Presently I am studying to be a Kiss the Ground Soil Advocate and I want to share with you some of what I am learning.

The picture I have shared in this column is a great representation of the importance of regeneration and the key distinctions between the terms degenerative, sustainable, and regenerative.

Regeneration is a natural tendency for life – it is the natural process of replacing or restoring damaged or missing cells, tissues, organs, and even entire body parts to full function in plants and animals.

The major contributor to climate change is carbon, but I’m here to tell you that carbon is not inherently bad.

Our building block of life is carbon! Carbon’s ubiquitous presence in our atmosphere has caused it to be subject to vilification for all our environmental degradation. It’s all a matter of balance whether carbon becomes a problem or a solution.

At the moment our relationship with nature and the land in which we live is degenerative. We are depleting the world’s natural resources at a rate that the natural ability for the land to replace and replenish is stretching beyond repair. The great news is that soil has the potential to regenerate our Earth and reverse climate change.

According to Ryland Engelhart, the co-founder of Kiss the Ground, “Carbon, that is currently one of the biggest problems in our atmosphere, can be one of the biggest solutions when it comes to soil.”
The solution is PHOTO-FREAKIN’-SYNTHESIS!
I say this word with such emphasis because photosynthesis is considered the fundamental life process for nearly all plants and animals.

It is critical to mitigating the climate changing effects of atmospheric carbon and the restoration of soil organic matter promoting regeneration. The soil holds twice as much carbon as does the atmosphere, and most soil carbon is derived from recent photosynthesis that takes carbon into root structures and further into below-ground storage.

By understanding the balance of our ecosystem and carbon in our atmosphere and soils & by seeing a gradual change in agricultural practices we can improve soils with farming efforts that focus on building soil organic content.

These efforts are evidenced by an increasing use in permaculture techniques that incorporate varied cropping regimes, integrating crop production with grazing cattle, maintaining soil structure and from photosynthesis through planting and establishing communities of perennial trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants.

– By Eve Ballard