Soil Solutions Highlights 2016

SOIL SOLUTIONS 2016 highlights

Dear Friends, The year 2016 might well be remembered as the moment sequestering atmospheric carbon in terrestrial ecosystems gained mainstream recognition. And, your support is helping CFS’ Soil Solutions program be at the forefront of creating this new consciousness.

Our short film Soil Solutions to Climate Problems is now the most widely viewed piece on the topic and is being used as a teaching tool in a wide variety of settings. Available in several languages, the film is regularly live-streamed at conferences around the world and has been screened on Capitol Hill.

In the spring, we launched “Dig Deeper,” a series of short videos covering a wide range of topics related to soil health and function. Our goal is to aggregate the wealth of expert knowledge as a resource for the climate and soil health movements.

As you’ll see from these highlights we continue to advance the soil carbon opportunity at the local, state, national and international level. Thank you for your invaluable support!

Diana Donlon Program Director

SOIL SOLUTIONS TO CLIMATE PROBLEMS short film over

117,065 VIEWS

Since premiering at the United Nations Climate Conference (COP21), Soil Solutions to Climate Problems, narrated by Michael Pollan, has been shown in dozens of countries. In Finland, the film is being shown to schoolchildren ages seven to sixteen. In Zimbabwe, South Africa, Malawi and Kenya, it is being shared by farmers and educators. In China, a subtitled version of the film was uploaded to Tencent, China’s version of YouTube. The French version was featured at “Festival Zero Waste” in Paris, Lyon, Grenoble and Strasbourg, and Zero Waste France will screen the film again during their 2017 festival. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Recology SF screens the film for dozens of foreign delegations that regularly visit San Francisco’s world-leading recycling and composting facilities. Many of them, including a group representing 20 recycling coordinators from different South Pacific island nations, have gone on to use the film as a teaching tool in their own countries.

Additionally, our partners at Center for Ecoliteracy will be using the piece in a forthcoming interactive guide on food and climate designed to reach 120,000 science teachers across the United States. Lastly, an upcoming feature-length documentary, Evolution of Organic, has incorporated key segments of our film.

PUBLIC POLICY & EDUCATION the soil carbon message

CFS works to promote progressive policies at the state and federal level. In 2016, we provided input and commented on the limited federal opportunities attempting to promote soil health. We are working primarily in California, which has the most progressive policies in the nation on climate change. In April, we met at Stemple Creek Ranch with California Governor Jerry Brown’s Senior Policy Advisor. This behind-the-scenes opportunity at one of the first farms to practice carbon farming allowed us to communicate the importance of increasing soil carbon to meeting California’s ambitious climate targets. In the public arena, we testified before the CA State Budget Committee on the need to incentivize pasturebased dairies, and in support of the “Healthy Soils Initiative,” which received $7.5 million dollars in September. CFS has been aggressively pushing policy solutions to reduce methane emissions in the state. We will continue to participate in the process as Healthy Soils and methane regulations unfold while advancing other state climate policy.

On the education side, we added significant content to our website and our social media channels which have high levels of engagement. Throughout the year, we were interviewed by a number of radio programs and had original articles in Food Tank, the Huffington Post, and the Christian Science Monitor. We also spread the soil-climate opportunity at a number of conferences including the National Council on Science and the Environment where, together with NRDC’s Soil Fellow, we organized the sole panel addressing soil. In June, The Perennial— the world’s first carbon farming restaurant—hosted a community-builder and fundraiser where we celebrated Soil Solution’s progress with many of our supporters.

Building on our success as content generators, in spring 2016 Soil Solutions began rolling out “Dig Deeper,” an original series of short video interviews with leading farmers, ranchers, academics, scientists, activists and authors. The videos cover a wide range of topics related to soil health and function including the causes of desertification, the benefits of composting, and the role of the soil microbiome. We currently have nineteen Dig Deeper videos with an additional eight in production.

As a result of recent technological advances, coupled with the research community’s renewed interest in soil science, the soil conversation is evolving quickly, and we’re well-positioned to be a leader in communicating this cutting-edge research. Aggregating this wealth of knowledge is proving to be a valuable resource for the growing soil health movement.

DIG DEEPER video series

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109,642 VIEWS

ALLAN SAVORY

BRITTANY COLEBUSH

JOHN D. LIU

JOEL SALATIN

PRECIOUS PHIRI

AMINA EL HAJJAMI

NIKKI SILVESTRI

RATTAN LAL

DAVID MONTGOMERY

ARIEL GREENWOOD STÉPHANE LE FOLL

DJIBO BAGNA

HEALTHY SOIL CONFERENCE hawai‘i

In October, Center for Food Safety brought together its Soil program and its Hawai‘i office to host “Healthy Soils, Healthy Ranching” a conference for ranchers from across the state at Pu’u O Hoku Ranch on Molokai.

The conference brought together forward-looking ranchers to share best practices and create a rancher-to-rancher network. Mark Thorne, a State Range Extension Specialist, and Rebecca Ryals, a professor in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management at University of Hawai‘i at Manoa contributed a wealth of knowledge about management practices both in Hawai‘i and on the mainland. Participants also heard from outside experts including Johann Zietsman, a pioneer in holistic planned grazing from Zimbabwe, and David Johnson, a molecular biologist at New Mexico State University. Johnson’s experiments show a new direct correlation between improving fungal–bacterial ratios in soils and increasing the ability to capture, store and retain atmospheric C02 as new soil carbon.

By the end of the weekend, the ranchers had agreed on the importance of baseline carbon monitoring and are now working with Ryals to set that applied research in motion. They also agreed that the ecological and social benefits of well-managed ranching are an underrecognized story that bears telling.

Soil Solutions is continuing to partner with Hawai‘i CFS to advance local efforts on soil and climate.

COP22

marrakech, morocco

Soil Solutions maintained its international presence by attending the second week of the U.N. climate conference, COP22, in Marrakech, Morocco. While there we were humbled to address women on the front lines of climate change from vulnerable communities around the world who were brought together by the Women’s Earth & Climate Action Network (WECAN). We visited a women’s cooperative dedicated to improving livelihoods for women and increasing resilience to an unpredictable climate in the beautiful Ourika Valley of the Atlas Mountains. We were fortunate to interview the French Minister of Agriculture, Stéphane Le Foll, as well as other international colleagues and participate in the first consortium meeting for France’s “4 per 1000” initiative.

In addition to participating in several other events sponsored by soil colleagues, we had the honor of hearing outgoing Secretary of State John Kerry reaffirm the United States’ commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement. The Secretary stressed that now is not the time to disengage from the world on climate change. CFS’ Soil Solutions team is proud to be helping shape global policies that will help chart the course for humanity’s future.

THANK YOU

Thank you to all of our generous supporters. You inspire us with your own successes and encourage us to strive for ongoing excellence. Your investment in the success of CFS’ Soil Solutions allows us to have an outsized impact locally, nationally and internationally. Special thanks to: TPW Food Angels Threshold Foundation The 11th Hour Project New Priorities Foundation Arkay Foundation Better Tomorrow Fund The Springcreek Foundation JEC Foundation William Zimmerman Foundation The Commonwealth Fund The Podoll Family Fund Tompkins-Imhoff Fund The Drake Family Elizabeth R. Patterson Paul Dolan Front Porch Farms Healdsburg SHED The Perennial

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