Rewild Our Soil…
I always say that my yoga practice is not a faith, but a practical tool to wellness. The same is true for Regenerative Farming… it is simple Biology, and has been proven for millions of years. What is this awesome old/new farming practice, you ask? Put simply, it involves no-till farming, with holistic management of diverse crops, following seasons and planned grazing, using zero chemicals and lessening input costs.
I grew up going to my Grandparents farm in South Dakota; easily my favorite memories of my childhood are all found on that farm with my cousins. The only negative there was that my Grandpa spent my entire life struggling to keep his corn and cattle making a profit, and regular loans from the bank were his guiding lights.
I never thought too much about this, but it might have filtered into my college paper about the “Pyramid of Power. I argued how our ‘soul’ needs to be the foundation of our pyramid, not capitalism. I continued by replacing the three walls (media, politics and corporations) with ‘passion, love & truth’, and with great indignation concluded that this new ‘Pyramid of Power’ would save our lives. Because living for the soul purpose of making money creates nothing but competition, and humans cannot survive long-term if our goal is to consume/destroy the very planet we live on.
Darwins’ ‘survival of the fittest’ has done more than explain evolution, it explains the human psyche… win at all costs or perish. The problem with using this model in our human society is that we are not simple animals, our brains have developed beyond fight or flight. Our hands manipulate our surroundings, we can share our knowledge verbally and express beyond our years, for generations far later to learn from. We also cover our naked bodies, and by doing so, have forever separated ourselves from the animal kingdom. But we are not separate, and it is time to repair the damage caused by our abuse and naivete inherent in our evolution… it is time to remember our connection and reliance on mother nature. Reuniting with nature is the crucial first step to our continued survival here on this planet.
We thought we could
control mother nature.
But she doesn’t like bullies.
One has to coexist
to play in her ground.
Even though I had this dream for our world back thirty years ago, I certainly didn’t have a plan of attack. And as life tends to do, she meanders down the road and so did I for a while. Found my soul mate, raised two kids, grew a business, loved and laughed a lot. Then I was hit with stage IIIC ovarian cancer, and my mind soaked up all the knowledge I could get my hands on during recovery. It all boiled down to a bleak reality of chemical infusions into our water and food, endless attacks on our health, and lies as far as the eye could read.
Although my conscious mind knew the world worked this way, it was a blow to know I wasn’t the only cause of my cancer, and my kids were looking to me for their own answers. Again, I found myself with a dream, but no real plan, and I buried my head in more studies that grew into Ayurvedic practices and Herbalism.
My moment of A-HA - of a plan, of a tangible, successful, elegant and undeniably easy plan of attack came from watching a movie while recovering from my second battle with ovarian cancer (after being six years clear), thank you, KISS THE GROUND:-) This movie has given me a response to my kids, who have no problem condemning my generation (and those before me) for ‘blowing it’ with this planet and life itself.
With ‘Regenerative Farming’, we can return the soil to a living part of our ecosystem within as few as three years. It truly doesn’t take much time to free ourselves from the German death chemicals that came into our land after World War II under the guise of pesticides and herbicides. Our waterways will be cleaner; droughts, floods and fires will lessen; more nutrient dense foods will be produced, and the entire land biosystem will improve with each mindful year.
The same number of carbon atoms remain on the planet since the very start of time, and they move between storage systems. Carbon is stored in the soil as humus, in carbon-based life forms (i.e. plants, animals and humans), the ocean, or in the atmosphere (as CO2 and methane). According to ‘Kiss the Ground’, this carbon load, which was historically soil-based, is now in the atmosphere due to industrial farming and deforestation (plus our use of fossil fuels being pumped into the air). The solution (and the plan I am advocating) is to sequester carbon back into the soil by practicing regenerative farming and stopping deforestation.
This plan is not for sustainability, but rather for harnessing the regenerative power of nature itself, and returning our land to the Garden of Eden it wants to be again. No longer the manufacturers of food, but the trusted stewards of our land, of mama earth. We owe her this try; this is our time to nourish the land… and with this simple act, we will not only Rewild the SOIL but also our Soul.
There are substantial benefits from this plan, including clearing our waterways of dangerous pesticides and herbicides. Our (no-till) crops will return to their natural nutrient dense states (our foods contain just 20% of the nutrients our grandparents ate), and production will increase, while also lessening input costs for seeds & chemicals. Soil erosion will also lessen, thereby reducing floods, droughts & fires.
A beautiful example of this practice can be found in the Loess Plateau in China, where the World Bank and the Chinese Government helped restore four million hectares of land, reportedly more than doubling the incomes of local farmers, reducing erosion by 100 million tons of sediment annually, reducing flood risk and dramatically increasing grain production.
My new version of the ‘Pyramid of Power’ is clear; it is instead a circle of life, with LOVE at the center, sending out rays of light like the sun. Let’s harness this natural energy and see where it takes us. Stop the fear, change can be simple, especially going down this path; it is fairly painless. Opportunities for businesses will always present themselves, and they may be in emerging markets, but that is where we are heading anyway, so let’s have fun with the process.
For me, the words “I can’t breathe” represent not only the last gasps from George Floyd, but they are the words I hear echoing from the future if we carry on this path of degeneration and desertification. We can no longer separate ourselves by labels, by race, by gender, by economic standards… we can no longer separate ourselves from nature. This is where we all began, and where we must return.