Healthy Soils Sustain a Healthy Future

Exploring the soil resource and some of the issues/concerns for

global/local agriculture

What is Soil?

Soil is the mixture of minerals, organic matter, gases, liquids and a myriad of micro- and macro- organisms that can support plant life. It is a natural body that exists as part of the pedosphere and it performs four important functions: as a medium for plant growth and of water storage, supply and purification; as a modifier of the atmosphere; and finally as a habitat for organisms that take part in decomposition and creation of a habitat for other organisms.Soil is considered the "skin of the earth" with interfaces between the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. Soil consists of a solid phase (minerals & organic matter) as well as a porous phase that holds gases and water. Accordingly, soils are often treated as a three-state system. Soil is the end product of the influence of the climate, relief (elevation, orientation, and slope of terrain), biotic activities (organisms), and parent materials (original minerals) acting over periods of time. Soil continually undergoes development by way of numerous physical, chemical and biological processes, which include weathering with associated erosion.

Can You Name One Thing That We Use in Our Everyday Lives That

Does Not Come Directly or Indirectly From the Soil?

Organic Matter

Scientists using new analytical techniques over the last decade have found that the world’s ocean of soil is one of our largest reservoirs of biodiversity. It contains almost one-third of all living organisms, according to the European Union’s Joint Research Center, but only about 3 percent of its micro-organisms have been identified, and the relationships among those myriad life-forms is poorly understood.

A teaspoon of soil may have billions of microbes divided among 5,000 different types, thousands of species of fungi and protozoa, nematodes, mites and a couple of termite species. How these and other pieces all fit together is still largely a mystery

Soil is the foundation on which the house of terrestrial biodiversity is built. Without robust soil ecosystems, the world’s food web would be in trouble.

"There are three great regions that could sustain intensive mechanized agriculture — the wide expanses of the world's loess belts in the American plains, Europe, and northern China, where thick blankets of easily farmed silt can sustain intensive farming even once the original soil disappears. In the thin soils over rock that characterize most of the rest of the planet, the bottom line is that we have to adapt to the capacity of the soil rather than vice versa. We have to work with the soil as an ecological rather than an industrial system... The future of humanity depends as much on this philosophical realignment as on technical advances in agrotechnology and genetic engineering."

Dirt: The Erosion of CivilizationsDavid R. MontgomeryUniversity of California Press 2007

Great civilizations have fallen because they failed to prevent the degradation of the soils on which they were founded. The modern world could suffer the same fate.This is according to Professor Mary Scholes and Dr Bob Scholes who have published a paper in the journal, Science, which describes how the productivity of many lands has been dramatically reduced as a result of soil erosion, accumulation of salinity, and nutrient depletion."Cultivating soil continuously for too long destroys the bacteria which convert the organic matter into nutrients,"

Can American soil be brought back to life?

A rough calculation of current rates of soil degradation suggests we have about 60 years of topsoil left. Some 40% of soil used for agriculture around the world is classed as either degraded or seriously degraded – the latter means that 70% of the topsoil, the layer allowing plants to grow, is gone. Because of various farming methods that strip the soil of carbon and make it less robust as well as weaker in nutrients, soil is being lost at between 10 and 40 times the rate at which it can be naturally replenished.

Why haven’t we heard more about this?Probably because soil isn’t sexy. People don’t always think about how it’s connected with so many other things. | TIME.com http://world.time.com/2012/12/14/what-if-the-worlds-soil-runs-out/#ixzz2uNIMIZw2

Read more: What If the World’s Soil Runs Out?

What happens if this isn’t addressed?There are two key issues. One is the loss of soil productivity. Under a business as usual scenario, degraded soil will mean that we will produce 30% less food over the next 20-50 years. This is against a background of projected demand requiring us to grow 50% more food, as the population grows and wealthier people in countries like China and India eat more meat, which takes more land to produce weight-for-weight than, say, rice.Second, water will reach a crisis point. This issue is already causing conflicts in India, China, Pakistan and the Middle East and before climate change and food security really hit, the next wars are likely to be fought over unsustainable irrigation. Even moderately degraded soil will hold less than half of the water than healthy soil in the same location. If you’re irrigating a crop, you need water to stay in the soil close to the plant roots. However, a staggering paper was published recently indicating that nearly half of the sea level rise since 1960 is due to irrigation water flowing straight past the crops and washing out to sea.

Read more: What If the World’s Soil Runs Out? | TIME.com http://world.time.com/2012/12/14/what-if-the-worlds-soil-runs-out/#ixzz2uNIy2400

Building Soil Health (Quality) — "If we take care of the land, it will take care of us." ~Hugh Hammond Bennet

AG on the Local Scene - This is YOU!

What is the State of your Soil and it’s Associated Natural Resources Locally???

-Soil Erosion - <5 tons/ac/yr or >5 t/ac/yr ??

-Organic Matter - 1%, 2%, 5% ????

-Water Efficiency Usage as a % 10%, 25%, 50%, 75%

-Fertilizer Loss (especially N&P) to water

-Salts/Heavy metals

-Soil Biology as compared to a functioning natural system - 90%, 75%, 50%, 25%, 10%

But there is an answer and it “ain’t no snake oil”

How would you like to:

Increase your bottom line?

Reduce tillage operations/costs?

Reduce pesticide use?

Reduce fertilizer inputs?

Increase yields?

Increase quality?

WHILE…………………………………………..

Increasing your soil organic matter

Increasing your water and nutrient-holding ability

Improving infiltration

Building in drought resistance

Reducing erosion and topsoil loss

WHILE……………………………..Improving Water Quality

Improving Air Quality

Reducing Water Use

AND of COURSE………….Improving the sustainability and long term use of your soil resource to keep you and your consumers in a healthy state now and into the future

• Dave’s Partial List of Benefits of Organic Matter in the Soil – the Magic Bullet• • Stores Carbon (1% increase equivalent of 10,000 pounds of C per acre)• Increases Nutrients (both macro and micro)• Promotes Soil Biology – “feeds the factory workers” from the micros to the macros, while improving their place of residence (the soil

home)• Increases CEC (cation exchange capacity-the Soil’s ability to hold nutrients and make them available to plants)• Increases Water Holding Capacity• Increases Pore Space• Improves Soil Tilth• Reduces Bulk Density• Improves Soil Structure• Reduces Soil Compaction• Reduces Runoff• Reduces Erosion (both Wind and Water)• Improves Soil Stability• Reduces Deep Percolation• Improves Ground Water• Reduces Sediment Loss to Surface Waters• Reduces CO2 Levels in Atmosphere• Decreases Greenhouse Gases• Reduces Fertilizer Inputs Needed• Reduces Salt Mobilization• Reduces Heavy Metal Movement in Soil• Buffers the Soil To Help Increase Plant Resistance to Stressors such as Drought, Overgrazing, Insect Pressure, Weed Pressure• Improves Plant Health • Improves Food Quality• Improves Crop Yields• Improves the “bottom line” for farmers• Reduces the need for fossil fuel consumption on Ag lands (less fertilizer, less farm equipment usage)

• Food Quality

Still No Free Lunch:Nutrient levels in U.S. food supplyeroded by pursuit of high yields

Government data from both America and theUnited Kingdom have shown that the concentrationof a range of essential nutrients in the food supplyhas declined in the last few decades

Increasing soil organic matter is anecessary step in improving soil quality.Recent science has highlighted potentiallinkages between soil quality and foodnutritional quality,

There is evidence that the same techniques thatfarmers use to push up crop yields, including highamounts of chemical fertilizers and irrigation, canalso make crops more susceptible to insect pests,disease, and extreme weather.

Healthy biology = Healthy nutrient cycling in the soil = Healthy plants = Healthy Food = Healthy People A change is needed in how we think of ourselves and our soils as

we produce plants and their byproducts for consumption. The soil is not just a place to hold the roots of the plants. The soil is the active ecosystem by which we produce a plant product. Simply put, as stewards of your land, you are “Carbon Managers”. What you produce is a carbon product in usable form. What you understand about carbon and nutrient cycling, and how you apply that knowledge using the appropriate tools, is the key to your success.

• Soil Health and sustainable AG The power of organic matterNutrients that are bound up in organic matterseem to help boost crop nutrient levels partly bymaking nutrients available over more of theseason and partly by stimulating healthy rootgrowth: the fungi, bacteria and other soilmicroorganisms that depend on organic matterhelp plant roots function better.One surveyfound that mycorrhizal treatment of a range ofcrops can increase copper, selenium, and zincuptake by roughly 30 percent

The basic goals of sustainable agriculture are environmental health, economic profitability, and social and economic equity

mimicking the ways of nature can harvest the big benefits of healthy soil

Cover crops, a traditional conservation practice considered old-fashioned by many in modern agriculture, are being used in new ways by innovative farmers to improve their soil’s health

The Answer is Soil Health and Using the many and Varied Tools we have/are discovered to

Meet some/all of 5 simple principles based on the following theme:

The closer we can mimic or apply practices that are part of the natural functioning plant/soil ecosystem, the less inputs will be needed to accomplish our desired production goals, while maintaining or improving our soil resource base now and into the future. These applications will help us with a living now and into the future.

Five Soil Health Principles

- Minimize Disturbance

- Living Root- Diversity- Keep the Ground Covered- Livestock Integration

• There will always be a need for food and the people who produce it.

• There is rapidly becoming a need for healthy food and the people who produce it in a healthy sustainable way.

The FFA Creed

I believe in the future of agriculture with a faith born not of words but of deeds-achievements won by the present and past generations of agriculturalists; in the promise of better days through better ways, even as the better things we now enjoy have come to us through the struggles of former years.I believe that to live and work on a good farm or to be engaged in other agricultural pursuits is pleasant as well as challenging; for I know the joys and discomforts of agricultural life and hold an inborn fondness for those associations which, even in hours of discouragement I can not deny.

I believe in leadership from ourselves and respect from others. I believe in my own ability to work efficiently and think clearly with such knowledge and skill as I can secure and in the ability of progressive agriculturalists to serve our own and the public interest in producing and marketing the product of our toil.

I believe in less dependence on begging and more power in bargaining; in the life abundant and enough honest wealth to help make it so-for others as well as myself; in less need for charity and more of it when needed; in being happy myself and playing square with those whose happiness depends upon me.

I believe that American agriculture can and will hold true to the best traditions of our national life and that I can exert an influence in my home and community which will stand solid for my part in that inspiring task

Want More???????Gardening Series - Montrose Library - FREE

Every Tuesday from 3/12 - 4/30 at 6:30pm

Session 7 - April 23, 2019

Improving Soil Health,

Investing in your future

- Four principles of soil health and why

and how you should be practicing them in

your garden. How to build the health of your

soil biology while improving your garden

plants abilities to resist pests and diseases

and minimize climate impacts. How soil

health can reduce or even eliminate the

need for outside synthetic fertilizer

applications. How soil health improves

the nutritional quality of your garden produce.