We bring you the footage of a unique zoom with Philip Barton on Soil Food Web and Syntropic Agriculture. Here is the presentation in Pdf.
I met Philip during my three-month internship in Brazil at Ernst Gӧtsch’s farm. This young British Soil Food Web School student accepted Ernst’s invitation to evaluate soil samples on his land using the methodology of his teacher, Elaine Ingham, a world-renowned soil scientist.
Ernesto had previously brought Elaine’s work to my attention when I asked him for more information on the impact of conservation agriculture techniques (no-till, cut and layer organic matter) on soil carbon storage and climate protection.
On her website https://www.soilfoodweb.com/ I found short and illustrative videos that helped me to understand how the whole miracle called soil actually works. I understood that if we as humanity could change the way we treat the soil, we could be able to reduce atmospheric carbon below the critical standard in the foreseeable future and avoid the most frightening climate change scenarios(https://www.soilfoodweb.com/resources/animations-videos/?vID=372478833&h=7c10d53c26 ).
But with proper soil care, we could also solve the problems of flooding, drought, compaction, erosion, and dependence on fertilizers and sprays.
That’s why when I found out what Felipe was studying, I was amazed and had a lot of questions for him. And it was incredible to listen to him.
When Ernst tried to measure the soil compaction with a penetrometer, he stuck the instrument in the ground and no resistance, so he pushed the instrument deeper and deeper and deeper… …until there was nothing left to push, he would have driven it into the ground up to his elbows, how loose the soil was 😉 . That amused me, so I thought he could talk to us about what he was measuring and why he was measuring it and how he was measuring it and what he thought syntropic farming was doing to the soil.
Below you will find a video of our Zoom together, where Felipe explains what the Soil Food Web is, what role it plays in soil health, how it can be measured, and how Syntropic Agriculture relates to it.
