81 results for tag: remineralization

Tomatoes, Orchards, and Forests: Studying Reforestation and Remineralization in China

Carbon reduction in China For China, carbon-reduction efforts remain rooted in reforestation and afforestation efforts, as the country keeps planting trees through to 2025.[4] In addition to these efforts, researchers in the People’s Republic have turned their attention increasingly towards enhanced weathering and rock dust application, studying reforestation and remineralization. China has decades of experience with major tree planting projects, for example, in 1978 initiating the so-called “Great Green Wall” project (official name: the Three-North Shelter Forest Program), whose goal is to plant 2,800 miles of tree-based wind breaking forest ...

Make Climate Goals Attainable: Remineralize croplands

A truck spreading rock dust on a field. Photo by Ilsa Kantola, University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana Paris Climate Agreement metrics are just out of reach As of July 2021, the top 10 fossil carbon emitting nations are failing to meet their 2030 green-house gas (GHG) reduction goals, as pledged under the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement defines a hard warming limit to 2°C, but current status quo climate initiatives – even if met – will lead to a global warming of 2.6 - 3.1°C. Heating of this magnitude could set forth a cascade of irreversible effects. The Earth, and the communities it supports, are in crisis.  To make climate goals ...

The Threat of Thawing Permafrost: Further impetus to remineralize the Earth

Photo by Sergey Dolya, sergeydolya.livejournal.com A subterranean threat  A new study, published by a team of geologists at the University of Bonn, has presented scientists with a new worry: thawing permafrost. In the past year, the Taymyr Peninsula in Northern Siberia recorded its hottest summer to date. From May 2020 to March 2021, arctic temperatures rose a whopping 6°C above the typical 1967-2000 baseline. While this rising temperature alone is cause for concern, the deeper issue lies below the Earth’s surface. The Taymyr Peninsula is coated with an impermeable layer of permafrost about 700m thick – approximately the length of six ...

Peter Jackson on Natural Farming, Ecological Resilience, and the Magic of Minerals and Microbes

Over a span of nearly two decades, self-taught natural farmer Peter Jackson has transformed a plot of rural Washington land into a thriving, bountiful forest garden.  When his family first arrived on the land nearly twenty years ago, it contained only a few food-bearing plants: old heirloom apple trees, sickly pear trees, and Chinese plum trees with cherry-sized fruits. Today, the property is home to approximately three hundred fruit and nut trees, as well as assorted berry bushes, and Jackson isn’t finished yet. “I’m trying to get up to about 500 trees on the four and a half acres,” he says. In addition to his farming work, Jackson is the ...

Prairie Grass Systems: Texan’s Invention Remineralizes Soil While Replenishing Native Flora

Imagine an irrigation system that does not rely on clear water to run through its small tubing orifices, but rather can provide a nutritious ‘dirty’ water, filled with fine rock dust and other particulates that can optimally feed soil microbes. That will be just one of many benefits with David Munson’s Prairie Grass Systems.  “We take a water slurry mix and inject it under the plants to provide a little bit of water to the plants, but also food for the soil organisms to attack the rock dust and feed the plants,” he says about his patented invention that allows for maximum production of forage crops for cattle — native prairie ...

Remineralization Slam Dunk: NYC Dirtball Court Scores One for the Earth

Would you like to combine pickup basketball with offsetting carbon emissions? On Governors Island in New York City, you can! In June 2021, residents of the area gathered on the island for the grand opening of New York City’s first Dirtball court.  Dirtball is an interactive environmental art exhibit —a basketball court incorporating remineralizing concrete, a garden, and a birdhouse— designed and executed by Kosmologym, an art and game design collective with the goal of challenging players to build relationships to ecological systems.  “There’s all these layers of trying to get those playing Dirtball to recognize the different natural ...

Rock Dust Key to Club Root Cure, May Unlock 20 million + Acres For Remineralization

This is an update to our previous article: Remineralize the Earth | Plant Nutrition Technologies, Inc: Commercializing Remineralization while Protecting Waterways. Line break Remineralization truly is the gift that keeps on giving. We’ve known for decades that rock dust-based fertilizers are key to regenerative agriculture: in addition to eliminating the ills of artificial fertilizers, they foster healthy soils, grow nutrient-dense foods, and sequester carbon. But new research has discovered another application for rock dust that could protect farmlands and save the canola industry billions of dollars. Plant Nutrition Technologies, Inc. (PNTI) ...

Geology Matters: Ontario farmer uses mining background to identify better soils

John Slack at Spanish River Carbonatite Complex Educated at the Haileybury School of Mines, John Slack is a Canadian mining technologist-turned-farmer who uses his thorough understanding of geology to promote remineralization and sustainable soil fertility. “Promoting the use of rock dust — and the throwing away of your fertilizer bag — has been a really tough row to hoe, but we’re now going to see major breakthroughs, particularly as we move to a ‘greener’ environment, where people are thinking about this more,” he said. “The fact of the matter is it does work.” Slack began his professional life employed with a progressive ...

ArtifexBalear in Mallorca: From regenerative agriculture to marine ecosystem restoration

A tour of Miquel's Farm I had the opportunity to interview Miquel Ramis, the multifaceted founder and director of ArtifexBalear, and he took me on a virtual tour of his farm. On the outskirts of Palma de Mallorca, in a forest garden brimming with raspberries and asparagus, Miquel grows around 14 varieties of different plants. They are planted and grown densely, and they are chosen for their synergy in relation to each other. In the garden, Miquel has built and installed bat houses and two prototypes of houses for insects such as ladybugs, mason bees and butterflies. The old stone finca, a 17th century estate, includes stonemasonry, blacksmithing, and ...

Plant Nutrition Technologies, Inc: Commercializing Remineralization while Protecting Waterways

It’s tough to teach an old dog a new trick, and the agricultural industry has relied on NPK fertilizers for almost 100 years with essentially no alternatives for large farms. That is to say that for a century, conventional fertilizers have been the only proven “trick” that could produce enough food for our swelling population, and so the consideration of other fertilizers has gained little ground within the large-scale agriculture industry. But as pollution and runoff from artificial fertilizers pose greater threats to human and environmental health, markets are increasingly looking for sustainable alternatives that can eliminate the waste ...