Regenerating the world’s degraded soil
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- Опубліковано 29 тра 2024
- The soil on our planet is not just vital to grow the food we eat, but also plays an important role in the intricate balance of above and below-ground ecological systems. This has been degraded worldwide at a staggering rate, largely due to unsustainable agriculture, ongoing deforestation, and climate change.
In Switzerland, the Crowther Lab is taking a big picture approach to understanding the holistic structure of global ecosystems. RAZOR’s Amelia Martyn Hemphill heads out to the forest near Zurich with lab lead Tom Crowther to find out about what they are working on to help restore degraded soil around the world.
One of the major factors of soil degradation is industrialized farming. However, around the world there is a growing appreciation for the powers of regenerative agricultural practices. RAZOR travels to Cornwall to meet chef Dan Cox and farmer Tim Williams at Crocadon Farm. ‘Regen’ farmers work to actively change the way they farm by increasing biodiversity, enriching soils and enhancing the health of livestock and wildlife. - Наука та технологія
Thanks for having us on!
I'm really interested to learn more about how you use AI to create this global map. Do you work with FAO data at all? I had an idea for a similar AI tool that would also incorporate FAO's land suitability index, and human population distribution data.
Carbon is primarily released from soils when we till it because the influx of too much oxygen in the soil causes a kind of bacteria to bloom that consumes carbon sources like humic acids and releaes CO2.
If you look at satellite images for CO2 emissions in the Spring, what you see are large plumes coming from the soil in the farming areas like the midwest US.
Over time the soil loses its carbon and its fertility. It goes from looking black and rich in life to tan or grey or red depending on the foundational minerals in the soil.
Tilling the soil is killing the soil.
I work and study in this area, but sometimes it's easy to get disheartened and see the problems, and it's good for the soul to see videos like this of other people who are working to heal the Earth and our relationship to the whole.
So happy to come upon this channel. Such a great and informative documentary. Thank you
Great presentation. Thank you for respecting the Web of Life and for teaching the info about soil food web carbon sequestration.
Superb 💚
Large farms using mono-crop ideals with herbicides and pesticides to grow is not the solution. Like said in the video, you can't keep taking until there is nothing left. We shouldn't forget the dust bowl syndrome of the 1930s because that came about from over tillage and not appreciating what the soil gives us. The Earth was in perfect balance before the Industrial Revolution and has been in health decline ever since.
Stoked they are starting to understand it ✌️
Liked to see the research in labs. More should be shown.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen....that was a lovely documentary with professional movie shots...😊
Love your stuff kick on love it 👍 ❤
Many soil scientists, myself included, believe we passed the tipping point in 2020. IMO, there's no way to fix the problem without significantly reducing world population.
I disagree. Many desert areas have been greened by doing things as simple as making a swale. Animal husbandry techniques like mob grazing, which mimics natural systems, have also greened deserts. The Lus valley in China was greened by terraces, lakes, and massive replanting. What was a yellow silt desert is now lush and fertile. Farmland can be created and is being created. Soil can be built instead of lost and it doesnt take centuries to do it. Ive built several inches of soil in my garden by nit tilling it, and by adding mulch. I can grow 300lbs of tomatoes on a 3ft by 8ft hugelbed, (a garden bed with rotting wood underneath it) without any fertilizer and very little watering.
How does this desert greening and soil building happen? Is it by irrigating; pumping huge amounts of fossil water out from deep wells? No, it works because people have a better understanding of the biological component to soils and how to help that component instead of killing it with salt based fertilizers and lots of tilling. These practices release CO2 from the soil because the over oxygenation of the soil causes heterotrophic bacteria to bloom which consume the humic acids turning them into CO2. Soil is destroyed and the carbon in those soils is released when the soil microbiota is not helped.
When people set up natural growing systems like food forests, more calories, and nutrients are created per acre than in the best monocropped chemiculture farms. There are lots of examples, for instance a 12 acre food forest in Thailand that has fed dozens of families in that community for centuries. It might have been Vietnam. Its been a long time since I read about it.
The soil biota and the plants they are in symbiosis with, are natures way of taking CO2 out of the air, and storing it in the soil. In regenerative agriculture based farms, the carbon content of the soil increases by 1/2% to 1% per year. This amounts to 30 to 60 tons of CO2 removed from the air each year, per acre of soil that is regenerating. If 17% of the worlds deserts were greened, then that would offset the total human emisions of greenhouse gases each year going forward. The available food producing land would increase, And... it would produce more food per acre than chemiculture farms, without the runoff of fertilizer salts into the oceans or erosion to happen.
It would also re empower the small farmer by making this kind of no input farming the most profitable kind of farming, without the need for expensive equipment. Big Ag, and big food companies don't like this though, and have been working to suppress info on it.
Is it not ridiculous to add both anthropogenic and biogenic methane emissions together to calculate carbon footprint?
Do you really need the stupid background musical noise to get the point across?
*PromoSM* 😪
Global Biodiversity is being destroyed 1,000 times the natural rate. - How do you measure the "natural rate". An impossible task, I think. Perhaps feeding the world grasshoppers is part of this biodiversity envisaged by you?
Carbon and nitrogen are stored, but are also released cyclically. Carbon Dioxide is not the enemy. Plants survive on it. Carbon capture is futile, and is a waste of time and effort.
This video is climate-crisis-infused. Water vapour is the 'greatest' green-house gas, but totally uncontrollable, so is ignored.
It is a shame that farmers are blamed for producing food more abundantly, and economically.