The recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shows that agriculture is responsible for 37 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. There’s hope — and a solution.
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From where I stand inside the South Dakota cornfield I was visiting with entomologist and former USDA scientist Jonathan Lundgren, all the human-inflicted traumas to Earth seem far away. It isn’t just that the corn is as high as an elephant’s eye—are people singing that song again?—but that the field burgeons and buzzes and chirps with all sorts of other life, too.
Instead of the sunbaked, bare lanes between cornstalks that are typical of conventional agriculture, these lanes sprout an assortment of cover crops. These are plants that save soil from wind and water erosion, reduce the evaporation of soil moisture, and attract beneficial insects and birds. Like all plants, these cover crops convert atmospheric carbon dioxide into a liquid carbon food, some for themselves and some to support the fungi, bacteria, and other microscopic partners underground. A portion of […]
I am a viticulturist in California and we farm grapes biodynamically. Cover crops, farm animals graze among the vines and offer their “emissions” to the balance of the soil. I believe biodynamic farming is the most sustainable system. Please look into the Demeter Society for further information. We can solve the problems of the planet!
All garden or farm soil must alive with all sorts of living things like fungi and bacteria and worms that are essential for good nutritious crop production.