Growing a Revolution, page 1
GROWING
A REVOLUTION
Bringing Our Soil Back to Life
DAVID R. MONTGOMERY
W. W. Norton & Company
Independent Publishers Since 1923
New York • London
For the innovative farmers restoring life
to their land so the future can eat.
Upon this handful of soil our survival depends. Husband it and it will grow our food, our fuel, and our shelter and surround us with beauty. Abuse it and the soil will collapse and die, taking humanity with it.
—Vedas, Sanskrit Scripture, 1500 B.C.
CONTENTS
Introduction
1 Fertile Ruins
2 Myths of Modern Agriculture
3 Roots of the Underground Economy
4 The Oldest Problem
5 Ditching the Plow
6 Green Manure
7 Developing Solutions
8 The Organic Dilemma
9 Carbon Cowboys
10 Invisible Herds
11 Farming Carbon
12 Closing the Loop
13 The Fifth Revolution
Acknowledgments
Notes
Sources
Index
INTRODUCTION
There’s a revolution brewing—a soil health revolution. Since the dawn of agriculture, society after society faded into memory after degrading their soil. But we need not repeat this history on a global scale. For while the problem of soil degradation remains the least recognized of the pressing crises humanity faces, it is also one of the most solvable. Are you ready for an optimistic book about the environment?
A growing movement of innovative farmers has laid the foundation for this revolution. They are upending conventional ideas and changing practices in ways that leave the soil better off rather than worse off under intensive cultivation. I admit I was skeptical when I first started to look into all this. But what I found convinced me of the transformative potential of adopting a simple set of agricultural practices that together define a new philosophy of farming that merges ancient wisdom and modern science.
This book is the story of my journey to meet these farmers and learn how they build fertile soil as an integral part of how they farm. But there’s more to this new breed of regenerative farmer. The secret to their success is that they are also maintaining or increasing their yields and increasing their profits. The extra money in their pockets comes from spending less on fossil fuels and agrochemicals. They replace these costly inputs with practices that cultivate diverse communities of soil life that efficiently deliver nutrients, minerals, and other compounds that crops need to grow while fending off pests and pathogens.
The principles underlying the practices of the entrepreneurial and practical farmers leading this revolution can work on farms big, small, high-tech, low-tech, conventional, and organic. And their focus on soil health comes with a silver lining. For changing the way we think about—and treat—soil offers simple, cost-effective ways to help feed the world, cool the planet, and bring life back to the land.
As a geologist I never thought I’d tour the world talking to farmers, let alone start such an expedition in a natural history museum. . . .
I circled behind the elephant, squinted into the overhead lights, and stuck a knife deep into the tasty blue cheese beside the creature’s feet. Anne, my wife, was stalking a glass of wine on the far side of the buffet. We were still recovering from our cross-country flight, relaxing in a rotunda of the National Museum of Natural History. I was blissfully unaware that a fertilizer industry lobbyist, of all people, was about to inspire me to write another book—something I’d just sworn to think long and hard about before tackling again.
It was 2008, and I’d received an invitation to speak at a National Research Council–hosted symposium being held in conjunction with Dig It! The Secrets of Soil, a new Smithsonian exhibit. The purpose of the symposium was to raise awareness around the issue of soil degradation, a topic close to my geological heart. Plus, I’d been asked to advise them on the exhibit. Naturally, I was curious to see how it turned out.
The most striking display that night was a set of wall-mounted slabs of excavated soils mounted in sturdy wooden frames that covered the walls from floor to ceiling. Fifty side-by-side panels, one from each state in the country, formed a massive patchwork quilt. Arranged in alphabetical order, they cast an earth-toned rainbow—tan from Arizona, mocha from Colorado, black from the Dakotas, and red from Hawaii.
Arranged this way, it was difficult to see a pattern in the colors. I couldn’t make geographical sense of it, until I got to the three-panel block of deep-black soil from Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa. Then I rearranged the display in my mind’s eye as a map of the United States and it all made geographic sense—the deep black of the plains separating the tan of the Western desert from the rusty red of the Southeast. As much as this colorful wall entranced me, I wondered how many of the other attendees, absorbed in watching videos, pushing buttons, and navigating kid-friendly displays, had noticed the regional character of American soil, obscured as it was by alphabetical arrangement.
Back in the rotunda with the other guests, we continued to enjoy the generous spread of wine and hors d’oeuvres courtesy of the event’s sponsor, the Fertilizer Institute. Their speaker began, expounding on the pressing need to use chemical fertilizers. Organic farming could not possibly feed the world, he intoned. The deluded advocates of organic practices offer a recipe for mass starvation. Fertilizers had saved the world by doubling crop yields in the twentieth century. Now they would save us again. As I looked across the room beneath the elephant’s belly, the institute’s prominently displayed NOURISH, REPLENISH, GROW slogan seemed less innocuous than it had fifteen minutes before.
I had recently become immersed in this very topic, reading papers and studies that reported cases of organic farming matching conventional crop yields. I knew that fertilizers could boost crop yields on degraded, nutrient-poor soils, but they don’t help that much on already fertile land. I had started to suspect that the oft-cited conclusion that conventional farms outproduced organic ones depended on the state of the land, as well as the specific practices of those who farmed it. Some studies found that organic practices were as productive as conventional ones, and more profitable because they didn’t use expensive chemical inputs—like fertilizers. This research had left me wondering if organic food is generally more expensive because it costs more to grow, or because people are willing to pay more for it. And if the latter were true, then shouldn’t an increase in supply relative to demand bring the price down, making it a more viable option for a much larger population if more farmers were to go organic?
Not surprisingly, such ideas were not highlighted in the evening’s program. And as the spiel from the sponsor’s representative came to a close, I couldn’t stop thinking about the gulf between what I’d just heard and what I’d been reading.
The next day at the National Academy of Sciences, a series of experts also painted a different picture, stressing the importance of using organic matter to maintain soil fertility. World-renowned scientists talked about how soil conservation and soil health are vital for feeding a growing population over the long run, especially after we burn through the cheap, abundant fossil fuels that have enabled reliance on industrially produced fertilizers.
Ohio State University soil scientist Rattan Lal presented an idea that particularly intrigued me: put carbon back into the ground to both remove it from the atmosphere and to improve soil fertility. A soft-spoken gentleman, he didn’t look particularly revolutionary in his dark suit and tie as he stressed the urgency of sustaining soil quality on a warming planet. But his message was as radical as his manner professorial. He argued that conventional farming practices degraded carbon-rich soil organic matter, not only reducing fertility but contributing to global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Putting more carbon back into the ground through increasing the amount of organic matter in agricultural soils would both enhance soil fertility, and thus food production, and could go a long way toward offsetting CO2 emissions.
Of course, there was a catch. Doing so would require wholesale changes to our agricultural practices. I began to wonder whether the organic-versus-conventional distinction was too simplistic. Maybe mineral fertilizers are like many other tools in that it’s the way they are used that governs whether they enhance or degrade the soil. Could building soil health depend more on adopting practices that protect the soil from erosion and build up soil organic matter than on forgoing agrochemicals? As I thought about how to do this on a global scale, I had no idea that I’d already begun following in Lal’s footsteps and would soon embark on a journey that would take me to farms around the world. By the end, I’d find cause for optimism. For it turns out that we can change the practice of agriculture in ways that leave soil better off instead of degrading it. And doing so would help us overcome the daunting challenges of feeding the world and cooling the planet.
GROWING A REVOLUTION
1
FERTILE RUINS
Civilization itself rests upon the soil.
—Thomas Jefferson
What if I told you there was a relatively simple, cost-effective way to help feed the world, reduce pollution, pull carbon from the atmosphere, protect biodiversity, and make farmers more money? If this was true, you might assume that governments around the world would race to embrace it. Well there is, and they aren’t. Not yet anyway.
&nbs p; Why not? Because the solution challenges a century of conventional wisdom and powerful commercial interests, and requires a profound shift in how we think about and treat the least glamorous resource of all—the soil beneath our feet.
But before we get to the good news, let’s look at where we are and how we got here. It’s not a rosy picture. We have already degraded at least a third of the world’s agricultural land. A third. And though we rarely hear about it, degradation of farmland presents as great a threat to civilization as global conflict, our exploding population, climate change, and dwindling supplies of fresh water.
In 2015, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization released a report by a consortium of scientists from around the world that estimated soil degradation erodes almost half a percent of our global crop production capacity each year. By any accounting, such a trend can’t go on for long without serious consequences. Indeed, we are already seeing foreign interests buy up farmland in developing nations. Not to grow food for the local populace, but for export back home. With food shortages already fueling violence in drought- and conflict-plagued regions like Nigeria, Somalia, and Syria, such arrangements will not favor global stability.
Among the classical elements of earth (soil), air (climate), fire (energy), and water, it is the first that consistently gets overlooked or short-changed in public discourse and policy. Yet we might consider fertile soil as the ultimate strategic resource. For there is no substitute as there is for oil, and it cannot be distilled, as fresh water can be from seawater, nor cleaned by filters as air can. And because we do not fully recognize the value of what’s beneath our feet, we risk repeating ancient mistakes on a global scale.
From the Roman Empire to the Maya and Polynesia’s Easter Island, one great civilization after another sank into poverty and eventual demise after destroying their topsoil. But the effect of soil degradation on human societies is not simply a historical footnote. We too are facing challenges these once-thriving societies faced, only now simultaneously from North Carolina to Costa Rica, India, and Africa. And if we don’t implement solutions soon, we’ll find ourselves in the same dire circumstances globally as did our regional predecessors. For with even less fertile soil, how will we feed several billion more people in the future?
Unlike other environmental problems such as dwindling water supplies and loss of forests, the degradation of soil fertility has gone relatively unnoticed. It happens so slowly that it rarely becomes the crisis du jour. Therein lies the problem. The once-Edenic, now-impoverished places that spawned Western civilization illustrate one of history’s most underappreciated lessons: societies that don’t take care of their soil do not last. We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the past now that there’s nowhere left to go. We’ve already farmed, developed, or degraded and abandoned pretty much all the land well suited for agriculture over the long run.
Today, however, feeding the world is more of an economic and distribution (and therefore political) problem than an agronomic one. Even with the loss of a substantial amount of fertile land, we currently harvest enough food to feed everyone, in principle if not in practice. But we can’t count on being able to meet the demand for long if fertile cropland continues to shrink while the global population continues to rise.
Of course, there are other dimensions to the problem of global hunger. Aside from population growth, there are issues of land tenure and how much of our harvests goes to feed livestock and cars (biofuels). But a far-too-neglected factor in thinking about how to feed the world of tomorrow is the potential to restore land to agricultural productivity. Could we really restore fertility to degraded farmland? If so, how much—and how fast?
A growing movement of farmers around the world is starting to turn ancient patterns around, restoring life and health to their land. Yet we don’t hear much about this movement. With no products to sell, they tell a different story than that of conventional interests. This movement is gaining momentum because farmers who adopt its practices save time and money, and many increase harvests. These practices can work on large and small farms across the technological spectrum, from enormous farms in the Dakotas to small subsistence farms in Africa. And, if implemented well and globally, they could solve one of civilization’s oldest problems.
THE PROBLEM OF THE PLOW
I confess I never thought I’d write an optimistic book about the environment. For many years I was a dark green ecopessimist convinced humanity was rushing headlong into self-inflicted disaster. While I still harbor some such fears, I’ve become far more positive about our long-term prospects. Over the past few years, I’ve traveled extensively, meeting visionary farmers who are restoring life and fertility to their land. These experiences convinced me that it’s possible not only to restore soil on a global scale, but to do so remarkably fast.
At least I hope it is, since we face the confluence of the end of cheap oil, continued population growth, and a changing climate over the coming century. How farming will adapt remains uncertain, as political, economic, and environmental interests push competing visions, policies, and agendas. No matter how all this plays out, it will shape the fate of nations and define the world we leave for generations to come.
My perspective on this issue started to change a decade ago, after I did something some colleagues might consider unpardonable—I wrote a book about soil and titled it Dirt. You see, soil scientists consider it blasphemous to call soil dirt. This is because there are very important differences between soil and dirt. For one, soil is full of life, dirt is not. So why would a geologist like me write an irreverently titled book about the importance of what covers up rocks? While my primary focus of study is how landscapes are shaped by natural processes and changed by people, over the course of examining the evolution of landscapes around the world, I came to see how soil erosion and degradation influenced human societies.
Some geologists argue that people, directly and indirectly, now move more earth around than nature herself. Earth scientists have even proposed a new epoch, the Anthropocene, or “Age of People.” Although we argue about when this epoch started, it is perfectly clear that of all our world-changing inventions, the plow was, and remains, one of the most destructive.
Yes, you read that correctly. The plow. That iconic symbol of our agricultural roots that helped launch civilization as we know it. The plow enabled few to feed many and set the table for the rise of commerce, city-states, and hierarchical societies with priests, princes, politicians, and all the rest of us who don’t farm. The problem, in a nutshell, is that the plow makes land vulnerable to erosion by wind and rain.
Consider that you rarely see much bare earth in natural grasslands or forests. Where she can, nature clothes herself in plants because ground stripped of plant cover—like a just-tilled field—erodes faster than soil forms. Tillage also pushes soil downhill with each pass of the plow. Thus, when plowed generation after generation, hillslopes gradually—and sometimes not so gradually—lose their natural endowment of topsoil. And so, storm by storm, with each pass of a plow, a millimeter at a time, the land slowly loses fertility.
Studying how erosion shapes topography in different settings around the world, I noticed how the prosperity of societies can mirror the state of their land. The point was driven home for me when I was doing fieldwork in the Amazon. Driving through an area of rainforest freshly cleared for subsistence farming, I saw how fast bare fields eroded down to nutrient-poor weathered rock. Where this happened, impoverished families could barely scratch a living from the earth. The farmers would soon move on to clear fresh fields from the rainforest, as ranchers moved their cows in behind to graze abandoned fields. This became a cycle of destruction with no end in sight. On another trip, this time to the South Pacific island of Mangaia, I saw how badly eroded soils barely fed a small population with a long history of fighting over ever-fewer productive fields.
