Climate Solution: Air to Soil
Alex Smith | 01.12.2011 17:58 | Climate Chaos | Ecology | Sheffield
Out of 2600 submissions, Allan Savory and the Savory Institute survived to the current short-list of 11 technolgies to do it.
We talk with Allan Savory, the 76 year old pioneer biologist and agriculturalist from Zimbabwe.
Forget what you know about animals and land management. Desertification is not what you think. A very old relationship between animals and grass lands could reverse the damage.
It may even be a mega-solution for climate change. In a classic interview, I talk with a world-recognized pioneer in natural land management, Allan Savory, founder of the Savory Institute.
Allan Savory was born into white-ruled Rhodesia. He became a biologist, a game manager, a member of Parliament. Savory resigned and went into exile over the racist policies of that government. Now the country is called Zimbabwe, and Savory has returned often, to teach and to test his methods of restoring water, life, and carbon to the land.
His best known book is "Holistic Management: A New Decision Making Framework" written with his wife Jody Butterfield.
In 2003, Savory won the Banksia International Award, quote "to recognise extraordinary individuals or organisations that have made, or are making a significant contribution to improving our environment on a global level."
Allan Savory & the Africa Centre for Holistic Management was the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge Winner. "Operation Hope" showed a way for permanent water and food security for millions of Africa's poor.
Then to Abe Collins, a Vermont farmer using those methods to capture carbon with agriculture. The extra soil also helps with flood control.
The program wraps up with a new presentation from the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas conference in Washington D.C. in November 2011.
Aaron Newton is the Local Food System Program Coordinator for Cubarrus County, North Carolina. He'll tell us how to develop your local food-shed, even in hard times. And why the most important crop may be... new farmers.
It's a really helpful short presentation from Aaron. The ways the County used the tax structure to both keep farmers, and to fund community organizing around local food. Lots of good tips for localizing your own community. The Newton talk is dead-on for how to create a local food-shed getting ready for Peak Oil.
Our D.C. correspondent Gerri Williams was at the ASPO conference, and sends this recording. My thanks to ASPO USA for sharing the audio, and for getting localization on the Peak Oil menu.
Find the show blog, with a lot more details, and tons of links (including video from Zimbabwe) here:
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Alex Smith
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http://www.ecoshock.org