Treating the Farm as an Ecosystem with Gabe Brown Part 1, The 5 Tenets of Soil Health

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Strong rec tastyfreeze · 2019-09 · on “Estimates that mineral levels in vegetables have dropped by up to 90% since 1914”

This happened due to extermination of soil life through modern farming practices of heavy tilling, fertilizing and monoculture crops. Dead soil is more susceptible to erosion and requires ever increasing amounts of synthetic fertilizer to grow anything. More soil has been lost from the US than the amount of food that has been produced. Soil fertility can be returned to historical levels by changing farming practices to make living soil. The benefits of treating the soil as a living organism include increased fertility, water infiltration, moisture retention, and nutrient availability as well as decreasing or eliminating synthetic fertilizer requirements. [LINK] This is a long video but it ha

Strong rec tastyfreeze · 2021-04 · on “The U.S. corn belt has lost a third of its topsoil”

YouTube soil health videos has all you need. Gabe Brown and Ray Archuleta presentations are easy to consume. Dr. Elaine Ingham focuses more on the soil life in greater detail than most care about but she does provide some important to understand details on rhizosphere interactions. Living Web Farms has quite a lot of lectures about regenerative practices. There are also a myriad of academic papers on soil health as well. This video, [this video] , by Gabe Brown set me on the regenerative path. If you dont want to consume hours of information here is the gist. The soil is alive. Plants use microbes and fungus as an external stomach. Direct sun and disruption/tilling kill the soil life. Without lif

Strong rec akeck · 2021-07 · on “Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies”

Gabe Brown's talk is my favorite introduction to regenerative ag: [this video] He did a book on it: [LINK] I also like Geoff Lawton's work on food forests: [LINK] [LINK]

Strong rec frereubu · 2021-09 · on “Sri Lanka’s overnight flip to organic farming has led to an economic disaster”

I don't know if you've come across this video on HN before, but I discovered it here and it was an eye-opener for me. It's a guy called Gabe Brown who transformed his farm into one that needed no fertilizer by using no-till and rotation. One of the most compelling things is that he's no tree-hugger (he even has an uncomplimentary comparison with the soil from an organic farm) - his focus is squarely on profit, which goes up when you're not forking out huge amounts of money on chemicals. I thought I'd give it five minutes, then 2.5 hours later I realised I'd watched the whole thing. [this video]

Recommends jakeogh · 2019-09 · on “Healthy soil is the real key to feeding the world”

I found this video series about soil really interesting: [this video] It's long, and I was sure I would click away, but the presenter has a great tone and the content is heka cool.

Recommends VBprogrammer · 2020-04 · on “Fruit Trenches: Cultivating Subtropical Plants in Freezing Temperatures”

Not sure if you've come come across it but Gabe Brown has done some interesting stuff in farm scale low input farming. [this video] That said, I think there is a lot of interesting stuff in permaculture design. But in a lot of cases it is a bit of a pyramid scheme / agile consultancy feel going on.

Recommends vram22 · 2020-07 · on “Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable”

Gabe Brown has been doing regenerative agriculture for over two decades on Brown's Ranch, over 2000 acres, in Bismarck, North Dakota successfully. Food crops plus cover crops plus livestock, all integrated. Lot of good results compared to neighboring farmers doing the traditional synthetic fertilizer / pesticide / tilling / monoculture approach. There are others like him too. And he's been invited to and giving a lot of talks about it at many confs for years: Watch "Treating the Farm as an Ecosystem with Gabe Brown Part 1, The 5 Tenets of Soil Health" [this video]

Recommends carapace · 2020-10 · on ““Fungi Can Teach Us a New Way of Looking at the World””

I had an experience with mycelium that changed my way of looking at the world: [LINK] I am coming around to the POV that soil should be thought of as a kind of organism. Check out e.g.: "Treating the Farm as an Ecosystem with Gabe Brown Part 1, The 5 Tenets of Soil Health" [this video] He talks about fungus starting around 1:20 (80 minutes in) [this video] Fungal to bacterial ratios...