Saving the Planet, One Molecule at a Time
Today I’m re-posting an article from the Northeast Organic Farming Association on rebuilding carbon mass in soils. Though written for the layman, it’s dense reading. I apologize, but if regenerative farming is to make a difference in saving the planet, we need to be willing to expose ourselves to some complex concepts. For the gardeners among my readers, this may challenge your concepts about “what’s good for the soil.” Especially for row-crop people, this pushes our image of how farmers manage their soils and their land.
Studies are beginning to show that regenerative agriculture has the ability to sequester the excess carbon built up in our air. As gardeners and farmers, we can contribute to that process. As a planet, we must curb our appetites for fossil fuels–or we will fry in the very heat we generate. Though some throw their hands up in futility, we are learning that our soils may hold the solution to climate change–if we learn to respect our soils and stop killing them with the chemicals of “conventional farming.” It’s a two-pronged solution, cut carbon emissions and return carbon to the soils. As gardeners and farmers, we can build healthy soils and grow healthy food, at the same time we harvest the carbon in the air.
For most of the planet, it is a win-win proposition. We have healthier soils. We sequester carbon in the landscape. We slow and stop climate change, all while producing more nutritious foods for consumers. But don’t think this will be easy. It requires a complete re-thinking of the “how-to” of agriculture. The monied interests, purveyors of agricultural chemicals–pesticides and fertilizers–will be the big losers. Conventional farmers will resist change. If we’re lucky, and diligent, we’ll make change in time to avert catastrophe, and I say “we” in the most inclusive of senses. It will take all of us to make it work. Even consumers play a part, because they can vote with their dollars to buy foods that don’t kill the planet. Consider it to be shopping like your life depended on it. Finally, there is some proof that cheap food ain’t cheap.
Here’s the article. Enjoy if you can. Learn what you can.
tworockchronicles 
Yes, I imagine the manufacturers of pesticides and fertilizers won’t go quietly into the night.
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I may be tilting at windmills, but the stakes are high and I don’t see any choice but to give it a go.
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From St. Wendell:
“You are tilting at windmills,” I will be told. “It is a hard world, hostile to the values that you stand for. You will never enlist enough people to bring about such a change.” People who talk that way are eager to despair, knowing how easy despair is. The change I am talking about appeals to me precisely because it need not wait upon “other people.” Anybody who wants to do so can begin it in himself and in his household as soon as he is ready–by becoming answerable to at least some of his own needs, by acquiring skills and tools, by learning what his real needs are, by refusing the glamorous and the frivolous. When a person learns to act on his best hopes he enfranchises and validates them as no government or public policy ever will. And by his action the possibility that other people will do the same is made a likelihood.
But I must concede that there is also a sense in which I am tilting at windmills. While we have been preoccupied by various ideological menaces, we have been invaded and nearly overrun by windmills. They are drawing the nourishment from our soil and the lifeblood out of our veins. Let us tilt against the windmills. Though we have not conquered them, if we do not keep going at them they will surely conquer us.
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It’s the same in all things–the yin and the yang of it–and, if you stand to your principles, of course the mantra is “constant vigilance.” Because this speaks to individual action and individual choice the reward of acting true to one’s inner voice is immediate. In this way, and by example, we really can move mountains.
And, thank you, I am honored to have Mr. Berry’s words ring in concert with my own.
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LOL
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That’s a really well written summary. Thanks for sharing. I’m in Texas, and chances are I’d never have found it.
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Hope this catches on!
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Make it so. Discuss it with friends. Include it in your shopping decisions.
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Can small farmers such as yourself make a difference across the planet? Or do big farmers have to get on board with this?
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Ideally, Big Ag would get on board. I’m not holding my breath. Estimates of carbon recovery say that if regenerative agriculture became the norm, we could bring carbon levels to 350 in a decade. Oddly, third world farmers would benefit hugely, and would likely be the first adherents, were our own State Department not deeply entrenched in forcing “modern agriculture” on them. In the meantime, while we wait for the rest of the world to wake up, we can all do our bit towards making it a better world. Remember, small farmers feed most of the world.
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I do believe everyone must do their part, so this makes sense. Small farmers like small employers (which is me: Employer of one) do make a difference, don’t they.
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Small is beautiful.
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I’ve just skip read the article and it is solid stuff. I don’t like to print out too much but that will have to be printed out for reading and later reference. Amelia
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More on the same topic–but less technical:
https://www.organicconsumers.org/essays/food-fight-2015-taking-down-degenerators
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