This article excerpt originally appeared in the May 2018 Vol 48, No. 5 issue of ACRES USA magazine. It is written by Abbey and Spencer Smith. Readers may view and download a full PDF of this article. Introduction to Carbon Farming Loren Poncia stands in front of a room full of farmers. The high ceilings of
– This article first appeared in the July 2017 issues of ACRES USA Magazine. Written by Abbey and Spencer Smith In California, many farmers and ranchers are either drilling wells to get more water for their crops or putting in drain tile to remove water from their fields. It is not possible to make more
Food that makes us sick In a JeffersonHub.com post from spring of 2016, “Why healthy soil matters” we discussed the current state of our food system and analyzed why our population is in the condition of chronic illness that we find ourselves in. When we look at the data in the graph above we see
Kiss the Ground We are excited to announce that Kiss the Ground is sponsoring- Build Soil, Build Wealth. This collaboration will bring a regenerative agriculture course to Shone Farm, in Santa Rosa California. Kiss the Ground has been active in this space for a while and is a California-based 501(c)(3) environmental non-profit telling a new
Flood in the winter, drought in the summer This is a common enough thing to hear in seasonally dry environments, even farmers and ranchers will complain about too much rain in the winter and then lament about the long dry summers. Around here it’s California’s water scarcity problem that is often the topic of discussion. Few
Are you feeding in a sacrifice lot? All too often on ranches all over the west, people winter their livestock on feed grounds that end up looking like ground zero after a bombing. The soil is packed hard and when the growing season finally comes, all you can grow is Mustard and thistle. Does that
Savory Institute Online Courses I got my first computer when I went to college at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo in 1999. It was a Gateway. It was enormous. My roommate, Liz, and I had our own desktop computers and they took up about one third of our tiny dorm room. How times have changed.
“You can trace every sickness, every disease and every ailment to a mineral deficiency.” – Dr. Linus Pauling, two-time Nobel Prize winner “Sick soils mean sick plants, sick animals and sick people.” What is the condition of our food supply, really? According to the current research the food that we buy and consume to keep
Ever since visiting Dimbangombe Ranch in Zimbabwe, I’ve wanted to use livestock to grow crops. Cows in the cornfield? What? The Africa Centre for Holistic Management, our fellow Savory Network Hub near Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe is where Spencer and I first witnessed the positive effects of using animal impact to improve the soil health of
Soil Quality? Manage for health instead. The term “soil quality” thrown around a lot and I have a real problem with that. Soil quality leaves us with the impression that it is as good as it can be and at its potential. This is categorically wrong, no matter what soil type you have or its
