Join Michael Kennard from Brighton’s Compost Club for a deep dive into the world of soil life and effective composting.

We’ll be covering the soil food web and all the microorganisms that do the following:

• Naturally cycle nutrients.
• Build soil structure.
• Naturally suppress weeds, diseases, and pests.

We’ll touch on how the soil microbiome can influence the food we eat and therefore our own health, as well as its potential to sequester carbon.

There will be examples of effective composting methods, discussing pros and cons in different situations and how you can design the right composting system for you.

In the afternoon we will build a compost bay together so that you can go away with practical knowledge, learn about food and have the option to enjoy a meal made by FieldFoodCo then finish with a fire, and jam into the evening.

The aim is to get you started or upskill your composting and deepen our understanding of the diverse ecosystem that is our soil, to lead us into a regenerative future. Things to bring: Potluck meal to share An instrument of your liking Your insatiable curiosity

About Bees to a Flower:

Bees to a Flower is a Primal Gathering initiative that encourages people, past participants, their friends and the extended community to act as bee’s to a flower to their local community ‘flower’ projects. Actively pollinating the wider ecosystem with the support they need while learning new and empowering skills

Tickets available here – Use code EARTHEDB2F and get 10% off tickets.

The post Bees To A Flower: All About Compost with Michael Kennard appeared first on Earthed.

Sadhguru, Save Soil and Earthed recognise the intrinsic value of the ground beneath our feet and work collectively for a sustainable future. Explore the conversations below…

Q: Why did you create the campaign to “save soil”? Why is it important that we all get involved?

Sadhguru: If you look at the way life happens on this planet, the microbial life in the soil is the foundation for all other life. The basis of all life is in the first 12-15 inches of soil. But today, around the world, soil degradation is happening at a rapid pace.
Half of the world’s topsoil has been lost. In normal agricultural soil, the minimum organic matter should be between 3-6%, but in large parts of the world, it is well below 1%. Right now, United Nations statistics say that we may have agricultural soil only for another 80-100 crops. This means in just 45-60 years, there could be severe food shortages, and getting rich soil will become the basis of wars on this planet.
When it comes to biodiversity and soil, national boundaries mean nothing. It has to be addressed globally. If we have any commitment to life on this planet, if we have any commitment to future generations, this is a must-do for every nation. So, the first and foremost thing is to enshrine soil and ecological regeneration as a part of every nation’s policy.
This is what the Conscious Planet – Save Soil movement is trying to do. It is aiming to bring about a global policy that there must be a minimum of 3-6% organic matter in agricultural land, based on regional conditions.

Q: What is the relationship between our spiritual practice and the practice of caring for the Earth?

Sadhguru: Unfortunately, we live in times when human consciousness is so compartmentalized that we have forgotten that there is actually no such thing as “environment.” If an individual is willing, he can experience the entire world as himself. It is only because he has not exercised this choice that there is a divide between humanity and the environment.
Ecology and human consciousness cannot be separated. Spirituality is not about looking up or down, it is about looking inward. The first fundamental fact you find on looking inward is that you are very much a part of everything around you. The word “Yoga” means union. Union means the boundaries of the individual self dissolve, and you experience existence as yourself. Once this is a living experience, then no one has to tell you to save the planet. To care for what is around you as you care for yourself is only natural.

Q: What is your advice to people who want to inspire their friends and family to work to regenerate soil too?

Sadhguru: In a democracy, the most important thing is the people’s voice. So, I want you to use your voice. The Save Soil movement is your movement. Bring awareness in the nation and in the rest of the world that the soil upon which we stand and walk is the basis of our life, that the life which is happening in the first twelve to fifteen inches of topsoil is actually the basis of our existence.
Say something about soil, at least for five to ten minutes a day. Use social media – Twitter, Facebook, Telegram, or whatever else you have. Put a sticker on your car that says “Save Soil.” If you send a WhatsApp message, close it with “Save Soil.” If you speak to someone, say “Save Soil.” Write a letter to the Prime Minister, President or your local representatives urging them to take action.
Try to reach as many people as you can. Because when the people speak up, governments will make the necessary policy changes.

_{Image: Courtesy of Coulson Brothers Arboriculture, demonstrating the impact of healthy and unhealthy soil on tree health.}

Q: How can the movement for nature regeneration scale to the point it’s having global and transformative impact?

Sadhguru: Soil and environmental damage has happened not because there is an evil force sitting somewhere wanting to damage this planet. It has all happened in pursuit of human happiness and wellbeing. Every one of us, knowingly or unknowingly, are partners in this destruction. The only way out is for every one of us to be partners in the solution. It is from this basis that the Save Soil movement was launched. The movement is not an agitation or a protest, nor is it against anyone. It does not involve economic losses to companies, industries or nations. This is why the response to the movement has been phenomenal.

Since March 2022, we have reached over 4 billion people, making Save Soil the world’s largest people’s movement.

We have active partnerships with many UN agencies. I addressed 193 nations at the UNCCD COP15, where we suggested an incentive-based approach for soil revitalization. The European Union has signed a manifesto with us, and we are confident that it will naturally bring forth change across all the EU countries.

But the most important thing is that we have shifted the narrative around soil. During the COP26 in Glasgow, the word “soil” did not come up anywhere. But now, after the 100-day campaign and our continued efforts with various governments, soil has become mainstream.

At COP28, the UAE proposed the Emirates Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, which aims to shift the focus of climate action towards soil and agriculture. This is what the Save Soil movement has been striving for. The Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, also launched the Green Credit Initiative, marking a significant opening of possibilities for farmers to access carbon credit funds. This initiative will also fulfill one of the goals of the Save Soil movement.

The call for decisive action is pressing. If we just listen to the life on the planet, the message is loud and clear: we must turn around from the ecological disaster we are headed towards. Let us put aside our differences of race, religion and nationality and work together for the sake of all life on the planet. Let us make it happen.

—

We are deeply grateful to have the opportunity to collaborate with Sadhguru and the Save Soil team on this interview. If you’d like to become a soil steward, and take action to regenerate and replenish soil, Nicole Master’s 45-minute video course is a great place to start.

The post Q&A with Sadhguru: Why Soil Health is so Important appeared first on Earthed.

_{In alignment with World Soil Day, Earthed and Farmacy came together to highlight the pivotal role soil plays in building healthy ecosystems, healthy food, and healthy people. Farmacy is a Founding Partner of the Earthed charity, championing the belief that ‘food is medicine’ and advocating for local, organic and biodynamic farming. The following is an extract from their latest publication, Manifesto on the Future of Food. This insurgent manifesto traces a path from the health of the soil to the health of human beings, with food as the connecting agent between our mental, physical and planetary wellbeing.} 

The thin, porous blanket of soil between the Earth’s crust and its atmosphere is the alchemical chamber that gives rise to 95% of humanity’s food.

And the soil provides more than food. It filters and regulates water as it travels through the ground into aquifers, rivers and streams. It is the largest active carbon pool after the ocean, holding more carbon than all plant life on the planet.⁠

Soil accomplishes all of this because it is not a dead medium for roots, containing trace minerals and little water. Soil is alive, a bustling community of organisms whose intricacy boggles the mind.

The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.

—President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Letter to State Governors on February 26, 1937

We have often mistake soil for dirt. But the most contemporary science is revealing soil to be perhaps the most fascinating and complex of all ecosystems, as diverse and abundant as a tropical rainforest or a coral reef. Nowhere in nature are species so densely packed as under our heels. In English soils, 90% of species haven’t yet been named. A pinch of healthy soil can contain kilometres of branching fungal filaments and a billion bacteria. Entire branches of the tree of life are represented in a single handful of earth. 

Despite being the ecosystem most essential to human life, soil wasn’t even recognized as one until recently.

Leonardo da Vinci remarked that we know more about the celestial bodies than the miniature bodies beneath our feet. This remains true to some extent. Despite being the ecosystem most essential to human life, soil wasn’t even recognized as one until recently. In the last decade, scientists have realised that the soil is not only an ecosystem, but a vast biological structure, an intricate matrix created by the very organisms that live in it, in the same way as a beaver’s dam or a beehive, only dramatically more complex.

At the smallest level, bacteria convert carbon from the air. They use it as glue to stick together bits of dirt in forming tiny chambers to call home. Other soil creatures then build those chambers into bigger ones. Then the giants of the soil, creatures visible to the naked eye such as worms and ants, build those pockets into still larger ones. All of this is going on at once and is fractally scaled. The soil has the same pattern to its structure no matter what magnification you look at it at, whether you zoom in or out.

These features make living soil an extraordinarily resilient matrix. The density and variety of organisms allows it to adapt to changing conditions. Healthy soil stays on the land when it rains and when the wind blows. Were it just a passive heap of rock and dust the rain would sweep it away.

The emerging understanding of soil emphasises ecology, the science that studies the relationship between living things.

Today biologists know that soil fertility is as much a function of its ecology as of its chemistry. Plant growth is driven by a bustling exchange of stimuli and substances among many organisms. As the root hair of a plant makes its way into a lump of soil, it releases highly specific chemical signals. This is its language for communicating to a select group of bacteria. The chemical message wakes the target bacteria from a hibernation state, and the microorganisms multiply wildly around the root.

Thus the plant creates alliances with fungi and bacteria that forage about the soil — both nearby and miles away — for the minerals the plant needs. They then rush back to the surface of the root to exchange these for the sugars that the plant derives from its own traffic with the sun. The magic we call photosynthesis. In addition to the building blocks of plant nutrition, this symbiotic relationship also provides the plant with growth hormones and immune stimulation.

This is the handshake that is at the heart of life on Earth. The energy that plants harvest from the sun is put into the web of life of the soil in the form of carbon. The plants in turn receive the minerals they require from the microorganisms that make their home in the soil. The soil biome is teeming with bacteria, fungi, protozoa and nematodes that carry out this dance. This system has fed plants for 460 million years. It generates everything from the great forests to the vast grasslands of the world.

The living mantle of the soil biome is — in both historical and practical terms — the cradle of civilization. For all our achievements as a species, we owe our existence to these few inches of soil.

But our soil is hurting. In the last 30 years, roughly a third of the Earth’s arable land has been lost to erosion and pollution. Twenty-four billion tons of fertile soils slip away from the land managed for human food production each year. A loss of 3.4 tonnes for every person on the planet, every year, year after year. This is estimated to cost the world economy $400 billion per year, but the real loss is unquantifiable.

What soil remains is losing its life and releasing the carbon it holds into the air. When soil ecosystems begin to die, all the parameters of fertility — depth, internal drainage, acidity levels, moisture retention and more — fall out of health.

This is no small predicament. The loss of soil health and vitality has led to the demise of civilizations before our own. But to understand what to do about it, we must understand the particular inventions and imperatives that brought us to where we are today.

_{In alignment with World Soil Day, Earthed and Farmacy came together to highlight the pivotal role soil plays in building healthy ecosystems, healthy food, and healthy people. Farmacy is a Founding Partner of the Earthed charity, championing the belief that ‘food is medicine’ and advocating for local, organic and biodynamic farming. This is an extract from their latest publication, Manifesto on the Future of Food. This insurgent manifesto traces a path from the health of the soil to the health of human beings, with food as the connecting agent between our mental, physical and planetary wellbeing.} 

About Earthed

Earthed is the nature skills platform for a global community learning from and for nature. The charity exists to galvanise and support a peer-driven, mass mobilised ecosystem restoration movement by giving anyone, anywhere, access to the skills, networks, and funds they need to restore nature and grow food. Together, the growing Earthed community will mainstream restoration knowledge, help fund community-oriented regeneration projects, build back biodiversity, restore soil health and degraded ecosystems, localise food systems, and help every balcony, city, farm, and river burst with life.

About Farmacy

Restaurant, farm, shop, and foundation, Farmacy has become renowned for its innovative, nutritionally curated and organic dishes, with ‘living food’ recipes that are good for human health and sustainability. Farmacy champions the belief that ‘food is medicine’ and advocates for local, organic and biodynamic farming. The ‘Farm’ in Farmacy is grounded in the Kent countryside. It’s a Demeter-certified biodynamic plot of land, growing vegetables, fruits and herbs, which are delivered weekly to the Notting Hill restaurant by electric van. As well as championing a regenerative approach to agriculture, Farmacy is passionate about creating educational initiatives to share this knowledge of biodynamics and set individuals and families off on their own journeys towards deep health and personal sovereignty.

Already a member of Earthed?

Head to our Earthed Courses and start learning from restorers around the world. Not sure what the best course for you is? Start a discussion in our community area!

The post The Magic Complexity of Soil and Soil Health appeared first on Earthed.

_{In alignment with World Soil Day, Earthed and Farmacy have come together to highlight the pivotal role soil plays in building healthy ecosystems, healthy food, and healthy people. Farmacy is a Founding Partner of the Earthed charity championing the belief that ‘food is medicine’ and advocating for local, organic and biodynamic farming. Get your own copy of Farmacy’s new Manifesto on the Future of Food.}

Part 1: the magic complexity of soil

In English soils, 90% of species haven’t yet been named. A pinch of healthy soil can contain kilometres of branching fungal filaments and a billion bacteria. Healthy soils are living ecosystems. They are fascinating complex webs of life that contain a huge diversity of species.

Healthy soils are living ecosystems. They are fascinating complex webs of life that contain a huge diversity of species.

Within the soil, worms, bugs, fungi, bacteria, plants and animals all work together to turn organic material into nutrients and food. These creatures create beautifully rich soil. This is the basis for all terrestrial life and 99% of what we eat. 

The connection between human health and healthy soils.

Within healthy soils there are thousands of microorganisms that unlock nutrients for plants, allowing our food to become nutrient-rich. Nutrient-dense food provides us the nourishment we need for the ecosystem of our body to thrive. When we destroy the soil food web and kill these millions of tiny organisms within the soil, we are also affecting the nutrients and nourishment that we receive through the food we eat.

Photosynthesis is the handshake at the heart of life on Earth. 

Plants harvest energy from the sun that feeds the web of life in the soil in the form of carbon.  The plants in turn receive the minerals they require from the microorganisms that they feed.

Plants send roots into the soil biome. This is the community of microscopic bacteria and fungi that allows plants to take nutrients from the ground. 

Similarly, our own bodies extend roots called villi into the gut microbiome, a community of tiny creatures that break down our food and shift nutrients. We receive part of the ecology of our microbiome from our families. But we also ingest millions of microbes with every meal. 

Science is finding that our microbiomes, shaped by the food we eat, affect our emotions, thinking, and relationships. With depression and anxiety strongly linked to poor gut flora diversity. 

Serotonin — one of the body’s most important neurotransmitters — is almost entirely produced in the digestive tract. Serotonin influences sleep, appetite, and moods. It inhibits pain and regulates sexual function. When it’s out of whack it can lead to depression, anxiety, and even more dramatic mental effects. 

Since at least 90% of serotonin is produced in the gut, and the gut is lined with a hundred million neurons. It makes sense that the inner workings of the digestive system affect the mind and emotions. 

A healthy soil supports a healthy gut. A healthy gut supports a healthy mind.

A resilient group of minds can give rise to a thriving culture that continually invents new harmonies with its surroundings. 

We must learn to nurture the soil so that it becomes alive and vital once again.

The unimaginable, magic complexity of soil is constantly contributing to human and planetary health in more ways than can be listed.

Farmacy Manifesto on the Future of Food

Part 2: the impact of industrial agriculture

Declining soil health is intrinsically linked to declining human health. 

Agriculture dominates the surface of the globe, spanning 46% of all habitable land. The way we feed ourselves is the most direct and intimate aspect of our relationship to nature. 

Yet around the world, industrial agriculture is actively killing the soil food web and impacting human health.

Industrial Agriculture and the Soil Food Web:

• Continual tilling breaks down the connective structure that bacteria and fungi create. 

• Heavy machinery compacts soil, leading to soil erosion, increased nitrogen loss, and reduced drainage.

• Pesticides kill the billions of microorganisms within the soil that are also working to bind the soil together. 

• Synthetic fertilisers further unravel the balance between microorganisms in the soil.

When the complex web of life holding soil together deteriorates, rainfall is more likely to result in soil runoff. That runoff is filled with pesticides and fertilisers which then enter waterways, polluting aquatic ecosystems. Therefore creating further imbalance in the surrounding landscape.

Industrial Agriculture and Human Health

The mass adoption of industrial agriculture was shaped by historical forces, gaining much of its momentum in the aftermath of the World Wars.

The chemical and machinery industries that had been busy manufacturing poison gases and artillery during the wars found new markets in the farm fields. In fact many of the same companies that had developed nerve gas for use on the battlefields and in the gas chambers turned their techniques to another kind of war: the war on pests.

Today over 1,400 pesticides are used, but less than 1% of the poison sprayed acts on the target organism. The rest leaches into the ecosystem, undermining the web of life — and slowly and insidiously ravaging human health too.

Since the rise of synthetic chemical pesticides and fertilisers being sprayed on our food, we have seen increasing rates of inflammation, chronic disease and neurological disorders. 

There is now increasing evidence showing the direct links between the chemical intensification of our agriculture and the rapid rise of a range of diseases. Which are now resulting in increasingly unaffordable treatment costs. These include diet-related illnesses such as obesity, type-2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, allergies, certain cancers, and diseases of the immune system. Many of which are being directly linked to the way food is currently produced and consumed.

The same industrial agricultural processes that are damaging the soil food web are also impacting human health. In comparison, healthy soils support healthy people. We need to transform the way we farm and eat in order to support and celebrate this intrinsic link between humans and soil.

Today, in our fast-forward and dulled state, we understand food as fuel and convenience. But food is so much more than that. In the truest sense, eating is a profound act. It is about nourishment and connection. The way we eat involves us in a web of information and exchange that stretches across the globe and as deep into history as it is possible to go. Food is loaded with meaning as well as nutrients, encoded with the largest possible implications for human destiny.

Farmacy Manifesto on the Future of Food

Part 3: food as medicine

The regeneration of the food landscape is about the integrity of the soil ecology but also about the integrity of the human ecology. 

Within healthy soils there are thousands of microorganisms that help our food become nutrient rich. Nutrient dense food provides us the nourishment we need for the ecosystem of our body to thrive. When we destroy the soil food web and kill these millions of tiny organisms within the soil, we are also affecting the nutrients and nourishment that we receive through the food we eat. 

Our dysregulation starts with the food we eat. Food is the medicine for healing humanity.

There are many factors that have affected the health of our intestinal microbiome, from antibiotics, low fibre in processed foods, the modern emphasis on hygiene, and the generalised use of biocides in agriculture. But it is possible to regenerate our guts by eating a diversity of foods from living soils. 

Fermentation

Fermentation is a set of practices that goes back to the dawn of humanity. They are a means of working with nature to elicit more nutrition and flavour from food. As foods are transformed by microorganisms in controlled environments, chemical changes take place, unlocking nutrients, creating new ones, and developing natural chemical cocktails. Therefore stimulating our taste buds, guts and imaginations.

Living cultures such as sauerkraut, yoghurt and kvass can help us to rebuild the microorganisms in our gut. Yet this still depends on healthy soil. Vegetables from a depleted industrial landscape won’t contain the necessary elements to jumpstart their own fermentation.

Fermentation thus illustrates once again how the vitality of the mind can be traced directly back to the vitality of the soil.

The trouble is not only how industrial food is grown, but in what happens to food after it leaves the farm, as it enters a second industrial process. In the factories, food is radiated, oxidised, and further treated with synthetic chemicals. Soybean, corn, and rapeseed oils are extracted, bleached, and deodorised with chemical solvents such as hexane, a known neurotoxin. Processed foods come packed with refined sugars, artificial sweeteners, preservatives, emulsifiers, enzymes, and hormone-disrupting substances.

By and large, we don’t know where our food comes from, how it was grown, or what it has been mixed or treated with. A useful rule of thumb is Michael Pollan’s philosophy for eating, which he summed up in just seven words in a mastery of synthesis: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Food sits at the intersection of our inner landscapes and our outer landscapes. The food we eat affects how our bodies respond, how our minds understand, and how our health supports us — but it also determines the way the world around us looks, the state of the air, the earth, the water, and the vitality of our social and political systems.

Farmacy Manifesto on the Future of Food

Part 4: the shift to regenerative agriculture

The regeneration of the food landscape is not only about the integrity of the soil ecology, but also about the integrity of the human ecology. Agriculture that is truly regenerative should not harm the environment or human health. 

Regenerative agriculture is a way of growing food that honours this complexity that lives in the soil. It acknowledges how as humans we depend on that living soil for our health and wellbeing. By using approaches that build soil health through natural means, in the same way soils have been doing for millions of years before industrial agriculture, we can halt the decline of our health and our soils. 

What does a regenerative food system look like in practice?

Smaller scale.

Big monocultures reliant on toxic chemicals and fossil fuels cannot be truly regenerative. Smaller scale allows for farming practices that collaborate with nature. 

Job-rich instead of tech-intensive.

Many food technologies rely on rare-earth minerals and use tremendous amounts of energy. They also impose standardisation. Human beings, on the other hand, are built for diversity and capable of nurturing soil, landscapes, and each other. Regenerative food systems are people-led.

Diverse farms.

Life is built on diversity. In order to harness the power of ecology and build healthy soil, a variety of plants and animals must be integrated into the same land.

Local markets.

Cutting food miles is crucial to reducing emissions and use of plastic. More importantly it connects eaters to their local landscapes and keeps farming accountable to the community. Local food networks are more resilient to changes in climate and financial shocks. They also shift the balance of power away from corporations and back to actual people: farmers and eaters. Local food is fresh food — with more nutrients and flavour.

Face-to-face relationships.

Real connections between farmers, retailers, and consumers help keep all parties informed and accountable to each other. It also means that people can support each other in times of need, translating to resilience and social regeneration.

Real food for real people.

For food systems and not just certain specialty products to be regenerative, the fundamental shift will be to provide everyday food at affordable prices. This is not easy in a deregulated globalised economy. Policy intervention are needed, but in the meantime paying more for organic food can help to subsidise the transition. (Adapted from Local Futures, founded by Helena Norberg-Hodge – check out Helena Norberg-Hodge’s Earthed course on Localisation)

The principles of regenerative agriculture encompass a vibrant range of practices. Those practices leverage the natural features of the landscape and the biology of the plants and animals involved. These principles allow farmers to make expensive synthetic inputs redundant by harnessing ecology to create soil fertility and deal with pests. Along the way, carbon is returned to the soil and the water cycle is restored to more reliable flows. Regenerative agriculture is a kind of farming that produces food with greater nutrition while improving the conditions for life and food production in the future. 

Regenerative agriculture today is not only empirically recognized to offer greater nutrition without the toxic load of synthetic chemicals, but many organic and biodynamic farms also provide an aesthetic that is deeply pleasing to humans. This is not accidental. Outer landscapes are reflected in our inner landscapes. When the outer landscapes to which we are connected through food are alive, complex, and humming with response, so are we.

Farmacy Manifesto on the Future of Food

About Earthed

Earthed is the nature skills platform for a global community learning from and for nature. The charity exists to galvanise and support a peer-driven, mass mobilised ecosystem restoration movement by giving anyone, anywhere, access to the skills, networks, and funds they need to restore nature and grow food. Together, the growing Earthed community will mainstream restoration knowledge, help fund community-oriented regeneration projects, build back biodiversity, restore degraded ecosystems, localise food systems, and help every balcony, city, farm, and river burst with life.

About Farmacy

Restaurant, farm, shop, and foundation, Farmacy has become renowned for its innovative, nutritionally curated and organic dishes. With ‘living food’ recipes that are good for human health and sustainability. Farmacy champions the belief that ‘food is medicine’ and advocates for local, organic and biodynamic farming. The ‘Farm’ in Farmacy is grounded in the Kent countryside. It’s a Demeter-certified biodynamic plot of land, growing vegetables, fruits and herbs, which are delivered weekly to the Notting Hill restaurant by electric van. As well as championing a regenerative approach to agriculture, Farmacy is passionate about creating educational initiatives to share this knowledge of biodynamics. Therefore setting individuals and families off on their own journeys towards deep health and personal sovereignty.

Already a member of Earthed?

Head to our Earthed Courses and start learning from restorers around the world. Not sure what the best course for you is? Start a discussion in our community area!

The post The soil food web: why healthy soil means healthy people appeared first on Earthed.