- The solution to climate change
might be right under my feet.
I'm talking about the soil.
- Healthy soil equals healthy food equals healthy people.
The age of chemical food production is gone.
Regenerative Organic agriculture is really the future.
- If you follow sustainability issues at all,
you may have heard of regenerative agriculture.
It's a farming practice that some experts claim
can reverse climate change by sequestering atmospheric CO2
in the soil.
We could sequester 100% of human-caused carbon emissions?
- That's absolutely correct.
- Proponents say that it can increase biodiversity,
make farms more resilient to floods, produce healthier foods
and even improve farm animal welfare.
It sounds almost too good to be true.
So I want to know,
can regenerative agriculture reverse climate change?
To find out I've come to
the heart of regenerative agriculture research
The Rodale Institute, they've studied regenerative
and organic farming methods for 70 years.
I'm Lucy Biggers.
And this is One Small Step.
The farm where we're standing was purchased
by entrepreneur J.I. Rodale in 1940.
On the land he began experimenting with farming
without the use of chemicals in a term he coined organic.
In 1947, Rodale launched the Soil and Health Foundation,
which today is known as the Rodale Institute.
The nonprofit has decades long research on farming methods,
including a nearly 40 year side-by-side analysis
of conventional farming versus organic farming.
Regenerative organic farming emphasizes
the importance of soil health
and includes practices like cover cropping, crop rotation,
holistic raising by animals, the use of compost
and no chemical fertilizers herbicides or pesticides.
In September, 2020, the Rodale Institute released a paper
which concluded that
the global adoption of regenerative practices
across both grasslands and arable acreage
could sequester more than 100%
of current anthropogenic emissions of CO2.
Okay, that is definitely a mouthful,
but basically what Rodale's research is saying
is if we could transition our farmland and grasslands
to regenerative practices we could actually sequester
the carbon that humans release.
Basically they're claiming
that we could reverse climate change
just by changing our farming practices.
I spoke to Jeff Moyer, CEO of the Rodale Institute
to find out more.
I think a lot of people think that soil is just dead,
it's dirt.
- Right?
- So what are you doing right now on this farm to protect
that soil health and restore that soil health?
- The key to soil health is the microbial life
that's in the soil.
We all get our energy from the sun,
whether it's electrical energy you're using in your home,
or it's oil that you're using in your car.
With microbial life in the soil is the same way.
Only it gets its energy from the plants
that are growing on the soil.
So if the soil is bare with no crop on it,
there's no energy being collected,
the microbial life in the soil dies and the health degrades.
And so what we need to do as farmers is keep
the ground covered with something green
and growing 12 months out of the year.
So this field was tilled just the other day,
but we immediately planted some fast growing cover crops
that I'm gonna dig a little bit up here and show you
that it has a very complex root system already.
there you can sort of see the rye seed that we planted
right here. - Right.
- Here's the rye sprout coming up,
but look at all of the root structure here already.
So it's collecting energy and putting carbon in the soil.
The plant roots are supporting
the microbial life in the soil
and the top of the plant is collecting solar energy,
which is carbon and putting it in the soil
where the plant can use it.
- When plants use photosynthesis,
they take CO2 out of the atmosphere
and put some of it in the soil as carbon.
Plants are so good at this,
that there's three to four times more carbon in our soils
than in our atmosphere and vegetation.
Historically conventional farming
with its heavy reliance on pesticides
and synthetic fertilizers has degraded the soil
and decreased the amount of carbon it holds.
So much so that it's estimated 75% of global soils
are degraded.
And according to the United Nations,
we only have 60 harvest left.
So if this was just a conventional farm,
they would just leave it field like this bare all winter?
- That's right, yes, absolutely, it would just be bare.
- And why is that so bad?
- Well, again, you're not collecting any solar energy
and you're not feeding the microbial life in the soil.
- So even when this is gone next season some of this carbon
that was in its roots will (indistinct)
- Oh, the carbon will, yeah.
In a couple of weeks this thing will be covered solid
with solar collectors,
collecting energy from the sun and sequestering that energy
and that carbon in the soil.
- To understand regenerative agriculture,
we have to look at today's conventional farming,
which took hold in the 1960s
and is now the dominant way to farm in the US.
Conventional agriculture relies on
the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides,
as well as genetically modified crops
that produce high yields in vast acres
of monoculture fields.
Over the past century,
conventional agriculture has doubled farm outputs,
but at a major cost.
Conventional agriculture produces less nutrient dense food,
emits chemical runoff
that pollutes waterways threatening human health
and it contributes to climate change.
Fossil fuel based nitrogen fertilizers
are a major source of nitrous oxide,
which is a potent greenhouse gas.
- When we first started farming organically
and we bought this farm in 1971,
everybody said you can't grow corn,
but clearly you can see this field right next to us.
- Yeah
- Is a very lush green growing corn field.
- Yeah.
- And this has been organic for the last 50 years.
So this is the corn
that's being raised for livestock feed.
- Got it. - This is not
human consumption corn.
This isn't sweet corn,
but a very nice ear corn.
We have a whole field of it.
So it doesn't matter if this field is one acre
or 10,000 acres.
- Right.
- We can do it organically.
- And what about pest control with organic?
- That's where crop rotations come in.
We're growing corn on this field this year.
We won't grow corn on this field next year.
We're gonna grow it over there.
So all the insects and the pests will be here not over there
so we rotate crops and.
- It's that simple?
- It's that simple.
- Rodale has conducted a 40 year farm systems trial
to compare the yields of conventional farming
versus organic farming.
Here are their fields
where they've been testing for 40 years.
This is conventional corn,
which has fed fertilizers and pesticides
and then there's this five foot barrier.
And then here is the organic corn.
This side has no chemicals added.
This side has a ton of chemicals.
- So the first four years,
the conventional system out-yielded the organic system.
- Okay.
- And this is a field that was pretty degraded.
It had been 70 to 100 years of conventional tillage
and heavy chemical use.
The plants kind of like relied on those chemicals
and then we took them away.
From year four to today
there's been no statistical difference between
the yields in the organic and the conventional system.
And what we found a lot of that has to do
with putting more carbon in the soil.
- Drew Smith is the chief scientist at Rodale.
Why can't conventional agriculture also sequester carbon?
What are you doing differently that changes that outcome?
- What we found over a long period of time
here at Rodale Institute and the farming systems trial
is that when you use synthetic fertilizers
you actually lose carbon over time.
And when you use organic or natural based fertilizers,
like composts, manures, and other natural fertilizers,
you actually gain carbon in the soil over time.
- [Lucy] Rodale shows that you don't have to use chemicals
to get great results.
On the farm they grow vegetables like squash,
sweet potatoes, and tomatoes.
- This tomato plant is 15 feet tall.
- Wow, so there's one that starts right here
and then it goes over here.
And up to here, wow.
- And up to here.
- That is amazing.
- And you can see that it's still.
- It still wants to keep going.
And they humanely raise pigs, chickens, and turkeys
that have space to live and access to fields.
This is like the chicken lawnmower.
- Oh yeah, we call it the chicken tractor.
- I know right now there's this huge conversation, you know,
go vegan for the climate.
But I see you're raising chickens here,
you obviously care about the climate.
So what is the relationship with animals?
- The problem is in how we've chosen to produce animals
by force feeding them grains so that they can produce meat
at a faster rate,
but then the quality of the meat goes down.
Beef animals produce methane
if you feed them corn and soybeans.
They don't produce nearly as much if they're eating grass.
Probably in this country, we all eat too much meat.
- [Lucy] Right.
- [Jeff] And we should cut down the amount of meat
that we eat, but we don't have to eliminate meat.
- Instead of chemical fertilizer, Rodale uses compost,
which Jeff told me help sequester carbon.
- In degrees, hotter than bath water, you know.
You can see it looks like rich black soil.
Keep in mind carbon is black, coal is black.
We only put it on our fields once every five to 10 years.
- Really?
- Yeah. - That's how strong it is?
- The idea of applying this material
is not to use it as fertilizer,
but to use it as a soil amendment to feed
the microbial life in the soil.
- So connect the dot to me,
then that's sequestering carbon
because more microbes means more carbon in the soil?
- That's correct.
The microbes are carbon based just like we are.
All life is carbon based.
So the more carbon and they all--
- Oh, the more life.
- Exactly, there's more life in the soil.
More diversity and more life.
- You really connected a dot for me
because I'm like, it's been so abstract,
like carbon in the soil.
I'm like, okay, but it really it's because the microbes.
- The population of the microbes, yes.
- And it seems like what we've got going on right now
with conventional agriculture, with the chemicals,
is we're just masking a very dead soil.
- That's correct.
- So back to this argument of sequestering
100% of our co two emissions.
How is that even possible?
Well, Rodale looked at several farmland and grazing studies
that showed significant increase in soil carbon after
the adoption of regenerative agriculture.
Based on those results, they extrapolated
that if global degraded farmland and grassland were restored
through regenerative agriculture,
global soils could draw down over 49 gigatons of CO2,
which is more than the approximate 37 gigatons of CO2
released globally each year.
However, critics of the white paper claim
that 100% carbon sequestration in our soils is overstated.
And that 10 to 15% sequestration is more likely
and still optimistic.
Regardless, I still think there are serious benefits
to regenerative agriculture,
including preventing chemical runoff,
creating more nutritious foods,
improving animal welfare
and improving resilience against climate change.
I didn't go into in this video, but research has shown
that soil with higher levels of carbon
have higher water holding capacity,
which helps farms survive times of flooding and drought.
So here's what you can do
to support regenerative agriculture.
First vote with your dollar
and look for this newly released
regenerative organic certification,
which is beginning to show up on products in stores.
If you can't find them in your local store,
you can shop them at regeneorganic.org.
Also in February of 2020 U.S. legislatures introduced
the Agriculture Resilience Act to Congress,
which includes incentives for farmers to improve soil health
and an increase in soil carbon research.
Reach out to your house representative
to express your support.
Finally, the more people
that know about regenerative agriculture, the better.
So share this video with your friends.
That's all for this episode.
Thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time.
Bye.
Thank you so much.
This has been an awesome, awesome tour.
- It's been my pleasure.
- Really feel I got a few light bulb moments there.
- Good.
- Carbon is life in the soil.
- That's right.
- So cool.
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