To Revitalize SOIL 
​means to
replace till-and-kill corporatized agribusiness practices with 
​thrive-and-flourish Regenerative farming practices

​

Extra! Extra!!
Read all about it.
Regenerative Agriculture can
reverse global warming.

First off though, before we dive into this topic,
it's important to note that there are two different forms of
agriculture being practiced in the world today:

1.  One is being practiced by real human beings, people who love the land and the animals they tend.
2.  And the other is being practiced by legal entities known as corporations. Corporations, as non-living legal entities               whose only mandate is to make a profit, are incapable of loving the land or any living creature, including humans.

This results in vast exploitation and abuse of the land ... the pulverizing and the pummeling and the plundering and the pounding and the poisoning and the polluting that giant corporatized agribusinesses do. This distinction is important to make when discussing agriculture because all too often goodhearted human farmers get blamed for the havoc that corporatized agribusinesses inflict.  
​But thankfully now there's a robust worldwide movement of real human beings who are Revitalizing SOIL and regenerating
​the land that corporatized agribusinesses have degraded, degenerated, and destroyed. Their movement has become known as REGENERATIVE Agriculture.

In this video, Australian farmer, Charles Massy, explains eloquently how
​REGENERATIVE FARMING HEALS!

To Revitalize SOIL -- this is the main goal of all Regenerative farming practices. 
Why? ... Consider this -- there are as many teeny-tiny-little-living beings (animals, plants, bacteria, and fungi) in this
handful of SOIL as there are stars in our Milky Way Galaxy.
​SOIL is literally teeming (teaming ;-) with life! 
And from SOIL all other life emanates.

All these teeny-tiny-little-living beings make up the super-organism we call SOIL.

Ever since humans domesticated animals and developed agriculture, some 10,000 years ago, one civilization after another has fallen because of its misuse and abuse of the SOIL. This misuse and abuse was mostly the result of mismanaged grazing.

Since the end of WWII that misuse and abuse has increased enormously because of 4 practices introduced by giant corporatized agribusinesses. These 4 practices degenerate and destroy SOIL faster than has ever been done before.
The four practices are: 

1. Toxic chemicals --- During WWII  giant chemical corporations had profited greatly selling explosives for bombs, and nerve gas for the extermination chambers of the Hitler's concentration camps. When the war ended, these giant corporations suddenly found themselves without a demand for their product. So they got together and schemed to re-purpose and re-brand their products in order to create a new market for them. They found that new market in agriculture. The explosives were re-purposed into fertilizer, and the nerve gas was re-purposed into pesticides (nerve gas for insects). The result of this transformation is that every year now corporatized agribusinesses dump billions upon billions of pounds of these toxic chemicals onto the SOIL, thus poisoning and killing the teeny-tiny-beings living there, in addition to killing the insects          above ground ... you've probably heard of the decline in the bee, butterfly, and other pollinator populations.
2. Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) --- Many people are familiar with the term GMO, but they don't really know what they are. Many assume they must be a good thing because, after all, aren't our revered  scientists developing them so they can better feed the world with more nutritious food?  Actually no, not so much. Most GMO agricultural crops have been genetically modified to do one thing, and that is to be able to accept dosages of toxic chemicals that will kill weeds but not the GMO plant. This is one of the reasons the usage of some of these toxic chemicals has increased so massively since GMOs were introduced in the 1990's.
3. Extreme tillage --- worldwide, corporatized agribusiness tills the ground excessively with huge machinery, thus pulverizing, and obliterating the very homes and communities where the teeny-tiny SOIL beings reside.​  And to add insult-to-injury,  millions upon millions of acres are left pulverized and bare for months out of the year. This is a very bad practice because        one of the things plants do big-time is take carbon out of the atmosphere, make their bodies with it, store it in their roots,      and share it with the teeny-tiny beings of the SOIL, whose food it becomes. Leaving SOIL bare starves the SOIL life of its food source. All this adds up to removing the carbon sequestering function that plants do. This is a little remarked upon fact, but so vital to understand if we want to know how we can drawdown all that excess heat trapping carbon we've put into the atmosphere. One of the main principles of REGENERATIVE Agriculture is to keep a living root in the SOIL for as long as possible, if not at all times, throughout the year. This single practice can lead to a huge amount of carbon sequestration, in fact enough to totally reverse global warming. No need for all that stupid, cumbersome, expensive, ineffective technology that  giant corporations propose to deal with the excess carbon in the atmosphere ... technology that they, the giant corporations,    would of course, be paid lots and lots and lots to install.
4. Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) --- No real human farmer would ever have thought up these unbelievably barbaric atrocities. CAFOs are a huge, huge cruelty to the animals confined there, and the people who have to work in them. Many of you beautiful, gentle, kind-hearted people are vegetarians or vegans because of this. Only soulless legal entities such as corporatized agribusinesses could have ever concocted something this despicable. And not only are they despicable, CAFOs also result in another hugely damaging effect on Mother Earth ... that is the practice of taking animals off the land. Doing so removes them from the plant communities that depend on them for their very existence. Plants need animals, and animals  need plants. That's the way Mother Nature does things ... always has, always will.

Legendary REGENERATIVE farmer/ rancher Allan Savory has noted:
​"Throughout history, armies have never destroyed civilizations---they have changed them. Farmers destroy them and they never rise again."​

He describes the degradation in the U.S. alone:
​"If we look at American policy (policy written and promoted by giant corporations ---Big Agriculture, Big Food, Big Chemical, Big Oil) 
it was that that was resulting in all the dead eroding SOIL being America's greatest single export every year from agriculture --- outweighing all grain, all timber, all other exports. The Soil Conservation Service, when I came here (in the 1980's) estimated it as a train load of SOIL leaving this country every day, 116 miles long! There's no other export matching that."

Corporatized till-and-kill agribusinesses have been shown to be responsible for more environmental degradation
​than anything else we humans do to Mother Earth --- even more than all our burning of fossil fuels. 

But have hope!
By using REGENERATIVE farming practices,
agriculture could be the single most beneficial prescription
​for healing Mother Earth ---
all the while feeding us abundantly and healthfully.
Why? Because amazingly enough
healthy SOIL can sequester all the extra carbon 
that has somehow (it doesn't matter how)
​found its way into our atmosphere.
This video explains how
​SOIL-SAVES-THE-DAY!

Right about now some of you are probably thinking:
"Hey wait a minute! ... I've heard that cows are really bad for the environment
because they burp and fart methane gas.
And methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2."
I must admit, when I first heard of cows being  blamed for global warming, I was puzzled.
 I wondered why this silly 'fact' was being spread by corporate media now.
I've come to suspect it's probably Team GRUNCH's way of taking our attention
off of natural gas, the latest fossil fuel boom.
You see, a little known fact is that natural gas is mostly methane.
The PR people for natural gas probably thought: "It was a stroke of genius on our part getting this fossil fuel to be called natural gas.
People think' natural' is a good thing. But the bad reputation it's getting for the fracking and pipelines associated with it
is hard to spin to our advantage. And if people further became aware that it's mostly methane,
that would be hard for us to do damage control. Let's see ... what animal can we blame for all that extra methane
that natural gas is emitting into the atmosphere now? "

And their scheming little brains came up with, you guessed it ... the cow!

But as you may have gathered from the above information, the presence of animals on the land is essential for healthy soil,
​is essential for healthy ecosystems. Every plant community absolutely needs some form of herbivore in it. An arid grassland community has its magnificent herbivores--- elephants, rhinos, wildebeests, bison, antelope, water buffalo, zebras, giraffes, caribou, reindeer, gazelle. etc. And in humid forest communities insects fulfill the herbivore duties the ecosystem requires (yes, insects are animals too ;-) ​The herbivores in a plant community act as the first line of digestion for the life in the SOIL. Just like our teeth break down the big pieces of food we put into our mouths so that the teeny-tiny-little-living beings of our gut (aka microbiota/microbiome) can digest it, so too the herbivores chew and break down big pieces of plants into smaller pieces so the teeny-tiny-little-living beings in the SOIL can digest them.

The magnificent herbivores that roam the grasslands of the world are mostly ruminants, that is, animals that have extra
stomach chambers called rumens which allow them to 'digest' the grass they eat. Their digestion process creates methane.
All ruminants naturally release methane. And yet in all the millennia that these massive herds of ruminants have roamed
the grasslands of the Mother Earth emitting methane, excessive accumulation of methane in the atmosphere has not happened. Today, excessive accumulation from ruminants is happening because of CAFOs. Ruminants were 'designed' to eat grass,
not the grains they're fed in CAFOs. Naturally they get 'upset stomach' when they eat these grains, causing them to produce
more 'gas' than normal. Imagine how upset your digestion would be if you were forced to eat grass ... you'd be gassy too!

Rancher Wendy Pratt explains here, ​simply and clearly,
​ why grazing animals are so important to grasslands.
​She explains how
​ RUMINANTS RULE!

And journalist Judith D. Schwartz' book 'Cows Save the Planet' 
is an excellent book on the subject:​

The back cover of the book says: 
"COWS SAVING THE PLANET?   WHY NOT?
An idea that sounds preposterous begins to make sense 
when you take a soil's-eye view of our current ecological predicament.
In 'Cows Save the Planet', journalist Judith D. Schwartz looks at SOIL as a crucible for
our many overlapping environmental, economic, and social crises ...
Where do cows fit in?
​Cattle, like many grazing creatures,
​can if soundly managed,
restore land and help build SOIL."

Now I'd like to address an issue that's probably on the minds of those of you who have chosen to be vegans or vegetarians.
You've probably chosen to be a vegan or a vegetarian because your beautiful, kind, and empathetic heart wants to do no harm
by killing animals. This is a very noble aspiration, but that's not the way Mother Nature sees these things. She doesn't judge
a hawk as being harmful when it kills a mouse and eats it. She doesn't consider a lion cruel when it kills and eats a gazelle.
She doesn't regard horses or gorillas as being morally superior because they eat only plants. She doesn't criticize a swallow for gobbling up insects as it swoops through the air. She doesn't condemn an Inuit for killing and eating a seal, or a Laplander for
killing and eating a reindeer, nor a Maasai tribesman for killing and eating a cow. Many cultures developed a sacred bond with             
​an animal because of the sustenance it provided them ... the North American Great Plains Indians and the Bison,                                           the Tibetans and the Yak, the North American Pacific Coast Indians and the Salmon.
All of us creatures have evolved to eat different things. For Mother Nature, everything is ultimately food for something else. 
This is how life works ... this is how life continues. It's the way Mother Nature does things ... always has, always will.

And also, if you want to do no harm, consider this:
The way corporatized agribusinesses grows plants for food, fiber, and fuel causes much more harm to Mother Earth
than does their production of animals. The reason for this is because of the ginormous scale of land in plant production as
compared to that devoted to animal production. Probably the only good thing about Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) is that they are concentrated, and not spread over the millions upon millions of acres of land that cropland is.
Those millions upon millions of acres of cropland being managed by corporatized agribusinesses is pulverized and poisoned
by their till-and-kill practices. And that's not to mention the massive destruction of wildlife habitat being done worldwide
by corporatized agribusinesses in order for them to create more cropland. An example of this destruction is how corporatized agribusinesses cut down and burn Amazonian rainforests in order to create land on which they can grow GMO soybeans to make those plant-based 'fake' burgers. When you eat one of those 'fake' burgers you're contributing to the demise of all that magnificent life in the rainforest. In fact, this destruction of habitat by corporatized agribusinesses is the main cause of the major extinction that life on Mother Earth is experiencing now​. As we speak, another species goes extinct every 20 minutes!!! You've probably heard the term 'loss of habitat' given to explain why this major extinction event is occurring. Well, that's a euphemistic term some corporate PR dude invented to hide the true cruelty of the destruction of habitat being done by corporatized agribusinesses. 'Loss of habitat' ... yeah, right  ... like the habitat went off and got lost somewhere leaving all those creatures homeless and without food and shelter. Duh!
Even knowing all this, you may still have your own reasons to  eat only plants. If you do, be comforted to know that you have the choice to eat plants that have been grown by kind and loving real human beings who are practicing REGENERATIVE Agriculture.
By doing so, we have a chance to stop this major extinction event.

Gabe Brown is an example of a kind and loving real human being who is practicing REGENERATIVE Agriculture.
He has been described as a folk hero of the REGENERATIVE Agriculture movement.
In his book 'Dirt to Soil, One Family's Journey into Regenerative Agriculture',
he describes ​five principles/practices that Regenerative Farmers follow/use to nurture SOIL health.
Basically these practices mimic the way Mother Nature does things.

1. "Limit disturbance. Limit mechanical, chemical, and physical disturbance of soil. Tillage destroys soil structure. It is constantly tearing apart the "house" that nature builds to protect the living organisms in the soil ... Synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides all have negative impact on the soil as well.
2. Armor. Keep soil covered at all times. This is a critical step toward rebuilding soil health. Bare soil is an anomaly---nature always works to cover soil. Providing a natural "coat of armor" protects soil from wind and water erosion while providing food and habitat for macro and microorganisms. It will also prevent moisture evaporation and germination of weed seeds.
3. Diversity. Strive for diversity of both plant and animal species. Where in nature does one find monocultures? ... If you want a healthy, functioning ecosystem on your farm or ranch, you must provide a home and habitat for not only farm animals but also pollinators, predators insects, earthworms, and all of the microbiology that drive ecosystem function ... Grasses, forbs, legumes, and shrubs all live and thrive in harmony with each other ... Each of them plays a roll in maintaining soil health.
4. Living roots. Maintain a living root in soil as long as possible throughout the year...Those living roots are feeding soil biology by providing its basic food source: carbon (hence carbon sequestration). This biology, in turn, fuels the nutrient cycle that feeds plants.
5. Integrated animals. Nature does not function without animals. It is that simple. Integrating livestock onto an operation provides many benefits. The major benefit is that the grazing of plants stimulates the plants to pump more carbon into the soil. This drives nutrient cycling by feeding biology."  

Another legendary SOIL Revitalizer is permaculture designer Geoff Lawton. These two videos of his are so inspirational, I just had to include them here.

And here is yet another video displaying the regenerative powers of Mother Earth. 
Really, if we just give Mother Nature the chance,
if we work/play with her and let her find her balance, 
she can heal herself and all her children. 
And the best news here is how quickly she can do that!

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