Tag Archives: sugar

Episode 263. An Ice Age Species, Holocene Tech and An Anthropocene Future

This is The ChangeUnderground for the 5th of July 2021.

I’m your host, Jon Moore

Decarbonise the Air, Recarbonise the Soil!

The Pleistocene

Our species, Homo sapiens, came into existence during the period known as the Pleistocene, the Ice Ages. The Pleistocene lasted from about 2.5 million years ago to around 12,000 years ago. In that time many other species of humans evolved too. Since I finished my degree in archaeology back in ’95 the situation has become far more convoluted. There was a nice neat chronology: The Australopithecines, of which there were many but out of this lineage came Homo habilis, Homo erectus and then Homo sapiens. And Neaderthals were slotted in somewhere. Continue reading →

Episode 219. Unintended Consequences of the Wrong Target

This is the World Organic News for the week ending 22nd of  June 2020.

Jon Moore reporting!

Decarbonise the air, recarbonise the soil!

The trouble with “knowing” is it leads to certainty, certainty leads to errors and these errors usually come from the unintended consequences of “knowing”. It may well be part of the human condition, it is certainly part of the current industrial agricultural paradigm.

From Dr Christine Jones’s last episode came the following:

Quote:

No amount of NPK fertiliser can compensate for compacted, lifeless soil with low wettability and low water-holding capacity. Indeed, adding more chemical fertiliser often makes things worse. This is particularly so for inorganic nitrogen (N) and inorganic phosphorus (P). An often overlooked consequence of the application of high rates of N and P is that plants no longer need to channel liquid carbon to soil microbial communities in order to obtain these essential elements. Reduced carbon flow has a negative impact on soil aggregation – as well as limiting the energy available to the microbes involved in the acquisition of important minerals and trace elements. Lack of trace elements increases the susceptibility of plants and animals to pests and diseases.  

End Quote Continue reading →