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AGRO-ECOLOGICAL BLOGLET’S TALK DIRTYDon’t treat soils like dirt. Soil is not often talked about or discussed in the agriculture investment space. I think at the most recent conference I attended only a couple of other speakers (apart from your author) mentioned it. Certainly there was little to any discussion on how poorly soil is treated, the damaging legacy of industrial agriculture in terms of soil degradation and pollution and in fact the largely declining health of the global topsoil resource. It is much easier for people to talk about the wonderful soils they have in their region “probably the best in the world”. This is also slightly amusing given they will be using the soil primarily as an inert mechanism through which to transfer synthetic fertiliser to plants. However as a pastoralist and someone brought up with grass grazing ruminants (4 stomached animals such as sheep and cattle) outside all year round, it occurred to me that it isn’t just about soils - agricultural production that is. When those guys in Eastern Europe ‘bang on’ (because they do) about their wonderful black soils my first thought is - yes but they are under snow for 6 months of the year, not a major issue for cereal production but rather limiting for livestock, particularly when compared to pastoral grazing systems where animals are outside 365 days of the year, the most efficient and authentically sustainable system for producing animal protein (dairy and meat). As an aside to the above paragraph, in one of my favourite regions of NZ you can produce three crops from the same land in one growing season under organic management and there is no snow in sight other than on the hills in the distance (which is actually rather attractive on one of the many sunny days). Soil and climate are connected and very directly through the much discussed but seemingly little actioned climate change. (Is it just me or do governments seem incapable in the face of the big polluters’ efforts to prevent meaningful progress on climate change?) Soil organic matter (SOM) declines dramatically and measurably under industrial agriculture using synthetic nitrogenous fertiliser. This is material for a number of reasons. SOM is in effect carbon stored in the soil so therefore declining SOM means a declining level of carbon sequestration in soils. It gets worse however as SOM enables soils to better retain water and therefore hold on/be more resilient in the face of drought challenges. It also, interestingly enough, provides the soil with a superior ability to drain water away after extreme water events, for example floods. The practical consequence being that declining and/or reduced SOM means declining/reduced resilience in the land you are farming which in turn means reduced yields and of course....less financial return. Ecological approaches to agriculture enhance and indeed focus on developing SOM with all the attendant benefits such as superior resilience; which of course lead through to superior returns - helped further by the premiums achieved by certified organic crops. By investing in and using practices that knowingly reduce SOM you are ensuring your asset is being managed in a way that makes it more susceptible to negative climatic events and overall to climate change. It is also slightly ironic that those same practices play so large a part in contributing to climate change. So put simply, if you adopt farming practices (industrial agriculture) that reduce the level of SOM in the soil, you are actively reducing the productive ability of the land and your ability to generate attractive long-term financial returns. Comments on this blog
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