Tag Archive for: Soil Health

Soil Carbon – Can it Save Agriculture’s Bacon?

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Author: Dr. Christine Jones

The number of farmers in Australia has fallen 30 per cent in the last 20 years, with more than 10,000 farming families leaving the agricultural sector in the last five years alone. This decline is ongoing. There is also a reluctance on the part of young people to return to the land, indicative of the poor image and low income-earning potential of current farming practices.

Agricultural debt in Australia has increased from just over $10 billion in 1994 to close to $60 billion in 2009 (Fig.1). The increased debt is not linked to interest rates, which have generally declined over the same period (Burgess 2010).


Fig. 1. Increase in agricultural debt (AUD millions)
1994-2009 vs interest rates (%pa)

The financial viability of the agricultural sector, as well as the health and social wellbeing of individuals, families and businesses in both rural and urban communities, is inexorably linked to the functioning of the land.

There is widespread agreement that the integrity and function of soils, vegetation and waterways in many parts of the Australian landscape have become seriously impaired, resulting in reduced resilience in the face of increasingly challenging climate variability.

Agriculture is the sector most strongly impacted by these changes. It is also the sector with the greatest potential for fundamental redesign.

The most meaningful indicator for the health of the land, and the long-term wealth of a nation, is whether soil is being formed or lost. If soil is being lost, so too is the economic and ecological foundation on which production and conservation are based.

Keep Reading on Permaculture Research Institute

Cover Crops: Long-term Benefit

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Author: Reed Fujii

LOCKEFORD — Farmers and ranchers primarily focus on growing plants that produce food or fiber — something of value they can sell and get cash to pay their bills for seed, farm labor, fuel and fertilizer and, hopefully, keep something for themselves.

But researchers at the Lockeford Plant Materials Center are encouraging growers to think differently — to cultivate cover crops, noncommercial plants that can improve the soil and more.

“They have so many benefits,” said Margaret Smither-Kopperl, manager of the U.S. Department of Agriculture research facility. “What we’re trying to do here is useful for all of us.”

Cover crops can help break up soil, improving water infiltration. and add organic material, which boosts the soil’s ability to retain water. They also can inhibit weed growth, provide nutrients for commercial crops and sustain beneficial insects.

During a field day attended by about two dozen farmers at the center last week, Smither-Kopperl acknowledged that water use by cover crops is a concern, especially with California entering a fourth year of drought.

But by helping soil retain moisture, she said, “They can actually store water in the soil.”

Cover crops are no panacea, the experts said. Plants or seed mixtures commonly used in other parts of the country may falter or fail in California’s Mediterranean climate, with its variable amounts of winter-months rain.

Keep Reading on Recordnet.com

An Awesome, Under-Recognized Opportunity to Act on Climate

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Author: Diana Donlon

As a plant-lover I’ve always appreciated healthy soil, but it wasn’t until I heard a rancher named Richard King explain how rebuilding the organic matter in soils has the potential to store tons of atmospheric carbon that I got true religion. “You should do a TED Talk,” I gushed after his workshop at the California Climate & Agriculture (CalCAN) summit a few years ago. Since first meeting King, I’ve been preaching the multiple benefits of increasing soil’s capacity to store much of our excess carbon to anyone who will listen. And I’m not alone.

An emerging community of soil-carbon enthusiasts is working diligently to bring thought-leaders, policy-makers, and concerned citizens into our fold by offering a practical, empowering, and ultimately hopeful — albeit under-recognized — tool to address the climate crisis: rebuilding soil carbon.

We’re an eclectic, enthusiastic, and occasionally eccentric, bunch that includes global luminaries like Ohio State University’s Dr. Rattan Lal, Australia’s Dr. Christine Jones, and Zimbabwe’s Allan Savory; cutting-edge carbon ranchers like John Wick, Ridge Shinn, and Joe and Julie Morris; insightful (and delightful) authors Judith Schwartz, Cows Save the Planet, and Kristin Ohlson, The Soil will Save Us, as well as forward-thinking organizations including the Quivira Coalition, Biodiversity for a Livable Climate, the Carbon Underground, Kiss the Ground and of course, Center for Food Safety, the amazing organization where I work.

Our soils are in trouble. Ray Archuleta, an agronomist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, tells us they are “naked, hungry, thirsty and running a fever.” There are many reasons for the sickly state of this life-supporting ecosystem, but essentially, humans have been undermining soil function by tilling it for thousands of years. In recent decades, we’ve also been actively poisoning the life in our soils with pesticides and other chemicals.

Keep Reading in the Huffington Post

The Surprising Leading Contributor to Pollution: Agriculture

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Did you know that the modern agricultural system is responsible for putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than the actual burning of fossil fuels? Understanding this reveals an obvious answer to pressing global problems.

There are only three places for carbon to go: land, air, and water. Our agricultural practices have removed massive amounts of valuable carbon from land, transferring it into air and water. Carbon management is critically important regardless of one’s views of climate change.

By paying greater attention to carbon management, we have the opportunity to make a dramatic difference in this area, which is having major negative consequences to our agriculture, our air, and our oceans, lakes, streams and rivers.

One important factor that some experts believe is KEY for reversing environmental devastation like desertification, which is when land turns to desert, is to return much of our land to grasslands and build a network of herbivore economics.

There is no better way to improve the conditions for animals, solve the carbon problem, bring more revenue to farmers, and improve our health by purchasing nutritious foods from properly pastured animals – vs the horrible CAFO model based on the monocultures of corn and soy fed to the animals in questionable conditions in which they are proactively fed antibiotics to make them fat and keep them alive in such atrocious conditions.

Keep Reading on Mercola.com

Improving Soil Health May Require More Use of Cover Crops

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Author: Julie Buntjer

WORTHINGTON — Farming practices haven’t been kind to the agricultural landscape since farmers first began tilling up the prairie soils of southwest Minnesota more than a century ago.

The common two-crop rotation of corn and soybeans has contributed little organic matter to the soil and even less cover to protect the landscape from the winds that often blow across the region.

Jay Fuhrer, dubbed the Waterway King of North Dakota (he’s a Natural Resources Conservation Service conservationist in Bismarck, N.D.), was in Worthington on Thursday to address soil health and the advantages of beneficial crop rotations, cover crops and livestock grazing on farm fields.

Before a crowd of more than 70 attendees at Minnesota West Community and Technical College, Fuhrer shared how he spent the first half of his career building drainage ditches and designing waterways because North Dakota farmers couldn’t get water into the soil profile. Every time it rained, the water flowed across the landscape. That, combined with wind erosion, meant a lot of nutrient loss on farm fields.

By the 1990s, Fuhrer said a team of conservationists came together as a team and decided their approach had to change.

“We can’t keep going the way we are — it’s non-sustaining,” he said, adding that with the focus placed on conserving a degrading resource base, the team developed ideas to rebuild soil and recreate the pore spaces that once existed.

Keep Reading in Daily Globe

Organics and Soil Carbon: Increasing Soil Carbon, Crop Productivity and Farm Profitability

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This paper explains how atmospheric carbon is introduced into the soil and how it is stored in stable forms. It identifies the farming techniques that are responsible for the decline in soil carbon and gives alternative practices that do not damage carbon. Increasing soil carbon will ensure good production outcomes and farm profitability. Soil carbon, particularly the stable forms such as humus and glomalin, increases farm profitability by increasing yields, soil fertility, soil moisture retention, aeration, nitrogen fixation, mineral availability, disease suppression, soil tilth and general structure. It is the basis of healthy soil.

Organic agriculture also helps to reduce greenhouse gases by converting atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) into soil organic matter. Some forms of conventional agriculture have caused a massive decline in soil organic matter, due to oxidizing organic carbon by incorrect tillage, the overuse of nitrogen fertilizers and from topsoil loss through wind and water erosion.

Why is carbon important to productive farming?

Soil carbon is one of the most neglected yet most important factors in soil fertility, disease control, water efficiency and farm productivity. Humus and its related acids are significantly important forms of carbon. Below is a summary of the benefits of humus.

Keep Reading in The Natural Farmer

Soils and Biodiversity

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Soils host a quarter of our planet’s biodiversity.

Soil is one of nature’s most complex ecosystems: it contains a myriad of organisms which interact and contribute to the global cycles that make all life possible.

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Download the Info Graphic from FAO

Regenerative Organic Agriculture Puts Soil Health Front and Center

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Author: Lisa Marshall

On Oct. 21, 2002, a New York Times editorial proclaimed: “Today marks a milestone in American farming.” The newspaper lauded the long-awaited implementation of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program (NOP), which defined the word organic and established—for the first time—who could and could not use it legally. The real value of the program, the Times argued, was not in any added health benefit of organic food itself (that had yet to be scientifically validated), but rather in its emphasis on soil preservation. “In an organic system … the soil grows richer and richer, more and more fertile. It does not blow or wash away,” the editorial explained. “Buying organic food is a way to support the health of the soil itself. For that alone, it deserves our support.”

Fast-forward 13 years and organic has no doubt been a success. Sales of products emblazoned with the USDA Organic seal soared to $39 billion in 2014, up 11 percent, according to the Organic Trade Association. But with that success, and the accompanying influx of industrial-scale organic producers, has come concern that the NOP, while an important step forward, does not go far enough to achieve that foundational mission. “I am a huge fan of organic, but unfortunately, the National Organic Program is not sufficiently focused on soil health,” says industry veteran Tom Newmark, whose former company, New Chapter, was the first supplement brand to obtain the organic seal. “There is an international movement afoot today that says it’s time to take things a step further.”

Newmark is among a growing number of vocal advocates for so-called “regenerative agriculture,” a catchall phrase describing farming systems that not only protect existing soil from prohibited chemicals and other inputs (as the NOP does) but also promote soil generation. Advocates say abundant, healthy soil—which can act as a carbon sink—is a key but oft-overlooked solution to addressing global climate change. Some farmers take the term regeneration a step further, seeing it as their obligation to regenerate not just the soil and the forests that spring from it, but also the communities that rely on it and—in the case of Biodynamic agriculture—the “life force” within in it.

While some organic farmers are indeed regenerative farmers, Newmark says many are not. He argues that, although legal under NOP, the heavy tilling, monocropping, use of nonorganic chemicals and other practices some large-scale industrial organic operations rely on are hardly good for the soil.

Keep Reading in New Hope 360

We care for Life – The Power in Caring – A message from Dr Vandana Shiva

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The Global Movement for Seed Freedom invites you to join people and communities around the globe, from the 2nd to the 16th of October to celebrate our seeds, our soils, our land, our territories, and to create an Earth Democracy based on Living Seed, Living Soil, healthy communities and living economies.

We are living in a changing and challenging world.

We clearly have two totally different world orders, two totally different world views, two totally different paradigms evolving.

One is based on ONE Corporation with one paradigm, one agriculture, monopolies, monocultures, crushing the soil, crushing the biodiversity, crushing the small farmers, crushing our bodies with disease. On the other hand we have billions of species, millions of people.

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We, the people – cannot fail the Earth, each other and the future.

We believe that in the seed and the soil we find the answers to every one of the crises we face.

The crisis of hunger and disease, the crisis of violence and war; the crisis of the destruction of democracy.

If each of us takes a pledge to protect the Living Seed and protect the Living Soil, to grow our food as close to home as we can, in our balconies, on our terraces, with our farmers closest to us, we can also solve the climate problem, without waiting for governments to come to an agreement.

Join us in an amazing uprising of love and care where we act as one heart, as one mind and one consciousness to say no to this ecocide and genocide that is no longer a theory: it is happening all around us, to every society, in every generation and to every species.

We care for Life and we believe in the power of caring.

We will build living economies, we will become the change we want to see.

With our love: for biodiversity, for the soil, for the Earth, and for fellow human beings. And we’ll draw inspiration, hope and strength from the fact that the will to live is stronger than the will to kill: the power to love is stronger than the power to destroy.

Join us in the revolution of caring for Life

Add your actions to the Seed Freedom Calendar

Food and Climate Change: The Forgotten Link

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[ English | Español | Français | Ελληνική ]

Food is a key driver of climate change. How our food gets produced and how it ends up on our tables accounts for around half of all human-generated greenhouse gas emissions. Chemical fertilizers, heavy machinery and other petroleum-dependant farm technologies contribute significantly. The impact of the food industry as a whole is even greater: destroying forests and savannahs to produce animal feed and generating climate-damaging waste through excess packaging, processing, refrigeration and the transport of food over long distances, despite leaving millions of people hungry.

A new food system could be a key driver of solutions to climate change. People around the world are involved in struggles to defend or create ways of growing and sharing food that are healthier for their communities and for the planet. If measures are taken to restructure agriculture and the larger food system around food sovereignty, small scale farming, agro-ecology and local markets, we could cut global emissions in half within a few decades. We don’t need carbon markets or techno-fixes. We need the right policies and programmes to dump the current industrial food system and create a sustainable, equitable and truly productive one instead.  

Food and climate: piecing the puzzle together

Most studies put the contribution of agricultural emissions – the emissions produced on the farm – at somewhere between 11 and 15% of all global emissions.[1] What often goes unsaid, however, is that most of these emissions are generated by industrial farming practices that rely on chemical (nitrogen) fertilizers, heavy machinery run on petrol, and highly concentrated industrial livestock operations that pump out methane waste.

The figures for agriculture’s contribution also often do not account for its role in land use changes and deforestation, which are responsible for nearly a fifth of global GHG emissions.[2] Worldwide, agriculture is pushing into savannas, wetlands, cerrados and forests, plowing under huge amounts of land. The expansion of the agricultural frontier is the dominant contributor to deforestation, accounting for between 70-90% of global deforestation.[3] This means that some 15-18% of global GHG emissions are produced by land-use change and deforestation caused by agriculture. And here too, the global food system and its industrial model of agriculture are the chief culprits. The main driver of this deforestation is the expansion of industrial plantations for the production of commodities such as soy, sugarcane, oilpalm, maize and rapeseed.

Keep Reading on GRAIN