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The modernized food industry has pushed farming practices to the back burner in the eyes of consumers. Still, the majority of our food comes from the land. That being said, the issue of soil erosion isn’t making front pages, but amongst those that lobby around organic farming and environmental health issues have identified the degradation as increasingly problematic. In order to help the problem, activists are looking for help from the government and policy regulators to aid in the protection of farmland. However, most feel that the topic is tired out amongst those that should care the most, and because of that the urgency to gain awareness is crucial.

Soil erosion is a naturally occurring process that can affect all types of landforms. In agriculture specifically, the topsoil is worn away by water, wind, or human practices like tilling. The process of soil erosion includes detachment, movement, and deposition. The topsoil, which is the most nutrient part of the soil, removes itself and eventually is carried off-site. The process reduces the productivity of the soil and can actually hurt surrounding ecosystems as well.

Dr. David Lobb of the University of Manitoba recently completed a study to show that $3.1 billion worth of crop capacity has been lost due to soil erosion. Lobb identified practices like tilling, mouldboard plowing, chisel plows, and hoe drills to be some of the leading factors in soil degradation, as well as easily preventable ones. Lobb focuses his research within the Canadian borders and has identified that the adoption of no-till farming has significantly reduced the soil erosion due to wind in Western Canada, but in Eastern Canada, the fight against till-farming continues. Ontario’s rates for no-till farming is declining due to how hard it is to keep up with farms that use some tillage.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Manure: An Overview of This Shi…ning Addition to the Garden

October 20, 2017

MANURE: AN OVERVIEW OF THIS SHI…NING ADDITION TO THE GARDEN

Organic gardens really benefit from manure, and that is no mystery. However, it’s important to be aware of what kind of manure is at your disposal because they are not all equally desirable. Some manures, dare we say, are choice garden additions, while others take a lot of coaxing, a slow and patient cook, from composting gurus. Chicken manure is vastly different from cow manure, which is largely different dog manure.

Understanding some of the subtleties of manure, even in the most basic of ways, can make a huge difference to how, when, and for what you are using a particular pile. For those of us who aren’t connoisseurs of manures, it’s important to get a grasp of which ones we’d most like to get our hands on (or in) and which ones aren’t necessarily best suited for growing our food but could be useful elsewhere. So, with no further puns, let us dive head first into the wonderful world of animal excrement.

MANURE IS MAGNIFICENT

Firstly, it seems useful to know why it is that manure is such a valuable commodity. In the garden, it does two things very well: amends the soil and fertilizes the plants. Dry, well-rotted manure is great for retaining water and very useful in sandy soils, whereas the same thing goes along way in lightening up dense clay soils. In either case, fast-draining or compacted soils, manure helps reduce runoff and nutrient leaching. As far as fertilizing, manure carries a good punch of nitrogen (The type of manure changes the levels) and other nutrients, both of which release it slowly (Again, the speed changes via type) to the plants. It’s also full of microbes, which up the amount of soil life, thus fertility, in the garden.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Primer on Creating Soil

October 12, 2017

A PRIMER ON CREATING SOIL

Good agriculture depends on good soil. The problem over the past 10,000 years of our human attempt to live off the land (and especially during the last sixty years or so), is that crops take nutrients from the soil, and without proper husbandry, soil fertility will deplete. The “pseudo-solution” offered by the Green Revolution has been to import petroleum-based fertilizers to make up for our lack of stewardship of the soil´s fertility, though the negative effects and rampant unsustainability of that approach are well known.

Every agrarian culture around the world has developed their own systems for trying to maintain the balance between our human need for food and the soil´s need to be replenished. From “night soil” being applied to rice fields in China, to leaving large patches of land fallow to naturally recuperate, to actively incorporating animal manures, agrarian people have known that their livelihoods depend on the continued fertility of the land.

What follows are a few simple suggestions on how all of us can participate in the ongoing work of creating the fertile soil upon which all of our lives depend.

THE COMPOST PILE

The compost pile is a necessary part of every homestead and every garden. It is by far the easiest way to recycle kitchen scraps, grass clippings, leaf litter, and even your dog´s poop into rich, fertile soil that will add fertility and fecundity to every garden bed. Making compost is simply the process of providing the necessary conditions so that the millions of microscopic organisms can feast on your leftovers. Like lasagna gardening, it is basically the process of stacking up in layers a variety of different organic materials to allow them to decompose.

While there is no “recipe” for making compost, here are some general guidelines:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Connor Stedman: Carbon Farming

October 10, 2017

Connor Stedman: Carbon Farming

Sequestering atmospheric carbon through natural means

Climate change remains a hotly debated topic. But a scientific fact not up for dispute is the pronounced spike in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere over the past two centuries.

There’s a building urgency to find solutions that can manage/reverse that spike — a process known as carbon sequestration. But how to do that on a planetary scale? It’s a massive predicament. And most of the ‘solutions’ being proposed are technologically unproven, prohibitively costly and/or completely impractical.

Enter carbon farming. It uses nature-based farming practices to park gigatons of carbon in the soil, rebuild soil health and complexity, and revitalize the nutrient density of the foods that we eat. It is quite likely the only practical — and best — way to sequester carbon at massive scale, as well as reap a multitude of by-product benefits.

In this week’s podcast, field ecologist and agriforestry specialist Connor Stedman explains the science behind the carbon farming process:

For the last few million years of the Earth’s history, when there’s been this cycle of glaciers advancing and receding in the northern hemisphere, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has gone between about 180 parts per million and 280 parts per million. That is the band in which all of human history has happened, up until the last 200 or 300 years.

Now the concentration of carbon dioxide is about 407 parts per million, almost 50% higher than the upper end of that historical normal. Carbon dioxide is one of a number of greenhouse gases that hold heat in the Earth’s atmosphere, rather than it being fully reflected back out into space

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“Free” Fertilizer is Saving Rural Farmers

October 2, 2017

“FREE” FERTILIZER IS SAVING RURAL FARMERS

Revitalizing dead soil can be done in just one planting season, thanks to Shivansh farming. Rural farmers can use whatever materials are available to them to restore their livelihoods – lowering their costs and increasing their yields.

The majority of the world’s poorest farmers use a nitrogen fertilizer called urea. The chemical was initially produced to serve industrial agriculture, but many small-scale farmers were swayed by the fertilizer’s promise of increased productivity. However, the fertilizer begins to wreak havoc once absorbed into the soil, destroying the precarious balance of microorganisms the soil needs to provide plants with enough vitamins and minerals. The ecosystem is destroyed.

As a result, crops are left vulnerable to disease, produce lower yields, are less nutritious, and even require more water. This kicks off a chain reaction that leads to farmers using more fertilizer, herbicides, and pesticides in an attempt to remedy these issues. Producers begin investing more money in chemicals, and have to start purchasing seeds to replant their failing crops – resulting in farmers earning only a 2 percent profit, intensifying their food insecurity and ongoing poverty.

Shivansh fertilizer can allow farmers to break this cycle and reduce their dependence on the chemicals that are doing more harm than good. To create their own free fertilizer, farmers need only gather whatever they have lying around – fresh grass, dried plant materials, animal manure, or crop residues – and incorporate an easy layering technique to create a shoulder-high mound.

The rest is all up to nature. After 18 days, the pile has reduced down to a nutrient-rich fertilizer, full of the microorganisms that soil needs to grow healthy crops. This powerful fertilizer can bring damaged soil back to life within the very first planting season – meaning it has the capacity to completely revolutionize the farming industry for impoverished producers worldwide.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Conversation With Dr. Daphne Miller

September 28, 2017

A Conversation With Dr. Daphne Miller

Daphne Miller: These days I’m focused on the true cost of food. We have the cheapest food in the world. Food purchases make up something like 8% of our GDP. But when you start to factor in all the chronic diseases and environmental impacts—the health footprint of food—then all of a sudden we have the most expensive food in the world. Not 8% but 25% or higher. How is it we have something that is so cheap but so expensive?

Woody Tasch: How do we tackle this?

It’s clear to me that we need to start with the soil. It’s a vertical process. The businesses that are putting food on our table must have an interest in the soil. Their financial return has to be linked back, somehow, to the substrate of the soil. Any consumer goods company that isn’t thinking about the ecosystem in which the food is produced isn’t going to produce healthier food. We can slightly unprocess this or that, but unless we start thinking about the soil, we’re not going to get the shift we need. Farm policy is one shift we need, but the other is to shift the way the food companies do their business. And we need to change our understanding of health.

How does this affect your medical practice?

People are getting so sick because they aren’t connected to a healthy food system. Medicine is putting out fires, it gets to people way too late. We need to work upstream, outside the medical model.

When you say this, what’s the response of your colleagues in the medical community?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What We Sow is What We Eat

September 19, 2017

What We Sow is What We Eat

I am lying in a meadow high in the Rocky Mountains. The sun is warm and comforting. I watch the clouds, puffy white in the blue sky, but soon pull a cap over my eyes and enter that state where thoughts swirl through your head and you don’t know if you’re sleeping or not.

While I rest, Karen is looking for wild strawberries. She has a remarkable eye for them, and has found the delicate plants everywhere from along the ocean in Nova Scotia to the volcanic highlands of the Big Island in Hawai’i. She remembers as she is searching the hard labor of picking the tiny berries as a girl, gathering enough for her mother to make jelly. No easy task as I have learned when she finds a patch big enough for me to collect some too.

When all you have ever eaten are the overly large and often woody and tasteless strawberries sold in grocery stores, putting a wild one in your mouth is a revelation. A gift from the earth, sweet, tart, wonderful, perfect. They leave your fingers smelling like, well, strawberries.

We’ve found many fruits on our hikes. Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, cherries sweet and sour, currants, huckleberries, apples, plums, even liliko’i (passion fruit), guava, lemons, and limes. Some like the berries grow wild. Others have flourished long after they were planted and then abandoned.

Seeing and tasting these gifts of nature can’t help but make you think of the foods most of us eat. Heavily processed and full of salt, hydrogenated oil, and high fructose corn syrup; loaded with chemicals; laden with pesticides; grown on factory farms; treated like any other mass-produced products, aimed for the market with costs per unit low and profits high.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Degraded Land Impacts the Metabolism of Local Bees

February 10, 2017

Bee´s in front of a stock

DEGRADED LAND IMPACTS THE METABOLISM OF LOCAL BEES

Researchers in Perth have potentially uncovered a secret to understanding the declining populations of bees around the globe.

According to a study conducted by Kings Park and Botanic Garden, Curtin University, and the University of Western Australia, when human impact leaves bees with a lack of food, they don’t make an effort to forage further from home – instead, they start to depend on food sources stored inside the hive.

Bees were numbered and distributed among six hives north of Perth, at the Gnangara Mound. Three hives were located in healthy woodlands with plenty of available food, and the other three hives were only 5km away, in a section of degraded land that had been ravaged by fire. Don Bradshaw, a professor with UWA’s School of Biological Sciences, said the study measured the metabolic rate of the bees to determine how human-initiated change to the environment, like the clearing of large sections of land, would impact the insect’s survival.

The results of the study revealed that the bees from the desolate landscape showed a 30 per cent decrease in metabolism, as well as a 60 per cent lower intake of nectar. These findings were the opposite of what Bradshaw said he had anticipated, which was that the bees in degraded areas would have a faster metabolism – as a result of having to travel further to find food.

Degraded Land Impacts The Metabolism Of Local Bees 01

“Rather than travel in search of food in degraded areas, the bees foraged less and depended on stored resources inside the hive,” Bradshaw said.

Bradshaw’s method for determining the metabolic rate of the 76 numbered bees used for the study was initially developed for a study on honey possums.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Learning More on How to Think About Soil

September 10, 2016

Seedling & Soil

LEARNING MORE ON HOW TO THINK ABOUT SOIL

I don’t know why it is, but I’ve taken to waking up at about five every morning. I kiss my wife Emma on the head, creep downstairs from the loft of our apartment and spend the next hour or more watching Geoff Lawton videos from the PDC course. She knows I’m doing it. It’s nothing weird. But, for the most part, we don’t talk all that much about it. This morning, however, I was watching the soil section, and in probably the clearest way possible, I began to understand more about how to explain soil systems. Then, at breakfast, I wouldn’t shut up.

Obviously, I’ve not been unaware of the importance of healthy soils, and by happenstance, I’ve probably even managed to make a good deal of it. But, my technique has largely been based on adding a steady supply of organic carbon and nitrogen matter, mostly in the form of brown leaves, boxes and newspaper to layers of manure, household veggie scraps, and fresh cut greens. I stack them atop earth and begin building layers of soil, usually doing an initial cover crop of legumes that get chopped-and-dropped. I probably would have stopped to learn more before now had the system not worked—though slow—as well as it does.

But, this morning I learned a new way—very practical and familiar—of looking at soil. Firstly, Lawton explained the necessities of minerals beyond just NPK, using a wonderful analogy with the modern food system and its effects on people. Then, he explained pH balance, something I’ve never spent a lot of time addressing, save for avoiding certain things that have been reported to me as overly acidic.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Investing in Soil Health, One Piece of Land at a Time

April 18, 2016

Jim Baird in a field of organic vetch in the Columbia River Basin

Investing in Soil Health, One Piece of Land at a Time

Three years ago, in collaboration with a group of farmers and investors, my spouse and I formed an LLC called Living Lands. Together we wrote our purpose and articles of incorporation to place the highest priority on soil health. Under the astute guidance and leadership of Jim Baird, a longtime farmer in eastern Washington and a founding member of Slow Money, we purchased a 100-acre piece of farmland in the Columbia River Basin. Jim manages the land in conjunction with his other activities, including Cloudview EcoFarms, an educational and experimental farm project with operations in Royal City and Ephrata.

Our conversations have been wide-ranging and spirited. We have talked about soil and carbon and the best way to figure out whether we are improving the health of the soil. We are all concerned about water, and it has been enlightening to hear from Jim and Sam (another investor and also a farmer based near Ellensburg) about the history of our state’s water districts, irrigation programs, and farmer involvement. We are currently in the process of transitioning the land we purchased to certified-organic status, an important element in our pursuit of soil health, although by no means the “silver bullet.” Last year we leased the farmland to a young couple Jim has been mentoring. By leasing our land and raising commercial crops (currently alfalfa), they are able to make a living as farmers while continuing their explorations of farming practices.

We are not going to “scale” Living Lands. We may form Living Lands II and buy another piece of farmland. When we do, we’ll need to pay as much attention to it as we have to LLI.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Farming Controversies Are So Complicated

April 7, 2016

Farming Controversies Are So Complicated

I read an article on the DTN/Progressive Farming website that once again shows how difficult it is to resolve differences of opinion in farming disagreements. The article was an even-sided discussion of possible overproduction of organic crops, (which I plan to write about soon) but a respondent took the occasion to launch into a rather vitriolic attack on organic farming. He was irritated about the organic stand against herbicides. How could organic farmers consider their methods to be environmentally correct, he wrote, when they use cultivation to control weeds in row crops and shun herbicides. Cultivation increases the severity of erosion and uses more fossil fuel than herbicide applications. That’s true as far as I know. Cultivation also releases CO2 to the atmosphere, disturbs soil life negatively, and breaks up soil particles too much, he argued. He concluded by opining that those of us who cultivate row crops, or use flame throwers instead of herbicides to kill weeds, are stupid.

But herbicide farmers cultivate the soil quite a bit too, during fall and spring when erosion is more severe. At least here in my neck of the woods, fields are cultivated in the fall, so as to be ready for planting as soon as possible in spring, and then cultivated again in the spring ahead of planting. If a no-till planter is involved, the operation is called “no-till.” Beats me. The big trend now is cover crops overwinter, surely a good idea, but that means either more herbicides in spring to get rid of the cover or more cultivation of some kind to smack down the cover crop.

It leads me to a dismal conclusion. As soon as mankind reaches a population level where agriculture, as opposed the hunting and gathering, is necessary to provide enough food, collapse of the civilization is inevitable.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Save Our Soils

April 1, 2016

IMG_9379 feat

SAVE OUR SOILS

All terrestrial life depends on soil, directly or indirectly. Although our understanding of topsoil has grown by leaps and bounds over the past decades, we are still losing this invaluable resource at a frightening pace.

Less than thirty per cent of the world’s topsoil remains in fair or acceptable condition. The fragility of this vital layer can be illustrated through a simple comparison: if one imagines the earth as an orange, the extremely thin topsoil layer is no thicker than the shine on the skin of that orange. An astonishing variety of creatures rely on this ‘shine’ for all of their basic necessities.

Our growing knowledge about soil has formed the basis of new soil services, soil analyses, and many well-intended soil conservation attempts, yet we are still losing soil at an ever-increasing rate. If this trend continues for much longer, our current form of society will eventually collapse – and mainly as a result of practices as simple as over tilling.

At the same time, soil is being damaged irreparably by salinisation, for example resulting from the clear-cutting of forests that are often far away. There are only a few places in natural systems in which soils are well conserved: uncut forests; under shallow lakes and ponds; native grasslands populated by perennials; and mulched and non-tillage agricultural production systems.

A SUSTAINABLE APPROACH

Although this situation may seem extremely gloomy, there is hope in the form of numerous sustainable approaches to soil reconditioning, maintenance and rehabilitation. Surprisingly, amateur gardeners and farmers – not scientists with big fancy labs and federal research grants – are doing most of the real research. Moreover, these people are achieving results: creating high quality soil through water control, modest aeration, and the assemblage of specific plants and animals. And this is done with careful consideration of the sequence of these treatments.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Compost Worm Experiment

March 28, 2016

Compost Worm Experiment 01

COMPOST WORM EXPERIMENT

Every three weeks we have access to 80 to 100 kg of insect castings. These castings are from Meal worms, Cockroaches and Crickets. The waste is manure and leftover feed which is pollard and similar products. We use the waste in different ways and as the material is very high in nitrogen there is a need to consider the best way to approach the management processes. Usually I have been putting the waste into a chicken cell and then adding sawdust to it and the chickens process it. However I won’t put it in the cell if it is less than 3 weeks before planting so that the high nitrogen has had a chance to be processed out. So at times when its our turn to pickup the “bug poop”, as we call it we need to find some other use for it. Today I set up an experiment to see if compost worms will process it. I know that black soldier fly will process the material and I have designs and ideas to use them, just not the time at the moment.

I set up a half poly drum that has a drainage hole in the bottom and put a bag of the bug poop in , added some water to moisten the material and then added some compost worms with some of their castings and mulch that they were living in. I will monitor their process and see if it is to their liking. If they go well then I will set up a bigger system. We will feed the worms to the chickens to supplement their diet and hopefully increase the egg production.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is Climate Change Putting World’s Microbiomes at Risk?

March 28, 2016

Is Climate Change Putting World’s Microbiomes at Risk?

Researchers are only beginning to understand the complexities of the microbes in the earth’s soil and the role they play in fostering healthy ecosystems. Now, climate change is threatening to disrupt these microbes and the key functions they provide.

The spores of an opportunistic soil fungus, Penicillium sp. View gallery.

Photo: PNNL

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.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Vermicomposting–A Great Way to Turn the Burdens Into Resources

March 24, 2016

Vermicomposting 01

VERMICOMPOSTING – A GREAT WAY TO TURN THE BURDENS INTO RESOURCES

Thousands of tons of foods are being wasted everyday throughout the world and due to their improper management, they are creating further trouble polluting the environment. Though wasting food is not a matter to be happy with; but if it cannot be stopped at least the wastes can be managed in some beneficial ways. Vermicomposting is the process which will protect the environment from the pollution of food scraps, kitchen wastes and other organic wastes in one hand and will give you a great organic fertilizer and healthy crop production on the other.

VERMICOMPOSTING AND VERMICOMPOST

Latin word ‘Vermi’ means worm; thus ‘Vermicomposting’ refers to composting with worms. In vermicomposting, various organic waste materials are broken down by using worms, bacteria, and fungi. These organisms are nature’s vitally useful tools to decompose organic materials. So, vermicomposting is a process that boosts up nature’s process of decomposing organic waste materials and produces a very useful end product.

Vermicompost, the end product of vermicomposting process, is a heterogeneous mixture of decomposed organic wastes, bedding materials, worm castings, decomposed worms as well as other decomposer organisms, worm cocoons etc. The worm castings, one of the major components of vermicompost, contain lower levels of contaminants and higher levels of nutrients than the organic wastes do before vermicomposting. Vermicompost is rich in many water-soluble nutrients which makes it an excellent organic fertilizer.

PLANT NUTRITION WITH VERMICOMPOST

In optimum conditions worms consume huge amount of organic wastes in a day, as much as their own weight at least. After consumption, they take their nourishment from the micro-organisms residing in the wastes; and when they excrete their casts contain an increased number of micro-organisms.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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