Welcome to the new season based ChangeUnderground Podcast. The theme, as always, is “Decarbonise the Air, Recarbonise the soil!” In this first dedicated season, I’m going back to take a deep look at the world of Regenerative Agriculture, its current state of play and where it might be heading. That being laid out, this episode, episode 1 of season 9, will cover the basics, the underlying principles and an overview of practices.
So without further ado… Continue reading →
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A kit designed to quickly and cheaply turn petrol cars into hybrid vehicles has won the prestigious James Dyson Award and could one day help cut Australia’s transport emissions. Continue reading →
From the Agriland website:
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New Zealand’s Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) has approved a feed additive to reduce methane emissions in livestock. Continue reading →
An anecdote to start the episode. A colleague at work asked to have a chat. Their story is instructive of what’s coming.
They’d received a letter from their home insurance provider of 16 years informing them that at the end of the current policy period they will no longer be able offer insurance for the property. Their reason being the property is a few metres above sea level and 100 odd metres from the coast and will become an unacceptable flooding risk in the next three years. Continue reading →
Following on from last week’s heat wave stories comes an article from The Conversation, dated 23 June 2023:
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If you take a plunge in the sea this winter, you might notice it’s warmer than you expect. And if you’re fishing off Sydney and catch a tropical coral trout, you might wonder what’s going on. Continue reading →
And I’m back!
A month that’s just disappeared from my personal timeline. I hope all my listeners are well because it’s great to feel like I’ve got at least one foot in the land of the living. Thanks for your patience.
And what a month we’ve just lived through as a species. Continue reading →
As I discussed last month with the new vision statement for the podcast and blog, “Decarbonise the air, recarbonise the soil.”
This week we continue our journey through the soil with a post from CHELSIESQUARED entitled: 7 Ways to Kill Soil Microbes: and why this is a bad idea…. Continue reading →
This week the focus is building big things from small. Let me explain.
Following on from the hundred monkeys idea discussed in Episode 189, I’ve come to realise the need for as many people as possible to know how to grow some food. My thinking goes like this:
If it took 100 monkeys to shift the monkey paradigm from eating raw spuds to eating salty raw spuds that had been washed in sea water, then the more people I can influence into growing some food, the point will come when our cultural paradigm will shift from consumption to production. Continue reading →
Today we’re going to discuss regeneration in particular regeneration of the soil and ecosystems. Over the last 50 to 75 years, basically since the second world war we’ve gone through a period of destruction. In effect a faustian bargain in which we gave up 1% of our topsoil every year in return for production returns.
We did this by using chemicals: chemical fertilizers, chemical pesticides and herbicides and fungicides and it worked. There were lots of famines and people starving in the 1970s. A lot of the techniques developed with chemical inputs saved many people, kept them alive. But the cost! That bill is coming due and we need to pay for it now. If we wait, the cost will be so much higher. Continue reading →
Rewetting peatlands is an important way to fight climate change. It helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions and allows carbon to be stored in the soil. In a study in Ireland, researchers compared a rewetted peatland with a drained area. They looked at how much carbon was released or stored in both places over five years. Continue reading →