Soil Remineralization and Climate Change

In addi­tion to the mea­sures that each nation is being asked to take in the fight against cli­mate change, major dis­cus­sion at the con­fer­ence also cen­tered on tech­nolo­gies that will assist in the bat­tle. This year one of the tech­nolo­gies pre­sented, through a mul­ti­me­dia DVD given to each of the UN del­e­gates at the con­fer­ence, was soil rem­iner­al­iza­tion. The DVD is enti­tled The Green Disc: New Technologies for a New World and con­tains 40 sep­a­rate chap­ters on new technologies.

“Our inclu­sion on this his­toric DVD means an oppor­tu­nity for gov­ern­ments and devel­op­ment agen­cies world­wide to con­sider rem­iner­al­iza­tion as a pos­si­ble strat­egy,” Joanna Campe, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Remineralize the Earth, told Organic Connections. “This is not only some­thing that they can use for small-scale sus­tain­able development—it has huge poten­tial for restor­ing forests and agri­cul­tural areas through­out the world, with sig­nif­i­cant results.”

Soil rem­iner­al­iza­tion cre­ates fer­tile soils by return­ing min­er­als to the soil in much the same way that the earth does: by weath­er­ing of min­er­als from rocks. Normally this is a slow chem­i­cal process, lim­ited by the sur­face area of the rock exposed to water and CO₂. During an ice age, glac­i­ers crush rocks in their path, pro­duc­ing a fine rock “flour” that is car­ried by water and ice to form deposits at the end of the glac­ier; after the ice age ends, winds blow the accu­mu­lated rock dust all over the globe.

Volcanoes erupt, spew­ing forth min­er­als from deep within the earth, and through weath­er­ing, these min­er­als are released into new soils. Such soils are extremely pro­duc­tive where fresh vol­canic mate­ri­als are plen­ti­ful, but min­er­als decrease in fer­til­ity with age as they are leached from the soil, espe­cially in warm regions with high rain­fall. This is why young vol­canic areas, such as Java, Costa Rica and Hawaii, are so fer­tile, and why older trop­i­cal areas such as Brazil, Africa and Australia have very poor, mineral-deficient soils. These infer­tile soils ben­e­fit enor­mously from hav­ing vol­canic rock pow­ders added to them to increase their fertility.

Remineralization has been used with great suc­cess both in farm­ing and in for­est agri­cul­ture. Crops grown in rem­iner­al­ized soil are highly nutri­tional, pest resis­tant, far health­ier and much tastier than “con­ven­tional” crops, as aptly demon­strated by inno­va­tors such as Bob Cannard (see arti­cle “Bob Cannard: Farming with Nature for True Taste,” Organic Connections, January–February 2009 ) and the SEER Centre (see arti­cle “SEER Centre: Scotland’s Remineralized Oasis,” Organic Connections, November–December 2009).

Remineralization is also being used to suc­cess­fully save California oak trees from a dis­ease called sud­den oak death, show­ing the poten­tial of rem­iner­al­iza­tion for for­est restora­tion (see arti­cle “Saving the California Oaks,” Organic Connections, July 2007).

Click on any image above to see a larger version.

Another enor­mous ben­e­fit is that rem­iner­al­ized soil retains a much higher amount of car­bon from the atmos­phere. Numerous stud­ies have shown the capac­ity to increase soil car­bon lev­els 0.5 per­cent per year through bio­log­i­cal growth and seques­tra­tion of car­bon as humus in the soil.

The poten­tial for rem­iner­al­iza­tion to bring atmos­pheric car­bon to pre-Industrial Revolution lev­els in five years, through tar­geted use of soil rem­iner­al­iza­tion of the world’s agri­cul­tural lands, has been doc­u­mented. Not only would global CO₂ be brought down to safe lev­els, but revi­tal­iza­tion of soil and bio­log­i­cal life on the planet would also occur, and human nutri­tion and health lev­els would sig­nif­i­cantly increase through­out the planet.

Campe points out how rem­iner­al­iza­tion could assist with many of today’s eco­log­i­cal crises. “One major issue we could help pre­vent is the huge for­est fires that have cre­ated such destruc­tion to both habi­tats and com­mu­ni­ties in Southern California, Greece and Spain. If we were to rem­iner­al­ize the urban areas that have these wood­lands, they would become drought resis­tant and there would be far fewer such fires. These forests would also absorb far more CO₂ and would actu­ally be sta­bi­liz­ing the cli­mate at the same time.”

Additionally, there are areas such as Kenya that have suf­fered com­plete eco­log­i­cal col­lapse, which could greatly ben­e­fit. “In Kenya, the ecosys­tem has been absolutely dev­as­tated,” Campe said. “Remineralization could bring back resources by increas­ing what they call in Kenya plan­ta­tion cover—the tree cover. It could also pro­vide sus­tain­able liveli­hoods for these peo­ple through man­ag­ing agri­forestry projects—supplying food, fuel and income.”

Remineralization is fast becom­ing a proven tech­nol­ogy for the appli­ca­tion of ancient nat­ural meth­ods in restor­ing lands to their thriv­ing best. It is hoped that the UN del­e­gates who received this infor­ma­tion will put it to good use.

For more infor­ma­tion on soil rem­iner­al­iza­tion and on the many impor­tant projects of Remineralize the Earth, please visit their web­site at www.remineralize.org. Click here for the Green Disc report on rem­iner­al­iza­tion.