For the Love of Soil

Author: Nicole Masters
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780578536729
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Book Description
Learn a roadmap to healthy soil and revitalised food systems to powerfully address these times of challenge. This book equips producers with knowledge, skills and insights to regenerate ecosystem health and grow farm/ranch profits. Learn how to: - Triage soil health and act to fast-track soil and plant health-Build healthy resilient soil systems-Develop a deeper understanding of microbial and mineral synergies-Read what weeds and diseases are communicating about soil and plant health-Create healthy, productive and profitable landscapes.Globally recognised soil advocate and agroecologist Nicole Masters delivers the solution to rewind the clock on this increasingly critical soil crisis in her first book, For the Love of Soil. She argues we can no longer treat soil like dirt. Instead, we must take a soil-first approach to regenerate landscapes, restore natural cycles, and bring vitality back to ecosystems. This book translates the often complex and technical know-how of soil into more digestible terms through case studies from regenerative farmers, growers, and ranchers in Australasia and North America. Along with sharing key soil health principles and restoration tools, For the Love of Soil provides land managers with an action plan to kickstart their soil resource's well-being, no matter the scale."For years many of us involved in regenerative agriculture have been touting the soil health - plant health - animal health - human health connection but no one has tied them all together like Nicole does in "For the love of Soil"! " Gabe Brown, Browns Ranch, Nourished by Nature. "William Gibson once said that "the future is here - it is just not evenly distributed." "Nicole modestly claims that the information in the book is not new thinking, but her resynthesis of the lessons she has learned and refined in collaboration with regenerative land-managers is new, and it is powerful." Says Abe Collins, cofounder of LandStream and founder of Collins Grazing. "She lucidly shares lessons learned from the deep-topsoil futures she and her farming and ranching partners manage for and achieve."The case studies, science and examples presented a compelling testament to the global, rapidly growing soil health movement. "These food producers are taking actions to imitate natural systems more closely," says Masters. "... they are rewarded with more efficient nutrient, carbon, and water cycles; improved plant and animal health, nutrient density, reduced stress, and ultimately, profitability."In spite of the challenges food producers face, Masters' book shows even incredibly degraded landscapes can be regenerated through mimicking natural systems and focusing on the soil first. "Our global agricultural production systems are frequently at war with ecosystem health and Mother Nature," notes Terry McCosker of Resource Consulting Services in Australia. "In this book, Nicole is declaring peace with nature and provides us with the science and guidelines to join the regenerative agriculture movement while increasing profits."Buy this book today to take your farm or ranch to the next level!

Soil

Author: Matthew Evans
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 1761062255
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 326

Book Description
'A love letter to Mother Earth and entertaining must-read that goes to the heart of our survival' Charles Massy. 'A love letter to Mother Earth and entertaining must-read that goes to the heart of our survival' Charles Massy, author of Call of the Reed Warbler. Perfect for fans of Wilding by Isabella Tree. What we do to the soil, we do to ourselves. Soil is the unlikely story of our most maligned resource as swashbuckling hero. A saga of bombs, ice ages and civilisations falling. Of ancient hunger, modern sicknesses and gastronomic delight. It features poison gas, climate collapse and a mind-blowing explanation of how rain is formed. For too long, we've not only neglected the land beneath us, we've squandered and debased it, by over-clearing, over-grazing and over-ploughing. But if we want our food to nourish us, and to ensure our planet's long-term health, we need to understand how soil works - how it's made, how it's lost, and how it can be repaired. In this ode to the thin veneer of Earth that gifts us life, commentator and farmer Matthew Evans shows us that what we do in our backyards, on our farms, and what we put on our dinner tables really matters, and can be a source of hope. Isn't it time we stopped treating the ground beneath our feet like dirt?

The Soil Will Save Us

Author: Kristin Ohlson
Publisher: Rodale
ISBN: 1609615549
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
Thousands of years of poor farming and ranching practices—and, especially, modern industrial agriculture—have led to the loss of up to 80 percent of carbon from the world’s soils. That carbon is now floating in the atmosphere, and even if we stopped using fossil fuels today, it would continue warming the planet. In The Soil Will Save Us, journalist and bestselling author Kristin Ohlson makes an elegantly argued, passionate case for "our great green hope"—a way in which we can not only heal the land but also turn atmospheric carbon into beneficial soil carbon—and potentially reverse global warming. As the granddaughter of farmers and the daughter of avid gardeners, Ohlson has long had an appreciation for the soil. A chance conversation with a local chef led her to the crossroads of science, farming, food, and environmentalism and the discovery of the only significant way to remove carbon dioxide from the air—an ecological approach that tends not only to plants and animals but also to the vast population of underground microorganisms that fix carbon in the soil. Ohlson introduces the visionaries—scientists, farmers, ranchers, and landscapers—who are figuring out in the lab and on the ground how to build healthy soil, which solves myriad problems: drought, erosion, air and water pollution, and food quality, as well as climate change. Her discoveries and vivid storytelling will revolutionize the way we think about our food, our landscapes, our plants, and our relationship to Earth.

Life in a Bucket of Soil

Author: Alvin Silverstein
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486320227
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 98

Book Description
Grade-schoolers learn how ants, snails, slugs, beetles, earthworms, spiders, and other subterranean creatures live, breed, interact, move about, defend themselves, and more.

Dirt to Soil

Author: Gabe Brown
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN: 1603587640
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Book Description
"A regenerative no-till pioneer."—NBC News "We need to reintegrate livestock and crops on our farms and ranches, and Gabe Brown shows us how to do it well."—Temple Grandin, author of Animals in Translation See Gabe Brown—author and farmer—in the Netflix documentary Kiss the Ground Gabe Brown didn’t set out to change the world when he first started working alongside his father-in-law on the family farm in North Dakota. But as a series of weather-related crop disasters put Brown and his wife, Shelly, in desperate financial straits, they started making bold changes to their farm. Brown—in an effort to simply survive—began experimenting with new practices he’d learned about from reading and talking with innovative researchers and ranchers. As he and his family struggled to keep the farm viable, they found themselves on an amazing journey into a new type of farming: regenerative agriculture. Brown dropped the use of most of the herbicides, insecticides, and synthetic fertilizers that are a standard part of conventional agriculture. He switched to no-till planting, started planting diverse cover crops mixes, and changed his grazing practices. In so doing Brown transformed a degraded farm ecosystem into one full of life—starting with the soil and working his way up, one plant and one animal at a time. In Dirt to Soil Gabe Brown tells the story of that amazing journey and offers a wealth of innovative solutions to restoring the soil by laying out and explaining his "five principles of soil health," which are: Limited Disturbance Armor Diversity Living Roots Integrated Animals The Brown’s Ranch model, developed over twenty years of experimentation and refinement, focuses on regenerating resources by continuously enhancing the living biology in the soil. Using regenerative agricultural principles, Brown’s Ranch has grown several inches of new topsoil in only twenty years! The 5,000-acre ranch profitably produces a wide variety of cash crops and cover crops as well as grass-finished beef and lamb, pastured laying hens, broilers, and pastured pork, all marketed directly to consumers. The key is how we think, Brown says. In the industrial agricultural model, all thoughts are focused on killing things. But that mindset was also killing diversity, soil, and profit, Brown realized. Now he channels his creative thinking toward how he can get more life on the land—more plants, animals, and beneficial insects. “The greatest roadblock to solving a problem,” Brown says, “is the human mind.”

Dirt

Author: David R. Montgomery
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520933168
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 299

Book Description
Dirt, soil, call it what you want—it's everywhere we go. It is the root of our existence, supporting our feet, our farms, our cities. This fascinating yet disquieting book finds, however, that we are running out of dirt, and it's no laughing matter. An engaging natural and cultural history of soil that sweeps from ancient civilizations to modern times, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations explores the compelling idea that we are—and have long been—using up Earth's soil. Once bare of protective vegetation and exposed to wind and rain, cultivated soils erode bit by bit, slowly enough to be ignored in a single lifetime but fast enough over centuries to limit the lifespan of civilizations. A rich mix of history, archaeology and geology, Dirt traces the role of soil use and abuse in the history of Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, China, European colonialism, Central America, and the American push westward. We see how soil has shaped us and we have shaped soil—as society after society has risen, prospered, and plowed through a natural endowment of fertile dirt. David R. Montgomery sees in the recent rise of organic and no-till farming the hope for a new agricultural revolution that might help us avoid the fate of previous civilizations.

Secrets of the Soil

Author: Peter Tompkins
Publisher: books catalog
ISBN: 9788129105639
Category : Agricultural ecology
Languages : en
Pages : 472

Book Description
This book,a fascinating companion to The Secret Life of Plants by the same authors, tells the story of the innovative, nontraditional, often surprising things that certain scientists, farmers, and mystics are doing to prevent the slow degradation of our planet. For example, using the techniques of Rudolf Steiner s biodynamic agriculture with its reliance on ethereal forces from the planets,Dan Carlson s growth stimulating Sonic Bloom, and rock dust fertilizer to revitalize depleted soils; or gardening with the help of truly amazing new technologies to reverse serious agricultural problems.The authors illustrate,in a truly enlightening and convincing manner, the pivotal role that the natural elements play in ourlives, and the necessity of cultivating and sustaining a relationship with one most basic of them the soil.

Grow Your Soil!

Author: Diane Miessler
Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC
ISBN: 1635862078
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 177

Book Description
Growing awareness of the importance of soil health means that microbes are on the minds of even the most casual gardeners. After all, anyone who has ever attempted to plant a thriving patch of flowers or vegetables knows that what you grow is only as good as the soil you grow it in. It is possible to create and maintain rich, dark, crumbly soil that’s teeming with life, using very few inputs and a no-till, no-fertilizer approach. Certified permaculture designer and lifelong gardener Diane Miessler presents the science of soil health in an engaging, entertaining voice geared for the backyard grower. She shares the techniques she has used — including cover crops, constant mulching, and a simple-but-supercharged recipe for compost tea — to transform her own landscape from a roadside dump for broken asphalt to a garden that stops traffic, starting from the ground up.

Teaming with Microbes

Author: Jeff Lowenfels
Publisher: Hachette+ORM
ISBN: 1604692545
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Book Description
“A breakthrough book. No comprehensive horticultural library should be without it.” —American Gardener When we use chemical fertilizers, we injure the microbial life that sustains plants, and then become increasingly dependent on an arsenal of toxic substances. Teaming with Microbes offers an alternative to this vicious circle, and details how to garden in a way that strengthens, rather than destroys, the soil food web. You’ll discover that healthy soil is teeming with life—not just earthworms and insects, but a staggering multitude of bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms. This must-have guide is for everyone, from those devoted to organic gardening techniques to weekend gardeners who simply want to grow healthy plants without resorting to chemicals.

Soil and Sacrament

Author: Fred Bahnson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451663307
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
Recounts the author's experiences founding a faith-based community garden in rural North Carolina, and emphasizes how growing one's own food can help readers reconnect with the land and divine faith.