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

​

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.

July 9, 2018 - Thetford, Vermont - Gary Rucinski, a Ph.D. physicist running for Congress in Massachusetts’ 4th District on a platform to reverse global warming, said recently that the restoration of degraded grasslands worldwide is essential to tackling climate change, because of the large quantity of atmospheric carbon that would be captured by soil. This CO2 “drawdown” can be achieved, according to Rucinski, through adoption of innovative cropping and grazing practices he referred to, respectively, as “permaculture” and “holistic range management.”

Rucinski stated, “We still have photosynthesis and biology available to us as … technologies that Mother Nature has honed over the last three and half billion years, that we can use to sequester the excess carbon load that’s in the atmosphere today and put it back into soils.”

"Primarily the opportunity is on about 15 billion acres worldwide of degraded grasslands ..."

“Primarily the opportunity is on about 15 billion acres worldwide of degraded grasslands, where if we simply reintroduce grazing herds and manage them properly, we will be building topsoil, we will be restoring wetlands, and we will be growing grass and building soil in order to allow carbon sequestration to happen naturally,” said Rucinski.

Making the case that land restoration and a revenue-neutral carbon tax, another policy goal he has advocated, both offer economic as well as environmental benefits, Rucinski said,  “We need to get ranchers generally to be aware of the fact that this is a financial win for them because they make due with fewer inputs, they get higher quality beef, and they can sell that at higher prices. So, again, just like the revenue-neutral carbon tax … getting ranchers and farmers to use permaculture and holistic range management is also a win-win-win for everybody involved.”

Rucinski’s comments came during a July 6th livestream interview by Soil4Climate cofounder, Seth Itzkan, in the Facebook group of Soil4Climate Inc.

A 2016 paper in the Journal of Soil and Water Conservation showed that well-managed grazing in North America could sequester 790 million tons of atmospheric carbon each year. According to the EPA Greenhouse Gas Calculator, this is equivalent to the annual emissions of 620 million passenger vehicles, more than twice the U.S. passenger vehicle population.

Rucinski is formally Northeast Director of Citizens Climate Lobby.  His opponent in the Democratic primary is incumbent Joe Kennedy III.

A video of Rucinski’s comments quoted above (3 minutes) is at
https://tinyurl.com/yd7tx99g

A video of the full Rucinski interview (50 minutes) is at
https://tinyurl.com/ycyntgx2

Soil4Climate, a U.S.-based nonprofit, nongovernmental organization, advocates for regenerative cropping and grazing practices to improve soil fertility, increase the bionutrient density of food, restore wildlife habitat, prevent flooding, replenish dried-up lakes and rivers, and revitalize pastoral communities while sequestering atmospheric carbon.

Media contact:
Karl Thidemann
Soil4Climate
​​karl.thidemann@gmail.com

June 23, 2018 - Thetford, Vermont - Thirty years ago today, on June 23rd, 1988, the U.S. government was put on notice that climate change was real and, if not addressed, the consequences would be catastrophic.

​On a then relatively rare (though increasingly more common) swelteringly hot day in our nation’s capital, NASA climate scientist James Hansen laid out for Congress a detailed synopsis of the science of global warming, as well as offering what has turned out to be an eerily prescient forecast for the anticipated rise in the world’s temperature. In understated scientific jargon, Hansen ominously reported that, as he had predicted in 1981, the signal of global warming was becoming “louder than the noise of random weather.” Two seats away from Hansen at the witness table was MIT Ph.D. William “Bill” Moomaw, director of the Climate, Energy, and Pollution program at the World Resources Institute, and today a revered member of the Soil4Climate Advisory Board.

Describing this momentous occasion, an Associated Press correspondent recorded the following exchange:

Sen. Wendell Ford, D-Ky., concerned about his state's coal industry, asked physical chemist William R. Moomaw of the World Resources Institute, a Washington-based policy research organization, if technology could not reduce the harmful emissions.

"I'm trying to find a way to use a resource we have," Ford said.
​
Moomaw replied, "I would argue the resource we have in most abundance is the potential for using fossil fuels more efficiently at much lower cost than building any form of power generation."

Moomaw’s career in climate science has ranged from helping to craft legislation to regulate chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) to protect the ozone hole, to serving as coordinating lead author of the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change chapter on greenhouse gas emissions reduction, and as a lead author of three other IPCC reports (1995, 2005 and 2007). The work of the IPCC was recognized with the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Moomaw is Professor Emeritus of International Environmental Policy at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, where he was the founding director of the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy, the Tufts Climate Initiative, and co-founder of the Global Development and Environment Institute.

I serve on the advisory board of Soil4Climate, an organization that has helped to create a global community of awareness and activism around these issues,” said Moomaw.

Inspired by Soil4Climate cofounder Seth Itzkan’s accounts of his visits to Zimbabwe to witness the extraordinary ecological restoration work being accomplished by wildlife biologist Allan Savory, Moomaw extended an invitation to Savory to speak at Tufts University. Just two months after his presentation at Tufts in January 2013, Savory delivered his TED talk that has received nearly 5 million views.

Most recently, Moomaw’s research has focused on halting the expansion of the bioenergy industry, its greenhouse gas emissions - officially considered “climate neutral” - greater than if an equivalent amount of power had been generated by burning coal.

“Having worked as a scientist in the field of climate mitigation for three decades, I have been encouraged to see the increasing recognition that natural systems already slow the growth rate of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. These systems can be managed to further reduce the growth of carbon dioxide by keeping forests intact, and allowing them to continue to grow, protecting and restoring wetlands, and transitioning to regenerative cropping and grazing practices that capture carbon in soil. I serve on the advisory board of Soil4Climate, an organization that has helped to create a global community of awareness and activism around these issues,” said Moomaw.

Please join us in our admiration and appreciation for Bill Moomaw, a pioneering climate champion who truly sees the world as a whole, and has devoted a lifetime to assuring its biodiversity and abundance will be the legacy of generations that follow.
​
Media contact:
Karl Thidemann
Soil4Climate
​karl.thidemann@gmail.com

AP Was There: The Age of Climate Change Begins - The New York Times
https://mobile.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/06/18/science/ap-us-sci-30-years-of-warming-ap-was-there.html

Game Over for the Climate - James Hansen
The New York Times
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/opinion/game-over-for-the-climate.html

William Moomaw Biography
http://fletcher.tufts.edu/Fletcher_Directory/Directory/Faculty%20Profile?personkey=67A797D9-CB21-4684-ADAF-388F7ED0DE39

​Allan Savory - Reversing Global Warming while Meeting Human Needs
Tufts University, January 25, 2013
https://youtu.be/uEAFTsFH_x4

Pruitt Is Wrong on Burning Forests for Energy - William H. Schlesinger, Beverly Law, John Sterman and William R. Moomaw
The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/03/opinion/pruitt-forests-burning-energy.html

By Karl THIDEMANN, Seth ITZKAN, and Bill MCKIBBEN

Across the nation, the first wave of a political movement rooted in agriculture’s role as a climate solution is gathering momentum. Unseen by most city dwellers and suburbanites, a carbon farming revolution is sweeping over the land. Driven by a mix of economic and ecological reasons, a growing number of farmers and ranchers are adopting practices to draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, where it overheats the planet, into soil, where it boosts fertility. Plants have performed this pollution-to-nutrition alchemy nearly forever, with the deep, dark loam found in the world’s breadbaskets attesting to soil’s ability to keep carbon out of the air for thousands of years. Research suggests photosynthesis could “lock up” enough carbon to help civilization avert a climate catastrophe - assuming, of course, emissions from coal, oil, and natural gas are swiftly reduced through the deployment of renewable energy technologies.

Converting agriculture, from a net source of greenhouse gases to a net sink, flips the climate imperative from “do less harm” to “do more good,” a proactive planetary healing that recognizes ecological restoration is climate mitigation. As one sign that so-called regenerative agriculture is going mainstream, Kiss The Ground, a California-based advocacy organization, will soon release a soil documentary featuring cameos by a celebrity couple not known for farm activism: Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen.

The right policies, of course, will be key to hastening a transition to climate-friendly agriculture, and democracy is answering the call. Healthy soil has risen from an obscure topic to a key issue for a small but swelling cadre of candidates able to think beyond the next election cycle.

• Audrey Denney, candidate for Congress in California’s 1st District, encourages voters to send her to Washington, D.C. to “fight for the health of our soils, our planet, and our future.” Denney, raised in a farming family, studied Agricultural Education then learned agro-ecology by assisting with projects in El Salvador and Ghana. “At a federal level, I’d work for more funding to increase the staff of the Natural Resource Conservation Service, which does a great job providing technical assistance on stewarding and building our soil health. I’m also committed to an outcome-based system rather than a practice-based system, empowering farmers to find creative and economically viable climate mitigation solutions,” said Denney.

 

• Bob Massie, a social justice activist, ordained minister, and former head of Ceres, an organization working to green the world’s largest companies, is campaigning to be the next governor of Massachusetts on a platform supporting agriculture’s unique role in reversing global warming. “Farmers, businesses, government agencies - even backyard gardeners - can manage land to capture carbon dioxide in soil and improve soil health,” said Massie.

 

• Also in Massachusetts, PhD physicist Gary Rucinski, Northeast Regional Coordinator for Citizens Climate Lobby, is hoping to unseat U.S. Representative Joe Kennedy III in the 4th Congressional District. According to the challenger, the incumbent doesn’t support the bold action needed to address the climate crisis, such as a transition to farming practices that mitigate climate change. “I am encouraged by draft Massachusetts legislation seeking to advance the practice of regenerative agriculture in the Commonwealth. Agriculture that improves soil carbon content is both a climate and a food security measure. As a representative in the U.S. Congress, I would advocate for changes to the federal Farm Bill to promote soil health,” said Rucinski.

 

• Nate Kleinman, well known Occupy activist and co-founder of the Experimental Farm Network, is running for U.S. Congress in New Jersey’s 2nd district. Equal parts organizer and farmer, Kleinman’s nonprofit is devoted to the collaborative breeding of plants resilient to a changing climate, with a focus on long-rooted perennial food crops that sequester carbon in soil. Kleinman promises to “Incentivize regenerative organic agriculture and small family farms, and support farmers who choose to transition to sustainable methods.”

 

• Arden Andersen, a physician, farmer, and regenerative agriculture educator running for governor of Kansas, recently tweeted, “Appropriate farm technology can make Kansas carbon neutral in 5 years due to carbon sequestration into soil humus.” Andersen is credited with coining the term “nutrient-dense,” used to describe food high in minerals and vitamins. Crops raised in carbon-rich soils derive all the nutrition they require for vigorous growth from bacteria and fungi working symbiotically with a plant’s root system, with no need for costly fossil fuel-based fertilizers and pesticides.

 

• Billy Garrett, running for lieutenant governor of New Mexico, wrote recently in the Santa Fe New Mexican that, “Regenerative agriculture and ranching practices - such as shifting from inorganic to organic fertilizer, planting cover crops and applying compost to rangeland - have the potential to substantially increase the amount of carbon sequestered in the soil while increasing yields and enhancing water retention.” Economic revitalization is also promised. “A revolution in regenerative agriculture could mean a new source of income for New Mexico’s rural communities, allowing farmers and ranchers to generate carbon offsets,” said Garrett.

Regenerative agriculture candidates have found a home on social media in the Twitter feed of Citizens Regeneration Lobby (CRL), the political lobbying arm of the 850,000-member strong Organic Consumers Association. Alexis Baden-Mayer, director of CRL, notes that the roster of traditional farm issues, such as the regulation of pesticides and fertilizer runoff, has expanded this political season to include recognition of agriculture’s role as the only sector of the economy poised to reverse climate change. “One of the most exciting aspects of regenerative agriculture is how quickly this climate mitigation tool can be ‘switched on.’ Farmers and ranchers can, within a few years, transition to land management practices that make their farms not just carbon-neutral but carbon-negative, sequestering more CO2 than is emitted. The remarkable potential of agriculture to sequester literally billions of tons of carbon annually offers a much needed glimmer of hope on the climate front,” said Baden-Mayer.

Elizabeth Kucinich, Board Policy Chair for the Rodale Institute, the oldest organic research organization in America, observes that improving degraded land offers economic and health benefits. “Returning carbon to soil boosts the natural capital of farms by helping farmers become more profitable and, by decreasing nutrient runoff, prevents algal blooms linked to human illness and harm to wildlife,” said Kucinich.

Heralded by California’s pioneering Healthy Soils Program, paying farmers to return carbon to soil, and France’s aspirational “4 per 1000” international initiative, encouraging farmers worldwide to enrich soil organic matter by 0.4% each year to stabilize the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, the regenerative agriculture transformation is well underway. It must accelerate, lest the planet bake for millennia.
---
Seth Itzkan and Karl Thidemann are co-founders of Soil4Climate, a Vermont-based nonprofit advocating for soil restoration to reverse global warming. Bill McKibben is the Schumann distinguished scholar at Middlebury College and founder of the anti-climate change campaign group 350.org.

-- Notes from Steven Keleti to accommodate the map --
Hello all,
Quick summary: We need more help in Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, Kansas, Kentucky and Missouri to build momentum.   Your help in any state makes it possible to expand the work in every state.
Texas and Pennsylvania are top priorities.
Latest good news: (Attached is the latest map of the status of state Healthy Soils legislation.)
Healthy Soils legislation for Massachusetts reported favorably and referred to House Ways and Means.
Draft legislation for Connecticut (deadline Feb 21) discussion with Environment Committee Chairs February 5th went well and Soil and Water Conservation Districts are supportive – on track for this legislation to be filed by deadline.
Draft legislation completed for Missouri (deadline Mar 1) - help needed to connect with Missouri supporters! draft removes sales tax exemption on fertilizers, pesticides, and fertilizers and commits that revenue to healthy soils fund.
Draft legislation started for Pennsylvania (filing deadline TBD)
Interest has been building in several states, including Texas, Pennsylvania, Michigan and New Mexico
Please reach out to those you know who may be interested in Healthy Soils legislation to join the Healthy Soils Legislation Google Group: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/healthy-soils-legislation
Upcoming deadlines:
Connecticut (committee bill filing deadline Feb 21)
Kentucky (filing deadline Feb 26)
Missouri (filing deadline Mar 1)
Ohio (filing deadline TBD)
Help is still needed to get bills on the docket! Getting Healthy Soils legislation on the docket increases awareness and education opportunities with legislators and their staffs. Who is interested?
Again, the letters on the map, indicating Senate and House members on the Agriculture Committees (chairs and co-chairs in a larger font), show why various states are higher priority, at least as far as shaping what happens in the Agriculture Committees relative to the September 2018 Farm Bill. Because of the lack of transparency from Republican legislators regarding the draft 2018 Farm Bill, a greater focus is being made on healthy soils legislation in states with Republican legislators.
Status on selected states:
Connecticut – On track for making legislative deadline of committee filing legislation by February 21st.
Illinois, Iowa, Ohio, Kansas, Kentucky, and Missouri – Initial draft for Healthy Soils legislation done for each state
Need more contacts to support legislation
Each need a group to be lead supporter for legislation
For each state, need to identify legislators who will support healthy soils legislation
Massachusetts – Healthy Soils H.3713 reported out favorably – referred to House Ways and Means
Need help reaching out to legislators to move forward
Need to create cost-benefit summary for legislators who want to have an indication of what funding may be requested later
New York – Recommendations for updates to Carbon Farming bill need to be reviewed
Need to recommend changes to define “economic value of carbon farming”
Need to identify revenue source to offset revenue lost due to carbon tax credits
Oregon – 'Clean Energy Jobs' or 'Cap and Invest’, HB4001/SB1507 had first public hearing at 3pm on February 7th
Vermont – H.661 An act related to regenerative organic farming
Could draft a short Healthy Soils bill to improve/expand 2008 law beyond “cover crops” and “carbon sequestration”, to generate interest as amendment to another bill
Best regards,
Steven (Keleti)
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/healthy-soils-legislation

Dear Friends, Please help us spread the Soil4Climate movement by singing a verse and chorus of the Soil4Climate theme song, "Brand New Sky." Just make a selfie movie and tag us on Facebook and post with hashtags #BrandNewSky, #Soil4Climate, and #EarthDay. An instrumental version and lyrics and chords are available below and on our Artistic page.  This will be fun. Thank you so much!

Lyrics to Brand New Sky

​​Think of a world where everyone cares
About the land that everyone shares
Think of the soil that’s under your feet
And what it needs to make it complete
Under a brand new sky

We don’t have to settle for a dying planet
There is something we can do
We can save the land and everything upon it
All it takes is me and you

Take a look outside of your door
And find a world worth fighting for
Where there was once nothing to see
Now there is life all around me
Under a brand new sky

We don’t have to settle for a dying planet
There is something we can do
We can save the land and everything upon it
All it takes is me and you

The answer that we’re looking for is soil for climate
Put the carbon back in the ground
This can be a movement if we get behind it
Help us turn the world around

We don’t have to settle for a dying planet
There is something we can do
We can save the land and everything upon it
All it takes is me and you

© Kevin O’Connor and Seth Itzkan 2016

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