Healthy Soil, Healthy People Story by Eva Stricker, photos from the Quivira collection
Carbon Ranch Initiative work for various field trials. Left to right: Sol Ranch, Santa Ana Pueblo, Polk’s Folly Farm, Weaver Ranch.
While there is no question that the COVID-19 pandemic has This organic material helps build the essential soil structures that exposed and exacerbated present divisions in our society, a enable nutrient and water retention, and thus reduces risk of loss multitude of shared values have also become more apparent to leaching and erosion. The great thing about focusing on soil in this crisis. We all miss spending time with our families and health is that it enables us to both revive degraded soils and enhance friends because loved ones are important to us. We all miss travel already productive soils. Just picture the healthy fruits, vegetables, and exposure to new things because learning about the world is and animals that will benefit from the careful management we important to us. We all are alarmed by empty shelves at grocery undertake with the living components of the soil. stores because equitable access We have the tools to increase the to healthy food is important to ealthy oil rinciples uptake of carbon dioxide from the us. And while we can all feel air via plant photosynthesis and overwhelmed by the volume of Keep soil covered assist the microbes that transform information regarding which it into organic matter stored deep Minimize soil disturbance activities are safe as we wait in the soil. These tools are part of for a vaccine or treatment, Maximize biodiversity a suite of activities that together scientific/technological fall under the five healthy innovation and a deeper Maximize the presence of living roots soil principles. By matching understanding of this virus to these principles, are also important to us. In Integrate animals into land management, including management we can also minimize the release the regenerative community, grazing animals, birds, and beneficial insects of excess carbon dioxide into the in which I am a relatively new air by reducing external inputs participant, I have witnessed (like inorganic fertilizers, which often take fossil fuels to produce strong affirmation of the shared values of responsible management and transport). Specific soil management practices may look and the protection of people, soils, plants, and animals in our food different for each producer depending on their various limitations system. and opportunities, but understanding these healthy soil principles The reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions over the last can lead to concrete steps that everyone, from backyard gardeners few months points to the possibility of expanding on practical, to multistate operations, can take. common-sense solutions that can help us protect our human and Here in New Mexico and the Intermountain West, we have the soil health at this critical time, as we forge a path forward from opportunity to be leaders in showing how diverse groups of people the pandemic. We at Quivira Coalition’s Carbon Ranch Initiative can connect to shared values to enact change (at Quivira, we call strive to champion these solutions and support agricultural this the radical center). We must use this global pandemic to build producers who are managing for healthy soils that can absorb and support programs and approaches that increase resilience and atmospheric carbon and store it as organic material in the soil. capacity for food, soils, and communities going forward.
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