Editor’s note: This commentary is by Beth Champagne, of St. Johnsbury, who writes on climate and agriculture as a freelance journalist.
[A]ll of Earth’s intricately interwoven life, on land, in water and in the air, and the carbon, water and energy cycles that sustain life are unraveling.
Yo-yo weather patterns that started 30 years ago have intensified. Now, “whiplash” weather is jerking plants and animals around and upsetting our expectations for the seasons.
Yet, just as time and again a thriving whole has sprung back, restoring an ecosystem devastated by flood, fire, or even, as botanist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer recounted in “Braiding Sweetgrass,” by industrial waste, so Earth’s air, land and waters might regain their own life-supporting balance,
Healthy soils are teeming with life: One spoonful holds as many microorganisms as there are people on the planet. Even degraded soil remains a matrix for life. Today’s soil scientists and innovative land managers understand how to attend to the whole landscape, hear its messages, and respond in ways that build soil health.
Jack Lazor of Butterworks Farm has been paying attention. Having read that soil can pull carbon from the air, Lazor decided a few years ago to measure soil carbon levels around his farm. His grain fields, he found, had very low levels, but fields and pastures held significant reserves of soil organic matter (aka carbon).
That discovery, Lazor said, led to his “conversion.” He cut back on grain-growing, and put the land into grass, the better to build the organic matter levels in the soil. Grasses increased the levels, pulling carbon pulled from the air to travel, through their roots, deep underground. Carbon also strengthened soil structure, so that water could make its way underground.
Next Thursday, Jack and Anne Lazor will host an all-day, participatory “Land Listeners” workshop at their Westfield farm, with four Vermont co-leaders and, from Oregon, Peter Donovan of the Soil Carbon Coalition.
What would it take to reverse the accelerating deconstruction of life-sustaining relationships, and bring back into good functioning Earth’s cycles of solar energy, air, water and carbon — the cycles that work together to keep every place on Earth alive and humming?
First, says Donovan, turn carbon from a problem into an opportunity!
Since starting the Soil Carbon Challenge in 2008, Donovan has been criss-crossing the continent, occasionally touching down at his base in Enterprise, in northeast Oregon. He works out of a customized school bus, with its own woodstove and piano, visiting land managers, farmers and landowners who’ve committed to managing land for increased soil health and higher soil carbon levels.
They start by learning to look at the landscape, and to recognize how it functions as a whole system. Instead of looking for problems, and devising solutions, they explore what’s going on, making observations, and asking how more water might sink into the soil, how more carbon might be pulled from the air into the soil, and how managed grazing might support soil health.
Donovan and his colleagues teach “citizen science,” using the holistic approach offered in participatory “Land Listener” workshops.
How do people get started as land listeners? By getting down and dirty: bringing the power of plants into the game. Photosynthesizing green plants pull carbon out of the air, grow leaves and stems, and continually return excess carbon to the soil, eventually to become humus, an extremely stable form of carbon.
All that carbon coming out of tailpipes, chimneys and fossil-fueled enterprises, came from decomposed plants. Returning it to the soil, says Dr. James Hansen, former director of the National Oceans and Atmospheric Administration, is as urgently necessary as cutting greenhouse gas emissions to reduce atmospheric carbon.
Increased soil carbon leads to flourishing green growth aboveground, and increased water absorption underground. Reduced runoff, more water held for roots to draw on during dry weather, more air entering the soil, and a thriving population of microorganisms all keep things humming along.
For Land Listeners, the challenge, and the opportunity, come in two parts: Listening to presenters, to learn how the interrelated energy, water and carbon cycles function to keep life thriving, and then walking the land, in small groups, learning how to hear what it is saying about its health and its needs.
They look to see what’s underfoot, and keep ears tuned for movement through the grass, birdsong or the cricket’s hum. What eyes can see and ears hear, knit together by a receptive intelligence, creates the story the land tells — the story land listeners learn.
All are invited Thursday, Sept. 20, to Butterworks Farm in Westfield, on the Quebec border, where Donovan and four more workshop leaders will present the principles and practice of land-listening. All five have extensive background and experience in working with farmers, landowners, graziers and others who manage land for soil health.
Donovan learned innovative practices from graziers while working as a livestock herder in his youth. He now travels throughout the country to over 300 sites where landowners are monitoring changes in soil carbon, soil cover, and water infiltration. The founder of the Soil Carbon Coalition (2008), Donovan has led over 100 workshops.
Heather Darby, an agronomist with UVM Extension, and Sarah Flack, an author and consultant on soil health, both recognized for their effective support of Vermont farmers, grew up on farms in northwestern Vermont.
Cat Buxton of Sharon, community activist, educator and master composter, is founding director of the Vermont Healthy Soils Coalition.
Didi Pershouse of Thetford, author of “The Ecology of Care” and of a teacher’s manual, “Understanding Soil Health and Watershed Function,” available online for downloading at no charge, is president of the Soil Carbon Coalition.
Donovan describes the coalition as “a nonprofit organization working to advance the practice, and to spread awareness, of the opportunity of turning atmospheric carbon into water-holding, fertility-enhancing soil organic matter and humus.”
All five presenters will share their understanding of how “everything is connected to everything else,” and how we can enrich our own lives and relationships by managing land for soil health.
The full-day Land-Listeners Workshop is offered at no charge, thanks to support from the Grazing Lands Coalition. Registration, a description of the day’s events, and information about what to bring along, is available online.
