We have been working against nature instead of with nature.
The “Green Revolution” started as a way to increase yields, and we did, but all that came at a cost to the environment that we couldn’t see.
The same chemicals that gave us the yield increase also killed off the biology in the soil that fed and tended to the plants and held the soil together.
We are at a point where we are growing weaker, chemical dependent plants with plateauing yields and increased run off and erosion.
Offer a brand solution:
At Soil Restoration Services, we are adding that biology back to the soil while keeping the yields, storing water and carbon in the soil, and decreasing erosion.
We do that mainly by adding liquid amendments made from high quality worm castings as well as adding the castings themselves. We also use amendments that feed and strengthen the beneficial soil microbes.
During the growing season we tabulate microbial population types and populations so we can track the growth and health of beneficial microbes, and the decline of the non-beneficials.
We may also test for nutrients in the soil as well as the plants themselves.
Specific nutrients can be added at specific times as guided by our testing, to help the plant live up to its genetic potential.
In the case of fruit, vegetable, forage and row crops, our goal is to bring the plants to a state of health that makes them impervious to predatory insects and diseases with fruit that is nutritious to the point that it plays an active part in the health of the person or animal consuming it. In many cases the soil biology, in relation with the plants, may be brought to the point where little to no amendments are needed in a growing season for both high yields and nutritious produce.
Overview of the problem:
Releasing carbon into the atmosphere by burning oil is only part of the equation.
Since humans started farming by turning the soil and adding high saline manure amendments 12,000 years ago, we have been releasing carbon from the soil where it was locked up in the form of organic matter. Population growth and technology made for more and more acreage under tillage and more and more soil degradation, until literally, the fertile crescent, birthplace of humanity is now mostly desert with it’s topsoil long since washed away. This pattern has been duplicated over and over until now, in America, it has taken us less than two hundred years to deplete much of our soil organic matter.
Reducing soil organic matter releases not only carbon, but it also reduces the soils ability to hold water. More and more water released into the atmosphere is causing more frequent and more violent weather events around the world.
Offer a solution:
How do we begin to reverse the degradation?
It has been said that the furthest distance between two points is the six inches between our ears. Once we can grasp the problem and see our part in it, we almost immediately start to see solutions. It might be a long road to that point. Or, maybe not.
We have only begun to understand the role of the trillions of microscopic creatures in the soil beneath our feet since about the nineteen seventies. Until then, they were pretty much a mystery. Since then it has been a long, mostly academic journey with a handful of USDA field agents trying things out in the field.
In just the last twenty years or so farmers in the midwest at least, began to put away the mold board plow in favor of some degree of limited tillage. Some of them went to a “No-Till” system entirely.
All of this was a benefit to the soil microbes even if the farmer didn’t know it.
In about the last ten years the voices of the academics along with the farmers and agents that were experimenting in the field began to fall on some interested ears. Other farmers began to notice that rain water tended to soak into their land instead of running off. They noticed that yields were about the same or better than average inn normal years, and much better in dry years. Some noticed that if they began paying attention to the biology in the soil and planting cover crops so the soil wasn’t bare for six months of the year, their fertilizer and chemical bills dropped off to a fraction of what they were. Their ditches stopped filling up with top soil. The
Ag community is beginning to pay attention.
Within the last five years, there has been a ground swell of interest in what is loosely called “Regenerative Agriculture”.
Regenerative Agriculture leaves the soil in better condition this year than it was last year, reversing the twelve thousand year pattern of degrading the soil. As the soil microbes multiply in numbers and diversity and plants begin to rely on them to mine the soil of nutrients in plant available form, plants develop a symbiosis with the microbes and organic matter begins to increase every year instead of decrease. Plants are healthier, the soil is healthier, farming is more profitable, soil is held in place, and water is retained in the soil.
The farming industry has a vast support system from the government to the local farm equipment salesman and that system is working in many ways for most farmers. Our modern farming methods are nothing short of miraculous at producing a given set of crops on a given plot of land, year after year. There are cracks in the system. Inputs are getting more and more expensive and real farm income is dropping but so far farmers are convinced it is up to them to react to that in a way that keeps them in the framework of modern farming.
Even small changes in their operations can have outsized effects on the bottom line, often in a negative way. There is a lot of pressure on farmers to produce a crop at almost any expense, even if it isn’t profitable in the short term.
This pressure can be crushing and a rising number of farmers are selling their equipment and renting their ground out to larger operations.
So, there is impetus for change.
The number one thing that must happen is a widespread message of hope.
“There are alternatives to the status quo and they don’t include throwing more money at it.”
“It is possible to work with nature instead of against it.”
“We can feed the world without destroying it.”
Some sort of safety net that would help farmers transition to new methods would help. Ending:
What is your interaction with the natural world?
Destruction vs co-creation
Reward is deep fulfillment
Walking on the belly of the earth with respect.
Environmental movement is witched to the wrong cart.
We are concentrating on symptoms vs underlying cause.
Carbon, as minor player is weather systems vs water.
Water is 70-95% of heat dynamics
Find real actionable ways to restore then water systems.