The Big Blue — Seawater Concentrate for Abundant Agriculture

This is a review of chapter 27 from our book Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase. Available from CRC Press and Amazon. Close your eyes and think about the oceans: the ethereal blue light shimmering through seawater, the breaking waves kissing the shore, the colorful fishes swimming around reefs. Those deep blue areas not only provide breathtaking beauty; they also provide the resources that all life on earth depends on. About 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered by the water of the ...

The Tour Guide — Guiding us from the sea to the soil

This is a review of chapter 28 from our book Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase. Available from CRC Press and Amazon. Like many other energetic and communicative college students, young Ioan Hossu combined his keen interest in nature and culture into a part time career as a tour guide in Romania. At that time, he probably never imagined that one day he and his company would be another type of “tour guide,” guiding society to an even more eco-friendly world with superior foods. Several ...

Growing Better Cacti with Remineralization: Research in the Quilombola Communities in Northeast Brazil – Part II

Previously RTE covered on-going research of the team led by Dr. Suzi Huff Theodoro and graduate student Fernanda de Paula Medeiros in the state of Bahia in northeastern Brazil. They seek to grow two species of cacti to serve as animal fodder and as subsistence for the farming families in the Quilombola community there. For an introduction to the project, please read the first article, Part I. In this article, we cover the latest developments of the project. Socio-economic and environmental assessment On May 13-15, 2016, the team embarked on their ...

Remineralizing a Tree Farm – Growing Nuts for the Revolution!

Our Question What does it mean to have an environmental footprint that regenerates the earth's ecosystems instead of degrading them? How can human beings once again live in concert with the earth, as fully participating members of the earth's diverse biota, enjoying rich lives in community with other beings? With the forest as our teacher, we are setting out to discover what this might mean in our post-colonial age. Using the principles of perennial agroforestry and regenerative agriculture, we are recreating a diverse ecological habitat; a place where we can ...

Da horta à floresta – From garden to forest

A farm called Sitio Semente near Brasilia is taking regenerative agriculture to a whole new level. One of the first steps of returning nutrients back into the soil was through the application of rock dust. In this system, only one initial application of rock dust is required, with no external inputs required thereafter. RTE is advocating for this agroforestry model in semi-tropical and tropical regions worldwide. This model can be easily adapted to a region’s culture and habitat with its great potential for growing a diversity of crops, from fruits and vegetables to ...

Sitio Semente– From Garden to Forest

Adapting agriculture to the local environment by mimicking natural processes is common to traditional agriculture communities around the world, yet it has only recently re-emerged in the Americas. After decades of land degradation and resource misuse, sustainable food systems are gaining popularity. Increasingly, a great emphasis is being placed on creating systems and practices that work in tandem with nature. One well-known practice is the ‘Three Sisters’ adopted from the Native Americans, in which corn, bean and squash are planted together. The three crops provide ...

Fertilização da Terra pela Terra | Earth Fertilizing Itself

Take a look at this exciting new video (with subtitles in English!) that has been released about the trajectory of remineralization/Rochagem in Brazil. The narration of Othon Leonardos in the beginning captures beautiful footage of the geological processes that show how rock minerals have fertilized soils since antiquity. Suzi Huff Theodoro shows how forests recycle nutrients and the importance of organic matter, particularly in the Amazon. She takes us on a tour to Sitio Semente, an agroforestry farm just outside of Brasilia in the midst of degraded lands, a virtual ...

Geotherapy on a Fast Track?

This is adapted from the blog of Benoit Lambert. Click here for the original version in French and English. According to Prof. Rattan Lal of the Carbon Management and Sequestration Center at Ohio State University, the world’s cultivated soils have lost 50-70% of their original carbon stock, much of which has oxidized upon exposure to air, to become CO2. Yet the issues of land use, agriculture and forestry remain little discussed by international bodies on climate issues. Nonetheless science has been telling us for a while there is no coming out of the climate-wa...

The Ethics of Climate Change: Geoengineering and Geotherapy

Geoengineering strategies, from the extreme to the sustainable. Photo by University of Leeds Climate change is an unprecedented human-made disaster that raises unprecedented questions about what we humans should do. The status quo is not a viable option, but there are several different ways we could approach the problem of climate change. One style of approach, known as geotherapy, identifies the root cause of the problem as a failure to understand the balances that naturally keep the climate stable, or that kept it stable before the industrial revolution. Industry ...

Othon Leonardos Receives Prestigious Brazilian Award

Othon Leonardos RTE would like to congratulate Professor Othon Henry Leonardos, for his recognition as a researcher and pioneer of remineralization in Brazil. Through Othon’s pioneering research and projects with Suzi Huff Theodoro in the Quilombola communities and his work with indigenous communities, he has been dedicated to sustainability for many decades. Professor Suzi Huff Theodoro and Embrapa lead researcher Eder De Souza Martins who also continue to lead remineralization research and projects in Brazil, were his students. For myself, it has been a wonder...