Amazon rainforest boundary

Observing the thriving and abundant rainforest, it is hard for some to comprehend why neighboring agriculture in the region experiences quite the opposite affect, but the answer is quite simple – it’s all about the soil.

In simplistic terms, due to constant high temperature and moisture levels, and associated microorganism, fungal and insect life – the decomposition of organic matter in these regions is extremely rapid. In a healthy forest, this thin layer of organic matter is quickly cycled. In the Amazon, 80-90% of the biomass lives above ground. In the temperate regions of the world this ratio is reversed.

Source

Root systems are shallow and widely spreading, allowing the biomass above ground to grab the nutrients from this thin surface layer. Massive amounts of organic matter produced by the forest allow this cycle to be maintained as the forest is constantly mulching itself and recycling. In addition the thick canopy serves the dual role of protecting the delicate and thin soil on the forest floor from the heavy rain.

Once this biomass above ground is removed for traditional agriculture purposes, a rapid soil depleting chain of events follows. Without the humus build up due to the rapid decay, there is nowhere for nutrients to be held in the soil and structure is poor. Heavy rains, now pounding the exposed earth, leach nutrients and wash away the tiny layers of fertility that do exist. The infamous swidden (“slash-and-burn”) practices are a result. Farmers cut and then burn the forest in order to add minerals into the soil, but due to the reasons explained above, the land will only support cultivation for 1-3 years, after which time the fertility is gone and the land must be left fallow for up to 10-20 years. Farmers will continue to clear and burn land in cycles, eventually returning to their first plot too burn and plant again. Such patterns are arguably sustainable by small populations over vast areas of forest, particularly if Terra Preta practices are incorporated, however, when time cycles between cultivation shorten, the net result is forest and soil degradation.

To further aggravate the problem, when chemical or organic fertilizers are applied to these unstable tropical soils, these nutrients have no organic matter to attach to and are thus leached in to the ground water at an even higher rate, thus throwing off the delicate balance of the neighboring forest that are still intact. With populations increasing and forest rapidly decreasing (largely due to these techniques) this is clearly not a sustainable model. There’s got to be a better way and the solutions we find will be crucial to the health of our planet.

This difference between temperate and tropical soil fertilities is often seen as the reason why nations in temperate climates tend to be more advanced than tropical nations. Some tropical soil types cannot support anything but the most simple civilizations. This difference in soil fertilities, in combination with the higher population growth rates in tropical nations, probably explains why the bulk of the world’s hunger is found in tropical nations. Today about 75% of the world’s human population resides in tropical climates. This population (about 4.5 billion) is growing significantly faster than human populations in temperate climates, and about 0.8 of these 4.5 billion do not have enough to eat, and many more are malnourished. – Bruce Sundquist

The forest demonstrates the systems that work. Inspired by the abundant designs in nature, Planet People Passion has plans to develop Forest Garden techniques to create abundant systems on a recently acquired 40 acres of degraded land in the Amazon, about 60km outside of Iquitos. The Permaculture Education Center is being established in collaboration with a Peruvian based Non-Profit, The Amazonian Institute for the Preservation of the Rainforest and Indigenous Cultures which will soon be based on this land.

The project will launch, and start up cost will be funded through a Permaculture Design Certificate Course, June 22 – July 6th, lead by Andrew Jones where students will have the opportunity to collaborate in the design of the center’s early planning and at the same time immerse in the cultural treasures of the region made possible through the 10 years of shamanic apprenticeships and work by co-founder Roman Hanis.

Co-Founders, Cynthia Robinson and Roman Hanis, seek to create a model for carbon negative living, which provides abundance for the living communities on all levels. The vision is to implement a multi-layered agro-forestry model, which also incorporates and nurtures the preservation of ancestral shamanic traditions, medicinal plant, as well as exploration on ancient techniques of Terra Preta ("black earth") where ancient cultures successfully developed large areas of thick fertile soil. These ancient traditions hold the keys in both quite literally creating a sustainable foundation and then nurturing the life stemming from it.

It is crucial that we spend our energy creating small living models that are able to explore and evolve organically as we learn and live. It is through these living models that we will truly be able to collaborate with indigenous communities and pool our wisdom together. And it is through these living models that we connect to the languages of nature and develop our own intuitive knowing.

But, imagine if the annual crops we rely on the most, grains and pulses, could be made to grow perennially instead. No end/beginning of year ploughing, no annual replanting, etc. It would save enormous amounts of time and energy on cultivation and planting, and allow soils to remain undisturbed for longer, with immense benefits to soil life, structure, organic matter and carbon content.

The video below highlights this out-of-the-box permaculture thinking. The Land Institute in Kansas has been working solidly on engineering annuals into perennials (by way of natural plant breeding – not by gene gun). They take ancient wild, perennial varieties of grains, and cross them with their modern annual counterparts, and repeat, and repeat, until they end up with a harvestable product from a plant that doesn’t have to be resown every year. Or at least that’s the aim. This is still a work in progress, but their purpose is "to develop an agricultural system with the ecological stability of the prairie and a grain yield comparable to that from annual crops".

The implications/benefits of this are hard to exaggerate – both in terms of energy/time expenditure for farmers, but also in terms of the health/structure of soil that doesn’t have to be cultivated nearly so often and the potential biodiversity (stability) that could be achieved with mixes of these polycultures.

With populations growing, the gap between nature’s way, and ‘our’ way, needs closing. We must find ways to eat that don’t undermine the very resources of soil, water and air that that eating depends on. This is the kind of ‘genetic engineering’ that I can endorse, and is the kind of research for the public good that should be aided by all governments that give a hoot about the future.

Find our more here.

The ABC just ran an interesting spotlight (video – or transcript here if you prefer) where we learn that one of Yeomans’ properties, ‘Yobarnie’, in Richmond, north of Sydney, is facing ‘development’ that would turn this important historical demonstration site into a housing estate. In the 1950s and ’60s the site attracted busloads of people on weekend tours where observers could see the transformation his methods effected and learn about their implementation.

Yeomans’ methods, which have heavily influenced permaculture design systems, are increasingly seen today as having tremendous potential to not only increase agricultural productivity but also to have a significant impact on reducing atmospheric CO2 concentrations through increasing soil carbon levels.

It’s a sad day when such a site, with not only such historical significance, but also present relevance, would be paved over.

For good measure, here’s a YouTube clip of Darren Doherty showing the before and after effect of a single keyline plowing on his property.

Resources:

• Keyline Plowing with Compost Tea Application
• The Keyline Plan by P. A. Yeomans
• The Challenge of Landscape by P. A. Yeomans
• The City Forest by P. A. Yeomans

Often, as I’ve travelled and lived in different parts of the globe, I’ve stood on mountains and beaches and looked around, somewhat wistfully, trying to visualise how those landscapes would have looked a few centuries ago. I’m sure you’ve done it too.

Many, if not most, of these places were once vast tracts of old growth forest, with rich diversity in flora and fauna. Natural biological water cleaning systems were in place, as the hydrological cycle was efficient and largely unmolested by man. Most places still had rich, dark soils and no chemicals had yet been employed to stamp out soil life.

These were the days of 280ppm. We lived then with respect, if not even fear, for a nature wide and wonderful – never for a moment thinking we could one day be the cause of these vast and mysterious systems collapsing wholesale.

But, that was then. The industrial revolution, in combination with the exponential function that has taken the human population into a steep hockey stick incline (it took from the dawn of time until the 1800s before we reached our first billion people, but we’ve multiplied that almost seven times in the two centuries since), has landed us in a world that looks vastly different today.

Reluctantly putting visualisations aside, now as I scan the landscapes in front of me, it’s mostly just cities, tarmac and a massively inefficient waste-of-space large-scale industrial monocrop agriculture. Cycles of precipitation and transpiration have been interrupted as we’ve cut down forests, ploughed the land, and almost universally determined to pipe precious rainwater directly to the ocean. Water tables worldwide are falling and many rivers no longer reach the sea while often the land is parched, eroded and turning to desert.

And, oh, all that carbon! Razing forests and churning soils has been a mass eviction of CO2 into our atmosphere. For the last fifty years – the period we call the ‘Green Revolution’ – we’ve been hastening this process further through additions of soluble nitrogen which results in nitrous oxide emissions (almost 300x more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO2) and which is now also seen to have even further detrimental effects on remaining forests.

Our before-abundant oceans – the massive heat and CO2 buffering mechanism we’re blessed with – are now taking in far too much CO2, changing seawater’s pH to the point where it’s interfering with basic processes for crucial members of the food chain: coral, molluscs and plankton.

Over the last few years I’ve spent considerable time examining these issues. The more I dug into it, the more depressing it got – not only because it’s looking increasingly like we’ve already passed the dangerous threshold (see also) that risks systemic environmental meltdown, but also because popular understanding of the problem is so linear in view. The chain reaction of the almost global recession of glaciers and the melting of the greenland, arctic and antarctic ice sheets and permafrost are the result of greenhouse gas concentrations from the 1980s, with a lot more damage yet to occur from today’s greater concentrations (see here for a summary of today’s noted changes), and yet mitigation has been almost entirely focussed on reducing fossil fuel consumption, only. Being a little ‘less bad’ does not a positive make. We can’t just reduce our emissions, we actually need to be sequestering GHGs out of the air – now! While reducing fossil fuel consumption is imperative, highlighting this alone sidelines the far more holistic course of also reinstating our soils as the massive carbon sink they once were. Increasing soil carbon not only has significant potential to ameliorate the climate change problem, but in doing so we increase soil fertility, improve soil structure (critical for water- and oxygen-holding capacity) and productivity whilst decreasing plant disease and insect attack (think improved nutrition and less chemicals). And, significantly, if we were to take these things a little further, developing biodiverse food forests to relocalise food production, we can also increase heat reflecting cloud cover whilst repairing/reinstating the hydrological cycle that supports all life on earth.

In other words – the focus of governments has only been on reducing emissions and the focus of trigger happy geo-engineering advocates has only been on ‘adjusting’ the world to accommodate our lifestyles, whilst little thought has been given to restoring natural biological mechanisms that would do most of the work for us, better, and for free. Like many aspects of modern civilisation, we find ourselves yet again dealing with symptoms and not root causes.

It’s with these thoughts in mind that I introduce you to The Biology of Global Warming (182kb 8-page PDF), which was originally published as pages 7-14 of the Dec 2006 – Jan 2007 edition of Nature and Society, the bi-monthly journal of the Nature and Society Forum.

The key point of the document is to ask the question why CO2 emissions were already rising before we really made much, or any, headway into mining for coal and drilling for oil. The answer is obvious:

• "Substantial de-forestation and farming of the Middle East, Europe, North Africa and North America prior to 1750 resulted not only in the release of vast quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere through the burning of timber and associated loss of soil organic matter but also the destruction of the carbon bio-sequestration of these forests."
• "…the destruction of up to 80% of the earth’s primary forests by humans during industrialisation could have resulted in a marked loss of natural cooling capacity and therefore increased global warming, particularly as biological systems increasingly need to shade and cool the planet from incident solar radiation."

To acknowledge these simple facts is to get us halfway to working on actual solutions. Harness biology and natural symbiotic relationships, I say, because through imitating natural systems in our food production we can initiate a ‘geo-engineering’ program that comes without side effects or risks and that holds significant promise of providing for human need in a manner that doesn’t put our race at odds with every other organism within the biosphere.

We now have no choice but to address global warming through its primary and initial cause. We need to rapidly re-establish natural cloud albedos and their cooling effects. To do this we need to re-establish the bio-systems that provided the transpiration and cloud nucleation processes on which such cloud albedos and cooling effects naturally depend. To help restore and support these bio-systems we need to biosequester carbon in forests but particularly soils so that they may enhance the natural infiltration and retention of availability soil water on which forest transpiration and cloud albedos depend. – The Biology of Global Warming (182kb 8-page PDF)

Postscript: Although perhaps controversial, I also personally believe that in such efforts we’ll need to quit our narrow views on maintaining only native flora, and work towards building food-providing ecosystems everywhere – systems that mimic natural forests in function but that utilise productive edible plants and trees alongside non-invasive support species.

Further Reading:

• A referenced restatement of the above PDF (PDF)

After driving all night from my North Georgia market gardens I arrived just before seven in the morning at the Indianapolis hotel where the ACRES U.S.A. Convention was to be held. The lines at the hotel desk were so long I left my colleague, Lorraine Cahill, to check in while I headed for the restaurant. I needed a steaming mug of coffee and a bite of breakfast to start my day. Otherwise I was in danger of fading away. Growing market veggies for 26 weeks for restaurants, markets and box subscribers had, thankfully, just come to a close before driving all night to reach America’s most unforgettable and inspiring convention. I didn’t want to miss a minute of it, but I had a booth to set up when the trade show opened and I needed more push than I had at the moment.

As fate would have it, as I joined the cue the people in front of me were Gary Zimmer from Wisconsin, Roelf Havinga from the Netherlands and a man named Rex (whose last name eludes my recall) from South Africa. We struck up conversation and all took a table together in the packed restaurant. I was the last one at my table through the buffet line, and as I took my seat I ventured that I figured the single highest priority we had as ecological farmers was to maximize the carbon we took out of the atmosphere and stored in the soil. After all, we, and all the things we grew on our farms, were carbon based life forms. “Funny you should mention that,” said Rex. “That’s precisely what I tell all my clients.”

Roelf echoed Rex’s sentiments with “You sure have got that right. When we store carbon in our soil we build life into our farms. I am all the time telling people this.”

The irrepressible Gary, who can say more in less time than all three Marx brothers talking at once, then regaled us with details of the whats, whys, hows, whos whens and the importance of catching carbon. “You can’t build soil without carbon, and the crazy thing about it is carbon is free. It’s the single most important thing a farmer can do. It’s a pity we cow farmers are demonized for releasing methane when growing grass and grazing it puts more carbon in the soil than anything else you can do.”

I had to agree with Gary that savvy graziers caught carbon more easily than any other type of farmer. The single biggest riddle I’d had to solve in self-sufficient biodynamic market gardening was how to build carbon into the soil whilst cultivation returned so much to the atmosphere. I’d discovered I had to maintain a grass and legume sod, almost as robust as my pastures, on all my traffic paths as well as growing robust mixes of the most productive crops I could find for my rotations. For those veggies like cukes, potatoes, capsicums, tomatoes, squash and ginger, mulch was the answer; but either way I had to keep the soil as fully covered as much of the time as I could, and I had to find ways of cultivation that minimized compaction and soil structure destruction.

After a delicious breakfast and lively discussion we got on with our day, each agreeing that being a good farmer meant catching carbon, first, foremost and always.

It should be no secret that excessive cultivation ranks right up there with mono-cropping and use of chemical nitrogen for driving carbon out of the soil and killing it; and yet, cultivation is what even the best organic and biodynamic market gardeners do. The trick is to not be excessive. Here is a picture of the method of cultivation I worked out. By cultivating metre wide beds between my tractor tyres and growing a mix of grass, clover and forbs on my driving strips I created heaps of edges—so beloved by observant permaculturists—whilst my paths were my biological reservoirs. There was never any spot in the field more than half a metre away from a rich diversity of plants and animals, small and not so small.

Maize or sweet corn, interplanted with soybeans, was my favourite way of catching carbon in summer. In winter it was cereal rye interplanted with a winter annual clover such as crimson clover, though I’m told arrowleaf clover or fenugreek are well suited to Australian conditions. In this mix I would also plant turnips, mustard greens, Chinese winter radishes and rape. Incidentally, corn salad, which used to grow in all winter grain paddocks, is an annual valerian that solubilises phosphorous and is known in German lore as rapunzel. The turnips, radishes and greens I harvested for market, as—like most folks—I needed a payday. The corn salad is a beloved and medicinal spring salad greens, and the grain can be cut for mulch at milk stage in the spring when it boots. Once the soil becomes crumbly and full of life, tomatoes, capsicums or cucurbits can be planted directly into the stubble with a spade—which is a pointed shovel—but don’t ever walk on the beds!

As for maize, the growing season is fairly long and earthworm populations would decline without mowing the paths for earthworm tucker about midway through the maize cycle. Earthworm populations need to be kept high in order to digest the thick stalks and soybean vines over winter after the rye is planted. Only the maize or sweet corn ears are picked, following the rule that if you want to build carbon you never export more than 8% of your biomass production. The spader pictured above has a beautiful tossing action that keeps the organic matter in the top two or three inches with just enough soil on top to plant the rye and clover mix into. The mass of maize stalks and soy vines need to be finely mowed before spading or the spader can’t chew them; but what a wealth of carbon is incorporated into the topsoil for moist, aerobic, fungal digestion! Fungal breakdown produces glomalin, which builds structural carbon into the soil.

Nitrogen management is another key. Loose, salty nitrogen burns carbon. It is the waste product of nitrogen fixing microbes, and when the soil is awash in it nitrogen fixers tend to feel like they are drowning in a dysfunctional septic tank. They say “That’s it. We’re out of here.”

What sets them on a nitrogen fixing jag is sugars. Then they produce amino acids that end up getting tied up with carbon in stable proteins in the soil reserve. On healthy soils that could easily be 3 or 4,000 ppm as stable protein nitrogen. Dumping something like raw chicken manure on the soil makes these beneficials give up the ghost and a protein breakdown cascade sets in. Then your soil loses carbon at a scary rate. Some estimate that 100 parts of carbon can be lost for every part of salt nitrogen added.

Also something else occurs—weeds. Unlike big seeds such as maize, beans and cereals, weed seeds generally are quite tiny. They depend on the soil being awash with soluble NPK and other nutrients. Their role in nature is to sop this up and conserve it. When it’s there they take off and outpace large seeded crops. Thus savvy farmers do not want much soluble nitrogen in the soil when they plant. They want nitrogen fixers to come running when large seeds start sprouting and excrete their carbs into the soil. Then there will be abundant amino acid nitrogen—all within a centimetre or so of the roots of the crop plants—while next to none will be available to the weeds even if they sprout. The picture just above shows maize with soybean at 21 days after planting.

Close inspection shows plenty of weeds which can’t get beyond the cotyledon stage because they don’t have any carbs to feed the nitrogen fixers, and they don’t have enough free nitrogen in the soil. This is an example of good nitrogen management in a vibrantly healthy living soil with plenty of nitrogen fixers living in it. And good nitrogen management is how to catch carbon and build it into the soil—even in a market garden.

To summarize, building soil carbon—the foremost imperative of every ecological grower—requires minimal, non-destructive cultivation. It also requires maximum diversity so the ecology is robust. It also requires good nitrogen management, which means keeping soluble nitrogen to a minimum and keeping plenty of nitrogen fixers alive in cultivated areas. This in turn means minimizing areas and times the soil is left bare. This also means NOT tilling in green matter which will decay and release soluble nitrogen.

And lest we forget, you want aerobic, fungal breakdown if you mix dry matter, like corn stalks, into the soil. This means you never incorporate organic matter deeply—even if it is dry—because you want fungi breakdown to make glomalin, build stable carbon and create superb soil structure.

Part I: Introduction

Employing the methods developed by P.A. Yeomans, keyline pattern plowing is a proven component in the job of revitalizing degraded soils. The plow performs deep ripping with minimal plant disturbance. At its most basic this offers many benefits, including opening compacted soils (without destructive tillage), breaking up the hard pan, allowing moisture and oxygen to re-activate soil life, thus restoring fertility.  When used in concert with controlled grazing or mowing through a managed cycle, top soil is built rapidly. 

In the related field of soil biology, Dr Elaine Ingham (the eminent biologist) has made breakthrough discoveries studying soil life and developing methods of brewing compost tea. Her work promotes the pressing need to re-populate our damaged soils with the necessary microbial biota. Without the essential micro organisms our soils cannot develop balance. A balanced soil offers fertility, that builds through the exchange for nutrients that is the tireless work of soil life. A multitude of symbiotic connections evolved in harmony.

With the generous support of the well respected compost tea educator and biological farming consultant, Paul Taylor (Trust Nature), I am developing a means to both inject compost tea into the root zone of pasture plants driectly, and perform a foliar (plant leaf) application while keyline plowing. The potential for this method to restore health and balance to soils is explosive.

I will therefore post a series of articles on taranakifarm.com detailing my development of this system so that others may be inspired to explore this exciting system (and perhaps make improvements).

Part II: Designing the Keyline Plow Frame Extension

Making Progress

I believe I’ve solved the tank (and equipment) frame extension question. The photos below mostly speak for themselves, although I’ll elaborate for the enthusiastic.

We made up a simple frame extension of welded steel box section that will form a platform for mounting the compost tea tank. In the photo below, you’ll notice I’m supporting the frame extension with timber, which obviously won’t do. So, next I’ll weld plate steel “L” brackets onto the extension where it meets the upper beam of the original keyline plow frame (positions A & B below). Then drill bolt holes so I can employ “L” shaped bolts. The same kind those used on the plow. I like standards and it makes everything multi-use, opening the door for more creative ideas.

Bolting onto the upper beam will support the extension, although it will not hold any significant weight. To solve this problem I will do the following.

Because the keyline frame is essentially a tool bar allowing great variation, it is essential to consider this variation when designing additions. To create a decent sized platform, my frame extension extends beyond the depth of the original frame, so it will require diagonal plate steel supports to bare weight. These will bolt to both the lower keyline beam and the new extension. This will give the extension support from below, as I intend to apply considerable weight to the platform above. As such I’ll need to make up at least two, maybe three supports.

A profile illustration of these supports is pictured left. To maintain a thin profile and not consume too much space on the rear keyline tool bar, I’ll most likely opt for plate steel. I must cut triangles out of each end of the plate piece to match the new frame extension and also the keyline plow. To sure this up, again, “L” constructs to bolt on.

These supports are then completely adjustable, which allows me to relocated the shanks and coulter beams without worrying about ‘permanent’ frame extension supports being in a fixed position. If they are in the way, I can just shift them, left for right. Total freedom. The general position is shown as dotted lines in the image below.

This extension also allows ample clearance beneath the tank platform should I need to access the shanks during plowing to change over a shear pin etc.

Part III: 1:1 Wooden Scale Model

Today I developed a 1:1 scale model of the platform supports. This allowed me to consider the design in more depth and get a feel for where the pressure points are. I constructed the model from cypress which obviously is much easier to work than box section or plate steel. I’ve established exact dimensions so constructing the steel version only involves cutting each ‘part’ of the assembly, then welding it together. All position issues, levels etc. are correct. No painful mistakes.

My only regret thus far, is employing non-standard box section steel for the frame extension. In the keyline plow, there are three sizes of box section employed. The main frame is constructed from 100×100mm RHS (Rolled Hollow Section). This is a very strong steel product. One that allows the frame to withstand extreme pressures during plowing. The coulter beams, which don’t experience the same stresses, are build from 75×75mm box section. Finally a smaller kind again is employed in the coulter assemblies themselves – the 50×50mm variety.

Since the frame extension was made up for a purpose other than its current application, I opted for 90×90mm. I briefly considered a ’sleeved’ design. Involving reversed coulter with a ’sleeve’ of 90×90mm over the 75×75mm. The intent – to create an extended rear platform. But the forces at play made me abandon it. If I had opted for 100×100, the platform supports would be fully reversible. A regrettable oversight.

For the supports, I’m using the same box section as the coulter beams. 75×75mm. Never to later to correct the course. I’m pleased with this design and look forward to creating the final steel versions.

Update

The steel brackets are now complete and working exactly as intended, with strength to spare. I anticipated a measure of ’spring’ based on the design, but this doesn’t seem evident. They are extremely robust, and very straightforward to construct.

One of the completed steel support brackets.

As it appears, mounted on the plow.

Part IV: Coming soon….

Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink. – Samuel Coleridge (1772-1834). The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, II

If you look down on our earth from space, the predominant colour is blue. The surface of our earth is approximately 70% water. In that respect, perhaps our planet would have been better called the Ocean, than the Earth. Yet, excepting expensive, energy intensive and environmentally problematic desalinisation techniques (PDF), we cannot use it for our daily personal water intake requirements.

• 97.5% of all water on Earth is salt water, leaving only 2.5% as fresh water
• Nearly 70% of that fresh water is frozen in the icecaps of Antarctica and Greenland; most of the remainder is present as soil moisture, or lies in deep underground aquifers as groundwater not accessible to human use
• Less than 1% of the world’s fresh water (~0.007% of all water on earth) is accessible for direct human use. This is the water found in lakes, rivers, reservoirs and those underground sources that are shallow enough to be tapped at an affordable cost. – globalchange

We’ve talked about Peak Oil and Peak Soil. Today we need to broach the topic of Peak Water. Despite our inherent natural tendency to think otherwise, fresh water is not an exhaustless commodity, and we are fast running out.

If per capita consumption of water resources continues to rise at its current rate, humankind could be using over 90 per cent of all available freshwater within 25 years, leaving just 10 per cent for the rest of the world’s species. – UNESCO (emphasis added)

More than 2.7 billion people will face severe water shortages by the year 2025 if the world continues consuming water at the same rate, the United Nations has warned. – BBC

Every day, it seems, we read about lakes disappearing, wells going dry, or rivers failing to reach the sea. But these stories typically describe local situations. It is not until we begin to compile the numerous national studies—such as an 824-page analysis of the water situation in China, a World Bank study of the water situation in Yemen, or a detailed U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) assessment of the irrigation prospect in the western United States—that the extent of emerging water shortages worldwide can be grasped. Only then can we see the extent of water overuse and the decline it can bring.

The world is incurring a vast water deficit—one that is largely invisible, historically recent, and growing fast. Because much of the deficit comes from aquifer overpumping, it is often not apparent. Unlike burning forests or invading sand dunes, falling water tables are often discovered only when wells go dry. – Lester R. Brown, Plan B 2.0 Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble (PDF)

The following passages outline the almost gold-rush type explosion of water extraction that occurred since the birth of the fossil-fuel based agricultural ‘Green Revolution’ days of post-World War II, and well demonstrates our natural tendency to assume natural resources are limitless:

There was a rush to exploit the limited groundwater resources. The groundwater was freely available at the cost of a bore and a pump. There was competition to use more and more groundwater. Water tables dropped, and farmers drilled deeper bores, and installed more powerful pumps. Almost simultaneously, all around the world, the wells began to run dry, and governments were quite unable to control the extraction of groundwater, or protect the resources.

Most governments did not know where the wells were, or the depth of the wells. Governments did not record water levels, but were certainly informed when farmers complained when their wells ran dry. Farmers, governments, and their professional advisors, had all believed that the wells would flow forever.

The groundwater rush was like a gold rush; it was a great uncontrolled bonanza. The International Water Management Institute has estimated that the total global withdrawal of groundwater is now about 1,000 cubic kilometers each year, but it is quite unsustainable. This great global rush to exploit available groundwater resources in our time is a one-off extraction of a limited natural resource. – Executive Intelligence Review

Over the last century, worldwide, demands on water have increased six-fold – twice the rate of population growth. Some of the main reasons are:

1. Population growth: the world’s population has doubled in the last forty-five years, and if present birth/death rates continue it is expected to double again in the next fifty. Whilst much of this growth is in developing nations, even the U.S. population (currently 300 million) has doubled in the last sixty years, and is expected to double again to 600 million in the next sixty-five. “The issue today, put simply, is that while the only renewable source of freshwater is continental rainfall (which generates a more or less constant global supply of 40,000 to 50,000 cubic km per year), the world population keeps increasing by roughly 85 million per year. Therefore the availability of freshwater per head is decreasing rapidly.” (Blue Gold) Water experts estimate that there is no more fresh water on earth than there was 2,000 years ago – when the population was three percent of its current size. (Imasar).
2. Agriculture: Approximately 70% of all fresh water is used for agricultural purposes worldwide. And, just as some nations have great oil resources, and others don’t, so it is with water. Dry Pakistan uses 97% of its freshwater for agriculture, and China (with 20% of the world’s population but only 7% of its water) uses 87%. For a quick comparison overview of water consumption for different dietary options, see tables on this page.
3. Industry: Worldwide, approximately 20% of freshwater is used for industry, and, increasingly, industry is battling agriculture for a greater share. Our consumer society promotes an escalation of excess, and everything produced consumes water. As our water tables shrink, we’re told to go shopping.
4. Home use: Around 10% of the world’s fresh water is used for private use. “The average American individual uses over 150 gallons of water each day. The average African family uses about five gallons of water each day.” (Water.org)

As water tables drop, disease increases in humans, flora and fauna. Additionally, diminishing water stores necessarily concentrate chemical run-offs from agriculture and industry, making remaining supplies increasingly dangerous – sometimes even resulting in toxic algae blooms that can convert dwindling freshwater reserves into poisonous sludge.

The miller sees not all the water that goes by his mill. – Robert Burton

We can be a very single-minded race. It is darkly fascinating to watch governments make profit-motivated policy decisions that not only ignore our diminishing water supplies, but that incentivise (subsidise) the systematic and inefficient escalation of their use. Somehow, our policymakers and industry heads manage to draw up economic strategies wholly independent of natural systems. Our most basic human needs take a back seat in the drive to “grow the economy”.

But, hard cold facts don’t defer to optimism or wishful thinking. Looking at economic and energy ’solutions’ in isolation from finite resource limitations is a dangerous, but contemporary, tendency. A recent news release indicates that the people of China are learning these lessons the hard way:

Apartment residents collecting rainwater in China

China Slows Coal-Liquids, Ethanol Push on Water Fear

Beijing is trying to slow the push on water-intensive alternative energy on mounting signs that China might face a serious water shortage in the future.

This may stymie the second-largest energy consumer’s plans to turn its huge coal reserves and agricultural land into transport fuel, and lead it to continue relying on greater imports to fuel its booming economy, a bullish factor for global oil markets.

An official… recently said China might halt coal-to-liquids (CTL) projects and stop ethanol production from corn.

… analysts said the NDRC comment reflected a shift in Beijing’s policy as droughts and pollution have led to hundreds of millions of people going without regular drinking water.

“If there’s any issue that can destroy China’s march forward, it’s water,”

… “Water levels in the upper reaches of the Yellow River have hit a historic low and officials have warned that China may run out of water by 2030.”

The Yellow River, China’s second longest, supplies water to over 150 million people and irrigates 15 percent of the country’s farmland. But in recent years, it has occasionally run dry before reaching the sea. – Reuters

Demand for water is outstripping replenishment rates in many parts of the world, and in some places many times over.

Scores of countries are running up regional water deficits, including nearly all of those in Central Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa, plus India, Pakistan, and the US.

… In 2015 nearly 3 billion out of the estimated global population of 7.5 billion people will find it difficult or impossible to find water for food, industry and personal needs. … According to John Gannon, a former assistant director of the CIA and former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, water scarcity now constitutes “a significant issue in security” as water shortages “encourage refugee movements which, if they spill over into other countries, can engage us.” “If people don’t have water, they can’t live. They are going to move or they are going to die.” According to the CIA report “Global Trends 2015” none of the proposed solutions – importing water, water conservation, expanded use of desalinization of seawater, or developing genetically modified crops that use less water or more saline water – will be sufficient to substantially change the outlook for water shortages in 2015…. – Earth’s Carrying Capacity (emphasis added)

Rapidly escalating glacier and snow melt trends brought about by climate change come as a volatile addition to the above. Sea water intrusion on coastal freshwater aquifers is another dilemma. Although a natural occurrence, rising sea levels as a result of global warming, combined with shrinking aquifers, can significantly magnify this problem.

Saltwater intrusion is a natural process, but it becomes an environmental problem when excessive pumping of fresh water from an aquifer reduces the water pressure and intensifies the effect, drawing salt water into new areas. – Wikipedia

Just to give an idea of the scale of our water problems, I’ve compiled just a few media reports from around the world:

All of which may translate to increased international tensions.

For example, Malaysia, which supplies about half of Singapore’s water, threatened to cut off that supply in 1997 after Singapore criticized its government policies. In Africa, relations between Botswana and Namibia have been severely strained by Namibian plans to construct a pipeline to divert water from the shared Okavango River to eastern Namibia.

The former mayor of Mexico City has predicted a war in the Mexican Valley in the foreseeable future if a solution to the city’s water crisis is not found soon. Much has been written about the potential for water wars in the Middle East, where water resources are severely limited. The late King Hussein of Jordan once said the only thing he would go to war with Israel over was water, because Israel controls Jordan’s water supply. – Blue Gold

No-one should feel safe and detached from these issues. Global Warming’s huddled masses will go wherever they have to, to survive.

So, is it all doom, gloom, death and despair? It would be a major understatement to say that it probably will be, so long as we cling to our present lifestyles and a ‘business as usual’ mindset. As we’ve already discovered, freshwater resources are not increasing, indeed, they cannot – yet our populations, and our population’s demands for more (of everything) are all rising just as our aquifers are failing. People worldwide are already feeling the pinch, if not enduring direct suffering. Even putting shortages aside, some believe water pollution is already a leading cause of death in the world – and it’s all happening just as those of us in The North have managed to convince everyone in The South that our water-intensive western lifestyle and diet is a ‘must-have’.

Our ability to overcome this end-of-the-line scenario may well depend on our ability to re-evaluate the priorities of our lives – to learn to find satisfaction in a simpler existence, and to create a society that places far more value on access to clean water, healthy food and healthy local communities than it does on artificialities. I think we need to transform our current deformed understanding of ’success’, diffusing it with visions and aspirations of sustainability.

Of concern is seeing the same mindset applied to this problem as is proffered in response to our other environmental issues – a patch and continue ’strategy’: anything but adjust our economies, our industries and our lifestyles:

Antarctic ice offers a remedy. … Tugs with icebergs in tow would be welcome not only to arid areas. Industry disastrously pollutes rivers and lakes in every part of the world. Current consumption makes use of only 0.01% of available fresh water. Over 70% of this valuable store is to be found in Antarctic glaciers, which consist of the world’s cleanest water. An average 2,500 cu km of ice is added to them every year, while just over 2,000 cu km drifts off as icebergs – a steadily renewed source of perfect drinking water. – TerraDaily

“Industry disastrously pollutes rivers and lakes in every part of the world”, and we use water in highly inefficient ways – yet the solution is not to change industry or industrial methods, but to use more energy to retrieve water from Antarctic icebergs. Patch, and continue.

Worse, the industry solution to diminishing water supplies, is to profit from it:

As the water crisis intensifies, governments around the world – under pressure from transnational corporations – are advocating a radical solution: the privatization, commodification and mass diversion of water. Proponents say that such a system is the only way to distribute water to the world’s thirsty. However, experience shows that selling water on the open market does not address the needs of poor, thirsty people. On the contrary, privatized water is delivered to those who can pay for it, such as wealthy cities and individuals and water-intensive industries, such as agriculture and high-tech. As one resident of the high desert in New Mexico observed after his community’s water had been diverted for use by the high-tech industry “Water flows uphill to money.” – Blue Gold

I would like to proffer a solution that involves change, and substantial change at that. I’m not afraid to dare to be different here, however, as social change is afoot, whether we like it or not. In the words of Simon and Garfunkel – I’d rather be a hammer than a nail. We either act, or react.

Peak Oil, Peak Soil, and Peak Water – they all share one central common denominator as we look at solutions: soil building. Please bear with me for a moment. With a little attention, you’ll come out the other end of the next two paragraphs unharmed, but hopefully inspired:

At left, a soil with high humus content – making it rich in carbon (indicated by the darker colour), nutrients and water retention capacity. The crumbly texture of this soil can be compared somewhat to a sponge. A humus-rich soil can hold up to 90% of its weight in water (remember – 70-80% of the water we use today is for agriculture, mostly irrigation). This soil also facilitates the ability of plants to draw water from beneath – through a process called capillary action (similar to what happens when you put a sponge onto a wet benchtop). Such soils have an increased cation exhange capacity – which translates to the ability of soil molecules to bind and hold nutrients to themselves. This soil is full of microorganisms and other soil life – the organic matter, air and moisture content makes it a miniature universe of activity. These micro-organisms take nutrients in the soil and feed them in balanced quantities to plant roots (supplying trace minerals and elements not provided in the NPK concoction ‘intraveneously injected’ via the soluble applications of agribusiness), fostering their own natural defense mechanisms against insects and temperature and weather extremes. The whole ‘package’ provides stability and protection against floods, droughts, disease and insect susceptibility – all of which are increasing as our world’s climate continues in its present state of flux. And, it’s all free.

Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium on the Menu Credit: throbgoblins

Conversely, in the lighter coloured soil profile (above, at right), we see the typical result of our chemical-intensive, heavily mechanised monocrop farming system. This soil invites hardy strong-rooted ‘weeds’ to take up residence (these very plants are working as the first stage of a natural process that seeks to restore the soil to the condition seen at left – by trying to break through the hard packed soil to create channels for air to flow, so microorganisms may return and take up residence, etc.). This soil is unhealthy, and not ‘crop ready’. It requires violent physical interventions, and a barrage of artificial stimulation and inputs – i.e. mechanical aeration, and chemical fertilisers – and its CO2 content is being systematically lost to the atmosphere through the application of both. Much of the chemicals applied are leached into the shrinking water table below. For ‘light’ (i.e. sandy) soils, the application of water and nutrients are regularly required since the lack of organic matter causes rapid leaching. For ‘heavy’ soils (high in clay content), water will often pool on the surface, creating anaerobic conditions that further destroy soil life, and promote disease. The compacted nature of these soils makes flooding a serious issue (water sits on top, instead of percolating down – or worse, moves rapidly sideways, destroying land and property). The heavier the farm equipment used, the more the compaction – the more the compaction, the heavier and stronger the equipment must be to break it up in preparation for planting. This soil is virtually devoid of life and organic matter, so the plant’s natural immunity is lost, necessitating drenching with energy-intensive fossil-fuel based poisons. This soil is the ‘prize’ of corporate agribusiness. The farmer in possession of such a soil is the captive customer of an unhealthy profit-making machine – the drivers of which being the only ‘winners’ in this picture.

If you multiply the above implications for water and energy use across the vast area of land we currently use for cultivation, and add to this the enormous potential of soil for CO2 mitigation, you may then begin to see that a shift in soil management techniques to those that work in harmony with nature, as opposed to battling with it to the bitter end, adds up to planet-saving quantities of resource conservation.

Some say we only have a few years before Peak Oil issues will become significantly more pronounced. Some say we only have the next few years to reshape our society and to head into a low-carbon economy, lest we push our climate into dangerous and irreversible feedback loops. And, don’t forget in all this, that as water becomes increasingly scarce, food production will drop. If we ignore these warnings, and these predictions come to pass, our societies will likely violently break apart in a dog eat dog fight for the remnants of current civilisation. It’s not a pretty picture. But, working away from the large-scale monocrop agribusiness model, and transitioning to a more diverse, small-scaled sustainable farming system, could allow, in addition to the benefits described above, the much-needed reduction in focus on global trade and the obscene product and food swaps that come with it – exchanging this, instead, for an active re-building of sustainable localised systems that value and incentivise health, over inequitable wealth. That health being all-encompassing – for individuals, communities, societies, and for the environment they all depend on.

Yes, save water in the shower, don’t let it run when you’re cleaning your teeth, put a brick in your loo’s cistern, harvest water from your guttering, and follow all the other water-saving tips you’ll find on this and other green sites, but let’s not ignore the largest and most glaring aspect of our water, fossil-fuel and CO2 wastage: our entire societal and economic structure, and the malformed agricultural system that makes it all possible.

Watching social, industrial, and political movements at the moment, there is a clear tendency to simplistically grapple with the individual fibres of an unravelling world, rather than examine the entire cloth. Amongst other things, there is the subsidising of even greater strain on our soil and water reserves, and the naive belief we can actually replace the vast amounts of energy we have come to rely on from fossil fuels with a few wind and wave farms – whilst continuing to shop, consume, fly, drive, and promote the very industries that have driven us into this corner.

I would invite you to step back and look at the bigger picture. We are the first entire civilisation to convince ourselves we can live in the world, while not actually being part of it; that we can control nature, whilst ignoring its unchangeable processes. We have thus marginalised the value of the most vital aspects of our existence – healthy food, clean water and fresh air – and, by doing so, we have corrupted them all.

In closing, if you haven’t already – please take some time to get familiar with some of the issues that are shaping our future. Seek out and support farmers that understand the need for diversity, and that focus on the soil rather than the plant. Indeed, consider becoming one yourself! Start small – discover the satisfaction, savings and increased nutrition of having your own garden, and from knowing that what you’re eating is fresh, and free – and carcinogen free!

There’s a world of change that needs to be made, but, change it we must.

Till taught by pain, Men really know not what good water’s worth…. – Lord Byron

Soil – the substance you walk on, build on, and live from – provides your food, clothing, and even the air you breathe. It gives warmth, shelter, and the goods you possess. Soil is, I believe, a substance that is under-acknowledged, and also under attack, and its misuse is contributing greatly to the excessive release of CO2 into our atmosphere – making it a large contributor to global warming. Therefore, I felt it high time we came to its defense. Here goes.

Firstly, what is soil? Unfortunately, and increasingly, the modern mindset simply regards it as ‘dirt’ – something to clean off your nine-year old son’s knees if he’s fallen out of that tree, or worse, at an industry level, its regarded as nothing more than an inert medium for sowing plants – just somewhere to put them. For agri-businessmen, little or no connection is made between the health of the soil, and the health of the plants they produce. The mechanised treatment of the soil is arbitrary and aggressive, and the consequences of this disconnect are dire.

More Than Just Dirt! There are over four billion micro-organisms in a teaspoon of healthy soil

You could simplify its composition by reducing it to four main components: minerals, air, water, and organic matter. The complicated version, however, is almost beyond belief, and despite the best efforts of scientists many aspects remain mysterious.

Hidden from immediate notice, a healthy soil contains innumerable micro and macro-organisms. In fact (and I haven’t counted these personally) there are said to be over four billion micro-organisms in just one teaspoon of healthy soil. If you were to add the combined weight of all the living micro-organisms in an average acre of land, they’d weigh about as much as a typical domestic cow. These organisms work with each other, and with plants, in a symbiotic relationship that ultimately provides for the needs of all creatures that walk, fly, or swim on our planet. Part of their work is to break down decaying organic matter, along with minerals in the soil, and then make these available to plant roots in a nutrient form they can utilise. They are essentially an immense army of recyclers – working for our benefit without reward and with scant recognition.

This natural process of micro-organisms feeding plants is significant, and highly complex. Through the work of these creatures a plant receives what we might call a ‘balanced diet’. To illustrate: What do you think a small boy would do if you gave him an enormous bar of chocolate to eat? Chances are good he’d keep eating it until it made him sick (even if half of it is still left on his face!). Children are unable to gauge an appropriate quantity, and will quickly scoff all they can fit in. The result? Even if he doesn’t make himself ill, your child goes on a physical and emotional roller-coaster ride until the refined sugar-induced energy dissipates. A wise parent might instead supply an appropriately sized portion of ’sugar’ in its natural state – bound up with fibrous dry matter in the form of whole fruit.

Modern agri-businesses do similar with their water-soluble fertilisers – they set a ‘meal’ before the plant that can be immediately absorbed by plant roots, essentially by-passing the balanced slow-release feeding by micro-organisms. Just like a child, this affects a plant’s health.

For example:

Pesticide residues are not the only problem arising from modern agricultural techniques. Increasingly, nitrate levels in vegetables are causing concern, although most attention so far has been focused on nitrates in water supplies…. About 70% of average daily nitrate intake comes from vegetables, compared with only 20% from drinking water. Nitrates are taken up very readily by crops, and if they are not utilised immediately in the formation of protein, they are stored in the cells in their original form. There is then the risk that when nitrates are ingested or cooked, they convert to nitrites which can potentially combine with amines to form carcinogenic nitrosamines. – Organic Farming, Nicholas Lampkin p.565.

Additionally, in the insect and plant world the weak are attacked first, just like lions and antelope on the savanna! Plants grown in a healthy soil using sustainable methods are consistently shown to be resistant to attack from insects and diseases.

Our newsletters have often explained how mycorrhizal fungi attach to plant roots and bring great amounts of needed nutrients to the plant, functioning like millions of extra feeder roots. These well-nourished plants become more disease resistant and produce higher yields or more flowers.

A less obvious benefit is reduced insect attacks. In our grow testing, we can often tell the mycorrhizal plants from control plants from some distance away, not just by size but also by a difference in leaf damage.

This same sort of difference can be seen by comparing plants fertilized with slow-release fertilizer versus those given fast-acting forms, especially liquids. The quick greening and rapid burst of growth that you get after drenching plants with liquid fertilizer is obviously an invitation to harmful bugs.

So what’s going on? There are different theories about this subject, but one is that certain insects are programmed by nature to eliminate sick or otherwise imperfect plants. When you create unnaturally lush growth on a plant, something about those leaves seems to be like a neon sign that triggers the “must destroy” instinct in bugs, even though the plant may look normal to our eyes.

Another theory is that completely healthy plants produce a substance that tastes bitter to insects – sort of a natural repellant – but a plant that is pushed with fast NPK fertilizer apparently does not form those anti-bug substances and tastes delicious.

Whatever the reason, the way to grow plants that won’t require drenchings of toxic rescue chemicals is to use small amounts of slow-release nutrients that are delivered as-needed to the roots by biological action. The use of any high-analysis fertilizer, especially in liquid form, seems to be a major cause of insect attacks.

Of course, the nice companies that so heavily promote their wonder fertilizers are also happy to sell you bug sprays later. But I’m sure they don’t realize that their plant food is creating the need for insect protection. Real sure. – BioOrganics

The soil, if allowed, will absorb more CO2 than it gives out

Another significant, and highly relevant, role of soil micro-organisms, is carbon sequestration (storage):

The estimated amount of carbon stored in world soils is about 1,100 to 1,600 petagrams (one petagram is one billion metric tons), more than twice the carbon in living vegetation (560 petagrams) or in the atmosphere (750 petagrams). Hence, even relatively small changes in soil carbon storage per unit area could have a significant impact on the global carbon balance.

Carbon sequestration in soils occurs through plant production. Plants convert carbon dioxide into tissue through photosynthesis. After the plants die, plant material is decomposed, primarily by soil microorganisms, and much of the carbon in the plant material is eventually released through respiration back to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

But some of it remains when organic materials decay and leave behind organic residues, often called humus. These residues can persist in soils for hundreds or even thousands of years. – Geotimes

Given all the attention and commotion over global warming today, this ability of our soil to naturally assimilate CO2 on a grand scale should be examined far more than it is. This ‘humus’, mentioned above, is the dark black content of a healthy soil – black due to the carbon content itself. Humus could best be described as the final result of decaying organic matter. It is a stable substance – slow to accumulate, and slow to deplete – and is critical for the soil’s biological activity. This stable state is in stark contrast to our industrial fertilisers, which, in addition to over-absorption by plants, also contaminate streams and rivers and leach into our water table.

Subsequent decomposition of dead material and modified organic matter results in the formation of more complex organic matter, called humus. This process is called humification. Humus consists of a group of humic substances that includes humic acids, fulvic acids, hymatomelanic acids and humins and is probably the most widely distributed organic carbon-containing material in terrestrial and aquatic environments….

Humic substances enhance plant growth directly through physiological and nutritional effects. Thus humic acid is capable of improving seed germination, root initiation and uptake of plant nutrients, and serves as a source of nitrogen, phosphorus and sulphur. Indirectly, they may affect plant growth through modifications of physical, chemical and biological properties of the soil, such as an increase in water holding capacity and cation exchange capacity, and improvement of tilth and aeration through good soil structure. – FAO

Humus is a rich resource – and could easily be compared to a modern day bank. Deposits and subtractions are made by the natural rhythm of decay and recycling through the weathering of air, water, and complicated interactions of various types of soil macro and micro-organisms. This ‘bank’ has been our central ‘financial institution’, sustaining our race for millennia, although there have been times in our history, in localised areas, where subtractions have exceeded deposits – resulting in biological bankruptcy.

Throughout history, the story has repeated itself: Great civilizations have grown where soils were fertile enough to support high-density human communities, and fallen when soils could no longer sustain our rough treatment. According to the International Task Force on Land Degradation, the great early civilizations of Mesopotamia arose because of the richness of their soils, and collapsed because of declines in soil quality. Poor land management and excessive irrigation caused soils to become increasingly degraded, leading to power struggles, migrations, and ultimately, the collapse of the Fertile Crescent civilizations.

Ancient Greece suffered a similar fate. The philosopher Plato, writing around 360 B.C., attributed the demise of Greek power to land degradation: “[In earlier days] Attica yielded far more abundant produce. In comparison of what then was, there are remaining only the bones of the wasted body; all the richer and softer parts of the soil having fallen away, and the mere skeleton of the land being left.”

Many experts also blame the collapse of the great Mayan civilization and the peaceful Harappan society of the Indus valley on soil exhaustion and erosion, resulting from agricultural practices and clear-cutting of forests. According to Jared Diamond, a UCLA professor and author of the books Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, 90 percent of the people inhabiting Easter Island in the Pacific died because of deforestation, erosion and soil depletion. In Iceland, farming and human activities caused about 50 percent of the soil to end up in the sea, explains Diamond. “Icelandic society survived only through a drastically lower standard of living,” he says. – The Scoop on Dirt, Tamsyn Jones

Since the use of the plough, then the tractor, and especially since WWII military chemical companies found a post-war use for their chemicals (pesticides, then fertilisers), the organic content of our soils, and consequently soil and plant health, has been in serious decline. This has resulted in even more fertilisers being applied to boost productivity, and the resulting poor health of plants subsequently encouraging the use of even more pesticides.

Costly petroleum-based fertilisers have long been touted as the solution to the world’s problems of poverty and hunger by the industries that produce them, but their use has not only necessitated pesticide application, but also encouraged a complete disregard of the free, and healthful, systems of fertilisation that are already available to us. This food-in-a-test-tube mentality is forgetting a significant fact – even putting plant health and water purity aside, this kind of agribusiness is wholly finite. As a soil’s inherent fertility is squandered the soil loses its structure. These lifeless soils become increasingly difficult to use, even as an ‘inert medium for placing plants’. The term ‘increasingly difficult’ translating to more expensive and energy intensive (i.e. increased mechanised interventions). Ultimately these lifeless soils are discarded and become what we call ‘marginal lands’ or ’set-asides’, forcing increased output on that which remains – or increased deforestation, so we can gorge ourselves on fresh virgin soil.

To our shame, the rich black soils that were commonplace in America when the Mayflower landed, the natural accumulation of centuries of natural processes, are now largely a thing of the past. Besides issues of plant and human health, water contamination and loss, soil compaction, erosion and desertification – this has also meant the carbon absorption ability of the soil has decreased significantly. Great quantities of CO2 that should be stored in the humus content of healthy soils have been systematically released into the atmosphere.

Much of the world is suffering from degraded soil fertility

- During the past 40 years nearly one-third of the world’s cropland (1.5 billion hectares) has been abandoned because of soil erosion and degradation.

- About 2 million hectares of rainfed and irrigated agricultural lands are lost to production every year due to severe land degradation, among other factors.

- It takes approximately 500 years to replace 25 millimeters (1 inch) of topsoil lost to erosion. The minimal soil depth for agricultural production is 150 millimeters. From this perspective, productive fertile soil is a nonrenewable, endangered ecosystem. – The Global Education Project

A Cornell University scientist says soil around the world is being swept and washed away 10 to 40 times faster than it’s being replenished.

Professor of Ecology David Pimentel says cropland the size of Indiana is lost each year, yet the Earth’s need for food and other grown products continues to soar.

“Soil erosion is second only to population growth as the biggest environmental problem the world faces,” said Pimentel. “Yet, the problem, which is growing ever more critical, is being ignored because who gets excited about dirt?”

Pimentel said 99.7 percent of human food comes from cropland, which is shrinking by nearly 37,000 square miles each year due to soil erosion, while more than 3.7 billion people are malnourished.

The study, which pulls together statistics on soil erosion from more than 125 sources, notes the United States is losing soil 10 times faster — and China and India are losing soil 30 to 40 times faster — than the natural replenishment rate.

Damage from soil erosion worldwide is estimated to be $400 billion per year. – Physorg.com

Thankfully, we also have historical record of peoples that have managed to not only survive on the same pieces of land, but prosper, even with highly populated, intensive agricultural production. One well-known reference book on this subject is Farmers of Forty Centuries (now available as a freely downloadable ebook ), documenting four thousand years of successful sustainable management by Chinese, Japanese and Koreans. The systems of these past agriculturally-sustainable nations have, despite their not having microscopes or beaker tubes, maintained (or indeed, improved) the soil over the course of many centuries – and despite operating an almost completely ‘closed system’, i.e. without importing fertilisers, let alone pesticides, etc., which we today use in huge amounts, and which are produced at high financial and environmental cost from finite fossil fuel sources.

We’ve ascertained that a healthy soil is one that is abundant in soil life, but how do we increase and maintain this fertility? Well, our macro and microscopic friends have just a few simple needs – needs that are actually very similar to our own.

• air
• water
• energy

Channels created by plant roots and the very porous texture of a humus-rich soil, provide the right amount of air for balanced microbial activity. I say ‘balanced’, because you can have too much of a good thing. Over aeration of the soil through ploughing and tilling (if it doesn’t bury the organisms to a depth where they cannot function and are destroyed entirely) can cause excess activity (or, to use a modern phrase – hyperactivity), hastening the breakdown of organic matter and humus. Using our financial analogy, it’s like blowing a month’s wages in a week. This is often followed by a complete lack of oxygen with which to work – as the reduced soil texture, combined with compaction from heavy equipment, creates anaerobic conditions that destroy soil life and encourage disease.

A healthy soil, rich in organic matter, holds, filters and purifies downwardly mobile water, and also allows the upward movement of water through capilliary action. Even sandy soils, which generally leach both water and nutrients very fast, can hold considerable amounts of moisture if it has a high organic content. Heavy soils, those high in clay, often hold too much water (especially after the compacting effects of tractors, etc.) due to very fine-grain structure and water-binding nature of clay particles. Overdosing in water essentially drowns micro-organisms, as it robs them of the oxygen they need to survive. These heavy soils also benefit greatly from a high humus content, as it again encourages the porous texture that allows for the free flow of water (and air) needed for healthy microbial action. This texture is also essential in heavy soils or plant roots cannot penetrate.

Energy comes through the presence of organic matter itself – something almost always removed (or buried out of reach of micro-organisms) in the modern ’sterile’ system of agriculture.

The question of how to restore and maintain soil fertility is best asked of nature herself. What would happen to the world if, today, we all just got up and left – if we had the means and ability to head off to a fresh new planet where we could just start all over? Now, I’m not asking you all to leave – hey, I like you guys – but what would be the result back down here on terra firma? What, in particular, would happen to our soil in that huge percentage of inhabitable land that we are currently using intensively for agricultural purposes?

Give the worms a fighting chance! Modern farms are increasingly devoid of worms – but these guys (somehow) mysteriously eat and excrete soil, making it more nutrient-rich than when they started. May our farmers re-learn how to do the same! (figuratively speaking…)

Those fields that have been ploughed and turned and churned would, with relief I dare say, surrender to the restorative influence of an amazing natural process. Firstly, in our absence, plants that are specifically able to grow in each condition (some like to call them ‘weeds’) would spring up to do what nature always seeks to do with soil – cover it up! This protective covering prevents erosion and loss from wind and rain (a good topsoil is slow in the making – so erosion is like a bank-robbery). Next, this thin initial film of ground cover would, through photosynthesis and root action, slowly, in an almost self-sacrificial manner, develop an improved state – in doing so rendering itself redundant and promoting the growth of a new phase of plants, which in turn would improve the soil further, and so on. The inevitable cycle of life, photosynthesis, root action, death, decay and recycling (including the addition of animal ‘by products’) would ultimately restore a healthy structure (tilth) and bring our exhausted soils back to verdure. It’s a hard thing to say – but we’re just plain not needed, and are usually positively damaging!

Of course, as much as we’d like to stop the earth and get off, we cannot just head off to another planet (indeed – we shouldn’t be allowed if we haven’t figured out how to look after this one). The good news is if we can imitate nature’s practices as closely as possible, and incorporate these into our farming methods, we can reverse the unsustainable pressures we’re currently placing on our land.

Working with living creatures, both plant and animal, is what makes agriculture different from any other production enterprise. Even though a product is produced, in farming the process is anything but industrial. It is biological. We are dealing with a vital, living system rather than an inert manufacturing process. The skills required to manage a biological system are similar to those of the conductor of an orchestra. The musicians are all very good at what they do individually. The role of the conductor is not to play each instrument but rather to nurture the union of the disparate parts. The conductor coordinates each musician’s effort with those of all the others and combines them in a harmonious whole.

Agriculture cannot be an industrial process any more than music can be. It must be understood differently from stamping this metal into shape or mixing these chemicals and reagents to create that compound. The major workers – the soil microorganisms, the fungi, the mineral particles, the sun, the air, the water – are all parts of a system, and it is not just the employment of any one of them but the coordination of the whole that achieves success. – Eliot Coleman, The New Organic Grower, p.3, 4.

Sustainable farming can be described as “one that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. Such a statement would automatically lead one to think wistfully about the needs of future generations. But, we need to realise we are the future generation. We are, today, the people that have to deal with depleted, humus-reduced (which translates to carbon-reduced), unproductive soils that have been handed down to us from decades of plundering. Over the past several decades people have made themselves rich, withdrawing from the financial institution that is our soil – and never giving back. We are facing biological bankruptcy, and, despite the good intentions of many energetic promoters of organic farmers, our world is so specialised and distanced from nature that our politicians seek to not only continue these subtractions, but substantially increase the burden already placed on our soils.

The word irresponsible is defined as “not having or showing any care for the consequences of personal actions”. Modern large-scale industrial agriculture is exactly that. We need to turn it around.

In order to understand our own time and predicament and the work that is to be done, we would do well to shift the terms and say that we are divided between exploitation and nurture….

Let me outline as briefly as I can what seem to me the characteristics of these opposite kinds of mind. I conceive a strip-miner to be a model exploiter, and as a model nurturer I take the old-fashioned idea or ideal of a farmer. The exploiter is a specialist, an expert; the nurturer is not. The standard of the exploiter is efficiency; the standard of the nurturer is care. The exploiter’s goal is money, profit; the nurturer’s goal is health – his land’s health, his own, his family’s, his community’s, his country’s. Whereas the exploiter asks of a piece of land only how much and how quickly it can be made to produce, the nurturer asks a question that is much more complex and difficult: What is its carrying capacity? (That is: How much can be taken from it without diminishing it? What can it produce dependably for an indefinite time?) The exploiter wishes to earn as much as possible by as little work as possible; the nurturer expects, certainly, to have a decent living from his work, but his characteristic wish is to work as well as possible. The competence of the exploiter is in organization; that of the nurturer is in order – a human order, that is, that accommodates itself both to other order and to mystery. The exploiter typically serves an institution or organization; the nurturer serves land, household, community, place. The exploiter thinks in terms of numbers, quantities, “hard facts”; the nurturer in terms of character, condition, quality, kind. – Wendell Berry, The Agricultural Crisis a Crisis of Culture, p. 13, 14.

Exchange our current large-scale monocultures with smaller more diverse systems that include crop rotations , green manures , leys, composting and animal wastes, and we may yet regain that which we’ve lost. The laws of nature are a powerful force. We do not have the power to alter them, even though some would try, nor can you break them without consequence. Work in harmony with nature, however, and we will get back not just our soil fertility, but also health of body and character, and our relationship with the land.

Civilisations have come and gone, disintegrating, relocating and learning hard lessons about soil-abuse. Relocating is not an option anymore. We cannot wait for the 20/20 vision of hindsight – as there are no more frontiers. Continuing on this agricultural trajectory will see wealthy countries collapse – although not before turning to plunder the soil and water reserves of weaker nations.

In the last century the global population has exploded from two billion people to over six and a half billion today. Our society must learn, or collapse. It’s as simple as that.