By John Hartman
Everyone knows about the American Dust Bowl. Tons of topsoil were blown from west of the 100th Meridian to places east — lost forever. It was lost due to poor farming practices. Taking grasslands, which prospered, and converting it, via the plow, to crop land. It didn’t work. When the droughts came in the ’30s, there was no grass to hold the soil when the wind blew.
We are facing another crisis in farming practices that will greatly affect climate change. Conventional agricultural practices such as plowing and tilling release carbon dioxide from the soil by exposing organic matter to the surface and thus promoting oxidation. It has been estimated that roughly a third of the increase in CO2 in the climate has been due to the degradation of soil organic matter because of poor farming practices.
Regenerative agriculture which includes no-till farming, rotational grazing, mixed crop rotation, cover cropping and the application of compost and manure have the potential to reverse this trend by sequestering CO2 in the soil. With widespread application of regenerative agriculture it is possible to offset a significant amount of the C02 currently being emitted. This approach is one tool which could be used with many other tools to reduce carbon emissions.
For much more information on regenerative agriculture check out the excellent movie “Kiss the Ground,” currently streaming on Netflix and rentable for $1 on Vimeo.