December 30, 2019 - NAIROBI, Kenya - Soil4Climate and the Maasai Center for Regenerative Pastoralism (MCRP) today announced the official start of a land restoration effort called Enkop Osiligi, Maasai for "Promised Land."

The Enkop Osiligi program offers hope for rural pastoralism by implementing a revolutionary grazing practice, Holistic Planned Grazing, that heals degraded soil. Improving soil fertility in this way increases its carbon content, enhances food and water security, and mitigates global warming.

By using large, tightly packed and frequently moved herds, Holistic Planned Grazing replicates how enormous packs of wild grazers such as wildebeest, zebra, and other ruminants beneficially impacted the land.

The partitioning of land has led to many small herds grazing in a haphazard fashion, resulting in unnatural animal impact. This has caused land degradation, soil erosion, and the proliferation of weeds unpalatable to livestock. Although not readily apparent, it has also led to a loss of soil carbon, or “soil organic matter,” exacerbating climate change and leaving grazed areas more vulnerable to droughts and floods. 
To counter this trend, the Enkop Osiligi project has facilitated training in regenerative grazing management for land-owning families in the Maasai village of Enkutoto Nalala. It has also provided funding to purchase cows to increase the herd sufficiently to ensure beneficial land impact, and to construct an earth dam to capture rainfall for the livestock to drink. As well, the project funds other restorative agricultural approaches including reforestation and bee keeping.

A scientific research program to monitor ecosystem impacts, such as changes in soil carbon and in the diversity of plant species, is presently under development.

Financial support for the Enkop Osiligi project has been provided through crowdfunding and the generosity of US-based Nutiva Inc., which donates 1% of its sales to regenerative agriculture. 
John Roulac, founder of Nutiva, said, "It is an honor to support this creative initiative that serves as a model for restoring degraded land and rejuvenating herding communities in Kenya, Tanzania, and other arid countries throughout the world.”

"Soil4Climate is pleased to partner with the Maasai Center for Regenerative Pastoralism on this historic project that propels Maasai herders into the forefront of the effort to restore soil carbon to reverse global warming,” commented Seth Itzkan, cofounder of Soil4Climate.

Dalmas Tiampati, founder and executive director of MCRP, stated, "Grazing is what the Maasai do. Our community believes this is a great opportunity for us and for the world. I look forward to helping to restore my homeland, and take comfort in the international interest in and support for our efforts.”

The Maasai Center for Regenerative Pastoralism, a Kenya-based nonprofit, works with Maasai pastoralists to implement regenerative land management practices.

Soil4Climate, a US-based environmental nonprofit, nongovernmental organization, advocates for soil restoration as a climate solution. Join the 15,000+ scientists, farmers, policymakers, journalists, and concerned global citizens of Soil4Climate at facebook.com/groups/Soil4Climate.

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Media contact:
Karl Thidemann
Cofounder, Soil4Climate
karl.thidemann@gmail.com
soil4climate.org

I'm glad there are a few cultures left in the world that understand the essential relationship between animals and food and soil and animals. When we expand that to include soil and climate, there will be hope. 

​There is no safe climate future for humanity in which large parts of the world's terrestrial biosphere are not replenished of their once prodigeous reservoirs of soil cabon with proper grazing management. The co-evolution of ruminants and grassland soils over the last 30 million years reduced atmospheric CO2 concentrations from approximately 1000 to 300 ppm, creating the very conditions suitable for the emergence of humanity. We are now reversing nature's drawdown legacy. 
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There is no safe climate future for humanity in which large parts of the world's terrestrial biosphere are not replenished of their once prodigeous reservoirs of soil cabon with proper grazing management. 
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As much as a thousand billion tons of carbon may have been oxidized out of the world's soils since humans began killing megafauna, setting fires, and, only recently (in the last ten thousand years), plowing. Long before we discovered fossil fuels, humans were causing climate change through deleterious land management. We've already postponed an ice age. The period of relative climate stability over the last 10,000 years, known as the Holocene, is unprecedented and unexplained other than from the CO2 loading we were doing with the preindustrial tools available to us. Fossil fuel use has dramatically accelerated human induced global warming and must be terminated, clearly. Nonetheless, fossil fuels are not the original cause of our current existential problem and ceasing their use won't on its own halt the warming nor our appointment with extinction. 

The livable future is only reached when a carbon neutral energy economy is complemented with a CARBON NEGATIVE food production system. Doing *that* requires restoration of the world's grassland soils with grazing - lots and lots of grazing - with lots and lots of animals - and the animals will need to be organized in large mobile herds, similar to how wild ungulates of antiquity roamed. 

Fortunately, innovations in livestock management, such as holistic planned grazing, are rising to this challenge and creating templates for how to meet human protein needs while restoring the land base, including the soil cabon that sustains life (and climate). 

Although the anti-meat movement has legitimate arguments with factory farms, the decimation of tall-grass prairie for conversion to chemical dependant monocrop gains is equally abhorrent and both are symptoms of the industrialization of food through reductionist management. Each leads to poor health and global warming. 

At Soil4Climate, we are assisting a Maasai community to INCREASE their livestock holdings while organizing to improve the surrounding ecology - including the succession of weeds to grasses - with modified grazing management. Let's work together for the ethical treatment of animals and soil within a realistic context that can feed humanity while drawinging down atmospheric carbon. The answer isn't in fake food produced in high-tech factories with genetically modified yeast. The answer is in nature. Let's go there. Let's graze and eat responsibly and respectfully. The Maasai do it. So can we. 
Peace and Love, - Seth 
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(p.s. This head was cooked and eaten shortly after the photo was taken. It tasted like lamb. Go figure.)

Opinion: Insidious Flaw in "Less Meat" Argument - We Need Soil, Not Soy - By Seth J. Itzkan

The insidious flaw with the "less meat" argument is that it implies that meat is bad (when, of course, it isn't) while looking the other way as it advances soil-depleting, GMO soy, faux meat products at the expense of nutritionally superior, regenerative beef and dairy alternatives that are essential for enhancing soil carbon, reviving pasture ecosystems, and just now gaining a foothold in supermarkets. What Burger King, and other franchises, should do, instead of carrying Impossible Foods paddies, is to insist that each region source at least 10% of their meats locally and via ecologically restorative production. That would jumpstart the food revolution genuinely poised to deliver a safe climate.

Let's look closer. Meat, as we know, is the healthiest food on earth and there would have been no human evolution nor higher order thinking without it. Nor, of course, would there be carbon-rich soil on two-thirds of the landed surface of the planet that depends on ruminants. The misplaced narrative shaming animal flesh allows for the promulgation of obscene Franken-foods like Impossible Burger. These aberrations of culinary sensibility increase, not lesson, our dependence on soy. They additionally concentrate the wealth generated by what we eat into the hands of a few high-tech entrepreneurs, who, like business vultures, use disingenuous arguments to simply make "lab meat" a vehicle for Intellectual property (IP) capitalization. What matters to them are the patents, not the "products" - 14 patents, in fact, in every bite of Pat Brown's shameless fillet - with a war chest, at last count, of over two billion dollars. Were that money applied to regenerative grazing, we could end hunger and desertification in Africa.

The misplaced narrative shaming animal flesh allows for the promulgation of obscene Franken-foods like Impossible Burger. These aberrations of culinary sensibility increase, not lesson, our dependence on soy.

The real problem, as most people in this group know, is the soy and corn used to support CAFOs. When the focus is on soil, it's a no-brainer, we actually need many more animals and large parts of the country, such as practically the entire state of Iowa, that are in annual grain agriculture, will need to be converted back to tall-grass prairie with grazing. When the average citizen understands that, and when there are carbon markets to reward drawdown, this debate will be moot. Grass-fed meats will be cost competitive with CAFO products in the same way that solar is now competitive with fossil fuels. You don't hear people saying "less energy." You hear them say "clean energy," "renewable energy," etc. Those exact same sentiments will be applied to meat, not "less," but "better."

By Seth J Itzkan
​(Originally posted on the Soil4Climate Facebook group, here.)

On this July 4th weekend, I'd like to honor those that fell at the Battle of Little Bighorn, June 25–26, 1876, the American soldiers and the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors who were defending their way of life. As most in this group will realize, at stake was not only the rights of people, but the health of the land (and, we now understand, the soil carbon).

The slow march of desertification which is present in the former home of America's shortgrass prairie region is heartbreaking to see (for those who can see it). Visiting the site of the Battle of Little Bighorn - and driving all the way from Billings, Montana to Boulder, Colorado - as I did recently - is an education in subjugation of people and earth. As most in the US know, the Battle of Little Bighorn was a seminal moment in US relations with the original peoples of this continent which has achieved legendary, almost mythological, status. Although the battle was an overwhelming victory for Native Americans, it was, also, in fact, the last moment of such glory for them and the impetus for America's subsequent relentless and unyielding suppression of these people with confinement to "reservations," and, until many years later, no rights as citizens.

The other story, not recognized by most, is the loss of soil and biodiversity. As wikipedia says in its page on shortgrass prairie, "The shortgrass prairie was once filled with huge herds of free-ranging bison and pronghorn. The prairie also teemed with large prairie dog colonies, deer and elk, and predators such as gray wolves and grizzly bears." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortgrass_prairie) Today, there is just typical grazing operations and increasing signs of desertification - woody plants separated by sandy bare ground (see pictures herein). The only way this land gets restored, and carbon captured, of course, is with a preponderance of grazing animals moving in large herds - either by humans, managed holistically, or with wild grazers and predators. We will either figure this out on our own, and manage accordingly, or our civilization will collapse and nature will, eventually, bring back wild grazers and predators in our absence. (In neither case is grain agriculture an option.)

If we're smart, we might be able to create a partnership between properly managed livestock and wild grazers with predators. They are doing just that at the Africa Centre for Holistic Management in Zimbabwe, so we ought to be able to do that in America. I don't see why managed grazing and a resurrection of bison herds - with predators - can't be a reality. Our future, in fact, requires it. It would be the best way to honor those who have fallen and respect those still unborn. Yebo, and God Bless.

Battle of Little Bighorn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Little_Bighorn
Shortgrass Prairie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortgrass_prairie
Africa Center for Holistic Management, Zimbabwe
https://www.africacentreforholisticmanagement.org/

Which Impossible Foods Patent is Your Favorite?
https://patents.justia.com/assignee/impossible-foods-inc
Patents Assigned to Impossible Foods Inc.

Patent number: 10287568
Methods for extracting and purifying non-denatured proteins

Patent number: 10273492
Expression constructs and methods of genetically engineering methylotrophic yeast

Patent number: 10172380
Ground meat replicas

Patent number: 10172381
Methods and compositions for consumables

Patent number: 10093913
Methods for extracting and purifying non-denatured proteins

Patent number: 10039306
Methods and compositions for consumables

Patent 10087434
Methods for extracting and purifying non-denatured proteins

Patent number: 9943096
Methods and compositions for affecting the flavor and aroma profile of consumables

Patent number: 9938327
Expression constructs and methods of genetically engineering methylotrophic yeast

Patent number: 9833768
Affinity reagents for protein purification

Patent number: 9826772
Methods and compositions for affecting the flavor and aroma profile of consumables

Patent number: 9808029
Methods and compositions for affecting the flavor and aroma profile of consumables

Patent number: 9737875
Affinity reagents for protein purification

Patent number: 9700067
Methods and compositions for affecting the flavor and aroma profile of consumables

​Patent number: 9011949
Methods and compositions for consumables

As Goes Iowa, So Goes the World

In addition to the necessary cessation of fossil fuel combustion, in order to actually stop flooding and reverse global warming, almost all the industrial grain production fields in the world will need to return to the short, medium and tall-grass prairies they once were - restoring prodigious soil carbon stocks and their water holding capacities.

Iowa used to be nearly 100% tall-grass prairie, with literally the best, most carbon-rich soils on earth, referred to commonly as “black gold.” Today it is almost entirely in industrial soy and corn with nearly 7 inches of this precious topsoil lost since 1850.

Enabling this conversion back to native soil requires holistically managed grazing. Recent studies show that properly managed grazing can restore between 1 to 3 tons of carbon per acre per year. Iowa has approximately 30 million acres in farmland. If this were restored to prairie, we could be sequestering 30 to 90 million tons of carbon per year in Iowa alone. In addition to the climate mitigation that provides, the flooding mitigation is enormous. The NRDC (2015) calculates that each 1% increase in SOM per acre to 6 inches holds an additional 20,000 gallons of water. This would provide the state an additional water holding capacity of 600 *billion* gallons of water or the equivalent of over a day's outflow from the Mississippi River at its mouth in New Orleans.

The rate to achieve this of course depends on many factors, but must, in any case, be pursued extensively and in earnest. A back-of-the-envelope rate calculation is as follows: Using estimates from the NRDC (2015), a 1% increase in SOM equates to approximately 4.5 tons of carbon (per acre to 6 inches). Machmuller (2015) demonstrated an increase of approximately 3 tons C per acre per year to 30 centimeters (approx. 12 inches), and showed that such increases can continue for 2 to 7 years. Thus, using Machmuller and assuming an even distribution of SOM across the 30 cm top profile (approximately 1.5 tC/yr in the top 6 inches and 1.5 tC/yr in the bottom 6 inches), a 1% increase in SOM to 6 inches (4.5 tC) may be achieved in as little as 3 years. Again, this rate calculation is just a thought experiment, but it is plausible given known data. The important point is that such increases are within our reach and we must work toward them.

Notes:

Teague, W. R., Apfelbaum, S., Lal, R., Kreuter, U. P., Rowntree, J., Davies, C. A., . . . Byck, P. (2016). The role of ruminants in reducing agriculture's carbon footprint in North America. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, 71(2), 156-164. doi:10.2489/jswc.71.2.156 http://www.jswconline.org/content/71/2/156.abstract

Stanley, P. L., Rowntree, J. E., Beede, D. K., DeLonge, M. S., & Hamm, M. W. (2018). Impacts of soil carbon sequestration on life cycle greenhouse gas emissions in Midwestern USA beef finishing systems. Agricultural Systems, 162, 249-258. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2018.02.003

Machmuller, M. B., Kramer, M. G., Cyle, T. K., Hill, N., Hancock, D., & Thompson, A. (2015). Emerging land use practices rapidly increase soil organic matter. Nature Communications, 6, 6995. doi:10.1038/ncomms7995
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms7995#supplementary-information

NRDC (2015) Climate-Ready Soil: How Cover Crops Can make Farms More Resilient to Extreme Weather Risks
https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/climate-ready-soil-IB.pdf
https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/climate-ready-soil-appendix.pdf

IOWA’S “BLACK GOLD” IS WASHING AWAY
https://iowastartingline.com/2017/08/14/iowas-black-gold-washing-away/

Iowa Farm & Land Statistics
https://www.lhf.org/learning-fields/crops/iowa-farm-facts/
https://www.farmlandinfo.org/statistics/iowa

New study: Up to 7 billion tonnes of Carbon Dioxide can be removed from the atmosphere each year through better soil management on farm land
https://blog.ciat.cgiar.org/new-study-up-to-7-billion-tonnes-of-carbon-dioxide-can-be-removed-from-the-atmosphere-each-year-through-better-soil-management-on-farm-land/

Holistic Planned Grazing
https://www.savory.global/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/about-holistic-planned-grazing.pdf

Flooding in Davenport
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/davenport-iowa-flooded-after-barrier-fails-mississippi-river-floodwaters-severe-weather-today-2019-04-30/

According to a simple calculation, regenerative grazing can offset nearly all automobile emissions in Vermont.  Below is the calculation  followed by a discussion.

1. A recent study from Michigan State University has demonstrated that grazing managed properly - for ecosystem performance - can sequester atmospheric carbon in newly formed topsoil to the rate of  3.59 tons  per hectare per year which equates to 1.45 tons  per acre per year.  

2. According to the USDA National Agricultural Statistic Service, there were 195,000 acres in "AG LAND, PASTURELAND" in Vermont in 2012, the last year for which data is available for.

3. Multiplying the drawdown potential from line 1 of 1.45 tons of carbon per acre per year by the 195,000 acres of Ag / Pasture land in Vermont (from line 2), yields a yearly sequestration potential of 282,750 tons of carbon per year. (1.45 tC/acre/yr * 195,000 acres = 282,750 tons C/yr).

4. According to the EPA, a typical passenger vehicle emits 4.6 tons of carbon dioxide per year.  This equates to 1.25 tons of carbon per year (where the mass ratio of carbon to carbon dioxide is  1 to 3.67).

​5. Given the drawdown potential of 282,750 tons of carbon per year for the state of Vermont from line 3 above, and the EPA figure of 1.25 tons of carbon per vehicle per year of emissions from line 4 above, we can calculate that the offset sequestration potential for Vermont soil via regeneration grazing would equate to 226,200 vehicles. (282,750 / 1.25 = 226,200)

6. According to statista.com, there were 229,570 registered automobiles in Vermont in 2016. 

7. Subtracting the number of vehicles whose emissions can be offset, 226,200, given in line 5, from the total vehicles registered in the state, 229,570 (line 6), yields a difference of only 3370 vehicles, or 1.46% of the total. Thus, the total offset is 100%-1.46% or 98.54%.

Discussion:

To be clear, this calculation is only a thought exercise. It's not likely, of course, that all the state's agricultural and pasture land would be utilized in this way.  Nor should this be misconstrued as an excuse for continued carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles - certainly not.  Cars and other forms of transport must go electric and renewable with haste.  It is, however, revealing of the substantial potential for drawdown, and therein lies hope for our regenerative future.
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