New Let’s Remineralize! website brings remineralization to the classroom
Our world needs future leaders able to tackle complex environmental challenges. Let’s Remineralize! is a K-12 science education initiative that aims to engage and inspire junior scientists worldwide to explore remineralization, and we have just launched its new website! Student and teacher John Mussington examining eggplant fruits to determine growth differences between plants grown in soil mixed with Monserrat volcanic ash vs the control. Remineralization – the process by which finely ground rock dust and sea-based minerals are added to depleted soils – is an ...
The Future Forest Company on OpenAir CDR: Natural approaches to CO2 removal
The Future Forest Company project in Brisbane Mains, Scotland The Future Forest Company featured on OpenAir CDR When it comes to national and international discussions of the climate crisis, so much of the focus has been on decarbonization methods: What can countries and corporations do to reduce track and reduce their carbon footprint? Experts agree that this is a necessary step in reducing future warming – and the inevitable consequences that come with a 2°C temperature increase – but this approach is inherently limited, circumventing the very real problems ...
Rock Dust as a Sustainable Amendment in Northwestern European Agriculture
Glacial deposit in Greenland Introduction The EU is the world’s leading exporter of agri-food, supplying 20% of world food and drink (Matthews, 2021; EEA, 2020). In 2020, more than 40% of Europe’s acreage was used for agriculture. 61% of this agricultural area was operated by high to medium intensity farms in terms of fertilizer and pesticide cost. The considerable growth in crop and livestock has caused environmental impacts that call for sustainable solutions. Northwestern Europe There are several initiatives currently focused on sustainable agricultural ...
Rock Dust to the Rescue for Brazil During Europe’s Geopolitical Crisis
A soy plantation in western Bahia, Brazil. Image by Fernanda Ligabue/Greenpeace. As the invasion of Ukraine by Russia threatens to cut off fertilizer shipments, forcing Brazil to search for new fertilizer suppliers, further expansion of rock dust application in the South American country offers a solution, according to Remineralize the Earth executive director Joanna Campe. Joanna Campe speaking at the II Congresso Rochagem in Brazil. “Rock dust is the cornerstone of a sustainable and profitable future,” Campe pointed out in response to the tragic circumsta...
Study Captures Data to Turn Midwestern Farms into Carbon Sinks
(Left to right) Prof. Daniel Maxbauer, Jaren Yambing, and Ella Milliken Carleton College geologists join a growing wave of research into the carbon-trapping power of pulverized rock in America's agricultural fields
No one could have predicted the severe heatwave that would swelter Ella Milliken and Jaren Yambing's first week of baseline field testing in June 2021—except maybe climate scientists. It was the longest heatwave to occur so early in a Minnesotan summer. Under a blazing June sun, the Carleton College research assistants walked among rows of knee-high corn ...
RTE’s Early Publications Freely Available on Internet Archive – Explore the history of the movement!
In 1986, Joanna Campe began to publish a newsletter originally titled Soil Remineralization, A Network Newsletter. The publication reached a global community of soil remineralization advocates, united by a common mission to return the Earth to its Eden-like conditions. What began as a newsletter later evolved into a magazine – Remineralize the Earth – with 80 pages per issue and a readership of about 2,500. Today, 20 of RTE’s early publications, newsletters and magazines, are preserved as high-resolution scans freely accessible on the Internet Archive. Since the ...
REMINERA: How A Stonemeal Startup Arose During A Time Of Pandemic
It was the beginning of the pandemic. My colleague, Nayara Mesquita, and I had recently defended our geosciences masters theses at the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), and I was still figuring out my ‘next steps’ in life. Always the multitasker, Nayara was already doing an MBA on leadership and sustainability, along with social entrepreneurship and environmental activism. She warmly invited me to join her and start studying stonemeal, food security and carbon sequestration. We had heard about stonemeal just once or twice at university, and so it was still a ...
Powering Food Sovereignty with Microbes
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Key takeaways from the 2021 International Nature Farming Convergence
What does a jungle that produces vegetables with rock dust and a weed-laden garden have in common? They both host a vast world of microbes that can save humanity from itself. With the secret to food sovereignty lying right underneath our feet, agriculturalists need to get out of the clouds of technology and back into the dirt to unearth its potential. In the past 20 years, the agricultural industry has created a rich and costly market of garden tech meant to fix any problem encountered in the field. ...
Book Review: A World Without Soil
A review of: A World Without Soil: The past, present, and precarious future of the earth beneath our feet
by Jo Handelsman, 2021, Yale University Press
This book is a good, clearly written, popular introduction to how quickly we are losing the topsoil that feeds us, and how politicians treat soil like dirt. The author, a plant pathologist, is Director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at University of Wisconsin–Madison, and was Associate Director for Science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to President Obama.
She focuses ...
IV Congresso Brasileiro de Rochagem: Highlights from the Presentations in Portuguese
(Clockwise from top right) Dr. Magda Bergmann, Prof. Suzi Huff Theodoro, and Dr. Antonio N. Zamunér Filho. “I was converted,” confessed agronomist Antônio Bizão. Listening to Bizão’s skepticism of stonemeal was the highlight of the IV Congresso Brasileiro de Rochagem (which translates to “IV Brazilian Congress of Stonemeal”). Bizão talked of his intention, years ago, to denounce professionals who defended the use of silicate rocks for agriculture, before conducting experiments himself and obtaining replicable positive results. We were listening to a ...
