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Managing plant surplus carbon to generate soil organic matter in regenerative agriculture

September 26, 2022

Soil degradation is a global problem. A third of the planet’s land is already severely degraded, and soil is being degraded at a speed that threatens the health of the planet and the civilizations that depend on it (Whitmee et al. 2015). Depletion of soil organic carbon (SOC) resulting from extractive agriculture is a key driver of soil degradation (Lal et al. 2015). Much of this SOC has been released to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO₂), a potent greenhouse gas contributing to ongoing climate change, including extreme weather events. Soil degradation also diminishes water infiltration and retention, biodiversity, watershed functions, and the nutritional value of food. Reversing soil degradation is a top global priority (UNCCD 2017).

Yields of major crops have increased substantially in the last century, primarily through intensive chemical fertilization. However, the greater aboveground plant biomass production resulting from chemical fertilization has usually not led to proportional gains in plant inputs to soil and soil organic matter (SOM) accrual (Khan et al. 2007; Man et al. 2021). Instead, these practices, in concert with other intensive agricultural practices such as intensive tillage, monoculture, application of pesticides, and bare fallows, have caused declines in SOM, increases in greenhouse gas emissions, and pollution of waterways (Loisel et al. 2019). However, adopting regenerative agricultural practices, such as substituting chemical with organic fertilizers like compost or manure, reducing tillage, intensifying and diversifying crop rotations, and cover cropping, often increase SOM (McClelland et al. 2021). The mechanisms underlying the positive effects of regenerative agricultural practices on SOM, however, are not well understood. Elucidating these mechanisms would advance our capacity to design agricultural strategies to reliably enhance agroecosystem SOM content, which would assist in reversing soil degradation and enhancing soil quality, food security, and climate change mitigation globally (Amelung et al. 2020).

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

Home Soil

May 26, 2022

Home Soil

We need more geology in school. Or perhaps ecology. Probably both. If we are to survive, we need to understand who and what we are, and for that we need to understand this world that made us. We are earthly beings. We are small parts of a small planet on an average star in the outer reaches of a galactic backwater somewhere in the vastness of the universe. We are small parts that have not been around for long, nor is there any reason to expect that we will continue for more than a few million years — most of our close cousin species are already extinct, after all. We are small parts that do not live long enough to have much impact. Yes, even all this mess we’ve made of our planet — while naming ourselves “the intelligent species” — will not last long. If there are geologists in the future capable of reading the rocks, they will be hard-pressed to even find the layers that contained humans.

A centimeter layer of rock most often represents thousands of years of deposition, perhaps millions of years when deposited in regions of high topography. (Some thick layers can be laid down in hours though these are more often igneous than sedimentary.) All that we’ve done, from our birth in Africa to our global ending, will likely comprise a layer of stratigraphy that is thinner than your smallest toe. To be sure, that layer will have ludicrously irrational geochemistry, laced as it will be with plastics and concentrated poisons. If there are mass spectrometers in the future (not likely, but humor me), geologists will spend careers trying to understand how this particularly toxic time period came about. They may invoke extraterrestrial impacts — because any thinking being will find the true story of our abiotic idiocy hard to accept.

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

Post collapse, just what will we eat…..?

February 28, 2022

Post collapse, just what will we eat…..?

Further to my post where I explained how Australia’s poor soils are largely incapable of growing much more than meat, this article landed in my news feed…

Here’s a list of what Australian farmers produce:

Each year, on average each Australian farmer feeds 600 people.

Agriculture powers 1.6 million Australian jobs.

Australian farmers manage 48 per cent of the nation’s landmass.

Cattle, wheat and whole milk are our top three commodities by value.

More than 99% of Australia’s agricultural businesses are Australian owned.

Out of the $58.1 billion worth of food and fibre Australian farmers produced in 2015-16 77 per cent ($44.8 billion) was exported.

6.8 million hectares of agricultural land has been set aside by Australian farmers for conservation and protection purposes.

Australian farmers are among the most self-sufficient in the world, with government support for Australian farms representing just 1% of farming income. In Norway it is 62%, Korea 49%, China 21%, European Union 19% and United States 9%.

Farm facts by commodity

In total, Australian beef cattle farmers produce 2.5 million tonnes of beef and veal each year. Australians eat an average 26kg of beef per person, per year.

Australians consume an average of 45.3kg of chicken meat per person, per year. This not only cements chicken’s position as Australian consumers’ favourite meat, but also makes Australia one of the largest consumers of chicken meat in the world!

In a normal year, Australia’s cotton growers produce enough cotton to clothe 500 million people.

Australia produces about 3 per cent of the world’s cotton but is the fifth largest exporter, behind the USA, India, Brazil, Uzbekistan.

Australian dairy farmers produce 9,539 million litres of whole milk per year with the farmgate value of milk production being $4.3 billion.

On average, each Australian eats 3.08kg of dried fruit per year. Total Australian dried fruit exports in 2015–16 totalled 5,000 tonnes and was valued at $19.4 million.

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

How healthy is your soil?

December 3, 2021

How healthy is your soil?

In celebration of World Soil Day, December 5, 2021, we want to help farmers around the world to better understand their soil.

Our soils are an incredible resource – they have a remarkable ability to clean water and help mitigate climate change, they support biodiversity and are the reason we can grow nourishing food. However, the ability of soil to deliver these benefits has been compromised by widespread intensive farming – so much so it’s been estimated we have only 50 harvests left until our topsoil is degraded beyond repair. But not all is lost. Every day, farmers are transitioning to more sustainable farming practices which can not only prevent further deterioration of the land but can regenerate it too.

But where do you start? You can’t manage what you don’t measure – a clear indication of the health of your soil can help show you where to go next and illustrate the effectiveness of new management practices. Here are three simple soil tests from the Global Farm Metric that you can do to understand, manage and protect the health of your soil and the vital services it provides.

These tests indicate the state of your soils in terms of structure, the amount of organic matter and biodiversity. You can do this in your garden, allotment or farm.

On farm scale, choose three fields that are representative of your land (e.g. with different soil types or different enterprises such as arable or permanent pasture). Follow the sampling protocols – time of year and weather (e.g. after heavy rainfall or frost) can sometimes affect your results, so tests are best done throughout the year, when soil is moist and not waterlogged or frozen. Let’s get digging!

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

Soils and Life Beneath the Ground

November 1, 2021

Soils and Life Beneath the Ground

There is more life beneath the ground than you know. Healthy soils contain a vibrant range of life forms such as protozoa, nematodes, mites, springtails, spiders, insects, bacteria, fungi, earthworms and numerous burrowing animals. This rich biodiversity plays a vital role in mitigating climate change, neutralising pests, purifying and storing water, providing antibiotics and preventing soil erosion. The well-being of all people, plants and animals depends on the complex processes that take place in soil. One square meter of soil can harbour as many as one billion organisms. Soils are home to over a quarter of all living creatures on Earth.

Soils - life beneath the ground

In the context of a human life span, soil is not normally renewable. Healthy ecosystems constantly recycle and generate fresh water and air. Soil formation however takes decades or even centuries to occur. Human activity has polluted the air and severely degraded most freshwater habitats. The ability of ecosystems to produce clean air and water has been impaired. The Earth’s healthy soils are also under attack. Intensive farming destroys the soil’s natural regenerative properties and makes it entirely dependent on artificial fertilisers. Modern industrial farming practices transform previously fertile soils into dust.

Soil quality and fertility depends on the presence of a vast biodiversity of underground living organisms. This community of creatures processes dead organic matter to produce nutrient-rich complex organic matter, called humus. Humus is necessary to sustain plants. Humus cannot be man-made. It is created by soil biodiversity. Micro-organisms play a major role in processing the organic matter in soil. Soil is the most essential food source on the planet. It provides the nutrients that plants need to grow and sustain animals, as well as produce our own food and textile fibers.

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

The Woodchip Handbook: A Complete Guide for Farmers, Gardeners and Landscapers: Excerpt

October 30, 2021

The Woodchip Handbook: A Complete Guide for Farmers, Gardeners and Landscapers: Excerpt

The following excerpt is from Ben Raskin’s new book The Woodchip Handbook: A Complete Guide for Farmers, Gardeners and Landscapers (Chelsea Green Publishing, October 2021) and is reprinted with permission from the publisher.

The Woodchip Handbook

By Ben Raskin

Restoring Damaged Soil

With the potential for woodchip to boost soil health, hold onto water and promote plant growth, it is a small step to look at how to effectively harness that potential for rescuing degraded and damaged soils. There are numerous examples of how this has been done, and we’ll look at a few of them here. In some of the studies woodchip and biochar are used either comparatively or in combination, and there is certainly potential for combining the shorter-term benefits of woodchip with the longer-lasting properties of biochar. Both the physical and biological properties of woodchip are used in soil remediation.

Bioremediation

We have already seen the potential for woodchip and the fungi that decompose them to absorb potentially polluting nitrates, but there is some evidence that it could be used more widely to help deal with other manmade pollutants, ‘such as chlorinated and non-chlorinated hydrocarbons, wood preserving chemicals, solvents, heavy metals, pesticides, petroleum products, and explosives. There is an even stronger body of evidence on the potential of biochar for this purpose, but creating biochar is more costly and in most cases some of the energy is lost during the production process. Woodchip is cheaper and easier to produce, so it is worth looking at those situations that could use it.

For contaminants that would eventually break down anyway, such as oil and diesel spills, woodchip appears to have the potential to significantly increase the speed at which the contaminants disintegrate…

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

Homage to soil

October 23, 2021

Homage to soil

Perhaps surprisingly, given that I worked for more than 20 years for an organisation called the Soil Association, my striving to understand the full significance and importance of the soil is still an evolving process which continues to be inspired and illuminated by ongoing revelations derived from my farming, my reading and my role in the Sustainable Food Trust. I thought it would be relevant to reflect on some of these recent milestones, particularly bearing in mind the various planetary emergencies which are now occupying the attention of citizens throughout the world in the run up to the COP26.

Everyone now knows that the soil is one of the world’s great carbon banks, actually second only to the oceans in its capacity, and arguably the only element of the Earth’s bank of natural capital where changes in farming practice could sequester significant amounts of CO₂ out of the atmosphere during the next 10 years. For that reason alone, it deserves to receive a huge amount of attention at the Glasgow summit. In writing this, I am mindful of the vision and leadership shown by the French minister Stéphane Le Foll at COP21 in Paris, launching as he did the so called ‘Quatre pour Mille’ (4 per 1000) initiative inviting all farmers to increase their soil carbon bank by 0.4% per year. Many governments and organisations signed up to this initiative but, due to the lack of financial incentives and the absence of adequate record keeping, little progress has been made towards achieving the French minister’s objectives, which is why the COP26 should be seen as a huge opportunity to implement the scheme.

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

Mycorrhizae: “If you build it, they will come”

June 25, 2021

Mycorrhizae: “If you build it, they will come”

The movie “Field of Dreams” is a family favorite – we love how baseball and the supernatural are interwoven to create a great story. If you haven’t seen the movie, you should – and for those of you that have, you know why it was important for Ray to build the baseball field. Like the magic that unfolded once that physical space was provided, botanical magic emerges from garden soils that support mycorrhizal life. Garden product peddlers have taken advantage of the scientifically-established relationship between plants and mycorrhizal fungi by selling inoculants. And gardeners tend to focus on which of the many brands of inoculants to buy, rather on questioning their efficacy.

I’ve attached a link to my peer-reviewed fact sheet on mycorrhizae for a more in-depth discussion about this symbiotic relationship, but the bottom line is this: inoculants don’t work. To understand why, we need to consider a modified version of the disease triangle. Many gardeners are familiar with this concept, which depicts the three criteria needed for plant disease to manifest: the presence of the pathogen, the presence of a host plant, and environmental conditions conducive to pathogen growth. Pathogen spores are EVERYWHERE in landscape and garden soils – they just aren’t activated unless their host is present and environmental conditions allow their germination. Likewise, mycorrhizal spores are EVERYWHERE in landscape and garden soils. We can make a mycorrhizal triangle to visualize the three criteria for needed for mycorrhizae to develop.

Comparison between a disease triangle and a mycorrhizae triangle

While our understanding of mycorrhizal relationships continues to expand, we do know some of the environmental factors needed for successful inoculation:

Soil oxygen. Mycorrhizal fungi are aerobes, meaning they are active when sufficient oxygen is present.

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

My Soil Is Crap, Part II

June 6, 2021

My Soil Is Crap, Part II

Last month in my blog My Soil Is Crap Part I, I tried to dispel the myth that you can diagnose soil problems by just looking at your soil. While the color of a soil does impart some diagnostic qualities, most soils are not easily analyzed without a soils test. A complete soils test will give a textural analysis including useful information about water holding capacity and a variety of chemical analyses. Soil reaction or pH is an essential component of any soil test (and is often unreliable in home soil test kits). Soil reaction affects the availability of plant required mineral salts. Most soil tests give a measure of the salinity sometimes call TDS, or total dissolved salts (solids). Finally specific mineral content of soil is usually analyzed – in particular macronutrients are usually quantified. With these data a great deal can be predicted about the “grow-ability” of your soil. Soil tests can also help guide attempts to modify soils. The biology of soils is not easily or routinely analyzed through soils tests.

Soil Harm

Soil can be “harmed” in several ways–making it less able to grow plants. Or another way to look at this is that soil can be enhanced in several ways to grow plants better. First let’s examine the harm. Soil can be physically harmed by tilling with a rototiller. Tillage destroys structure and the natural clods and peds that form over time because of a soil’s innate qualities. Structured soils support plants and help prevent disease. Tilled soils will in time resume their native structure, but the amount of time required is quite variable depending on soil type. Soil structure can also be squished– this is compaction…

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

Millions of Tiny Cows to Regenerate the Soil

April 30, 2021

Millions of Tiny Cows to Regenerate the Soil

Earth Day comes and goes every year but nothing seems to ever really change. We are still headed for climate catastrophe, we are still in the midst of a mass extinction, we are still losing our topsoil at an alarming rate. It is time to center food systems, and especially agriculture, in our efforts to address our ecological emergencies and to live more sanely on this Earth. Food systems are central to each of these emergencies for a number of reasons: the direct amount of energy used in the production, processing and transportation of food; the disproportionate emission of greenhouse gases; the toxic chemicals that end up in our waterways; the loss of autonomy that results from the globalization and corporatization of food systems drives human labor into other unsustainable industries, etc. Of particular importance is the land: how much of it is used by agriculture, who uses it and how it is used. The practices of our dominant agricultural paradigms are rapidly degrading and eroding our soils, and we need topsoil to grow food and sustain life. If we continue on our current trajectory, it’s not a stretch to say that we’re doomed.

Any strategy that truly seeks to heal our environment will have to have degrowth as its cornerstone; in terms of land use, degrowth will allow for rewilding and veritable ecosystem restoration. Since human poverty and exploitation and general misery are largely the result of capitalism’s ethos of growth at all costs, degrowth would also result in a more humane and equal society. Changing how we do agriculture is not only about halting the damage we are doing but also reversing course and undoing the damage. We can use agriculture as a tool to restore our soils and the biodiversity they support…

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

Regenerative Agriculture part 3 | Working With Nature, Not Suppressing It

March 6, 2021

Regenerative Agriculture part 3 | Working With Nature, Not Suppressing It

In the third and final installment in this series on regenerative agriculture, Peter Dunne explains how regenerative agriculture is about working with nature, not suppressing it. We’re often told nature and agriculture can’t share the same space. But we urgently need a paradigm shift, because true resilience only comes through diversity. Full series will be available to download as a pdf.

The Insidious Agrochemical Treadmill

The backdrop for the emergence of regenerative agriculture, and its emphasis on soil as a fulcrum of farming has been the ongoing, worsening ecological crisis and the phenomenon of climate change. Both are anthropogenic. At the farm level, declining economic returns have become commonplace. Although sometimes influenced by the first, perhaps it is the last issue which is persuading increasing numbers of farmers that the current agricultural paradigm is not working.

Over the past handful of decades, farmers have found themselves resorting to ever-increasing inputs to improve production to maintain financial income as the real farm-gate price fell. It has long become a downward spiral. It is the classic treadmill created by the continual adoption of technology. To ensure a viable farm business, the system had come to favour yield above all other considerations.

In contrast, regenerative agriculture is about returning to systems reliant on an understanding of how natural ecology produces without anthropological intervention. The latter is then about working with nature, not governing it, or suppressing it to the degree where, as often now predominates, nature and agriculture cannot share the same physical space. It has become an either or. Monocultures devoid of nature have become commonplace whereas true resilience, in fact, only comes through diversity.

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

New Evidence Shows Fertile Soil Gone From Midwestern Farms

February 25, 2021

New Evidence Shows Fertile Soil Gone From Midwestern Farms

Soil on hilltops in this photo is lighter in color, revealing a loss of fertile topsoil.

Evan Thaler for NPR

Farming has destroyed a lot of the rich soil of America’s Midwestern prairie. A team of scientists just came up with a staggering new estimate for just how much has disappeared.

The most fertile topsoil is entirely gone from a third of all the land devoted to growing crops across the upper Midwest, the scientists say. Some of their colleagues, however, remain skeptical about the methods that produced this result.

The new study emerged from a simple observation, one that people flying over Midwestern farms can confirm for themselves. The color of bare soil varies, and that variation is related to soil quality.

The soil that’s darkest in color is widely known as topsoil. Soil scientists call this layer the “A-horizon.” It’s the “black, organic, rich soil that’s really good for growing crops,” says Evan Thaler, a Ph.D. student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

It’s full of living microorganisms and decaying plant roots, also called organic carbon. When settlers first arrived in the Midwest, it was everywhere, created from centuries of accumulated prairie grass. Plowing, though, released much of the trapped carbon, and topsoil was also lost to wind and water erosion. The soil that remains is often much lighter in color.

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

Global soils underpin life but future looks ‘bleak’, warns UN report

December 8, 2020

Global soils underpin life but future looks ‘bleak’, warns UN report

It takes thousands of years for soils to form, meaning protection is needed urgently, say scientists

Scientists describe soils as like the skin of the living world, vital but thin and fragile, and easily damaged by intensive farming, forest destruction, and pollution. Photograph: Zsolt Czeglédi/EPA

Global soils are the source of all life on land but their future looks “bleak” without action to halt degradation, according to the authors of a UN report.

A quarter of all the animal species on Earth live beneath our feet and provide the nutrients for all food. Soils also store as much carbon as all plants above ground and are therefore critical in tackling the climate emergency. But there also are major gaps in knowledge, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) report, which is the first on the global state of biodiversity in soils.

The report was compiled by 300 scientists, who describe the worsening state of soils as at least as important as the climate crisis and destruction of the natural world above ground. Crucially, it takes thousands of years for soils to form, meaning urgent protection and restoration of the soils that remain is needed.

The scientists describe soils as like the skin of the living world, vital but thin and fragile, and easily damaged by intensive farming, forest destruction, pollution and global heating.

It’s time we stopped treating soil like dirt – video

“Soil organisms play a crucial role in our everyday life by working to sustain life on Earth,” said Ronald Vargas, of the FAO and the secretary of the Global Soil Partnership.

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

Soil Testing: Why Is It So Vital For The Natural Environment?

July 22, 2020

Soil Testing: Why Is It So Vital For The Natural Environment?

Improving productivity is the core goal of each farmer, and good soils assist to gain it. Soil structure, composition, and fertility are key aspects to consider while choosing crops to sow, fertilisers to add, and water volumes to distribute.

Thus, testing becomes a crucial aspect of agricultural success. It boosts yields, prevents erosion, and saves both farmers’ and nature’s resources. Soil tests become a win-win solution as soil health is not only a healthy environment but also healthy mankind, following the famous quote “we are what we eat”, and perhaps, what we breathe.

These are major reasons why smart cultivation and soil testing are vital for the environment.

What Is Soil Testing?

Soil tests aim to determine fertility, type, acidity, salinity, water retention properties, to estimate depletion and erosion risks.

Soil testing is beneficial both to farmers and nature as it completes the following tasks:

Prevents soil depletion and erosion. Alongside contamination, soil erosion has been a major concern of ecologists and agrarians. It impacts the climate with droughts, winds, floods as well as shortens arable lands. Soil and fertiliser residues pollute waters.

This phenomenon is mostly irreversible and can be only slowed down rather than stopped. The primary sign for the process is soil degradation and depletion. Thus, noticing the tendencies and taking actions in time are key steps of the prevention strategy.

Enriches the soil. Equipped with reliable knowledge, farmers improve the critical areas and maintain sustainability.
Boosts yields. Plants demand nutrients to thrive, so to analyse which ones exactly they lack is critical. An experienced farmer can spot the problem with abnormal plant colourings, yet detailed testing provides more extended results.

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

Fertilizing a Garden Entirely for Free

February 25, 2020

Fertilizing a Garden Entirely for Free

At our house we have a goal to produce 80% of our fruit, veggies, meat and dairy within five years of moving onto our land. We only eat a little meat and dairy, but we eat tons of veggies, so we grow a great big garden. Gardening is full of setbacks such as this summer’s drought, and successes such as this fall’s greens, but it’s always interesting. And it’s a powerful tool in the face of global environmental problems and personal health issues.

A vegetable from your garden measures its travel in feet, not miles. According to How Bad Are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint of Everything by Mike Berners-Lee, a local apple in season emits only 10 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent, while an apple that is “shipped, stored and inefficiently produced” emits fifteen times that (if you can’t find that book at your local library, that’s an affiliate link. My commission doesn’t raise the price of your item, and it supports this site first and then The Cool Effect). Asparagus packaged and air-freighted emits 28 times as much pollution as a local bunch. Plant foods are kinder to the planet than animal foods, and whole foods are kinder than processed foods, but garden foods are best of all.

Eggplant did well in my garden this summer, growing in sheet mulch and fertilized entirely with household waste.

A vegetable from your garden is grown safely and nutritiously with no E. coli contamination and no chemicals you don’t know about. A vegetable from your garden is fresh, giving you the biggest possible dose of vitamins and the most interesting variety through the seasons. Even people with tiny yards or just a balcony can grow something, thereby gaining knowledge and skills that will be valuable as we continue trying to live on this damaged planet.

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

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