Dan Hemesath's Blog

About Elaine Ingham:  A biological approach to agriculture

Dr. Elaine Ingham has had over 40 years of experience in Soil Biology and  microbiology.

Among her special skills is making this extremely complex subject understandable.

A few years years ago, hardly anyone paid any attention to the micro life in the soil.  But within the last few years we have come to realize that the micro-organisms in the soil are not only essential, but the basis for all life. They are the secret to a healthy soil and to productive harvests.

They serve in the soil in much the same way as the bacteria and micro-organisms in our own body account for 70 percent of our immune system and play various essential roles in our health and well-being.

A normal human body has over ten times the number of bacteria in his body as he or she has cells.

A teaspoon full of soil has billions of bacteria of so many different species the over 90 percent of the have not yet been catalogued. 

And species of soil fungi run into the millions, most of which have not been catalogued.

Dr. Ingham teaches how, working with biology, we can build soil heath regardless of whether the soil or sand, silt, or clay.

Aerobic  bacteria along with fungi and other soil micro-organisms do many jobs including building soil structure, extracting needed minerals nutrients out of sand, silt, and clay, releasing enzymes and making the nutrients plant available, or available for intermediaries like protozoa, and good nematodes who in turn convert the nutrients into plant usable food.

What are Dr. Ingham’s methods for building soil?

Some of the methods that she recommends are the use of compost, compost tea, and compost tea extract.

She also recommends no-till and perennial cover crops.  She provides a list of possible cover crops with the caveat that different crops do better under different conditions, such as soil type, slope, rainfall, and many other circumstances.  She has had more success with cover crops that have deeper root systems and less organic mass above the ground.

As for compost and compost tea, she describes in detail how compost should and should not be made, what components should be used and in what proportion, how to keep compost aerobic which is good and to avoid compost going anaerobic which its bad. The ingredients for compost an thus compost tea are available in every household, farm, and garden.

In trying to summarize some of Dr. Ingham’s main ideas, I realize that that my attempt is very weak  and incomplete.   For better understanding, go to youtube, type  “Elaine Ingham,” and spend some time listening to the master. 

Also check out her website: soilfoodweb.com

My next blog will give one example of one of Dr. Ingham’s many success stories.

Blog #2 Oct. 2016

There is an exciting potential for climate change by putting carbon into the soil.

“The soil of our planet contains about three times the amount of carbon that’s stored in vegetation and twice the amount stored in  the atmosphere. Since two thirds of the earth’s landmass is grassland, additional CO2 storage in the soil via better management practices, even on a small scale, could have a huge impact.  Grasslands are also home to two billion people who depend on livestock…Both these animals and their human stewards could be mobilized for carbon action.”  ( Kris Olson, “The Soil Will Save Us”  2014)

Today the great majority of people think that lands are changed to desert by too many livestock overgrazing and trampling before vegetation can recover.  This belief, according to Savory, is just as mistaken as the belief a few hundred years ago, that the sun rotated around the earth.

As a young man in Africa, Savory learned the hard way, how livestock, with planned, intensive grazing, can be the tool to create vibrant, productive soil, rather than to destroy it.

Back in the 60’s he was the man in charge of a huge, recently established, National Park on the Botswana border and degradation and desertification in the park soon became huge problems.  He determined that the cause was too many elephants.  Park officials concurred and his plan to reduce the elephant population was implemented.  40,000 elephants were killed.   But the problem just became worse. He realized that he had made huge mistake and dedicated his life to finding the solution—to learning how nature creates and to learn why man’s intervention so often destroys.

Savory was uniquely qualified for this mission or task, because of his background in biology, his willingness to question the standard wisdom, and most of all because of his motivation, having made such a huge blunder with the elephants.

In looking at the situation he saw that everywhere where lands, especially brittle, moisture deprived lands, were deteriorating and becoming deserts, both when conventionally farmed and when put aside as protected parks.

Why?

He came to the conclusion that nature’s way of preserving and building soil was by way of the movement of large herds, of larger animals, prey animals that moved in tight herds for their own protection.  For example, the huge herds of Wildebeests that annually migrate around the Serengeti park, for millennia, creating some of the world’s lushest savannas.

He studied the Frenchman, Andre Voisin, who studied and wrote about the advantages of planned rotation of pasture lands. Savory also learned from a South African rancher,/botanist, John Acocks, who developed a grazing system, mimicking nature,  that helped heal the land. Acocks concluded that the actual number of grazing animals was not that important.   He made the statement that Africa was “overgrazed and understocked.” 

Based on this information and a an examination of a farm that was following Acock’s guidance, Savory saw that livestock could simulate the effects of wild herds on the soil.  Working with his rancher friends, it took many failed attempts, but eventually, recognizing the vital role of timing, success began to be achieved.       

Blog #3

Savory started his Holistic Management  over 40 years ago.  Now it is being used by farmers, ranchers, policymakers who are developing a greater understanding of the strategies for managing domestic livestock in a cost-effective and nature-based manner.

Today, there are successful Holistic Management practitioners spread across the globe, from

Canada to Patagonia and from Zimbabwe to Australia to Montana.   More than 10,000 people have been trained in Holistic Management and its associated  grazing planning procedures and over 40 million acres are managed holistically worldwide.

Of course there is a long way to go before we reach the billion or so acres that could benefit from planned, intensive grazing worldwide.  But this kind of grazing is definitely on the upswing worldwide.

To find success stories of farmers and ranchers who not only salvaged their operation, but turned around their bottom line check out the following sites: https://holisticmanagement.org/holistic-management/success-stories/ and http://savory.global/institute.

This is not to say that everyone who attempts this method is automatically successful.   It is more than a simple method.  Success depends on several factors, such as having all decision makers on board, setting a common goal, adapting the plan to the situation, climate, and other variables, and investing the time and effort required. 

Holistic Planning as outlined in Savory’s basic textbook: “Holistic Management” by Allan Savory with  Jody Butterfield, is a beautiful, logical guide. I read this book very slowly from cover to cover.   As I read, I kept looking for weaknesses in Savory’s thinking, but couldn’t find any.   To the contrary, I kept thinking: “This is great.” or “This is really important”,  or “This point should not be overlooked if the process is going to work”.”

I’m may be a pie-in-the-sky dreamer, but as a 78 year old student auditing classes in the Fresno County Ag Dept.,  and as a gadfly, wannabe catalyst, I would like to see plans made, grants proposals written etc., to have students and professors set up and do research on a Savory style planned, intensive grazing project at the experimental farm north of Fresno where the beginnings of such a partnership between the Forest Service and Fresno State already exist.

blog-2-2016pdf

For my blog update 12-08–16

After a long pause in my blogging due to  a number of reasons including some health issues, I hope to post some thoughts that I think are worthwhile.

Since I plan to make these thoughts available to anyone who may be interested, including friends, students, and professors in the Fresno State school of agriculture, I will try to avoid saying anything that I can’t back up.  Of course I expect that there will be differences of opinions, and clarifications that should be made, and I invite your comments.

The first general area that I cover has to do with my interest in agriculture, and is related to global warming and the future of the planet. This will be a number of posts. I’ll try to keep them short to make it more digestible.  I plan to write about two general areas:

1. Allan Savory’s ideas about saving the planet through Intensive planned grazing.

1. Elaine Ingham’s ideas about working with soil micro-organisms as a next step in the evolution of agriculture.

1. Allan Savory has become one of my few heroes.    

           For a summary of his basic ideas, go to Ted Talks and type in “Allan Savory”.  Savory has many presentations on Youtube, but the 22 minute summary on Ted Talks is a good starting point.

           He points out how the processes of desertification  and soil erosion are proceeding more rapidly than ever before.  Desertification and erosion, caused by humans’ agricultural practices, are the reasons why many civilizations have disappeared over the course of history.

          The most powerful way to turn around desertification and global warming is found in grazing animals in a way which mimics nature, according to Savory.

          Savory points out how the great agricultural areas of the world were built up, in large part, over the thousands and even millions of years by activities of grazing animals—prey animals, such as buffalo and elk in North America, and wildebeests and zebra in Africa to cite two examples.

In the great western plains the buffalo formed immense herds,  staying closely grouped for protection from predators such as wolves. Over thousands of generations their migrations along with the migration of other animals such as wooly mammoths, elk, etc. over the immense plains have led to the formation of some of the richest soils the world has seen.

The same process takes place, to some extent, in Africa to this day with the annual migration of wildebeests, zebra and other prey animals making their annual migration around the immense Serengeti Park, trampling the grass and fertilizing with dung and urine, leaving the savanna time to recover and flourish as one of the world’s most productive savannas or grazing lands.

Grazing practices of humans, at least until recently, have not been successful in duplicating nature’s symbiotic relationship between grazing plants and grazing animals.

But, or the past 40 years, Allan Savory has been perfecting his intensive, planned grazing principles using grazing animals as the tool to turn around desertification, erosion, and CO2 loss to the atmosphere.   At this point ranchers and farmers from all six continents are applying his principles on many millions of acres, increasing the productivity of their lands, sequestering much more carbon, while improving their profits. It’s a win-win that just needs to be much more widely used.

In my next post I’ll try to explain, or at least give a summary introduction of how this planned, intensive grazing, mimicking nature, is done.