Save civilization — grow topsoil

Jeffrey Carter in the Western Producer: Farmers need to move beyond conserving topsoil and start growing it, according to a Vermont grazier, educator and consultant. “The best we’ve been able to do is that we’re losing 10 times more soil than is being grown. At least, that’s the latest numbers I’ve seen,” Abe Collins told the Ecological Farmers of Ontario conference in Orillia in early December.

Collins is part of a small group of agriculturalists who want to take that next step. He is co-founder of the Soil Carbon Coalition, a non-profit organization dedicated to transforming atmospheric carbon into soil organic matter.

“If topsoil is renewable, at least that’s the experience of our community, we all need to learn how to grow it,” he said. “Nearly everything rests on us to grow the topsoil so that the rest of society can survive and civilization continues.” Collins encourages farmers to evaluate their current practices and make the necessary changes to build their soil in a real and substantial manner.

The first step is to establish a series of GPS-located, strategically placed, four-by-four metre, permanent plots that can be monitored over the coming years. Locations should be photographed and ecological observations such as earthworm activity recorded. The water infiltration capacity must be measured with a tension infiltrometer and core samples taken to measure soil carbon.

Returning to the same location each year allows farmers, foresters and other landowners to monitor how the changes they are making are improving their soils. Collins said there is no one path to building the capacity of topsoil and increasing soil organic matter. Progress will have been made if farmers can achieve real, measurable gains....

Cracked soil, shot by Jeroen Moes, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons 2.0 license

Natural sequence farming could affect global climate change

Science Daily: mproving land management and farming practices in Australia could have an effect on global climate change, according to a study published in the International Journal of Water. Natural Sequence Farming is a descriptor used when sustainable agriculture mimics the once highly efficient functions of the Australian landscape. NSF pioneer Peter Andrews of Denman in New South Wales and coordinator of the NSF movement, Duane Norris of Hardy's Bay, New South Wales explain how NSF techniques could re-couple environmental carbon and water cycles not only to improve farming yields but to avoid soil erosion and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Agricultural practices such as clearing, burning, plowing, draining, and irrigation, have become commonplace across the Australian continent, as they have elsewhere. Their effect on the organic carbon content of soil has led to a decline in soil quality across farmland on the continent with levels currently a tenth of what they were 200 years ago prior to the major European settling of Australia.

Andrews and Norris point out that this has had implications for atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and will continue to impact on global warming if farming practices are not modified. "Soils hold twice as much carbon as the atmosphere, and three times as much as vegetation," the team explains, "But carbon in soil exposed by common agricultural practices leads to the oxidation of the carbon and the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere." Estimates suggest that soils that once contained carbon matter 4,000 to 10,000 years old, are now holding carbon that is a mere two years old because poor management of livestock grazing leaves soil de-vegetated and in an oxidizing state. ---There are four guidelines for Natural Sequence Farming:

* First, restoring fertility held by nutrients and organic matter to improve the biological function of soils.
* Second, reinstating the hydrological balance to increase groundwater storage in the floodplain aquifer, increasing freshwater recharge and hence reducing saline groundwater discharge.
* The third principle is to re-establish natural vegetation succession through pioneer species to promote the healthy growth of native plant communities.
* The fourth guideline is to understand the hydrological and biogeochemical processes that drive the natural landscape system, which will allow their management to restore ecological function….

Sunflower field in Queensland, shot by DavidMarsh, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license