Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life | “Where good Stewardship meets economic gain” pg 24. David Montgomery | Seattle, WA

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David R. Montgomery was born in 1961 Stanford, California, and studied geology at Stanford University before earning his Ph.D. in geomorphology at UC Berkeley. He teaches at the University of Washington where he studies the evolution of topography and how geological processes shape landscapes and influence ecological systems. He loved maps as a kid and now writes about the relationship of people to their environment and other things that interest him. In 2008 he was named a MacArthur Fellow. He lives with his wife Anne in Seattle, Washington.

Tell us a little about yourself.

I’m a geologist by trying

major hobby and passion

she’s a biologist

looking at plants and the role of microbes

I’ve gotten into gardening by looking over her shoulder and enjoying the fruits of what is happening! Watching how she transformed it from the lawn to nice garden

The New Book looks at translate the principals of we learned by watching our yard come back to life here in North Seattle where we live. How to translate that to larger scale farms and the way how ag can embrace and apply these same practices and principles that worked so well in our yard to revolutionize and transform agriculture adn take it  from an environmental problem and all the major problems that are associated with agrochemical intense agriculture and transform agriculture in ways that are practical can maintain yeilds have a much lower environmental footprint

The book really chronicals my journey visiting farmers around the world who are applying these and principals b

bringing their soil back to life the way Anne did to our yard.

iI knew as soon as I saw your book on amazon my listeners I call them green future growers becasue they are growing us a greener future and this is what it could be.

Tell me about your first gardening experience?

my primary love of garden come from helping Anne in the garden and absorb her passion

grow

I forget to water them I’m not the best plant parent

Right?

But Anne’s a plant whisperer

renting an apartment

transformed the whole place

came to an appreciation of the power of that experience

not only for an individual for the gardener and their love and joy of doing it, but the way their experience can rub off on others

experience what a good gardener can create.

It’s almost like the book the secret garden and how the garden can transform another life. When the kids play in the bucket of worms in my classroom I can’t hardly keep them out of them.

How did you learn how to garden organically?

We’re hardwired to like nature

dealt out of that

little bits of nature

can connect us with our deep roots

evolutionary roots

vision and senses all come together in terms of experiencing nature

I like to view our garden now as a little bit of that whichconnects us with the broader world. I ca’t believe how much time I spend in the non rainy season, in the spring or summer. We have really moved outside 3-6 months in our outdoor living room.

I can tell you about all that

fun book to research

observations I made as a geologist

I worekd all over the world that

studies soil erosion

techie

geomorphologist someone who studies the surface forms of the earth

topography and how it forms

if you do that enough and look at erosion like I have

sculpts terrain and topography you start recognizing patterns

looked at the soil erosion shaping the longevity of human civilizations how 

farming practices had destroyed the soil after

follow human history and region after region

affects our history

little of that is taught,

none of it’s learned in school

personal observations

looking at the archeology

final chapter was kind of depressing … chronologically of societies unable to feed themselves. Had to rewrite the end 3 times and then I sort of put the subject aside

started seeing the and we talk about in

The Hidden Half of Nature

She was able to restore the soil in our yard

Turn it from essentially dead dirt into thriving rich soil.

Over the course of a decade she changed our soil.

So counter to what I had seen about the destruction of soils, so I started to pay attention and perk up and go wait a minute!

We can rebuild soil fertility sort of fast here

Microbial life feeds plants

Importance for human health all played out in the book that we wrote together

The Hidden Half of Nature

What if we applied these principles to?

• farming
• gardens at large
• gardens that feed us all
• different kind of gardening

There’s definitely a big difference from  a garden feeding a family of four to a farm feeding 150 CSAs to large scale farming.

In Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life

I wanted to ask the question:

Could the things that Anne had done to our yard that were so transformative  could that be done at scale on big farms? On:

• big industrial farms that we have in North America
• family farms
• small subsistence farms in Africa

I wanted to know how applicable the things we were looking at were. So I started traveling around the world to visit farmers who had literally transformed their soil. Had brought their farms back to life. Taken land was degraded

Something like 1/3 of all farmland in the world has seriously degraded soil!

How do we keep feeding an 8, 9 billion, 10,000,000,000  person planet

Having soil that was degraded was not the way to do it!

So I wondered

• can we reverse that?

• does it make economic sense?

• Knew it made environmental sense to do it. But could it be done practically and economically?

It seems like the answer is yes!

Organic-ish

From one’s own garden all the way up  to very large farms, that aren’t  necessarily organic in nature but that I like to call “organic-ish” because the farmers,  many of the conventional Farmers who had adopted these principles and used them for the years.

They had kind of  weaned themselves off of most agro-chemicals.

They were getting more organic in nature but that was not their intent they were just finding that they

• didn’t need all the chemical in their own soil which
• all the fertilizer
• the herbicide
• insecticide

they didn’t need them if they adopted these practices and tailor their own environmental technology level to their own soil… There’s a lot of variables

But the principles are what I organized the book around my trip to see famers who were doing it well who were having success in improving their soil and returning the profitability to their farm. And radically lowering their environmental footprint

Some were completely organic but most were intentionally not completely organic or not organic started as conventional farmers but by the time they had restored their soil the difference was getting pretty narrow. It was really interesting.

I know listeners are probably dying to hear what can they do to restore their healthy soil, if they are trying or haven’t even gotten started yet. Where are some of the places you’ve been.

I went to:

• Latin America,
• Costa Rica
• Africa to Ghana 
• South Africa
• American Midwest
• North Dakota
• South Dakota
• Ohio
• Pennsylvania
• Saskatchewan, CA

A wide range of farmers who had a wide range of crops some who had

• crops
• livestock
• commodity crop producers.

It was interesting and informative set of farmers. I intentionally selected a biased set. I wasn’t trying to visit the average north american or average African farmer.

I was trying to visit people who had really restored their soil and figure out how they did it.

some of the farms went to in Africa were no bigger then our urban lot in Seattle. People were feeding themselves. They had really no access to capital but they had their own labor.

So the idea that you could bring fertilizer intense green revolution of agriculture to these farmers wasn’t gonna work because they didn’t have the money for fertilizer and patented seeds.

They needed a style of agriculture that they could implement themselves. 

Kofi Boa

Center for No-till Agriculture

Kumasi Ghana

Masters degree in Nebraska looking at no-till farming. and then came back and adapted to practices in Ghana

What he’s done is taken his farm and turned it into a teaching farm

show them how he was doing things and how much it had 

• reduced erosion off of his fields
• improved the quality of his soil
• doubled crop yields

going from traditional practices essentially slash and burn

clear burn, plant, go away for 10-20 years farm another piece of land while nature rebuilt the fertility etc. That works great if you have a low pop density but if you have a lot of people you run out of land…. can’t keep doing that practice

part it relied on

jungle growing plants up and rotting and  returning nutrients to soil

year after year

No-till Success in Ghana

took them from those practices…

1. taught them how to go to no-till
2. cover cops in and around the main crops
3. organic matter that would produce organic matter that would enrich the soil.

He literally doubled the crop yields!

Leap frogging past modern conventional agriculture… by skipping the fertilizer an intense ag took this village where nobody owns there own home and a decade later everyone owns their home. 

transformative change!

one end of the spectrum

mostly manual labor, hardly any inputs, radical transformation of the soil…

I just have to ask because I can’t imagine listeners aren’t wondering the smae thing… about water. Probably no irrigation system. Hauling water, rain?

• in an area where it is rain fed
• surface streams
• no irrigation

innovative irrigation that I saw. There are lots of areas where there are lots of plastic water bottles

take a water bottle

poke a hole and fill it with water…

place it by plant when it was

recycled plastic bottles as a drip irrigation system

turned something that had been garbage and turned it into a useful tool for gardeners…

My kids and I did a project for earth day about recycling and Seattle… I have water bottles coming out my Kazoo! I try to recycle, I try to carry gallon jugs… I try to use the filter at school.. . it doesn’t keep up… we’ve been thinking about a drip system… who will water when school gets out.

big attractions of the north american farmers for using these new techniques

saves on irrigation because it helps keep water in the soil and your plants can get at it

3 principles

Minimizing the disturbing the soil – no till planting. 

Not digging, rototilling, or distrubing the soil becaus that 

• breaks up the microizal fungi
• crusts up the soil water 
• runs off the surface

giving up the plow

Planting cover crops

Natural forests, how many places do you see bare earth? Nature tends to clothe herself in plants for good reason, because when those plants die or they shed their leaves it puts organic

• feed microbial life
• transfers nutrients into the soil… That’s what we talked about in the hidden half of nature

It works on big farms as well

minimizing the disturbance

Adding cover crops

especially using legumes to get nitrogen into of the soil when they die and rot they add carbon to the soil

3rd leg of this new of this philosophical 

diversifying the crop rotations

not growing

monoculture

repeating it

basically setting the table for pests and pathogens

inviting pests to dinner basically, if something shows up and nibbles on you are corn this year if you plant corn in the same field, then the hatched eggs are then gonna be growing up in a kitchen well stocked with what they want to eat!

But if you break up that same thing in the same place

moving it around your farm

it’s really effective at breaking up the pest and pathogen carryover problem

doing those things together

life will perforate the soil

Create openings in it that helps water sink down into the soil … you can store one to 3 inches soil in a healthy fertile soil, that used to run off … Works for farm very large arms 20000 acres could almost stop irrigating once they adopted these practices becasue they didn’t get much rain but it sank in the ground their plants could get it if it did rain it ran off over the surface

not because the rain didn’t drain

WATER is BIG DEAL!

Water is definitely a big deal. I didn’t even know what no-till gardening was until Jon Moore talked about it… did you say don’t dig in the ground… as his parting advice… Jon started his own podcast World Organic News! I was so jealous, but his show is great! 

That’s the thing I love about my podcast. To me the millenials are the best and changing the world. There’s this one girl Mandy Gerth, my gardening cross-fit winner of 2015! One of my guests talked about gardening cross-fit to get rid of her knapweed …. and where does it grow where you have unhealthy soil… well I’m not gonna irrigate on this hillside… this would be a potential to getting rid of the spotted knapweed without using the chemicals. And there’s been so many commercials on for weed and feed and kill you weed chemicals!!!

It’s a different way of thinking about it… you have a field that has weeds

take an herbicide to get rid of weeds and it makes a blank slate what’s gonna come back first

And the human gut parallels it… we write about that in 

The Hidden Half of Nature

solid science behind why that is. 

But if you think of the problem for weed control

I’m gonna do it with chemicals creating a blank slate, it creates a perpetual habitat for weeds in your attempt to get rid of them!

That’s not a great strategy!

Cover Crop Weed Control

In the other hand from a different perspective! If you try to fight your weeds with Cover crops… where you are growing something else so there is something growing there already, the weeds don’t have a chance to start, they get out competed by the cover crop.

Soil Fertility Restoration

Then the  cover crop has the advantage that organic matter. Uses crop rollers – almost like a steam roller instead of plowing their lands the let the cover crops grow up and drive over it with this thing called a crimper

• knocks the cover crop before it goes to seed
• returns all those nutrients
• nourishing the crop that comes next

The philosophy of are you gonna do it with competing with the weeds or just killing them with chemicals, lead you down completely different paths

One restores fertility and the other systematically degrades the soil.

One’s a good choice and one’s not!

It’s possible! We actually can do it

some of the problems are I think you touched on earlier

If it’s a change of thinking that leads to  a change of practices.

how do you sell somebody a product out of it

teach them to adopt a different practice doesn’t cost them

different equipment involved cost tot he farmer but your not selling them a product… say you can advertise … buy this and it will fix your soil

you’ll need to buy less of those products and you’ll fix your soil.

A lot of the impetus for changes are coming from farmers ground up

from farmers who have adopted these changes not from government

who have seen

• net benefits

less chemicals

growing just as much food and spending less to grow just as much

They’re telling their neighbors and they’re teaching others about it. My hope is that these ideas can spread widely and transform agriculture that isnt gonna do away with fertilizers

not gonna do away pesticides and pest but but greatly reduce our dependence on them…

Have you heard of a woman called Liz Carlisle who wrote a book called the Lentil Underground ?

Yes, I met her a couple of days ago and we were both at a conference in Minneapolis.

Her book delves into the question of if we know these are good practices why aren’t we using them. So all I can think is here is a scientist who is credible source of information!

mitigate

problems

last

one of the things I did in the book as an academic scientist

are the experiences of the farmers I visited are those things that academic science would back up. Is there other independent evidence that these practices work. I did a bunch of background research that parallels the experience of the farmers so I have back up elements of what they are doing and saying.  It’s important to do that kind of homework. But nobody want’s to read a book about what did the latest academic

much more interesting to go. What is that 

ahead of the academic curve

what are people are finding that suggest these people are really onto something?

Do you want to tell us more about that?

one of the things

well see there are people have done studies of studies = metaanaylsis.

Effect of no-till ag on the amount of carbon in the soil

yields of crops. When you get into those you find soem fairly mixed results

burry

parse a number of those studies

In Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life

Studies who looked at farmers who integrated all THREE PRACTICES –

• Minimal disturbance

• integrating cover crops

• diversifying rotation

those studies show

The body of them support the experiences of the farmers I visited had their yields back up to where they were with conventional and maybe exceed them

greatly lower your input use and make your farm more profitable….

just look at the academic studies… look at one effect. 

Don’t look at all three acting synergistically as a system. Just the results sepearately. 

adopting all three is where the major affect lies…

good reasons for that

those 3 practices cultivate the beneficial

That’s why I called the subtitle is bringing our soil back to life

literally actually bringing life back to soil

most organic farmers know this

gardeners

life filled soil

nutrients cycling

poop and fertilize the soil

philosophy

chemistry and physics

adding phosphorus

nitrogen

making sure there is enough water.

not the whole story

researching

backs up what theese farmers were sharing

in their experience

Look at farming as an ecological process

ecological

but in the scientific sense

interaction of organisms

roots of the plants

different way of looking

different philosophy that turns the modern view upside down

If you were to characterize modern farming as

• high disturbance – plow a lot
• leave bare in between crops – no cover crops
• monoculture basically corn and soy not much of a rotation

What I am arguing that seems to restore fertility is the opposite

• minimal disturbance

• integrating cover crops

• diversification

It’s kind of a big ask to get people to think so differently about the way they farm or garden. Once we think about it differently and see the soil differently

gardening or farming as applied ecology

Culitivating the beneficial ones that work for the goals we have in mind then those new principle make perfect sense. And you visit farmers around the world, like I did who have been practicing. It works real good!

One of the things Liz talks about is the banks, being scared to plant a cover crop and not having a producing crop. So if you have documented cases where it’s working, they can take your book to the bank and say… here look at this. 

That’s part of the reason I wrote the book because we also have to look at the way we structure our crop insurance program

because if you plant a cover crop you are not eligible for crop insurance

and that’s crazy!

a lot of policies that could be revisited how we look at ag subsidies

commodity crops

build markets  for other  cover crops

support a new style of agriculture. is eat more beans

beans are a legumes 

peas are  good for you as a person they are good fro your biome as well as 

soil micro biome

growing cover crops

some of these farms in Africa were real succesful

multiple crops in the same field…

corn and cowpeas

At the same time… corn and harvest and then plant the cow peas or like the corn is growing and the cow peas and you pick the corn. 

Farms in Ghana some had 8 crops in the field at once. Because they were hand harvested … that was the most extreme example but it was pretty impressive

• plantains
• corn
• peppers
• cassava

in the same field

companion crops growing 2 crops at once growing cover crop in-between the rows of ones main crop!

can actually be done

commonly done in the us

cove crops coming in the farming

There’s a lot of interest in how to shave their costs so if you can show them a way to decrease the amount they spend on herbicides and pesticides it’s gonna save them money as long as they don’t lose yields!

If they can rebuild the fertility of their soil they can rebuild their soil that will support the kind of yields they get without using large amounts of chemical inputs.

There was a farmer I visited in Ohio who took me to see his neighbors fields and I got a good view of his fields and soil

and neighbors soil

He doesn’t use hardly any chemicals and he’s harvesting a yield better then county average. He walked me through the farm economics and how much he spends and how much he makes and the spending against what his neighbors are doing and he’s much more profitable. 

You go look at his fields. His yields. His soybeans for example 50% or higher

You just look at the fields, and go Oh! His neighbors who are using conventional techniques have all these herbicide resistant weeds coming in. Where mariners tail and things you can’t harvest. 

herbicide of their

They had about half the soybeans that he had on his farm which is not organic but he hardly uses any chemicals

rich soil

used carbon content

Built up the carbon content 6-8% from where he started which is less then half of a percent 30 years ago.

He has radically transformed it! He has cut his expenses so much that he’s very profitable relative to his neighbors who are basically at the mercy at the commodity prices. If it dips below $5/bushel they lose money, they don’t make money.

One of the shocking statistics I found when researching the book 2015

1/4 of farmers in Iowa lost money growing commodity corn and soy. They are working some of the best ag land in the world! Something’s wrong if hardworking farmers in Iowa lose money growing commodity prices are too low, and input costs too high! So they are just squeezed out in the middle.

Do you want to tell listeners what a commodity crop is? Is that like corn?

Most of it doesn’t go to feed a person.

Most of the corn,

soybeans

look at what happens to what corn in they country

goes to feed

what happens to most of the corn and soy sold in the US. Most goes back into processed foods to developed world or livestock in Canada and US. When I mean it’s a commodity crop it’s not going from farm to someone’s table it’s going to a processing plant that will convert it into a processed food.

I was thinking it went to corn oil, from muffins to gummy bears to evertyhing like that Corn syrup, candy and cereal. It seems like if you flip over a box of processed food, the first ingredient is corn syrup…. I found out about Liz when I joined the AERO workshop and met the actual farmers. When you eat the fresh lentils, and peas your talking about, they are so good, it’s not like eating what you normally think of lentil soup. They are delicious!

silage feeding livestock

that is one major outlet

good for the soil too

we want to

diversify what we eat

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Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life

The Hidden Half of Nature

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Let’s Get to the Root of Things!

Which activity is your least favorite activity to do in the garden?

The least favorite for me would be killing slugs and snails. I don’t like killing things let’s just say every now and again… I’ll be asked to participate in the killing of slugs and snails, I just don’t like killing things.

How do yuo do that? do you put them in beer?

drowning them in beer might be somewhat more humane then the technique we do which is just throwing them out in the street.

How about your favorite activity to do in the garden?

play guitar

What’s your favorite song to play?

varies by the day

Do you write your own music?

figure

play in a band called Big Dirt

Soundhouse is our most recent

We’re all getting older … none of us gonna be professionals… nice to absorb inspiration!

What is the best gardening advice you have ever received?

The best advice I can share that Anne and I came up… when we give talks on the with the

The Hidden Half of Nature with is that

care and feeding of your own

mulch your soil inside and out.

How do you mulch your inside? She probably told me last week… it’s been a long week!

mulch your

feed your own micro biome

organisms that live within your gut

whole plant foods

How do you mulch a garden your dealing with organic matter

leave and compost and mulch

similar advice for 

dealing with diet

whole plant foods to mulch the inner part of your gut

A favorite tool that you like to use? If you had to move and could only take one tool with you what would it be.

whatever tool we need for the job

has a Japanese digging knife. She likes and I’m actually quite fond of

knives we use for sampling carbon dating.

solid knife.

Knives are important!

A favorite recipe you like to cook from the garden?

One of the things that Anne did when we were researching

The Hidden Half of Nature

What we should be eating, the nature of a good diet and she came up with a recipe I really like

• taking beans
• cooking them
• putting them in the oven and kind of popping them like popcorn
• Can be used as part of a salad or the base of something else.

little olive oil and salt

boy do I like it!

all kinds

• black beans
• pinto beans
• all kinds of beans

cook them first

You do cook them in water?

Yes once you have that you put them on a cookie sheet

essentially

popcorn

and they’re really good for you and way better for you then popcorn!

A favorite internet resource?

dig2grow

fond of twitter

against my better judgement

@Dig2Grow

we found there’s a community of people tweeting back and forth about things in science

that relate to organic food

sustainable agriculture

human microbiome

really great way to be pointed to new studies

one of the problems being an academic scientist

so many studies

hard to stay on top of things

sharing that with each other has been really useful for me

A favorite reading material-book, mag, blog/website etc you can recommend?

Ill give you two books a little obscure

one is called the One-Straw Revolution

Japanese farmer

grew up before the 2nd world are

early 70s

Japanese farming practices

many of the principles

take on it is inspirational

no new ideas

rediscovering

also

Farmers of Forty Centuries: Organic Farming in China, Korea, and Japan

Franklin H King

completely forgotten about till the 1940s

us agronomous

asian farming practices

philosophy done there

done in us at that time

sustainable ag

interesting historical

fairly good books

research and writing books of ones own

that

If you have a business to you have any advice for our listeners about how to sell extra produce or get started in the industry?

biggest

adopt all three

don’t just sort of dip a foot in. Don’t just try to go no till and not do the cover crops

system this whole different way

One of the farmers that did not adopt gradually learned to use this new system and adapt it to their land took them 20 years who to develop this new system is that looking back they could now do it in 2-3 years if they wanted to do it all at once.

We could radically transform pretty fast by taking the experiences of people who have done it! And applying it all at once!

Be BOLD!

Final question-

if there was one change you would like to see to create a greener world what would it be? For example is there a charity or organization your passionate about or a project you would like to see put into action. What do you feel is the most crucial issue facing our planet in regards to the environment either in your local area or on a national or global scale?

It could be a long list

stick to one I’ll sort of cheat a little bit

the issue with the climate we face is huge and daunting

not depend on fossil fuels need to restructure our economy is 

we need to restructure agriculture

that’s why I wrote

 Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life

fundamental needs quite happy it is pretty easy to do is that it can it be done perspective

to get there

it’s really rethinking our ag subsidies. We’re basicaly subsidizing practices that degenerate soil the more we farm that leads to less people will be able to do so…

we should be subsidies

Build Fertility

love to see

fundamental shift in the way that our institutional government programs and support farmers who are adopting regenerative methods and techniques

stop subsidizing practices that degrade the soil.

How does someone go about helping solve that problem write thier congressman?

I may not be the best person… 

a couple of ways in

Farm Bill of 2018

new farm bill in 2018 if you are inclined towards political activism

lobby your representatives to get in or reform the farm bill – tends to be written by a few legislatures from a few key states but should be something we are all interested in. 

what kind of food do you buy

where do you buy it

what do you buy

difficult to know if your buying from a store or a farm that had food had soil building or soil so you can get to know who’ the people are that are growing your food

support your local farmer’s market

how it’s done

that can be  depending on where you are 

I always like to tell listeners is that even if your representative wants to get something passed if they don’t have people backing them. If you have someone that believes like you do. It’s so easy. They gonna be super friendly. You’ll pretty likely get some young intern who’s gonna just take a note. I wouldn’t say I have my congress people on speed dial but I call when I get emails that ask and they usually have a script for you.

Do u have an inspiration tip or quote to help motivate our listeners to reach into that dirt and start their own garden?

I’ve been really surprised by how much food Anne is growing in a really small space in our yard! As for an inspriational tip, is that even if you have a small amount of space you can transform that into something that can produce the freshest food imaginiable. All the studies about nutritional food I have found is the time between when it’s picked and when it’s eaten is the biggest factor in nutrient dense food

right outside the window

well worth thinking everyone should grow a a little bit or a lot of their own food…

I thought what you said in the beginning about spending time in the garden with Anne was so eloquent.

How do we connect with you?

dig2grow

@Dig2Grow

 Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life

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