74 results for tag: remineralization

Powering Food Sovereignty with Microbes: The Nature Farming Convergence

. 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. Too many aphids? Get a pesticide drone. Yield not high enough? Use genetic ...

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 stonemeal Saul of Tarsus and the moment allowed me a glimpse of a community of farmers ...

IV Congresso Brasileiro de Rochagem: Highlights from the Presentations in English

Since September 2009 Brazil has held a conference on rochagem (rock dust) every 3 years. The Brazilian Conference on Rochagem highlights Brazil’s role as a leader in scientific research and policy creation around the use of rock dust as a sustainable fertilizer. The Congress creates a forum for researchers, the general public and private interests to discuss the scientific advances, effective policies and future rock dust potential. Past conferences have steadily advanced the importance of rock dust as a fertilizer to enhance food security and promote environmental health in Brazil. Despite pandemic difficulties, the IV Congresso Brasileiro de ...

Tomatoes, Orchards, and Forests: Studying Reforestation and Remineralization in China

Carbon reduction in China For China, carbon-reduction efforts remain rooted in reforestation and afforestation efforts, as the country keeps planting trees through to 2025.[4] In addition to these efforts, researchers in the People’s Republic have turned their attention increasingly towards enhanced weathering and rock dust application, studying reforestation and remineralization. China has decades of experience with major tree planting projects, for example, in 1978 initiating the so-called “Great Green Wall” project (official name: the Three-North Shelter Forest Program), whose goal is to plant 2,800 miles of tree-based wind breaking forest ...

Make Climate Goals Attainable: Remineralize croplands

A truck spreading rock dust on a field. Photo by Ilsa Kantola, University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana Paris Climate Agreement metrics are just out of reach As of July 2021, the top 10 fossil carbon emitting nations are failing to meet their 2030 green-house gas (GHG) reduction goals, as pledged under the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement defines a hard warming limit to 2°C, but current status quo climate initiatives – even if met – will lead to a global warming of 2.6 - 3.1°C. Heating of this magnitude could set forth a cascade of irreversible effects. The Earth, and the communities it supports, are in crisis.  To make climate goals ...

The Threat of Thawing Permafrost: Further impetus to remineralize the Earth

Photo by Sergey Dolya, sergeydolya.livejournal.com A subterranean threat  A new study, published by a team of geologists at the University of Bonn, has presented scientists with a new worry: thawing permafrost. In the past year, the Taymyr Peninsula in Northern Siberia recorded its hottest summer to date. From May 2020 to March 2021, arctic temperatures rose a whopping 6°C above the typical 1967-2000 baseline. While this rising temperature alone is cause for concern, the deeper issue lies below the Earth’s surface. The Taymyr Peninsula is coated with an impermeable layer of permafrost about 700m thick – approximately the length of six ...

Peter Jackson on Natural Farming, Ecological Resilience, and the Magic of Minerals and Microbes

Over a span of nearly two decades, self-taught natural farmer Peter Jackson has transformed a plot of rural Washington land into a thriving, bountiful forest garden.  When his family first arrived on the land nearly twenty years ago, it contained only a few food-bearing plants: old heirloom apple trees, sickly pear trees, and Chinese plum trees with cherry-sized fruits. Today, the property is home to approximately three hundred fruit and nut trees, as well as assorted berry bushes, and Jackson isn’t finished yet. “I’m trying to get up to about 500 trees on the four and a half acres,” he says. In addition to his farming work, Jackson is the ...

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 allows for maximum production of forage crops for cattle — native prairie ...

Remineralization Slam Dunk: NYC Dirtball Court Scores One for the Earth

Would you like to combine pickup basketball with offsetting carbon emissions? On Governors Island in New York City, you can! In June 2021, residents of the area gathered on the island for the grand opening of New York City’s first Dirtball court.  Dirtball is an interactive environmental art exhibit —a basketball court incorporating remineralizing concrete, a garden, and a birdhouse— designed and executed by Kosmologym, an art and game design collective with the goal of challenging players to build relationships to ecological systems.  “There’s all these layers of trying to get those playing Dirtball to recognize the different natural ...

Rock Dust Key to Club Root Cure, May Unlock 20 million + Acres For Remineralization

This is an update to our previous article: Remineralize the Earth | Plant Nutrition Technologies, Inc: Commercializing Remineralization while Protecting Waterways. Line break Remineralization truly is the gift that keeps on giving. We’ve known for decades that rock dust-based fertilizers are key to regenerative agriculture: in addition to eliminating the ills of artificial fertilizers, they foster healthy soils, grow nutrient-dense foods, and sequester carbon. But new research has discovered another application for rock dust that could protect farmlands and save the canola industry billions of dollars. Plant Nutrition Technologies, Inc. (PNTI) ...