Hunter Lovins at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Nov 13, 2018, discusses grasslands, soil, climate, and the positive role of Soil4Climate in helping to reverse global warming.

“When the grasslands of the world, which are the world’s second largest carbon sink, co-evolved, they did so with grazing animals. When a cow or a gazelle or any grazing animal eats grass, the roots sluff polysaccharide sugars. That feeds a biological community in the soil which mineralizes the carbon, that’s either in the root mass or in the manure or in the grass that’s being trampled into the ground, and it turns into mineral carbon in the soil. That’s why when the first pioneers went west from here, they found ten feet of thick black soil. That black is carbon, and as Karl (Thidemann) said, the world around, it’s now down to inches. We have decarbonized the soil the way in which we grow commodity crops.”

“So, in the book (A Finer Future) we describe Gabe Brown. Gabe was a go and broke corn, soybean, commodity farmer in the Dakotas. Because he was going broke, he said, ‘I’ll try something else.’ First he went to no-till. He stopped breaking the soil and inverting it. Then he planted cover crops, some of them very deep rooted. Then he brought animals on: cattle, goats, sheep. At that point - and he was measuring carbon in his soil. He went from a little over 1% soil organic matter, to in some of his pastures, over 11% soil organic matter. He’s rolling climate change backward. And this is exactly what Seth and Karl and Soil4Climate is talking about.”

“There are some articles here (picking up an article) ‘Agriculture of Hope: Climate Farmers of North America’ and then a more technical article over there that (Professor) Bill Moomaw had a hand in (Hope Below Our Feet: Soil as a Climate Solution - written with the Global Development and the Environment Institute - GDAE at Tufts University). So, I called Seth when I was writing the book. I called Seth and said, 'I’ve got some calculations, the numbers of which I don’t trust. How much carbon can we capture and put in the soil?' So, Seth called Karl, called Bill Moomaw, put together a little team and we did some back of the envelope calculations. These are rough calculations. But if you take the best evidence of folk like Gabe Brown - and there now are getting to be reams and reams of peer-reviewed, technical journals showing what farmers and ranchers have done in increasing their soil carbon, and you multiply that out over the grasslands of the world, how soon, how much could we pull down, and how soon could we get back to the preindustrial levels of carbon in the atmosphere? Back of the envelope: 30 years. Yeah. Wow! This is a big, 'Wow!' So, Tony Seba’s stuff solves half of the climate crisis. Soil4Climate solves the other half. We’ve solved it!”

Cited papers:
THE AGRICULTURE OF HOPE: CLIMATE FARMERS OF NORTH AMERICA
BY SETH ITZKAN, KARL THIDEMANN, AND STEVEN KELETI
https://permaculturemag.org/2017/09/agriculture-of-hope/

Hope Below Our Feet: Soil as a Climate Solution http://www.ase.tufts.edu/gdae/Pubs/climate/ClimatePolicyBrief4.pdf

This video of Hunter Lovins on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlTgWVDIM44

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By Steven Keleti, Karl Thidemann and Seth Itzkan

#1 – Federal: ensure that greater funding for regenerative agriculture and soil health programs is in the Farm Bill.  The Senate version has provisions to better support soil health and carbon sequestration, while the House version does not.  The provisions in the Senate version need to make it into the final version from conference committee. See, for example:

Good Soil Policy in Senate Farm Bill
June 13, 2018 Lara Bryant https://www.nrdc.org/experts/lara-bryant/good-soil-policy-senate-farm-bill

5 reasons why the Senate farm bill is a conservation powerhouse
By Callie Eideberg / Published: June 27, 2018
http://blogs.edf.org/growingreturns/2018/06/27/5-reasons-senate-farm-bill-conservation/

Conservation for Very Erodible Row Cropland Act of 2018 (COVER Act)
https://www.bennet.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2018/6/bennet-introduces-bill-to-promote-soil-health-and-boost-rural-economies

#2 – State: ensure that state legislatures have Healthy Soils legislation on their dockets and/or appropriations for increased funding for state soil health programs, which many soil and water conservation districts have.  (Note: this is not yet happening, yet legislators could consider funding programs through a fee on fertilizers and/or pesticides, as over-application of fertilizers and pesticides adversely impact soil health, water quality, air quality, drought resilience and stormwater management.)  Draft legislation exists for Connecticut, Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky, Missouri, Massachusetts, Kansas, Colorado, Vermont and Oregon, and there is growing interest in several other states.  California’s Healthy Soils Initiative is the strongest program thus far.  Maryland passed a Healthy Soils bill, yet needs to determine a funding source.  Oklahoma has had a small program since 2001. Hawaii funded a small study.  New York funded a study toward a Carbon Farming bill. We can help connect people who are interested.

#3 – Local: lawns are the biggest “crop” in the United States, and there is growing interest in providing incentives for regenerative agriculture and/or urban habitat on residential properties.  This comes up at meetings - “what can I do?” and "what can we do to encourage regenerative practices in residential areas?” In order to provide incentives, legislation at state level may be needed.  Bills were filed in Massachusetts the last two sessions to create a local option to allow a revenue-neutral property tax exemption to provide an incentive, but the bills did not move forward.

"There's five times more carbon is soils than there is in the atmosphere." - Dr. Thomas Goreau.