Soil and Land Management Solutions

      As humans we rely on healthy soil for 95% of what we eat, and most soil used for agriculture has lost 50% of it's original carbon over the years.

Soil releases carbon dioxide into the air when damaged, a cause of overheating atmosphere (global warming) as well as acidifying oceans which threatens marine life.

We've discovered that we can reintroduce carbon back into soil through the use of plants. This turns atmospheric carbon into carbon in the soil, so it can feed beneficial micro organisms.

     We can help raise the earth's potential to store carbon in a healthy way by keeping soil covered with plants in order to extract the atmospheric carbon, as well as crop diversity, and selective grazing. Another benefit to carbon rich soil, is that it can store water during floods and then nourish plants with said water during droughts.

Working on increasing carbon in the soil will help with global annual greenhouse gas emissions, and leads to more productive and thriving soil overall.

If you're interested in where I acquired the information for the above summary, you can find the video here.

And all of the information in the following paragraph I learned from this video.

     When Michael Pollan visited the Polyface Farm, he discovered that Joe Slatin had six different species living together in an 'elaborate dance' where the manure of one was the food for another and so on. He focuses on the farm's chickens and cattle. Joe has the cows graze 1 day in a field of grass, and then wait 3 days so that fly larvae has time to form in the cow dung, but not long enough for them to become flies, afterwards he brings in the farm's 350 chickens, who go straight for the cow's manure to feast on the grubs, in the process, the chickens spread out said manure, and add their own along the way, fertilizing the soil. This makes the grass thrive, making more food for the cattle on the next go around. New soil is produced in this process when the cows graze, because when the grass is cut short, the roots get shed and die, and as this happens, the organisms in the soil begin to eat through and decompose the excess root mass, creating the new soil.

     From this process, Joe Slatin's farm produces 40,000 pounds of beef, 30,000 pounds of pork, 300,000 eggs, 20,000 broilers, 1000 turkeys, 1000 rabbits, and all of that on 100 acres. Michael Pollan is hopeful for this method because at the end of Joe's process there's more soil, more biodiversity, and more fertility, with no technology involved other than cheap electric fences.