kiss the ground: book and documentary about the hidden power of soil.

Discover the hidden power soil has to reverse climate change, and how a regenerative farming diet not only delivers us better health and wellness, but also rebuilds our most precious resource—the very ground that feeds us.

Josh Tickell, one of America’s most celebrated documentary filmmakers and director of Fuel, has dedicated most of his life to saving the environment. Now, in Kiss the Ground, he explains an incredible truth: by changing our diets to a soil-nourishing, regenerative agriculture diet, we can reverse global warming, harvest healthy, abundant food, and eliminate the poisonous substances that are harming our children, pets, bodies, and ultimately our planet.

Through fascinating and accessible interviews with celebrity chefs, ranchers, farmers, and top scientists, this remarkable book, soon to be a full-length documentary film narrated by Woody Harrelson, will teach you how to become an agent in humanity’s single most important and time sensitive mission. Reverse climate change and effectively save the world—all through the choices you make in how and what to eat.

Click HERE to buy the book, it’s currently the #1 bestseller on Amazon! Once you have bought and read the book consider joining the Kiss the Ground Bookclub!

organic gardening tips from MOFGA

credit: MOFGA

The seedcorn maggot is the larvae of a fly, says Eric Sideman, MOFGA’s organic crop specialist, in the fall issue of The Maine Organic Farmer & Gardener. He continues: This critter spends the winter as a pupa in the soil. Flies emerge very early in the spring from these pupae and lay eggs near decaying organic matter and germinating seeds. The eggs hatch into maggots that feed on the seeds or young plants. Gaps in rows of crops such as onions, spinach, corn, peas, etc., often blamed on poor seed, actually result more often from seedcorn maggot feeding. The fly is often attracted to decaying organic matter, including some fertilizers that organic farmers use, such as soybean meal. In such cases the maggots end up feeding on the seeds and seedlings.

read: with only 60 years of harvests left, how do we transform our food systems?

credit: Indie Farmer 

Elise Wach from the Indie Farmer wrote an article published last week that explores the necessary trajectory of the future of farming. At a time when industrial agricultural systems are depleting our soil and placing quantity of produce and profit before quality and ecological health, this discussion is crucial. She also addresses the myths and misunderstandings attached to the local and organic food and farming movement.

 “Ecological and local food movements – and the farmers supporting them – are not trying to be elitist. They are trying to survive. In our current socioeconomic system, which ‘externalises’ the social and ecological costs of production, farmers tend to have two main choices – quality or quantity. They either produce for luxury niche markets (e.g. organic salad leaves, fancy preserves and veg boxes) or produce as much as possible through increasing their farm size (a strategy largely influenced by land area-based subsidies) and using industrial practices that destroy the soil, wildlife and water.”

 It’s a fantastic article that gets to the core of the problems in the current global food system, saying:

“It is clear that the existing food and farming system is not serving the public interest. It is also clear that efforts to change our food system through existing socioeconomic models have not worked. The problem isn’t organic. It’s capitalism.”

To read the full article by Indie Farmer, click HERE

believe it or not, tasty food is an environmentalist issue

Your weekly reminder that healthy soils mean tasty food means healthy people. Plus, a bonus shoutout to intuitive eating! Holler! Thanks, Kiss the Ground!

carbon farming in los angeles

“It’s not humans that are damaging to ecosystems; it’s our extractive culture that is damaging to ecosystems.”

This week’s Kiss the Ground share features Rishi Kumar, founder of Sarvodaya Farms, on how we can use agriculture to repair ecosystems. Savordaya Farms is a one acre farm located inside the city limits of Los Angeles and provides the city’s only urban farmer training program.

the conversation continues: hydroponics divorce people even further from the stewardship of the land

This recent submission to our series on whether or not hydroponics should be considered organic comes from Joanna Storie, a Doctoral candidate in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the Institute of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences of Estonian University of Life Sciences. She takes a similar stance on hydroponics to our last contributor, adding that hydroponics are not sustainable agriculture in that they divert attention from strengthening rural economies and reinforce urban ways of being that divorce people further from the land.

Have something to add? Email submissions to greenhornsblog@gmail.com.

In your recent blog you asked the question on whether hydroponics is organic or not and I have to agree that it is not. The following statement sums it up for me:

“Hydroponics may be a fine way to grow food and it might be an important part of how cities feed themselves in the future, but it’s no more a form of sustainable agriculture than producing wood fiber in a laboratory is a form of sustainable forest management.”

It also worries me that Hydoponics divorce people even further from the idea of stewardship of the land– which is something that makes the urban areas increasingly vulnerable, because– even if they can produce food in the cities using hydroponic techniques– this will not be the sum total of their food supply.

Recently I submitted an abstract for a conference, which took the position against urban-centric ways of structuring our society, arguing that “rural social networks need to be seen as inherently valuable to the resilience of the whole region.”

I think the hydroponics fits into the urban 24/7 mindset, which values cheap food and devalues rural social network,  thus exacerbating the situation of removing people further from the knowledge of healthy food and healthy environments.

“hydroponics is not organic — it’s not even agriculture”

Last week we asked the Greenhorns network what you think about the vertical farm. A perennially contentious idea, are hydroponics the way to the future or are they a hackneyed and ultimately artificial solution to the current crises of our food systems. The following submission on hydroponics comes from Matthew Hoffman, a Fulbright Scholar, Norwegian Centre for Rural Research, who argues vehemently that hydroponic farming be removed from organic certification.  Send us your opinions at greenhornsblog@gmail.com!

The farmers market in Jack London Square in Oakland, California was a bustling scene when I worked there in the late 1990s, and my customers liked to tell me how devoted they were to organic agriculture.

I remember one devotee in particular.  Her tote bag bulged with produce and her brow wrinkled beneath the brim of her floppy hat as she stopped one day to study the sign above my new display of organic flowers.  At length she turned to me and said, “How can flowers be organic?”

Photo from https://www.instagram.com/gardenholic/

Photo from https://www.instagram.com/gardenholic/

This was not the first time that I realized a devoted customer had no idea what organic meant.  So I explained to her about how organic farmers take care of the land, maintaining healthy soil and a healthy environment for plants to grow in without the use of synthetic chemicals—and how organic practices apply just the same to flowers and fields of grass as to lettuces and bell peppers.

She nodded thoughtfully and seemed to appreciate this explanation, but then she frowned again and asked, “What does it matter if you’re not eating them?”

the soil commons

Many of the most widely used antibiotics have come out of the dirt. Penicillin came from Penicillium, a fungus found in soil, and vancomycin came from a bacterium found in dirt. Last year, researchers from Northeastern University and NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals and their colleagues identified a new Gram-positive bacteria-targeting antibiotic from a soil sample collected in Maine that can kill species including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Moreover, the researchers have not yet found any bacteria that are resistant to the antibiotic, called teixobactin. Their results are published  in Nature.

To read more of this article and the innovative (and biodiversity driven) bacteria culturing method, click HERE!

Rick Haney, gangly and garrulous, paces in front of a congregation of government conservationists, working the room for laughs before he gets to the hard data. The U.S. Department of Agriculture soil scientist points to an aerial photograph of research plots outside his facility in Temple, Texas. “Our drones took this shot,” he says, then shakes his head. “Kidding. We don’t have any drones.”

Forty sets of shoulders jerk in amusement. Paranoia about the federal government is acute in Texas, and Haney’s audience—field educators from the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), part of a corps of around six thousand that works directly with farmers nationwide—hail from around the state. They’re used to suspicious scowls from farmers, who are as skeptical of the feds as they are of the outsiders who dwell on the downsides of agriculture. For the most part, the people in this room are both: feds and outsiders.

But what if those downsides—unsustainable farming practices—are also bad for a farmer’s bottom line? It’s the question Haney loves to raise during training sessions like this one, which the NRCS (today’s iteration of the Dust Bowl–era Soil Conservation Service) convenes around the country as part of a soil health campaign launched in 2012. Haney is a star at these events because he brings the imprimatur of science to something many innovative farmers have already discovered: despite what the million-dollar marketing campaigns of agrichemical companies say, farmers can use less fertilizer without reducing yields, saving both money and landscapes.

“Our entire agriculture industry is based on chemical inputs, but soil is not a chemistry set,” Haney explains. “It’s a biological system. We’ve treated it like a chemistry set because the chemistry is easier to measure than the soil biology.”

To read more, click HERE!

such fun, these scots!

“How do you sow the seeds of a better food system?”

soil city

Launching at Glasgow International, Soil City is a long term project initiated by Open Jar Collective, to reimagine the city as if soil matters.

“We know more about the movement of celestial bodies than about the soil underfoot.” Leonardo DaVinci, circa 1500s

Soil City is a space for conversation, participatory research and knowledge exchange. By engaging with the citizens of Glasgow and a wider community of scientists, artists, activists and academics, we hope to gain a better understanding of the relationship between healthy soil and healthy people.  We’ll be exploring how inequalities within society are reflected in the way land is used or remains ‘vacant’. By reframing soil as a valuable collective resource we aim to play a role in challenging economic, environmental, and health inequalities in Glasgow. You can expect to find explorations of soil culture through the alchemy of composting, growing, foraging, fermenting, brewing and cooking, as hospitality and sharing food together are at the core of Open Jar Collective’s approach, and living soil is what supports our nourishment.

To read more, click here!

canada: stewards of irreplaceable lands (SOIL) seeks apprentices!

SOIL links Canadian farmers willing to take on and train apprentices with folks wanting to work and learn on an organic farm using sustainable practices. We aim to facilitate apprenticeships which transfer lasting knowledge to both the farmer and the apprentice. Established in 1989 as a non-profit organization, our goals are:

• To encourage the growth of sustainable agriculture in Canada
• To expose potential apprentices to a rural lifestyle. For those with little or no farming experience an apprenticeship can offer a valuable hands on learning environment in which to acquire the basic skills or even provide the basis for an agricultural career.
• To assist the farmer with the necessary support required to successfully run their organic operation. The farmers and farm community can also benefit greatly from the influx of new ideas, energy and enthusiasm of apprentices.

SOIL acts as a directory that links farm-hosts and prospective apprentices. All listings are submitted to this site by farm employers. Stewards of Irreplaceable Land makes no claims of any kind about content, accuracy, suitability, intent, comprehensiveness, or availability of positions. SOIL makes no representations or guarantees about positions listed on its website and is not responsible for safety, wages, working conditions, or other aspects of employment. It is the responsibility of prospective apprentices to take all necessary precautions when interviewing for or accepting positions, and he/she is solely responsible for obtaining necessary information concerning the employers, using caution and common sense. It is the responsibility of host farms to be aware of federal and provincial labour laws related to hiring apprentices and for apprentice training for full on-farm health and safety. SOIL provides the listing only as a public service, and the listings do not imply any recommendation by the organization.

Please feel free to contact them with any questions using the form on their website, or by emailing soilapprenticeships@gmail.com.

new institute focused on nation’s soil health

To ensure that soil continues to be a vital natural resource for generations to come, The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation and Farm Foundation, NFP, today announce the formation of the Soil Health Institute. The announcement coincides with World Soil Day (Dec. 5) and celebrates the 2015 International Year of Soils.

The Soil Health Institute’s mission is to safeguard and enhance the vitality and productivity of the soil. It will work directly with conventional and organic farmers and ranchers, public- and private-sector researchers, academia, policymakers, government agencies, industry, environmental groups and consumers–everyone who benefits from healthy soils.

The organization will serve as the primary resource for soil health information, working to set soil health standards and measurement, build knowledge about the economics of soil health, offer educational programs, and coordinate research in all aspects of soil and soil health.

For more information, click HERE.

soil solutions to climate problems

Narrated by Michael Pollan, this four minute piece is expository in nature and is aimed at a general audience who may have no idea that there is any relationship between soil carbon and climate.