Regenerate Climate is a grassroots group of citizens, farmers, advocates, politicians and legislators. We are raising awareness and inspiring action on all solutions to the climate crisis, especially the mostly overlooked role of agriculture and regenerative framing. To join email thomashall38@regenerateclimate.com
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Regenerative Organic Agriculture Cools Earth, Moderates Weather Extremes and Reduces Pollution
By Thomas Hall
Introduction
Regenerative Farmers Can Help Reverse Global Warming
Why is it that all that we hear about is carbon dioxide from fossil fuels? We need to add regenerative agriculture to the debate and reverse global warming, not just slow it down.
Global warming started about 10,000 years ago with the invention of the plow resulting in progressive soil degradation. This was accelerated with the introduction of chemical agriculture after World War II which accelerates warming.
Conventional agriculture reduces plant coverage, releases carbon dioxide. It creates dead dirt which absorbs sunlight. The heat is radiated and trapped by the greenhouse blanket.
Regenerative agriculture supports nature to restore the living soil, plant cover, nature’s regulatory heat system, and rain cycles. Living plants draw down carbon dioxide then sequester it. Plants cool the Earth by absorbing heat through water evaporation and transporting the heat up above the greenhouse blanket back into space. When condensed into clouds the heat is released back into space and creates more heat-reflecting clouds. Green plants, especially trees, are nature’s heat pump. More organic rich soil reduces fires and drought through rapid infiltration and retention of rainwater, with reduced runoff and erosion as well as improved small water cycle which provides more water.
When regenerative agriculture is adopted, worldwide carbon will be returned to new soil at about the same rate that fossil fuel releases carbon into the atmosphere today.
Regenerative practices restore many indigenous practices and are an extension of organic agricultural practices, including the reduction or elimination of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. Others include biodiversity, no monocropping, no till, cover cropping, living roots in the soil year-round, agroforestry, and rotating animal grazing. There is no universal definition of regenerative because they are adopted based upon local conditions.
By reducing input costs of artificial fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, regenerative farmers increase profitability while producing more nutritious food.
As an engineer, I’m all for and excited about renewable energy getting cheaper and helping to reduce fossil fuel releasing carbon dioxide and pollutants, thereby reducing climate change.
Visit my website for an overview with references to explore for more information: https://www.regenerateclimate.com/
A good overview of the scientific evidence, and mechanics are these two short YouTube videos by Dave Borlacet, the Host of 'Just Have A Think': Regenerative Agriculture Part 1 (15 minutes) and Part2 (11 minutes). Borlacet also summarizes Walter Jehne’s lecture at Harvard The Soil Carbon Sponge, Climate Solutions and Healthy Water Cycles. He is an Australian Microbiologist, climate scientist, and founder of Healthy Soils Australia.
An introduction to regenerative farming practices: Common Ground Redux - Educational Version (Official Preview) 3 minutes
Dr. Elaine Ingham was a pioneering American microbiologist and soil biologist who spent 40 decades developing the concept of the soil food web, revolutionizing organic farming and regenerative agriculture. She has trained thousands of farmers and hundreds of consultants and soil lab technicians.
New England Stonewalls Farmers cut down most of the trees in Vermont then sheep ate all the plants killing the soil.
I'm a retired professor of Electrical Engineering Technology, with a master’s in nutrition and Biochemistry.
Please contact me with any questions. I would love to discuss them with you.
Thomas Hall
Thomashall38@RegenerateClimate.com
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I presented the concept of Regenerative Agriculture to the Legislative Climate Caucus on 9/19 saying, Regenerative Agriculture is the 3rd leg of the solution stool to global warming. We all know transportation and lack of appropriate building weatherization are 2 major contributors. Conventional agriculture, worldwide, is the 3rd major cause by ruining soil biology and natural carbon sequestration, thereby greatly disturbing the global water cycle. Changing the modern conventional agriculture paradigm back to regenerative cropping solutions is the significant additional piece to solving global warming,
Rep. Jim McCullough -Vermont state legislator
Hurricane Ian, which has destroyed parts of Florida, forest fires and other climate extremes are graphic examples and a wake-up call to the fact that the water cycle and carbon cycle have been disrupted. There are the major mechanisms that regulate the climate out of dozens of interacting mechanisms.
