Learning Center
Books That You Want to Read
Dirt to Soil
Dirt to Soil is written by Gabe Brown, an intelligent, experienced North Dakota farmer who has demonstrated over decades how to run regenerative agricultural practices profitably while constantly improving soil, animal and human health and producing nutrient dense food.
Our lives depend on the soil. Gabe, through his experience, brings to life the five tenets or principals he, and all of us, should abide by to grow nutrient-rich top soil with healthy water-capture capabilities. Those tenets which are expressed in his book are; limited disturbance (no till, no chemicals), Armor on the Soil (always covered to protect soil biology from weather and erosion), plant diversity (each species brings microbial diversity and has a role in maintaining soil health), living roots (always, to maintain soil health), and integrating animals (to stimulate biology through grazing and nutrient cycling).
Dirt to Soil is a must read for anyone serious about regenerative agriculture. Gabe Brown also has a website at BrownRanch.us.
(2017, Paul Hawken, US)
Project Drawdown released its inaugural body of work on climate solutions as the New York Times bestselling book Drawdown. It has become a seminal text on climate solutions, drawing on the practices and technologies that will reverse the buildup of atmospheric carbon by mid-century. Drawdown has influenced university curricula, city climate plans, business commitments, community action and philanthropy. This website provides a supplemental list of references used in development of the book.
(2017, Josh Tickell, US)
This book explains the practical steps we all must take to restore the health of the planet, and provides us with practical regenerative steps to reverse climate change. The simpler, though no less beautiful movie is available on Netflix.
(2017, Charles Massy, Australia)
Written by a visionary farmer, this is a review of the shortcomings and dangers of the last 100 years of industrial agriculture throughout diverse regions of Australia. The book provides countless rich examples of innovative farmers who found paths forward through regenerative agriculture practices to prolong the future of our food supply, our health and our planet. A clarion call for the global transformation of agriculture. Charles Massey also appears in useful YouTube lectures.
(2016, David Montgomery and Anne Biklé, US)
This tells us that the good health of homo sapiens and plants depends on microbes in the soil. Beneath our feet, beneficial microbes and plant roots constantly exchange a vast array of essential nutritional compounds. This exchange between plants and the teaming microbial and fungal population is the soils botanical life’s master strategy for defense and health, of the plants and ultimately ours. Analogously, they discover (through Anne’s cancer) the importance of the human microbiome in our gut which enables our immune systems to metabolize and regulate essential compounds. When our microbiome goes awry or gets imbalanced through diet or lack of nutrition, so does our health and well-being. We are what our microbes eat.
(2017, Peter Wohlleben, Germany).
Once you read this book, forests will become magic places for you. Trees communicate; through electrical impulses, smell and taste. And they’re social and they care for each other. They are also connected through root systems and the fungal wood-wide-web that shares information and nutrients between them underground. It takes a forest and social connection for trees to live long healthy lives. Perhaps the saddest plants are the isolated or mono-culturally grown trees which are silent and have lost their ability to communicate, feed and protect each other. Perhaps we can learn from the forests and breed a little more wildness back into our maintenance and relationships with trees.
(2018, Isabella Tree, UK).
This is a book about returning a 3,500-acre British farm back to nature and ‘wilding’ it, about fixing broken and deforested, exhausted land and inviting fauna to return. It is a testament to how if you throw such a party, nature will come with all its richness to our farmed landscapes, how we can stop and reverse the inexorable decline of nature that has been accelerating in the last half century. It describes how we can begin the process of wildlife and farm restoration, if only we humans get out of the way.
(2017, Michael Phillips, US).
The world needs to understand the importance of soil ecology, and specifically the fungal network/plant symbiosis that is in the soil beneath our feet. Most land plants depend on symbiotic fungi in their root systems, - mycorrhizals – to bring them nutrients. No mycorrhizals = many less and unhealthy land plants, thus devastating for land animals including us. They are vital to our ecosystem and little understood until recent years. Mycorrhizal Planet is thoroughly researched and well expressed. It is cutting-edge soil science.
(2010-2013, Jeff Lowenfels & Wayne Lewis, US).
Teaming with Microbes
Teaming with Fungi
Teaming with Nutrients
These three books are a guide to the soil microbiome; the vital relationship bacteria and mycorrhizal fungi play in freeing up and bringing essential nutrients to the plants we grow and that feed us. Every plant in garden, farm or forest forms a relationship with bacteria and almost all with fungi. Most plants would not exist without their fungal partners. None would exist without the bacteria in the soil just as we cannot exist without the microbiome in our gut. Understanding this relationship, gardeners and farmers will build the better microbe-laden soils which are vital to production of nutrient-rich foods and strong plants with natural pathogen resistance. These books explain in clear language how the soil microbiome and mycorrhizae interact with plants and how to support and use what is the foundation of our food web.
(2019, Nicole Masters, Australia)
A study of the complex world of soil / land stewardship. This book is educational and thought-provoking at the level of understanding mineral and biology imbalances in the soil. Nicole Masters offers a sensible discussion of the critical issue of healthy soils to produce nutrient-dense food. It is a well-referenced, entertaining guide to what we CAN do.
(1953, Jean Giono, France)
A beautiful short story that sits in the mind for a good long while, like the acorns of the narrative - bearing fruit at some time in the future. We could all take much inspiration from this simple story about one man’s patient, selfless act to rebuild the ecosystem of his little part of southern France. If you can, find the edition illustrated by Harry Brockway’s fantastic woodcuts.
(2007, Sustainable Agricultural Network & Andy Clark, US)
Farmers and gardeners alike are learning to use cover crops. Most usage is not diverse enough as diversity maximizes nutrients, plant resilience, a healthy ecosystem and soils, but the agricultural world is learning. Cover Crop planting during and between growing seasons slows soil erosion and armors the ground and soil microbiome against heat, frost and pelting rain. They improve the soil with nutrient diversity, improve soil structure by providing biomass, capture and retain moisture, control pests through cover crop diversity and plant strength from proper nutrition, and capture and sequester carbon through photosynthesis. These benefits accrue over the long term as carbon and humic matter build up in the soil. Farmers around the world are starting to understand and now successfully use cover crops for the long-term indispensable benefits they bring.
(2021, Bill Gates, US)
When great minds apply themselves to difficult problems, you know something special’s going to happen. Cochair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates approaches the climate emergency with a unique mix of pragmatism and straight thinking. Through simple explanations informed by field experts, he offers a playbook of specific solutions that can guide us through this crucial enterprise.
Similar to Project Drawdown, the result is a clear-eyed look at what we can all do in our day-to-day to fix the damage done.
Movies that Inspire and Teach
Fantastic Fungi is a descriptive journey about the mysterious world of fungi and their power to contribute to the regeneration of life on Earth that began 3.5 billion years ago. Imagine an organism that feeds you, heals you, reveals secrets of the universe and could help save the planet. You'll see it through the eyes of mycologists, like renowned Paul Stamets, about the unlimited potential of fungi in the field of agriculture - food, medicine, bioremediation and health.
Fantastic Fungi was the number one documentary on Apple TV, 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, and is readily accessible.
A 2018 American documentary film about the life of a Los Angeles couple who buy an abandoned and desertified Apricot Lane Farms in California. They spend the next seven years transforming the arid landscape into a beautiful functional farm and a biodiverse habitat overflowing with flora and fauna.
On Netflix. With climate change on the front burner these days, Kiss the Ground makes the case that by regenerating the Earth’s soils, we can balance the climate, replenish the water supply, keep species off the extinction list (including ourselves) and better feed the world. The film begins by examining how tilling and the use of pesticides and herbicides have led to soil erosion, and then traces the damage done to our ecology, health and climate. However, there is a solution in regenerative farming, an ethical practice designed to restore degraded lands and facilitate carbon drawdown.
YouTube Channels
Gabe Brown’s book and ethos are described above. His 2020 YouTube keynote address
Charles Massy presents regenerative farming in 2020 with an Australian perspective, and emphasis on drought worries.
Nicole Masters - Renowned Australian Agro-Ecologist and Soil Agronomist – a knowledgeable and dynamic speech on the topic of soil health.
Christine Jones (see her website Amazing Carbon) is an Australian soil scientist. Her 2020 keynote address at Soil Health is exceptional. As well as her 2021 lecture on the Phosphorous Paradox.
Alan Savory is a Zimbabwean ecologist, livestock farmer, and president and co-founder of the Savory Institute. Speaking on holistic agriculture.
Ray Archuleta is a Conservation Agronomist at the US National Resources Conservation Service in North Carolina. Ray teaches soil health and agroecology. Presenting at the Nobel Conference
Crash Course Chemistry Organic — To understand regenerative agriculture, you really have to go one step deeper and understand what is going on at the molecular level. This entertaining series of courses present the organic chemistry behind what’s really going on in plants, in the world and in us, but at a molecular level. It is ideal and entertaining for people who left school a long time ago and want to learn something in 15-minute segments while doing yoga or having that first morning coffee. It explains the organic compounds in the ground, in the air and water and in our guts, and how do they make life work? How does photosynthesis produce all the energy on our planet without which we wouldn’t exist? How and why do elements bond and form things like molecules, amino acids, proteins, enzymes, sugars, carbohydrates and fats, not to mention nucleic acids? The link is to a YouTube playlist of fifty 10-15-minute presentations on Organic Chemistry – Intro, Biological Molecules, the Periodic Table, Photosynthesis, Carbon, Water, the Global Carbon Cycle, Chemical Bonds, Polar and non-Polar attraction, etc.
String quartet performs for an audience of plants in the Barcelona Opera House — The most enthralling concept, if you are a musician, might just be that electrons (which are waves) in every molecule want to be in a complete series of eight in their outer orbital at which point they passively become a complete stable molecule. Eight harmonic electrons, or waves, in their outer orbital gives them the complete vibe. Do plants and we like music, or complete silence, or mantras for this harmonic reason? Do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do?
Informative Websites
The Degradation of the Earth and Two Ways It’s Being Restored; Regenerative Agriculture and Rewilding
The mission of Project Drawdown is to help the world reach “Drawdown” - the point in the future when greenhouse gases stop climbing and start to steadily decline, thereby stopping catastrophic climate change - as quickly, safely, and equitably as possible. Here are researched solutions and further sources.
NASA provides facts about Global Climate Change and The Plant’s Vital Signs - Carbon Dioxide cycle and global warming, the evidence, causes and effects.
Amazing Carbon - When I came across the website amazingcarbon.com I was fascinated. Christine Jones, a Soil Scientist developed the website to help others understand the critical role that carbon plays in ecosystem function, particularly underground.
Integrity Soils is Nicole Master’s site. It is a useful source of strategies to regenerate our food production systems.
Crowther Labs - The Crowther Lab at ETH Zürich is an interdisciplinary scientific research group which aims to generate a better understanding of global ecology to inform and address biodiversity loss and climate change. Their TedX talk, and their YouTube channel.
Knepp Re-Wilding, England - Knepp is a 3,500-acre estate in West Sussex. Since 2001, the land – once intensively farmed - has been devoted to a pioneering rewilding project.
Rewilding Europe is a pan-European initiative at the frontline of rewilding on a European scale. The rewilding process in Europe is gaining momentum and, if you are reading this, you like us are part of a building desire and force to make Europe a wilder place, with more space for wildlife and natural processes. Wild nature is a fundamental part of Europe’s heritage and is an essential element in a modern, prosperous and healthy society. Rewilding Europe has already rewilded landscapes in at least 10 different regions across Europe. These will demonstrate how Rewilding Europe’s vision can be put into practice on a far larger scale.
What’s Happening at the Biological Level? – Living Biology Under our Feet
Khan Academy’s Science Section is a wealth of well-presented information. Please visit ‘Biology’ - the study of life. You can browse videos, articles, and exercises by topic in a library kept up-to-date.
The Soil Carbon Coalition is a nonprofit organization working to advance the practice of turning atmospheric carbon into water-holding, fertility-enhancing soil organic matter and humus.
Ducksters - Science for Kids (and Older Kids!) - A clear and quick explanation of what really are Molecules, Proteins, Enzymes, Amino Acids, Carbohydrates, Lipids, and living organisms such as Bacteria and Fungi, etc…
Organic Chemistry For Dummies – Cheat Sheet
Informative International Organizations
Soil Capital is a Belgian group that has a bold mission: To empower farmers to commit 1 million hectares to more profitable, regenerative agriculture by 2025. To help farmers succeed in improving soil health and storing carbon, they provide carbon payments, fresh economic insights and access to local expertise. They are regenerative experts whose objective is to deliver farm profitability.
TrillionTrees.Org is a joint venture between BirdLife International, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and WWF. We know it through the World Economic Forum (WEF).
The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) is a global, CEO-led organization of over 200 leading businesses working together to accelerate the transition to a sustainable world.
National Resources Conservation Service (US Department of Agriculture)
National Council for Science and the Environment (US)
In Spain
Permallorca is a Mallorca-based expert in syntropic agroforestry with whom we work.
Semillas Silvestres: Source for indigenous Spanish seeds