In this episode, you’ll hear how modern agriculture has been trying to replicate and replace complex, biological systems yet focusing on the wrong components. We’ll learn how food quality, nutrition, crop productivity, and soil carbon levels are connected to a vast yet invisible system of microbial life, and how increasing plant diversity and well-managed animal grazing supports microbes to build soil, sequester carbon, and so much more.
Join us for a special edition podcast edit of a talk by Dr. Christine Jones, an internationally renowned and highly respected groundcover and soils ecologist. She has a wealth of experience working with innovative landholders to implement regenerative land management techniques that enhance biodiversity, increase biological activity, sequester carbon, activate soil nutrient cycles, restore water balance, improve productivity and create new topsoil.
Christine has organized and participated in workshops, field days, seminars and conferences throughout Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Canada, Central America, and the USA and has a strong publication and presentation record.
When Christine was traveling across the Western US in summer 2019, she shared two workshops with the Northern California Fibershed community, and so many of us were blown away by what we learned and the way she put this information together. We wanted to bring you an abbreviated, condensed version of these key learnings. And we’re able to do this thanks to John Parulis at Brightpath Video in Marin County, who recorded this audio and provided some of the initial editing.
To learn more about restoring soil ecosystems, join us for the 2020 Wool & Fine Fiber Symposium: Healthy Soil & Sea, a virtual gathering on November 12-14, 2020.
Show Notes:
- A study on the mineral depletion of the foods available to us as a nation over the period 1940 to 1991 in the journal Nutrition and Health
- Learn more about Compost application and other carbon farming practices
- The Biomass Distribution on Earth in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, plus a visual chart of all the life on Earth by weight
- Bonnie Bassler’s TED Talk on “How bacteria ‘talk'”
- For an illustrated guide to biodiversity in the soil, check out Life Belowground on the Range: an introduction to the soil communities that support California’s rangelands produced by Point Blue Conservation Science in cooperation with TomKat Ranch, written by Senior Soil Ecologist Chelsea Carey, illustrated by Rangeland Field Ecologist Mel Preston, and designed by Jordan Rosenblum
- More information about Gabe Brown’s farm and teachings is available through Chelsea Green Publishing
- For more about flowers for natural dyeing, check out Harvesting Color: How to Find Plants and Make Natural Dyes by Fibershed’s founder Rebecca Burgess. Find dye plant seeds in the Fibershed Marketplace and at Grand Prismatic Seed Company
- Light Farming: Restoring carbon, organic nitrogen and biodiversity to agricultural soils by Christine Jones, PhD
- Visit Fibershed’s Instagram Stories Highlight for snapshots from the “Fundamentals of Soil” 2019 workshop with Dr. Christine Jones
- The Grassfed Exchange conference
- “Biological Pathways to Carbon Rich Soil” – video of a presentation by Dr. Christine Jones at the South Dakota Soil Health Coalition 2020 Soil Health Conference & Annual Meeting
- “Community tipping points: Enhancing crop nutrition, yield and resilience through Quorum Sensing” – video of a presentation by Dr. Christine Jones at No-till on the Plains 2019 Conference
Thanks for listening to the seventh episode of Soil to Soil, a podcast connecting the dots in the lifecycle of clothing and material culture, brought to you by Fibershed, which is a non-profit organization based in Northern California. Each episode offers a look at how, and why, our community is working to cultivate fiber and dye systems that build soil & protect the health of our biosphere.
This episode is hosted by Jess Daniels, with production support from Whetstone Media and music by Arann Harris. Photo credits: featured image by Paige Green Photography of sheep grazing multi-species cover crop; workshop snapshot by Jess Daniels.