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Soil Research

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• Available in French only, but well worth putting through the automatic translator - a fascinating paper reviewing the history of the term ‘living soils’, and its fluctuating status within the mainstream of agronomic and soil research. The whole issue, led by our SCN colleagues Celine Granjou and Germain Meulemans, “focuses on the dynamics of production, negotiation, circulation and mobilisation of knowledge about soils” and is well worth a read.

 

• What is soil health? Should we strive for a singular soil health index? Or should we accept soil health as a direction of travel rather than a measurable reality? This crucial debate rages on, with this insightful commentary highlighting some key issues of soil health, and arguing for a continued scientific efforts towards better soil health measurement - but always in the context of desirable land use.

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• The role of soils in the life of cities is finally getting its due recognition. This fantastic article proposes the concept of soil connectivity to recognise the mutually nurturing and beneficial soil–society relations, and describes how Mayan urban life embraced and practiced soil connectivity and created cities built on soil protection and regeneration.

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• Soil is a living system - and land use practices must change to shift from a crop-only focus to a holistic treatment of soils. This review article considers some of the consequences of this especially in terms of the foregrounding of soil life in soil classification.  However, existing soil classification schemes do not enable this. This is also the first ever article we have seen in a Soil journal which refers to the movie Star Wars!!!

 

Regenerative Agriculture

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• The BBC has a beautiful webpage about soil and regenerative agriculture.

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• The Regenerative Organic Alliance has given out its first certification to a dairy farm in the United States for meeting high standards regarding soil health, animal welfare, and worker fairness.

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• Using lasers, microphones, satellite data, cameras, and AI to identify insect diversity, measure soil carbon levels, map out soil health, and evaluate bird diversity. This can contribute to quantifying the progress of regenerative agriculture. 

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• A great blog on the need for regenerative agriculture for soil health, particularly stressing the need for collaborative and localised research.

 

Soil Policy

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• Australia’s agriculture Minister intends on compensating farmers for sequestering carbon, but it seems that the best farmers will miss out.

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• In the US, the state of Maine recognises the value of soil health through legislation and a four-year plan for climate action.

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Soil Art

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• The artist Wangechi Mutu uses soil for making sculptures with advice on how to do this yourself at home!

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• What do soils sound like? The project Sounding Soil is a research and arts collaboration developing ecoacoustics as a method for measuring soil activity. For now based in Switzerland only, it allows us to listen to the hubbub of life beneath the ground - and if you live in Switzerland you can participate in the recording too!

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Farmers' Experiences

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• Here is a Q&A with a Guatemalan farmer who battles climate change through traditional farming practices.

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• Five Cambridgeshire farmers at different stages of their journey to regenerate their soil health talk about their experiences in this new short film ‘From the Group Up’. Very inspiring!

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​Other News

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• An exciting conference on the history of soil with special attention to insights from East Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the indigenous Americas.

 

• Soils featured heavily at the Oxford Real Farming Conference in January. Soil Mentor put together this great compilation of soil moments and learnings.

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• The New Scientist recently posted this article with the headline ‘the claim that there are only 100 harvests lefty is just a fantasy’. In this brilliant piece, Ellen Fay reflects on what the ‘100 harvest’ headline betrays in relation to our limited ways of thinking about soils through numbers and the need to value soils and act on them in ways which respect the complexity of the issue. 

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• World Pulses Day: Five Interesting Facts about These Ancient, Sustainable and Nutritious Seeds of Life.

 

• Some food contamination starts in the soil says a member of the Soil Science Society of America.

 

• What does it mean to think of soils as natural capital? KVAB Thinkers' Programme on "Soils as Natural Capital" explored this, and you can view a recording of the debate here. 

 

• What role does soil organic carbon play in climate change and soil health? A great presentation by Prof. Pippa Chapman available here.

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