A very well-presented video by Cat Buxton of Sharon, Vermont on the soil health principles ..read more

Many states, including Oregon, have passed legislation with incentives for agricultural and forestry practices that are presumed to constitute "natural climate solutions." Oregon's Natural and Working Lands Proposal rightly recognizes soil health as a priority for Oregon's working lands. Soil has long been understood as a more-or-less inert substance, a dance floor or stage for the more visible dramas of above-ground plants and crops, animals, roads, and buildings. Soil science became the categories, constituents, and properties of soil. But as some acute observers and thinkers a century ago ..read more

In working on soilhealth.app, I continue to wonder what sort of visualizations of energy flow and change over time might be useful to producers. Some of the usual concerns of applied soil and range science might be summarized as: classifications (such as ecological site description, mollisols, alfisols, etc.) categories (riparian, footslope) species (medusahead, sage grouse, nematode species) substances (water, carbon, plant-available nitrogen) the effects of practices such as tillage, herbicides, seeding, or grazing regimes. These concerns have resulted in many valuable practical insights a ..read more

Dave Chapman of the Real Organic movement interviewed me in February 2023. And the diagrams from the video are shown below. 1. Complex carbon cycle or circle of life 2. The simplified view of the carbon cycle that encourages the problem-solving, solutioneering, do-gooder mindset ..read more

Gail Fuller and his partner Lynette are putting on their 12th field school in April. Highly recommended! Issues: Most people (farmers included) don't know what a properly functioning water cycle looks like, let alone the true value it brings to the community/world.  The Ogallala Aquifer and the Kansas Reservoirs are on the verge of collapse, and the water in them is contaminated.   Farmers are about to be overrun with carbon credit programs but is there another way to incentivize change? Farmers are being incentivized to continue tilling, spraying and overgrazing.  Spe ..read more

Since the Soil Carbon Coalition began in 2008 I've sampled soils and measured soil carbon and soil carbon change at hundreds of locations across North America. After some research and experiments I figured measuring soil carbon was a simpler task than measuring water in the soil, which was the #1 issue on the land almost everywhere--too dry or too wet. Are carbon offset markets good or bad? We humans are committed and addicted to these kinds of good/bad judgments, and we apply them with shifting frequencies to wolves, knapweed, grazing, dietary fat, and of course people, including ourselves. W ..read more

Today Cat Buxton, leader and networker in Upper Valley of eastern Vermont (and board member of Soil Carbon Coalition) gave an inspiring presentation on what she's been up to and what she's learned: a big story of possibility. See also this booklet on Regeneration Corps: https://simplebooklet.com/regenerationcorpsin2022#page=1 ..read more

Here's a very significant and interesting talk by Matt Collins on place-based collaboratives. The topic is conflict prevention--wolves and bears vs livestock, strategies including guard dogs, fencing, fladry, carcass removal, range riders . .. but in many instances these strategies don't accord with existing social norms among ranchers. Highly relevant to other areas or challenges such as monitoring. He emphasizes the value of a bounded network, which allows important relationships to be fostered with some trust. And also the value of a "boundary-spanning network" (such as the Western Landowne ..read more

Deborah Frieze's remarkable TED talk on change. "The way we're trying to change the world is not going to work, and it's never going to work. I'd like to offer a radical theory of change, based on my experience working around the world with people trying to solve our most pressing problems. My belief turns most of our efforts to fix our world on their heads." "Here it is: you can't fundamentally change big systems. You can only abandon them and start over, or offer hospice to what's dying. By big systems, I mean education, healthcare, government, business, anything characterized by over-organi ..read more

This nonprofit organization, the Soil Carbon Coalition, was inspired in part by Allan Yeomans's 2005 book, Priority One: Together we can beat global warming, which Abe Collins and I had been reading. Yeomans suggested that increased soil carbon could make a difference for climate. In 2007 Joel Brown of the NRCS gave a talk in Albuquerque in which he said that according to the published literature, good management by land stewards did not result in soil carbon increase, and that it was too difficult to measure anyhow. With that, I resolved to begin measuring soil carbon change on ranches and fa ..read more