THE CGC FORUM COMMITTEE
15TH ANNUAL FORUM — JANUARY 19, 2023
SAVING OUR VANISHING SOIL
The following are highlights of the presentation:
New York Botanical Garden Arthur Ross Vice President for Horticulture and Living Collections.
Todd Forrest , the Arthur Ross Vice President for Horticulture and Living Collections at the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) located in the Bronx, NYC., spoke about the soils of the garden. The NYBG acquired their land in 1891. It was originally abandoned farmland and forests, containing rich and varied soil. Today, in line with the garden’s legacy of care, steps toward improvement in comprehensive soil assessment have been incorporated as an effort in soil management and preservation. NYBG works to identify all elements that impact soil health on the rounds and in the gardens, using all types of techniques. Positive transformation has been used to construct and preserve soil in the rose garden and the alpine rock garden. Trees and forests have been preserved and each year the impact of human activity, visitors, and traffic around and near the site are addressed in an effort to contain or eliminate pollutants. To map and identify soil conditions, processes have been engineered and incorporated to improve soil testing measures to identify heavy metals, acid rain producing low PH, and other chemicals. Steps to restore and transform soil include use of organic materials, aeration, mulch rings, soil plugs and seeding. “Life of the soil” methods help control and enhance the meadows and forests and composting methods are used in all areas. Collected leaves, grasses and dead headed flowers are all used in composting and the compost is then used to fertilize the many gardens and forests. To sustain and support growth of plants, new native plant gardens now are supplied with the correct type of soil for the right kind of plants, and plants are placed in the best locations to enhance these efforts. Top soils used in plantings may contain weeds and mugwort. To control these conditions steaming treatments are used in order to avoid destructive chemicals. The benefits of these treatments were clearly illustrated. In closing, Todd suggested Cornell Cooperative as a resource for soil management in home gardens and said home gardeners should obtain a comprehensive assessment of soil type and health before planting.
Director for the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Dr. Handelsman talked about soil in urban areas, where 20% of the word’s food is produced. She listed the key attributes of soil: it provides food security, filters water, maintains significant biodiversity, is a source of antibiotics and a major source of carbon storage. Various indigenous people have practiced intensive agriculture for thousands of years while preserving soil quality. By contrast, societies that degraded their soil quality failed to thrive and eventually collapsed. Existing since 1100 AD, Chinampas, or artificial islands, gave the Aztec empire its food security at its height. Some 2,000 acres of Chinampas are still farmed in Mexico containing 11% of Mexico’s biodiversity and producing enough to feed 12,000 people. The practice has been copied in The Netherlands. Similar practices can support intensive urban agriculture, deepen soil, increase soil fertility and provide a large amount of food from small, cultivated areas. The pioneering NYC Clean Soil Bank removes clean, deep soil from construction sites for reuse within the city. To date some 600 tons have been recycled and carbon emissions reduced by 4800 metric tons. A beneficiary, East NY Farms in Brooklyn, provides community engagement, learning about urban farming, and local food with a low carbon footprint. Another local farm, Brooklyn Added-Value Farm, produced 40,000 pounds of fruit and vegetables last year. In Camden NJ, a low-income city with a single supermarket, 44 sites produced 31,000kg. of vegetables. Farming on three rooftops, Brooklyn Grange produces 36,000kg. of vegetables and 680kg of honey. Advantages of urban farming include: Proximity to the consumer, few concerns regarding food access (as during CoVID), inexpensive fresh produce in food deserts, knowledge of food origin, stress management, and putting urban populations in closer contact with nature. We know how to improve soil and have the methods to do it. If we are to save our soil, we must change our practices, reduce land tied up in farming, restore forests and prairies and utilize the power of urban agriculture The choice is ours to make.
Distinguished Professor of Soil Science and a Founder and Director of the Center for Carbon Management and Sequestration at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.
Addressing our “vanishing soil” from a global perspective, Dr. Lal pointed out that in the last 10,000 years of human history, the population of the world has increased from 20 million to 7.6 billion humans today. Although The Green Revolution from 1961 to 2000 enabled us to feed this growing population, it did so at a huge cost resulting in the wasteful use of water and the degradation of our soil from chemical inputs. Today, land mismanagement is responsible for 30-35% of global greenhouse gases and an increase in unhealthy and unproductive soil. The question Dr Lal posed was how can the world produce enough food for a growing population yet save water and keep soil healthy? Dr. Lal’s answer was Eco-Intensification – or producing more from less. He advocates a new knowledge-based and science driven Green Revolution for the 21st Century and the adoption of transformative practices to regenerate soil and its use as a “carbon sink.” These practices include “no-till” farming and cover crops to create organic matter and a habitat for microbial activity. He is a passionate believer in the recarbonization of the terrestrial biosphere as the bedrock of sustainable development. In conclusion, Dr Lal urged universal education for women, who do the bulk of farming throughout the developing world, switching to a healthy diet, reducing food waste, returning land to nature, managing urbanization, paying farmers to sequester carbon, managing ocean carbon, restoring degraded land, and declaring a moratorium on all wars. If we did all this, we could produce as much food with no more than one-fourth the inputs, including water, that we are using today. Finally, Dr Lal advocated RIGHTS FOR SOIL just as we already have rights for Clean Air, and Water. His mantra is “Healthy Soil = a Healthy Diet = Healthy People = a Healthy Planet”.
Agronomist and Author.
Agronomist Dale Strickler discussed how our soil may be the answer to battling climate change. Currently there are 875,000,000,000 tons of CO2 in the atmosphere, of those, 240,000,000,000 tons were added since the beginning of the Industrial Age. While burning fossil fuel is considered the CO2 atmospheric villain, it is not the whole story. We need to look to soil tillage. When tilled, soil converts the carbon compounds in the soil to CO2 and it is released into the atmosphere. However, even if we were to instantly stop soil tillage and burning fossil fuel, we would still have the CO2 in our atmosphere. The bigger question may be, ‘How do we pull the carbon dioxide out of the air?’ Dale turned to soil for the answer. We do not need to wait for the invention of a carbon dioxide atmospheric extraction machine. We have in our possession right now a machine that can do just that…It runs on solar power, it is 100% biodegradable, it is 100% recyclable…it also replaces the carbon dioxide with food and oxygen…it is called a plant! 25 to 50% of the glucose excreted through a plant’s roots, (root exudates), feeds soil microbes enriching soil organic matter and making the soil richer, which enhances food productivity. How is this a solution? There are 20 billion acres of agricultural land in the world. An increase by 1% of the soil organic matter in the top 6 inches on an acre creates 10 tons of soil organic matter, which means 18 tons of CO2 will be taken out of the atmosphere. Multiply this over 20 billion acres and 360 billion tons of CO2 will be taken out of the atmosphere. He further noted, leaving land fallow is a fallacy. Studies demonstrate that planting cover crops enriches the soil, stores moisture, and feeds the land microbes. When his suggested soil techniques are combined ‘magic happens’. We need to inspire our farmers to adopt these regenerative practices and we need to do it now.