Tag Archive for: Soil

World Soil Day Hails Symbiotic Role of Pulses to Boost Sustainable Agriculture

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Author: UN Food and Agriculture Organization | Published on: December 5, 2016

New report explores how nitrogen-fixing plants enhance nutritious diets, carbon sequestration and soil fertility.

5 December 2016, ROME- Soil and pulses can make major contributions to the challenge of feeding the world’s growing population and combating climate change, especially when deployed together, according to Soils and Pulses: Symbiosis for Life, a new report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization released on World Soil Day.

“Soils and pulses embody a unique symbiosis that protects the environment, enhances productivity, contributes to adapting to climate change and provides fundamental nutrients to the soil and subsequent crops,” said FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva.

Pulses are environmentally resilient crops that deliver high-nutrition foods to people and critical nutrients to biological ecosystems. Soil, a non-renewable resource, is essential for plant life and 95 percent of the global food supply.

Pulses such as lentils, dry beans and chickpeas are nitrogen-fixing plants that can benefit soil health, leading to better growing conditions for themselves and for other plants. On average, cereals grown after pulses yield 1.5 tonnes more per hectare than those not preceded by pulses, which is equal to the effect of 100 kilograms of nitrogen fertilizer.

The new book illustrates a variety of ways that pulses and soils can be “strategic allies” in forging more sustainable food and agriculture systems.

READ MORE ON UN FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION

Dicaprio’s Before the Flood: Powerful, yet Misses on Soils and the Carbon Cycle

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Author: John Roulac | Published: November 18, 2016

The new Leonardo DiCaprio documentary Before the Flood can now be seen on National Geographic.

The actor is a longtime advocate of environmental causes, and his film is surely helping to increase awareness of global warming and the challenges we face with climate chaos. In it, DiCaprio journeys from the remote melting regions of Greenland to the burning forests of Sumatra to the halls of the Vatican, exploring the devastating impact of climate change on the planet.

Before the Flood discusses how climate change is moving us rapidly into an era in which life on Earth might be much, much different. It does a great job describing the pressing problems we face. Yet, sadly, the film has a serious omission. It makes only passing mention of the food issue and almost no mention of soils or ocean acidification.

KEEP READING ON ECOWATCH

Changes in Soil Microbial Community Structure in a Tallgrass Prairie Chronosequence

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Authors: Victoria J. Allison, R. Michael Miller, Julie D. Jastrow, Roser Matamala, and Donald R. Zak | Published: August 4, 2005

Increasing the abundance of fungi relative to bacteria should favor C accrual, because fungi use C more efficiently, and are composed of more recalcitrant C compounds. We examined changes in soil microbial community structure following cessation of tillage-based agriculture and through subsequent succession in a C-accruing tall-grass prairie restoration chronosequence. We predicted that the relative abundance of fungi would increase following conversion from tillage-based agriculture. Soil microbial community structure was assessed as relative abundances of phospholipid fatty acids (PLFAs). Cessation of tillage-based agriculture did initially lead to an increase in the abundance of fungi, particularly arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), relative to bacteria. We suggest this is primarily due to reduced disturbance when tilling ceases. Vegetation characteristics also appear to be important, with high cyclopropyllprecursor PLFA ratios indicating bacterial communities under stress in agricultural soils, probably due to low C, and possibly to low C relative to N inputs. A secondary gradient in soil microbial community structure was related to successional time, and tied to soil characteristics, particularly bulk density (D-b), pH, and soil organic C and N. However, while the fungifbacteria (F/B) ratio was high in early succession plots, it declined later in succession. In addition, although the F/B ratio increased with SOC in the agricultural soils, it decreased with SOC in prairie soils. We conclude that increased community metabolic efficiency due to higher relative abundances of fungi is not the primary mechanism leading to enhanced C storage in these soils.

KEEP READING ON RESEARCH GATE

Resistance Is Fertile: It’s Time to Prioritize Agroecology

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Author: Colin Todhunter | Published on: August 29, 2016

Food is becoming unhealthy and poisoned with chemicals, while diets are becoming less diverse. There is a loss of plant and insect diversity, which threatens food security, soils are being degraded, water tables polluted and depleted and smallholder farmers, so vital to global food production, are being squeezed off their land and out of farming.

Over the last 60 years or so, Washington’s plan has been to restructure indigenous agriculture across the world. And this plan has involved subjugating nations by getting them to rely more on U.S. imports and grow less of their own food. Agriculture and food production and distribution have become globalized and tied to an international system of trade based on export-oriented mono-cropping, commodity production for the international market, indebtedness to international financial institutions (IMF/World Bank) and the need for nations to boost foreign exchange (U.S. dollar) reserves to repay debt.

This has resulted in food surplus and food deficit areas, of which the latter have become dependent on agricultural imports and strings-attached aid. Food deficits in the global South mirror food surpluses in the West.

Whether through IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programs, as occurred in Africa, trade agreements like NAFTA and its impact on Mexico or, more generally, deregulated global trade rules, the outcome has been similar: the devastation of traditional, indigenous agriculture.

KEEP READING ON THE HUFFINGTON POST

Valuing What Really Matters: A Look at Soil Currency

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Author: Randall Coleman | Published: July 2016

We have all heard the expression “cheaper than dirt.” But many experts disagree. Soil is a vital resource that the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates contributes about USD $16.5 trillion in ecosystem services annually. In fact, FAO named 2015 the International Year of the Soils in order to highlight the importance of soils in our food system.

Unfortunately, arable soil is depleting very rapidly due to erosion, by around 24 billion tons each year. This rate of erosion is 10 to 100 times greater than the rate at which soil is being replenished. The major contributing factors are urban development, desertification, and industrial agriculture. The use of chemicals, intensive machinery, and monoculture are increasing productivity in the short term but leading to fallow soil and desertification over the long term. The most widely discussed solutions around these issues include polyculture, reforestation, and climate-smart agricultural practices. But, what if the reason we do not see soil being replenished is because we are not properly valuing it? I believe soil can provide a way to increase food access in urban food deserts, increase healthy diets among low-income communities, and shield communities from increasingly volatile global markets. To do this, we can look to the world of economics for a solution.

Some practitioners, artists, and scholars are exploring the idea of soil as a currency. Economists, agronomists, and ecologists have already agreed and estimated the economic benefits we receive from soil ecosystem services. Because we can create certain types of topsoil and because we know how valuable it is, we can create an economic system that is based on the value of soil.

KEEP READING ON THE SOLUTIONS JOURNAL

Could Cows and Sheep Halt Climate Change and Tackle Rural Poverty?

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Author: Judith D Schwartz

Holistic management, with its counterintuitive claim that more, rather than fewer, cattle can improve the land, has been around for decades – a kind of perennial cattleman’s quarrel, and a thorn in the hide of ranchers and anti-ranchers alike.

The use of livestock as a tool for restoration has been scoffed at by scientists, reviled by vegetarians and those who blame cows for climate change, and a flashpoint for tension over how to conserve land in the American West.

Reviving grasslands

But that was before Allan Savory, who developed holistic management, won the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge for a programme with “significant potential to solve one of humanity’s most pressing problems.” And before governmental agencies such as USAID and large NGOs like the Nature Conservancy teamed up with the Savory Institute on international projects after seeing the benefits on the ground. And, in an era when one viral video makes the difference between anonymity and renown, before Savory’s TED talk, How to Green the Desert and Reverse Climate Change, flew round the Internet with some 2m views.

At the end of June, I attended the first Savory Institute International Conference, Transforming Landscapes for Global Impact, in Boulder, Colorado. This two-day event, attended by 300 ranchers, scholars and investors from around the world, showed that holistic management is now launched as a global movement – one that’s positioned itself as a vehicle for addressing seemingly intractable problems of climate change, desertification, and rural poverty.

Keep Reading on The Guardian

A 12 Step Program to Stopping Drought and Desertification

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Author: Green Prophet

Soaring temperatures and low precipitation could not occur at a worse time for many farmers in the United States, and around the world. Intensifying drought conditions are affecting corn and soybean crops throughout the Midwest, raising grain prices as well as concerns about future food prices.

The US Drought Monitor reports that 88 percent of this year’s corn crop and 77 percent of the soybean crop are now affected by the most severe drought since 1988. In response the Worldwatch Institute launched a 12 step guide to combatting drought and desertification. These tips can be used by policy makers around the world and in dry climates in the Middle East. Read on for the list.

1. Agroforestry: Planting trees in and around farms reduces soil erosion by providing a natural barrier against strong winds and rainfall. Tree roots also stabilize and nourish soils. The 1990 Farm Bill established the USDA National Agroforestry Center with the expressed aim of encouraging farmers to grow trees as windbreaks or as part of combined forage and livestock production, among other uses. See Green Prophet’s feature on the Nabateans to see how this idea can be applied in the Middle East.

2. Soil management: Alternating crop species allows soil periods of rest, restores nutrients, and also controls pests. Soil amendments, such as biochar, help soils retain moisture near the surface by providing a direct source of water and nutrients to plant roots, even in times of drought.

Keep Reading on Green Prophet

From Dust Bowl to Bread Basket: Digging the Dirt on Soil Erosion

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Author: Caspar van Vark

Can we achieve a 70% increase in food production by 2050? It’s often quoted as an objective, but some areas of Africa have seen agricultural productivity decline by half due to erosion and desertification. If productivity is ever to go up, we may need to start by looking down: at the soil.

This is the International Year of Soils, so policy attention is likely to shift to this resource. It’s not a moment too soon, according to Bashir Jama, director of African agriculture body Agra’s Soil Health Program (SHP).

“Around 65-70% of arable land in Africa is degraded in one form or another,” he says. “Farmers are on average getting a tonne of maize from a hectare of land, where a similar size plot in Asia gets three tonnes per hectare. Soils have been cultivated for many years with little or no inputs, and this is compounded by problems of erosion. So the challenge is how to replenish soil and mitigate degradation.”

A recent report on conserving, restoring and enhancing Africa’s soils recommends a holistic approach to soil management called Integrated Soil Fertility Management (ISFM). This includes adding organic matter such as crop residues and manure into the soil, applying small (and therefore affordable) amounts of mineral fertilisers and planting legume crops such as cowpea that naturally deposit nitrogen into the soil.

SHP has taught farmers about these methods via 130,000 demonstrations in 13 countries over the past five years. “The demos are on farmers’ land, school fields, churchyards or roadsides,” says Jama. “One plot might have little or no inputs, with a second plot showing the microdosing of fertiliser – very small amounts placed in the planting hole, along with manure – and another plot might have legumes where, in the next season, they can put sorghum where previously they had legumes.”

Keep Reading on The Guardian