Regenerating Soil to Fight Climate Change

Did you know that after the ocean, soil is the biggest carbon sink on the planet?

In school we learn that trees and plants absorb carbon dioxide and release the oxygen that we then breathe. But have you ever given much thought to what happens to the carbon after it has been absorbed?

It becomes plant food! 

The carbon the plants have just absorbed is processed into sugar, which transforms it from a gas to a liquid. Some of this liquid carbon is utilized by the plant, but the rest flows down into the root system, where it is released into the soil.

And here is where things get really interesting. There is this beautiful symbiosis going on beneath our feet, where the liquid carbon transforms into a solid, and is taken up by the microbiota—bacteria and fungi—that make up healthy soil.

The microbiota returns the favour by releasing minerals and trace elements that feed roots, encourage worms, build soil, and deliver the taste and nutrition to our food that we need to stay healthy and ward off disease.

You can’t get nutrient dense food from nutrient deficient soil.

Except it is our soil that is taking the worst beating in conventional agriculture. With technological advances in the early 20th century came new machinery that compressed and hardened the soil.  Farmers increased the size of their fields and made cropping more specialised, which equated to less biodiversity. Advances in the manufacture of nitrogen fertilisers made them abundant and affordable. Ammonium nitrate produced in WWII for munitions was then used for agriculture.

All of this, fed by a fear of how to feed massive population growth.

This is where biodynamic farming differs. The key focus of Biodynamic farming is to create and regenerate quality soil. We nurture the land with cow poo, compost and homeopathy. And it’s the quality of biodynamic soil that researchers are beginning to notice.