216 results for author: Joanna Campe

Remineralizing a Tree Farm – Growing Nuts for the Revolution!

Our Question What does it mean to have an environmental footprint that regenerates the earth's ecosystems instead of degrading them?  How can human beings once again live in concert with the earth, as fully participating members of the earth's diverse biota, enjoying rich lives in community with other beings? With the forest as our teacher, we are setting out to discover what this might mean in our post-colonial age.  Using the principles of perennial agroforestry and regenerative agriculture, we are recreating a diverse ecological habitat; a place where we can live and grow food, as well as enhance the fertility of the soil, recharge the ...

Da horta à floresta – From garden to forest

A farm called Sitio Semente near Brasilia is taking regenerative agriculture to a whole new level. One of the first steps of returning nutrients back into the soil was through the application of rock dust. In this system, only one initial application of rock dust is required, with no external inputs required thereafter. RTE is advocating for this agroforestry model in semi-tropical and tropical regions worldwide. This model can be easily adapted to a region’s culture and habitat with its great potential for growing a diversity of crops, from fruits and vegetables to nuts, coffee, cacao, and other tree-based crops.

Sitio Semente– From Garden to Forest

Adapting agriculture to the local environment by mimicking natural processes is common to traditional agriculture communities around the world, yet it has only recently re-emerged in the Americas. After decades of land degradation and resource misuse, sustainable food systems are gaining popularity. Increasingly, a great emphasis is being placed on creating systems and practices that work in tandem with nature. One well-known practice is the ‘Three Sisters’ adopted from the Native Americans, in which corn, bean and squash are planted together. The three crops provide nutrients to one another, support each other structurally, retain moisture, and ...

Fertilização da Terra pela Terra | Earth Fertilizing Itself

Take a look at this exciting new video (with subtitles in English!) that has been released about the trajectory of remineralization/Rochagem in Brazil. The narration of Othon Leonardos in the beginning captures beautiful footage of the geological processes that show how rock minerals have fertilized soils since antiquity. Suzi Huff Theodoro shows how forests recycle nutrients and the importance of organic matter, particularly in the Amazon. She takes us on a tour to Sitio Semente, an agroforestry farm just outside of Brasilia in the midst of degraded lands, a virtual paradise producing fruits, vegetables, cacao and coffee. The project only ...

Geotherapy on a Fast Track?

This is adapted from the blog of Benoit Lambert. Click here for the original version in French and English. According to Prof. Rattan Lal of the Carbon Management and Sequestration Center at Ohio State University, the world’s cultivated soils have lost 50-70% of their original carbon stock, much of which has oxidized upon exposure to air, to become CO2. Yet the issues of land use, agriculture and forestry remain little discussed by international bodies on climate issues. Nonetheless science has been telling us for a while there is no coming out of the climate-water-food crises, without an organic U-turn of the anthropocene. " Anthropocene – ...

The Ethics of Climate Change: Geoengineering and Geotherapy

Geoengineering strategies, from the extreme to the sustainable. Photo by University of Leeds Climate change is an unprecedented human-made disaster that raises unprecedented questions about what we humans should do. The status quo is not a viable option, but there are several different ways we could approach the problem of climate change. One style of approach, known as geotherapy, identifies the root cause of the problem as a failure to understand the balances that naturally keep the climate stable, or that kept it stable before the industrial revolution. Industry interrupted the Earth’s processes that already existed and already worked to maintain ...

Othon Leonardos Receives Prestigious Brazilian Award

Othon Leonardos RTE would like to congratulate Professor Othon Henry Leonardos, for his recognition as a researcher and pioneer of remineralization in Brazil. Through Othon’s pioneering research and projects with Suzi Huff Theodoro in the Quilombola communities and his work with indigenous communities, he has been dedicated to sustainability for many decades. Professor Suzi Huff Theodoro and Embrapa lead researcher Eder De Souza Martins who also continue to lead remineralization research and projects in Brazil, were his students. For myself, it has been a wonderfully personable experience to interview Othon through the years for RTE, from ...

RTE Makes Advances at Cuba Agroecology Conference

In November of 2015, Remineralize the Earth (RTE) was invited to the 5th International Conference of Agroecology and Cooperatives, November 22-27, 2015, by Greg Watson who led the Cuban-U.S. Agroecology Network (CUSAN) delegation of the Schumacher Center for New Economics. CUSAN was launched in 2014 as an initiative for exchanging and promoting agroecology-related knowledge. While primarily focused on the information exchange between the United States and Cuba, it welcomes partners from other international communities as well.[1] The network is being established at a turning point in Cuban and U.S. history, following President Barack Obama’s ...

Bill Holmberg’s profound impact on those who knew him (1928 – 2016)

Bill Holmberg with intern Laura Brenner Kimes at an ACORE event   We were incredibly privileged to have Bill Holmberg on our board of directors from the very beginning in 1995 until his passing on September 8, 2016. Bill was a major advocate and pioneer for renewable energy in Washington, D.C. In honor of Bill’s extraordinary career and contribution from war hero to environmental advocate, we would like to share reflections from those who knew and worked with him. From former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle: I have known Bill Holmberg ever since I came to Washington as a freshman Congressman more than 20 years ago. I know Bill not as ...

Remembering Bill Holmberg – RTE Board Director (1995-2016)

Photo portrait of Bill Holmberg.   I have been reflecting this Thanksgiving on the opportunity to express my profound gratitude for the contribution of our dear friend Bill Holmberg as a board director of Remineralize the Earth. He supported this mission and this work long before we became a nonprofit organization, already beginning in the 1980s. Bill passed away on September 8 at the venerable age of 88. As I prepared for our next board meeting I was nevertheless stunned and shocked to know that I would not hear his inspiring voice again on the telephone. I would not be visiting him in Washington, DC for any meetings or conferences ...