Healthy Soil Leads To High Quality Nutrient Dense Food

Healthy Soil Leads To High Quality Nutrient Dense Food

Sustainable Agriculture Begins with Healthy Soils

The Big Q: What are some of the most important components of sustainable, responsible, and healthy agriculture?

The Big A: You have to start from the ground up, it all begins in the soil.

Rancher and farmers begin by assessing the current state of the soil, its fertility and soil biology, and there are simple tests for that. Then, they have to determine how to implement agricultural practices that will allow the farmer to significantly reduce chemical inputs, such as inorganic fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides.

“What we find is that when we have to rely on heavy applications of inorganic fertilizers we get trapped in a vicious cycle. “Heavy nitrogen applications over time acidify the soil, lower the soil pH, damage soil biology, and therefore cause us to have to come in every few years and correct those negative aspects through applying agricultural lime and those types of things.

We look at practices that allow us to significantly reduce all of those external inputs, particularly the chemical inputs –the inorganic fertilizers– and allow us to be able to substantially build the soil microbial population and other organism population beneath the soil. What we have found is that if we start there, then everything else comes much easier.

Our plants, whether we are growing crops or forages for our livestock to graze, are significantly healthier, more nutrient dense, and more tolerant and stress-resistant. They are much more resistant to diseases that impact plants. They are more resistant to pests that impact plants. And therefore because they are healthier, we get greater levels of production from them. And our livestock are healthier because they’re grazing these plants,” explains Allen Williams is a sixth-generation farmer, born and raised on his family’s farm in South Carolina, which has been there since Y 1840. This family heritage has played a major role in shaping his career.

Consumers can assist the process of converting conventional chemical-based agriculture into a system that relies on regenerative practices in a number of ways.

For starters, “voting with your pocketbook” is one of the most potent ways to support farmers who have transitioned, or are transitioning, to sustainable practices.

As noted by Mr. Allen: “The exponential growth of the grass-fed sector over the last 15 years, as well as the local food movement, the increasing number of farmers market in the US, and the increased incident of direct marketing—consumers buying direct from farmers—all of those are ways that consumers can support and contribute to regenerative agriculture and family farm-based ranchers and farmers.”

As it is now, less than 2% of the US population is engaged in growing sustainable food.

So in terms of government policy, they have a small voice. This is particularly true for farmers practicing regenerative agriculture. According to Mr. Allen, regenerative farmers make up just 1/10th of 1% of the US population.

They need the broader, stronger voice of consumers, not just by purchasing these products, but also by supporting policies from the USDA, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and others that would help further support regenerative agricultural practices. And, of course, by voting against policies that are detrimental to regenerative farmers.

Mr. Allen is actively involved with the Pasture Project, which is part of the Wallace Center of the Winrock Foundation. The Pasture Project is heavily centered on controlling harmful runoff, particularly harmful runoff going into the Gulf of Mexico. The Pasture Project places heavy focus on regenerative agricultural practices, and educates ranchers and farmers about techniques that will significantly reduce harmful runoff from their land.

Another important project that Mr. Allen is involved with is the Soil Carbon Nation Team, which consists of scientists, farmers, ranchers, soil experts, and other industry experts across the US. This team actively measures and monitors changes that are brought about by regenerative agriculture on farms and ranches, and use that data to help farmers understand the power of transitioning to regenerative agriculture.

“Consumer support of those types of projects can be very vital in helping us to continue those efforts,” Allen says. “I’ve also been involved with the National Audubon Society5 and looking at the development of bird-friendly grazing practices. Consumer support of Audubon is another way [to support the movement] because they are heavily focused now on helping farmers and ranchers get the education they need, to, again, put in regenerative bird-friendly grazing practices on their farms and ranches.”

Many of the regenerative land management practices used on farms and ranches can be duplicated in a much smaller area, like your home garden.

A large component of soil regeneration on a ranch is the presence of grazing cattle, which is not feasible for most suburban home owners. But there are strategies they can implement.

father and daughter hands play with soil in the garden

Below are some ways for home gardeners regenerate the soil, as follows:

1.  Stop or minimize tillage because when you till, you expose the soil and allow soil carbon to be released back into the atmosphere. In the soil, carbon promotes soil health and healthy plant growth. Once in the air, it only contributes to atmospheric CO2 levels, which has an adverse effect on the environment. Tilling also destroys important soil biology, particularly soil fungi.
2. Also minimize the use of inorganic fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, or avoid them entirely. Opt for Organic fertilizers instead, if needed.
3. To promote soil health, use biochar in your soil remediation strategy. Biochar is charcoal used as a soil amendment. Like most charcoal, biochar is created by pyrolysis of biomass. Biochar is an approach to carbon sequestration to produce negative carbon dioxide emissions.
4. Mulch, a Key to healthy soil is keeping the soil covered with a deep ground cover.
5. Compost application is helpful too. You can even work with local farmers and ranchers to access animal manures and apply that to your garden.

Many of the farmers and ranchers Mr. Allen has worked with over the past 20 years were in deep distress, trying to farm and ranch conventionally, and failing. Many of them were on the brink of losing their farms, which had been in the family for generations. By teaching them regenerative land management techniques, many of them are now thriving, and are prospering financially. Moreover, their farms are greatly contributing to the health of the environment, rather than detracting from it.

They are producing very high quality, Organic nutrient-dense foods.

“This holds a lot of hope for those who have not been able to make adequate profits on their farms and ranches, to be able to turn things around. These practices also offer a way – and this is very important to the future of agriculture – for beginning farmers and ranchers, for young people to be able to effectively and profitably enter back in to farming and ranching,” Mr. Allen says.

“For several decades, we have seen the younger generations leave the farms and ranches for job opportunities that they deemed much more profitable and viable because they saw their fathers and mothers struggle on the farm and they didn’t want any part of that.

Now, we’re able to turn that scenario around and to be able to bring back the young people, the younger generations. We desperately need that because the average age of farmers and ranchers across the US are people in their 60’s and early 70’s. So we desperately need the younger generation to return to the land, and these regenerative practices allow them to have that opportunity to return and to do it in profitable and viable manner where they can support their young and growing families.”

To learn more, or to get more actively involved, please check out the Grassfed Exchange website (http://www.grassfedexchange.com). It features blogs and videos by a number of contributors, along with a wide variety of cutting-edge educational information.

Eat healthy, Be healthy, Live lively

HeffX-LTN

Paul Ebeling

The post Healthy Soil Leads To High Quality Nutrient Dense Food appeared first on Live Trading News.