Put carbon where it belongs… back in the soil

We hear a lot about climate change and carbon dioxide

what can farmers do about it a lot

says Australian soil scientist dr.

Christine Jones and get better crops as

a result it's all about getting light

energy transforming it to biochemical

energy getting that biochemical energy

into the soil to drive the soil

ecosystem to make nutrients available

well the reason that carbon is important

is because all living things contain

common so as things live and die they

give up their carbon and then something

else lives and takes up that carbon I

guess what we're talking about with

climate changes were talking about that

cycle getting out of balance so for

thousands of years it's been in balance

the atmosphere and the plants and the

soil and all the living creatures but in

modern times people have dug up and

burned fossil fuels and exposed soil for

farming in fact over a third of the

carbon added to the atmosphere since

1850 has come from deforestation and

exposing and oxidizing the rich carbon

deposits in our topsoil u.s. soil

scientist dr. Elaine Ingham says we can

put it back though and in a way so that

much of it will stay so carbon

sequestration were talking about putting

co2 from the atmosphere back into the

soil in a form that's not going to be

lost how do we do this the same way

nature did in the first place

we got to be photosynthesizing so we've

got to be growing plants in that soil so

co2 and sunlight will be bound back into

sugar structures as those sugars go down

into the root system picking up all the

nitrogen phosphorus sulphur magnesium

calcium from the soil building that

plant material the plants are putting

exude AIDS out into the soil cakes and

cookies out into the soil and the

bacteria and fungi utilize that material

and build the organic matter back in the

soil once again those sugar water

exudates are the key this photo shows

liquid carbon flowing from a plant root

above along a fungal hypha or two to

feed the fungus below in exchange for

that carbon soil microbes including

fungi bring water or micro nutrients to

the roots causing the plant to release more carbon

in order to build that soil carbon you

have to be looking after the microbial

or supporting the microbial communities

in the soil that join all the little

carbon atoms together to form humors polymers

I can't grow as well unless those

microbes are there they won't have as

many trace elements in them if those

microbes aren't there and when the

plants don't have those trace elements

and then they become vulnerable to

insect attack and fungal attack

pathogens of all kinds

finally we're now seeing the light as it

is and realize that we are like farmers

and that what we need to do is to

harvest as much sunlight energy as

possible by having as much green leaf as

possible therefore as much of the year

as possible because photosynthesis

drives the whole system soil should

always be covered with plants either

crop plants or cover crops farmers here

in the United States started

experimenting with two-way covers and

then five-way covers and then 10-way

covers and now they're sort of aiming

for 20 Way covers in other words 20

different varieties of plants in a cover

crop and realizing that the more diverse

they make the cover crop the faster they

can build soil and the more less reliant

they are on any chemicals at all farmers

are finding that building soil

biodiversity builds plant health now

they're finding they don't have to use

any synthetic fertilizers anymore they

don't have to use pesticides they don't

have to use insecticides the not only

are they producing food that's higher in

nutrients but it's also lower in toxic

chemicals and they're taking co2 out of

the atmosphere and storing it in soils

we also want resilience in our fields

carbon builds a good clumpy soil

structure holding on to rainwater

and the other thing is how quickly when

the rain does absorb how quickly does it

evaporate so when it gets into the soil

we want it to stay there so we want to

have an aggregate send us all aggregates

the little lumps like pea show clumps in

the soil that have a much higher

moisture content on the inside of the

aggregate than on the outside and we see

the greatest increases in carbon

sequestration through what I call the

liquid carbon pathway when it's being

fixed in and green leaves transfer

powder through the plants excuted by

roots into microbial communities in the

soil and forming aggregates and leading

to the process of unification which is

the holy grail for soil to have an

increase in humans in the soil so our

job as dr. Ingham says is to farm so we

are working with nature

so don't till could we have a list of

those farmers that are no-till or zero

till and really let people know that

they're the ones doing the work and as

dr. Jones says this kind of farming is a

win for everyone if we can take more of

the carbon that's in the atmosphere and

store it in our soil and our soils and

our food production systems are going to

be more resilient but we could produce

the same meal with much higher quality

with much lower cost and building soil

at the same time

I think the fundamental shift in

thinking that we have to make is that

farming is about harvesting light

through the process of photosynthesis

we're going to change light energy to

biochemical energy and then that

biochemical energy becomes our plants

our animals so you know through the

carbon compounds that are made by that

process we are fundamentally light

farmers and when we make that

realization then the sky's the limit.