennial tree crops, and no-till vegetables.

There are four carbon sinks on the planet: the atmosphere, the ocean, the soil, and the forests. Two of these carbon sinks are full: the atmosphere and the ocean. Two of these carbon sinks are in dire need of carbon (aka: regeneration): the soil and the forests.

To our own detriment, we earthlings only ever talk about one carbon sink: the atmosphere.

In an effort to raise awareness about the other carbon sinks on planet Earth, I gave the following slideshow showing the (reletively) immediate positive effects that can be had by restoring the natural carbon cycles of a piece of land to sequester atmospheric carbon back into the soil and the trees.

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Chestnuts: A Regenerative Food Crop and The Next Health Craze

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Author: Harry Greene | Published: October 7, 2016 

Propagate Ventures’ mission is to accelerate the widespread implementation of agroforestry in cold climates, via the establish of profitable tree crops. We envision highly productive, ecologically-sound landscapes that produce food, fuel, and fiber for humanity. 100 years ago, the United States had a booming chestnut economy. The American chestnut, castanea dentata, was an overstory species from Iowa to Northern Georgia, to Maine. In 1904, a parasitic fungus known as the “chestnut blight” arrived from Japan, and killed as estimated 4 billion trees. 100 years later, Chinese chestnuts and Chinese-American hybrids blight-resistant, but pure American chestnut stands are few and far between. Pure American chestnuts are beautiful, productive forest trees, but for our purposes, Chinese chestnuts are just as good, if not better for food production.

Red Fern Farm

Red Fern Farm is a 25-year-old chestnut orchard in Wapello, Iowa. Kathy Dice and Tom Wahl own and run the property. Jeremy and Harrison of Propagate Ventures recently visited the farm to learn about chestnut production. Tom Wahl is an ecologist by trade, and in 1990, saw and foresaw the ecological and culinary benefits of chestnuts in comparison to annual crops such as corn and soy. Often in the regenerative agriculture sphere, figureheads with productive farms like to speak loudly about their operations. Kathy and Tom are much more modest, but nonetheless run an extremely productive, profitable business that we should pay attention to.

For the farmers among us, we’d like to go through some of the nuances of chestnut production at Red Fern Farm. We’ll do so with photos.

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Carbon Sequestration a Positive Aspect of Beef Cattle Grazing Grasslands

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Author: Donald Stotts | Published: December 6, 2016

Beef cattle grazing on grass pastures might not be the first thing people think of when discussing the subject of combatting greenhouse gas emissions, but it is an agricultural practice providing significant dividends to the effort.

“Environmental as well as economic sustainability are key elements of best management practices for agriculture, as most people involved in agriculture are well aware they are stewards of the land,” said Keith Owens, Oklahoma State University associate vice president for the university’s statewide Oklahoma Agricultural Experiment Station system. “Air, water, soil; we pay attention to all of them.”

In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, scientific studies have long indicated the burning of fossil fuels and land-use changes such as deforestation have led to an increase in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide since the beginning of the industrial revolution.“Carbon dioxide atmospheric concentrations have risen from 280 parts per million prior to the industrial revolution to more than 400 parts per million today,” Owens said.Carbon sequestration – the long-term capture and storage of carbon from the atmosphere, typically as carbon dioxide – is a method of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.“Many different agricultural production practices can capitalize on carbon sequestration in both soil and biomass to reduce negative environmental effects,” Owens said. “These practices enable use of the natural carbon cycle to replenish carbon stores while reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.” That is where beef producers who employ grasslands as a pasture resource come in. Research by R.F. Follett and D.A. Reed published in 2010 examined the effects of grazing on soil organic carbon storage in North American rangelands. Follett and Reed found impacts ranging from no change to up to 268 pounds of carbon stored per acre per year.

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Sustainable Agriculture Outlook Rooted With Millennials

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Author: Claire Mesesan | Published: December 2016 

Few issues capture the complex space millennials occupy better than food and farming. At a time when commodity agriculture is pervasive – regenerative, organic agriculture is experiencing a renaissance spurred on by millennials. Much has been written about millennials, a generation that occupies a peculiar place in history: the systems previous generations created and grew up with are faltering. Climate change is a reality we must address. No matter what else is said about millennials – a generation this author belongs to – one truth is that we face deep existential turmoil. In spite of current and future turbulence, millennials remain optimistic in believing that people have the power to effect change. This is abundantly clear in organic agriculture.

Organic agriculture was just agriculture in the pre-World War II period, signified by a lack of chemicals – industrialized agriculture became the way of the future in the post-war period. Our experiments in industrial agriculture led to increased corporate control of the food industry, a decline in the number of farms and farmers, and much less diversity in agriculture. By contrast, organic agriculture operates on a smaller scale, relies on crop diversity and soil management practices for pest control, therefore prioritizing environmental health.

The move to regenerative organic agriculture is a conscious choice that views growing food as values-based work. It is no surprise that organic agriculture speaks to millennials who see climate change as a reality, exacerbated by industrial agriculture that causes environmental degradation through soil erosion, water contamination and aquifer depletion. It is up to millennials to respond to the existential threat of climate change. Here is a look at how millennials are responding through food.

Millennials are leading the change toward a more organic agricultural system, with over 50 percent actively incorporating organic foods in their diet. More broadly, millennials identify sustainability as a priority in what they purchase; in fact, millennials are the most willing of any generation to spend more on items and causes that align with their values. Millennials are using their purchasing power to buy from companies they perceive as environmentally friendly, or committed to social values, or on organic products. Essentially, personal values are increasingly reflected in spending patterns. In 2014, millennials represented 36 percent of the workforce; it will be 46 percent by 2020. The millennial influence on food is evident in the increase in organic, specialty products and local, farm-to-table restaurants. With such interest in more healthy agriculture from millennials, it follows that this generation is turning to sustainable, organic, regenerative farming as a career path.

According to the USDA, the average age of a farmer is 57; additionally, estimates suggest that a quarter of American farmers will retire by 2030. There is great need for young farmers. It is encouraging that young farmers are responding, motivated by environmental awareness, interest in local and specialty foods, and market opportunities. However, young farmers face barriers to entering organic farming. In a survey of more than 1,300 farmers, the National Young Farmers Coalition identified lack of capital and land access as the top two challenges for young farmers entering the field. Iroquois Valley Farms has uniquely positioned itself as an investment vehicle to support organic farmers, especially young farmers to access land and capital, which will enable the next generation to grow food sustainably.

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Water In Plain Sight

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Author: Judith D. Schwartz | Published: December 7, 2016 

We often think of water as a “noun”, as something bounded by place. After researching and writing a book on water, however, I’ve come to regard water as a “verb”. Water is always in motion. It expands in volume or retrenches; it retains or releases energy. It changes state, moving from gas to liquid to solid and back again, in an ongoing dialogue with land and sun.

This is not just to fuss over language. Rather, I believe that understanding how water “works”—how it moves across the landscape and through the atmosphere—is essential to truly address our many water challenges. This is so whether we’re contending with scarcity, in the case of drought, or too much water, as in floods. And because the workings of water intersect with factors like climate, biodiversity and food security, we can better grapple with other significant global problems by zeroing in on water processes.

Let’s take a quick look at three ways that water moves:

Infiltration In a functioning landscape, rain is held in the ground and supports plant and microbial life or slowly filters into groundwater stores. Our water “infrastructure” here is soil, and the richer the better: every one percent increase in soil organic matter (mostly carbon) represents an additional 20,000 gallons of water per acre held in the ground. This means it’s a lot harder to make a flood, and the longer the ground stays moist between rains.

What we perceive as a “lack of water” problem is often an “inability to keep water in the ground” problem—itself a symptom of carbon-depleted soil. As Precious Phiri, a land management consultant based in Zimbabwe and Africa Coordinator for Regeneration International, says, “there are places where you will be in a drought no matter how much rain you get.” Simple approaches to building soil carbon, such as managed animal impact, can make a tremendous difference in food security. Jody Butterfield, co-founder of the Africa Centre for Holistic Management in Zimbabwe, says increased water infiltration in animal-treated fields can mean the ability to grow food for seven months rather than merely two—the difference between being self-sufficient and relying on food aid.

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UNH Research: Microbial Traits, Not Plants, Determine Abundance of Soil Organic Matter

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Author: Lori Wright | Published: December 5, 2016

Healthy soil is rich in organic matter, but scientists have yet to fully understand exactly how that organic matter is formed. Now a team of University of New Hampshire scientists have uncovered evidence that microbial pathways – not plants – are the chief originator of the organic matter found in stable soil carbon pools.

The new insight provides promise for designing agricultural systems that promote microbial communities to optimize soil organic matter formation.

The research was conducted by Cynthia Kallenbach, former UNH graduate student now at Colorado State University, her advisor, Stuart Grandy, associate professor of natural resources at UNH, and Serita Frey, professor of natural resources at UNH. Their results were published in the paper “Direct evidence for microbial-derived soil organic matter formation and its ecophysiological controls” in the journal Nature Communications, and comes from work supported by the NH Agricultural Experiment Station.

In the paper, UNH scientists suggest that soil organic matter accumulates from inputs of dead microbial cells and microbial byproducts formed when microbes eat plant roots and residues, rather than from plants themselves, as previously thought.

In the past, scientists thought the best way to build soil organic matter was to slow down or inhibit decomposition using plants that soil microbes find difficult to decompose. The idea was that the undecomposed plant parts would gradually become soil organic matter, especially if the soil microbial community was inactive.

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When I Dream of the Planet in Recovery

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Author: Derrick Jensen | Published on: April 6, 2016

In the time after, the buffalo come home. At first only a few, shaking snow off their shoulders as they pass from mountain to plain. Big bulls sweep away snowpack to the soft grass beneath; big cows attend to and protect their young. The young themselves delight, like the young everywhere, in the newness of everything they see, smell, taste, touch, and feel.

Wolves follow the buffalo, as do mallards, gadwalls, blue-winged teal, northern shovelers, northern pintails, redheads, canvasbacks, and tundra swans. Prairie dogs come home, bringing with them the rain, and bringing with them ferrets, foxes, hawks, eagles, snakes, and badgers. With all of these come meadowlarks and red-winged blackbirds. With all of these come the tall and short grasses. With these come the prairies.

In the time after, the salmon come home, swimming over broken dams to forests that have never forgotten the feeling of millions of fish turning their rivers black and roiling, filling the rivers so full that sunlight does not reach the bottom of even shallow streams. In the time after, the forests remember a feeling they’ve never forgotten, of embracing these fish that are as much a part of these forests as are cedars and spruce and bobcats and bears.

In the time after, the beavers come home, bringing with them caddisflies and dragonflies, bringing with them ponds and pools and wetlands, bringing home frogs, newts, and fish. Beavers build and build, and restore and restore, working hard to unmake the damage that was done, and to remake forests and rivers and streams and marshes into what they once were, into what they need to be, into what they will be again.

In the time after, plants save the world.

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The Obama Administration Announces New Steps to Advance Soil Sustainability

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Published on: December 5, 2016

Today, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), in collaboration with Federal agencies and private-sector stakeholders, is announcing new steps to work towards the long-term health and sustainable use of one of America’s most important natural resources: its soil. OSTP is also releasing today a Federal framework for soil science, developed in collaboration with more than a dozen Federal agencies, with input from approximately 80 stakeholders from academia, industry, non-profit organizations, and the agricultural community.

Soil is essential to human life. Not only is it vital for providing most of the world’s food, but it also plays a critical role in ensuring water quality and availability; supports a vast array of non-food products and benefits, including mitigation of climate change; and sustains the biodiversity needed for ecological resilience. These roles make soil essential to modern life. Thus, it is imperative that everyone—city dwellers, farmers and ranchers, land owners, and rural citizens alike—take responsibility for caring for and investing in our soils. Given their importance, soil must be protected from degradation, as the alternative is the loss of an array of important ecosystem services.

The new actions being announced today aim to advance scientific understanding of soils so that land managers and farmers are better able to care for them and maintain their ability to support food security, climate mitigation, ecosystem services, and public health. These actions focus on three key areas:

  1. Promoting interdisciplinary research and education, to answer key questions on rates of soil genesis and erosion, the role of soils in bioenergy production, the development of advanced soil sensors, and research to better understand non-agricultural soils.
  2. Advancing computational tools and modeling, to improve analytical capacity and develop a robust predictive framework in studying soil properties, including pursuing a more sophisticated understanding of soil-carbon fluxes and the potential for soil-carbon sequestration.
  3. Expanding sustainable agricultural practices, to ensure farmers and ranchers have the information and tools they need to protect and enhance agricultural soils and ensure global soils can continue to provide food security and climate benefits for future generations.

The projects in this Fact Sheet build on decades of experience, research, and conservation efforts of farmers, ranchers, and land owners, along with States and the Federal Government. Since the 1930s, when the onset of the Dust Bowl led to the creation of the Soil Conservation Service, Federal agencies have invested tens of billions of dollars in soil conservation and research initiatives. During this Administration, land managers have increased the number of acres of farmland enrolled in the Department of Agriculture’s conservation programs by nearly 200 million acres. Federal soil-science efforts are not limited to agricultural soils—across the Federal research enterprise, more than a dozen agencies work to protect soils in rangelands, cities, forests, coasts, and other areas—often working hand-in-hand with citizens, universities, local organizations, and other private-sector partners.

New Steps Being Taken by the Administration Today

To support the coordination of future government-wide science and technology efforts to protect soils, the National Science and Technology Council’s Soil Science Interagency Working Group (SSIWG) is releasing today “The State and Future of U.S. Soils,” a Framework for a Federal Strategic Plan for Soil Science, which is the result of a collaborative effort from more than 15 Federal agencies. In developing the Framework, SSIWG considered input from stakeholders from academia, industry, non-profit organizations, and the agricultural community who attended an OSTP workshop on soils in August 2016. The Framework is available for public comment until January 10, 2017. SSIWG intends to use it to inform the future development of a comprehensive Federal Strategic Plan for Soil Science.

The Framework sets forth the most important threats to U.S. soils and potential Federal research priorities. It identifies three overarching “Challenge and Opportunity” categories: (1) land use and land cover change; (2) unsustainable land management practices, and (3) climate and environmental change. It also lists potential priorities for future Federal science and technology efforts. In addition, several Federal agencies are supporting the development of the Strategic Plan by expanding their research and conservation initiatives:

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