Prairie Grass Systems: Texan’s Invention Remineralizes Soil While Replenishing Native Flora

Imagine an irrigation system that does not rely on clear water to run through its small tubing orifices, but rather can provide a nutritious ‘dirty’ water, filled with fine rock dust and other particulates that can optimally feed soil microbes. That will be just one of many benefits with David Munson’s Prairie Grass Systems.  “We take a water slurry mix and inject it under the plants to provide a little bit of water to the plants, but also food for the soil organisms to attack the rock dust and feed the plants,” he says about his patented invention that ...

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Geology Matters: Ontario farmer uses mining background to identify better soils

John Slack at Spanish River Carbonatite Complex
John Slack at Spanish River Carbonatite Complex Educated at the Haileybury School of Mines, John Slack is a Canadian mining technologist-turned-farmer who uses his thorough understanding of geology to promote remineralization and sustainable soil fertility. “Promoting the use of rock dust — and the throwing away of your fertilizer bag — has been a really tough row to hoe, but we’re now going to see major breakthroughs, particularly as we move to a ‘greener’ environment, where people are thinking about this more,” he said. “The fact of the matter is it ...

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Regrounding Regenerative Agriculture

Crops in a city
Photo: Fowler Clark Epstein Urban Farm, Regenerative Design Group 2018 For decades, organic farming was considered the pinnacle of environmentally friendly agriculture. Now, another movement is gaining traction, one which goes a step beyond simply eliminating certain harmful chemicals or improving the living conditions of livestock. Regenerative agriculture sharply diverges from conventional agricultural methods, incorporating practices such as low or no-till planting, rotating crops, planting cover crops, livestock grazing, and applying compost and manure. By aiming to ...

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Prof. David Manning on Rock Dust: Quarries, Breweries and Beyond

Soils are a critically important natural resource, providing us with 90% of our food, lumber for construction, and natural fibers like cotton. Through plant and microbial activity, soils also play an essential role in shaping Earth’s atmosphere. The amount of carbon cycled through the plant-soil interface every seven years is equivalent to all the carbon in the atmosphere. Soils do all of this while only covering about a quarter of Earth’s surface. Sustainable soil management is therefore essential to mitigating climate change while preserving soil as a resource for ...

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New UC Davis Center Paves the Way for Rock Dust Research

Tractor applying rock dust to a field
If the world were to judge soil remineralization based on what could happen, rock dust amendments might already be standard procedure for the world’s farmers. The potential to use rock dust as a carbon storage tactic for climate change mitigation is well known in the scientific community, in addition to its ability to improve agricultural yields and soil health. Benefits like these are enough to make any policymaker or farmer at least consider the use of soil amendment programs, but expectations alone are not adequate to persuade any party to go “all in.” Stakehol...

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Grow Your Own Nutrition: Jon Frank on Minerals, Biochar, and Ramial Chips

This article is based on an interview of Jon Frank conducted by Joanna Campe. Nutrient dense foods are an essential component to a healthy diet, yet they can be difficult to come by. To address this issue, Jon Frank founded Grow Your Own Nutrition, a program focused on consulting people on growing their own nutrient dense foods wherever they are. This user-friendly program can be applied to any soil type. In an interview with Joanna Campe, Frank explained the methods he used to create this program, as well as the importance of soil fertility.   Dr. Reams and ...

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Get Real: David Munson, Jr. Wants Realistic Solutions to Climate Change

David Munson standing in a cornfield.
David Munson, a Dallas-based philanthropist, has formed the Get Real Alliance to pursue “realistic solutions” to climate change and other global issues. Rock dust and biochar play a central role. He lays out the ideas behind this alliance in his upcoming book, “Get Real: A Positive Solution to Climate Change.” In particular, he advocates for an increased focus on carbon sequestration in addition to carbon emissions, for a couple of reasons. First, he judges emission reduction to be difficult to achieve, and thus likely insufficient. Second, reducing carbon ...

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Rock Powder with Biochar: Synergies & Co-Benefits

Rock powder and Biochar are two of the most powerful tools for reversing climate change, especially when used together! Tom Goreau explains the synergies and co-benefits. (Originally published by Global Carbon Alliance.) Biochar and rock powders can provide major, cost-effective, atmospheric CO2 sinks to reverse climate change through nature-based solutions, or planetary BioGeoTherapy. These methods produce major synergies and co-benefits when practiced together, but the benefits of each method have been measured in isolation, without positive feedback from combinati...

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High Times at Equinox Farm: Ted Dobson talks cannabis, coronavirus and Ancient Greeks

BEN GARVER — THE BERKSHIRE EAGLE Ted Dobson, owner of Equinox Farm in Sheffield, is working with Theory Wellness to grow cannabis outdoors in Sheffield, Wednesday, October 9, 2019. Remineralizing agricultural soil is as old as agriculture itself, says Ted Dobson, general manager and farmer-in-chief at Equinox Farm in the Berkshires in Sheffield, Massachusetts. “We all know that soils are particularly made up of rock minerals. Eventually, some of those particles are no longer being regenerated. That’s what we’re really talking about with rock dust — it’s ...

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Alex Podolinsky (1925-2019) Was an Australian Biodynamic Farming Giant

In 1988 I had the good fortune, along with my husband Christian, to assist Christopher Bird and Peter Tompkins on their upcoming book Secrets of the Soil, after their previous worldwide bestseller The Secret Life of Plants. I assisted on the chapters, “The Dust of Life” and “Life and Death in the Forest,” which focused on remineralization. During that year, Christopher Bird travelled to Australia to join Alex Podolinsky on his yearly tour of biodynamic farms, which covered over a million and a quarter acres of land. Christopher would send the hand-written ...

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