SOURCE: UK RELOADED
Intro by Steve Cook
This fascinating snippet was posted by Jo Silvester. Jo has a talent for finding truly thought-provoking and creative-thinking ideas and here is such a one, which we think is well worth sharing with you.
As the new Renaissance gathers momentum and we emerge from the biochemical barbarism of the globalist Dark Age, the world is going to turn to bright progressive people with creative ideas and the ability to expand thought beyond the strictures imposed by the slavers and decriers of Man.
Can Regenerative Farming Save the World?
Holistic management is one form of regenerative agriculture, which involves embracing the relationships between large herds of wild herbivores and grasslands, developing strategies to manage herds of domestic livestock to mimic wild herds.
“Holistic Management is successful because it is cost-effective, highly scalable and nature-based,” the Savory Institute explains.
Critics have brought up the fact that livestock can release excessive levels of methane into the environment, but this is only an issue with livestock raised in crowded conditions on concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), which maintain manure lagoons and convert forests and grasslands into corn and soy monocultures used for animal feed.
“It is reasonable to conclude that an intact ecosystem effectively balances ruminant methane production and breakdown,” according to the Savory Institute, which continues:
“Healthy, well-aerated soils — a characteristic quality of grasslands under Holistic Planned Grazing — harbor bacteria called methanotrophs, which break down methane. Soil-based decomposition of methane may be equal to or greater than ruminant methane production, depending on animal density, soil type and soil health. Thus, the benefits of eco-restoration through Holistic Management far outweigh methane emissions resulting from livestock.”
It’s a boon for food security as well, because it allows landowners to increase profits and yields without putting the long-term viability of the land at risk. The use of holistic management for the preparation of agricultural crop fields can increase yields more than four-fold, without the need for additional inputs, according to the Savory Institute.
While it may seem simplistic, the movement of herds of herbivores has a complex and beneficial role in increasing land productivity by up to 400%, which it accomplishes via:
Hooves that break up soil and trample plants, supporting seed germination and enhancing water filtration
Grazing, which stimulates grass growth
Dung and urine, which act as natural fertilizers to the soil
Desertification, which occurs when vast grasslands are plowed up, exposing the soil and causing water runoff and evaporation, is a growing problem too. According to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, nearly 2 million acres of federally protected grasslands and wetlands in North Dakota alone were taken out of the conservation program between 2007 and 2015.
Holistic management and planned grazing can help here as well, as it increases organic matter in the soil, helping it to hold water. An increase in water holding capacity of 40% was demonstrated by one study on land using holistic planned grazing.20 From increasing food security and mitigating drought to improving poverty by turning impoverished regions into productive ones, regenerative agriculture can, indeed, save the world. As Andersson put it:
“If we want our kids to have a safe place to live in, what do we need to do to make that happen? With our ingenuity and our creativity, there are so many places where we can enable and support and help life on this planet.
So we can obviously make this place greener and more diverse than it has ever been before. And to me that’s just step one. Regenerative agriculture is the natural step for mankind to take, now. That is the leap in progress, and there’s basically no other way.”
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RECOMMENDED: The Savory Institute
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