The Answer Is Right Under Our Feet
Work With The Soil That Will Save Us
As we come to the end of summer so does much of our gardening and hours of digging in the dirt.
Our months of work will hopefully pay off as we collect the fruits of our labor during the fall harvest. Some of us are already planning our gardens for next spring and thinking about soil nutrients and amendments for next year’s plantings. Well-nourished soil produces well-nourished plants.
A solution to climate change is literally right under our feet. The soil serves as a carbon sink, as well as a place to store and filter water. Carbon is part of a healthy soil structure in which it lives in a symbiotic relationship with bacteria and fungi, creating a richer soil.
The Rodale Institute started a Farming Systems Trial in 1981, in which scientists ran a side-by-side comparison of a chemical farm next to an organic farm. Skeptics of the organic practice were surprised when the yields soon matched and even surpassed the chemical methods. Yet, industrial farming still comprises as much as 30 percent of the CO2 that is leaked into our atmosphere, and further contributes to warming of the planet.
Rattan Lal, a director at Ohio State University, has calculated that 50 to 70 percent of the world’s cultivated soils have lost their original carbon stock, which has oxidized when exposed to air becoming CO2. Without carbon and microbes the soil is, well, just dirt, and dirt doesn’t grow productive crops. We need to return carbon back to the ground in order to improve the soil and mitigate climate change.
Our depletion of the soil nutrients has driven a market of adding back in nutrients. We literally are purchasing nutrients to attempt to make our soils healthy again due to our shortsighted management of the land. Nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium are typical soil additives when plants are not thriving. The reality is that the addition of the trifecta of nutrients is that it creates an unhealthy soil by wiping out microbial diversity. The microbes assist the soil structure by cycling carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus, which helps maintain the health of the soil.
Adding in nutrients is part of a larger scale problem of runoff into waterways, creating dead zones in the oceans. We are only exacerbating the problem, leading to soil degradation, dead zones and warming gases.
Eric T. Fleisher, director of horticulture at the Battery Park City Parks Conservancy in New York City, has taken an ecological approach to the 92-acre area. All businesses and residents recycle their food waste, which is composted at a facility located in the area. The green spaces within Battery Park are thriving. His methods are being used at college campuses around the country, including Harvard.
At Cambridge, a test plot was also developed using Fleisher’s methods. The results showed improved root growth, a drop in the amount of water utilized and the ability to get a shovel into the ground where it had been previously so compacted that digging was nearly impossible.
Managing the soil by directly applying manure, rotating crops and using no-till agriculture will help to restore organic matter. We should leave our soil with little disruption. In her 2014 book, The Soil Will Save Us, author Kristin Ohlson presents an argument detailing many ways in which we can solve problems – including drought, soil erosion, air and water pollution, food quality and climate change – by building healthy soil from a more pragmatic approach.
And so when I winterize my garden this year I will not pull up the plants. Instead I will cut them off at the base, where the plants meet the soil. I’ll allow them to lie where they fall for the next several months. This will leave the soil structure intact and provide nutrients by direct composting on top of the soil. When I plant next spring, the goal will be to disrupt the soil as little as possible.
In her book, Ohlson also points to cities as places that can be turned into living vibrant, green, soil-friendly spaces instead of concrete jungles. Why shouldn’t Denver, for example, be filled with vibrant green space in which our citizens can become its own resource for food and healthy soils?
Citizens must lead this effort and hopefully city leaders will follow. What can we do? We can insist that more open space with organic and soil-friendly practices are set as a priority in the planning effort, and that our city parks are managed with organic practices.
We can utilize vacant lots, as they have done in Detroit, to beautify areas by creating a patchwork of community gardens. We can partner with and teach each other soil management, and move away from a reliance on pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers.
Underneath our feet is a solution. But we must treat the soil with as much concern as our water and air. After all, it is all connected just as we are with each other, all other species and Mother Earth.
Let’s work together to stop climate change from the ground up.
Tracey MacDermott is chair of the board of Greater Park Hill Community, Inc. Active in the Registered Neighborhood Organization for many years, MacDermott was the 2012 recipient of the Dr. J. Carlton Babbs Award for Community Service. This year she received an INC Neighborhood Star Award, for her advocacy on behalf of Park Hill. She was trained as a Climate Reality Leader in 2017.