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Episode Air Date: April 16th, 2020

Transcript

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<<Music: April Showers- ProleteR>>

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[00:00:20.600] - DS
Hi, I'm Devon and welcome to WildWay. Today's episode, Agriculture, where we're going to talk a lot about crops. 

[00:00:27.730] - PG
No, here come the caterpillars 

[00:00:29.390] - DS
and regenerative agriculture. 

[00:00:31.340] - PG
I love to do this. This is just my hobby. I mean, I work in biotech and stuff, but I love to grow my own food. 

[00:00:36.770] - DS
And guess what? This is my very first podcast episode. I am super excited. It's been so much fun to work on. So without further ado, here you go. I got to confess something to you. I am a mad food scientist and I use my friends and family for culinary experimentation. And when it comes down to feeding them, I'm not perfect, but I do try to get the best quality ingredients. Last summer, I really got into growing my own garden and I ended up with so many beans that I had to resort to canning. My grandpa was over at the time and he began telling me about how they used to cart things away and store things in a root cellar, and it was really cool to listen to. It really got me thinking how we lost a vital connection to our food, growing my own vegetables and then turning them into delicious dishes that my family eight gave me so much joy, a lot more joy than buying food that I didn't know where it came from. The backyard farms of the early 20th century when my grandpa was growing up, gave me this beautiful image of a sustainable local seasonally mandated lifestyle. To revert to this way of being seems impossible now, especially with our current population.

Between 1950 and 1987, we humans doubled from 2.5 to 5 billion people and that took 37 years total. Our population is projected to double again by the year 2100 (Roser et. al, 2013). Two questions come to mind right off the bat. How in the world do we feed all these people and what does sustainable agriculture look like? Sustainable agricultural practices are productive, competent and competitive, while at the same time improving the environment and economies of local communities (Mishra et al. 2018). Sustainable practices result in increased carbon sequestration. They improve soil nutrients and reduce land erosion and maintain the water table, as well as reduce on farm costs (Mishra et al. 2018). Participation at an individual or small farm level is key to maintaining sustainable agriculture (Mishra et al. 2018). Studies on these practices actually go back to the 1940s. And they also include agricultural management practices that increase water quality and improve hydrology, both of which are huge concerns with the North America (Mishra et al. 2018). Traditional agricultural methods have been proven to devastate the environment Gosnell, Gill, Voyer, 2019). They consist of treating soils with fertilizers and chemicals, plowing it two more times a year, using herbicides, pesticides and fungicides, and compensating for a lack of water with irrigation that can lead to the salinisation of soils (Hawken, 2018).

Current practices do not focus on the health of the soil, but instead the wealth of the industry, creating a monoculture system that is easier for mass production. What we eat is one of the greatest causes of climate change. However, this source can be turned into a sink. Photosynthesis is the most effective way known to humankind to take carbon dioxide from the air and keep it out. Photosynthesis turns carbon dioxide into a liquid sugar that goes from the root system.

Producing the food we eat and through an agenda of agriculture feeds the soil life. Photosynthesis turns carbon dioxide into a liquid sugar that goes into the root system, producing the food we eat. And then through a genitive agriculture feeds the soil. Globally, 33 percent of land is moderately to highly degraded. And this poor soil quality affects the nutrient quality of the food we eat, resulting in a micro nutrient deficiency (Ball et al, 2017). Regenerative agriculture methods re-establish the land. Really, it's a paradigm shift away from current farming habits to sustainable practices.

For us non farmers, these practices include no tillage, ecosystem, diversity, rotation and cover crops and minimizing disturbance in the soil, mostly between micro-organisms and plant roots (climaterealityproject.org, 2019), (Hawkin, 2018). The aim is to constantly enhance the well-being of soil through carbon sequestration, nutrient incorporation and overall productivity (Hawkin, 2018). It is crucial for sustainable agriculture to stabilize the current nutrient depletion and press that rewind button to reverse soil digression. So I want to introduce you to a Canadian scientist who is doing just that.

[00:04:28.740] - PG
My name is Peter Gross. I'm a co-founder and chief technology officer of Lucent Bio Sciences in Vancouver, B.C..

[00:04:35.820] - DS
Hey, Pete. Thanks for coming on the show. I was hoping we'd be able to chat about sustainable agriculture and the biotech that you're working on.

[00:04:42.390] - PG
The goal of sustainable agriculture, other has to be an economic driver. There has to be a reason why a grower is going to spend money to convert to a more sustainable methodology. I mean, we're seeing some really big changes in a couple of months ago, I was at I was at Al Gore's family farm down in Tennessee. And we were talking about sustainable agriculture.

[00:05:04.800] - PG
And, you know, in Tennessee, they've got some pretty sophisticated practices going on the entire state right now. Zero till every time we tell soil you're losing carbon from the soil and soil. Organic carbon is one of the biggest drivers towards soil fertility. It's only been fairly recently that science and growers have understood the importance of soil carbon. So by going to zero till you retain soil carbon and over a period of time, if you include other regenerative practices like cover crops and, you know, returning waste biomass to your fields, you can actually improve carbon.

[00:05:40.440] - PG
And when you improve carbon, you improve nutrient uptake, you improve growth and yield. So all of those things form a little triad that drives how much food you can get from a certain acre. And also in some places, like in Tennessee, they have incentives for growers to convert to a janitor because sometimes it takes a process of several years before your soils become more fertile than using conventional agriculture. And so we're seeing some very sophisticated ideas like bridge loans for growers, because during that transition phase, you can sometimes see your yields drop.

[00:06:16.030] - PG
And of course, in conventional agriculture, for your yields are tiny, any decrease in productivity yield could be financially devastating for the growers. Following the transition phase, they're seeing improvements in soil carbon, improve growth and yield. And that just keeps getting better and better and better of year.

[00:06:32.160] - DS
Are these practices becoming more mainstream?

[00:06:34.920] - PG
You know, change is very difficult for people to adapt to, especially when you're talking about, you know, very, very large operations spanning thousands of acres and millions of dollars of equipment changing those practices. There is some, of course, some resistance because there's risk involved. It's like, you know, if we've grown this 10000 acres of canola exactly this way for the last 15 years and it works like a hot damn, why would I change it?

Well, the answer is you can reduce agricultural pollution. You can improve growth in yield. And very, very importantly, you can improve nutrient density. And nutrient density is a big topic right now. One of the byproducts of climate change is we're seeing altered growth patterns with photos, synthesizers, and some of them are going faster. But one of the things we're also seeing is there's a trend towards lower nutrient density. So when you think about it, if if I need to eat, you know, two hunks of corn to get the same amount of nutrient value I should have from one, then that is going to impact food sustainability because we need to grow more lower quality stuff.

If, on the other hand, we can improve nutrient density in crops, then were effectively improving our food supply at the same time. There is a lot of discussion right now and a lot of technology and research focused on improving nutrient density in crops.

And that's not only climate change, but it's also agricultural practices. That's one of the things we're working on is taking nutrients, putting them in the most bio available form and presenting them to crops in a way that causes no pollution and add soil carbon. And when I say bio available, your huge listening audience out there, millions of people listening to this right now. We are we're talking about, you know, our atmosphere is mostly nitrogen, but trees cannot eat nitrogen.

And if you look at trees, you'll see bacteria, fungi on trees. That's a symbiotic relationship. The fungi takes the nitrogen, converts it into a by available form that now the tree can consume. And we have the same thing in crops. There are soils all over the world that do not sustain crop production because the nutrients that are in the soil. Not by available, so they're there, but crops cannot eat them. One of the things we're doing is we're taking nutrients such as zinc, iron, manganese, boron, etc. and we're binding them to organic substrates like cellulose in their most by available form so that when these nutrients enter the soils, crops can uptake them very, very quickly. And what's left behind is cellulose, which is 44 percent organic carbon. So the crop nutrient is not only good for the crops, but also adds soil carbon at the same time. If you apply nutrients in the soils in their most bio available form, then the plants don't have to convert the lesser bio available or the UN bio available form of nutrient into one that they can then uptake.

It's a lot easier for them and they grow faster. And then very importantly is we're seeing significant improvements in tissue samples in nutrient levels and we have big problems in some parts of the world. Like if you're especially if we're looking at the African continent in zinc deficiency. I mean, zinc deficiency affects like one out of every three or four people in Africa and not just factually, it's one I should say that's zinc deficiency is a global problem. And one of the ways that we consume is we get them from plants, which is why everyone's mom says eat your vegetables. But if the plants lower levels of nutrient density, then you can manifest larger components of the population with nutrient deficiencies.

And zinc deficiency has all kinds of physiological problems associated with it. When we say sustainability, I mean, you know, cover crops and and these types of things, we're also at the same time seeing huge, huge advances in precision agriculture through technology. And this stuff is changing like literally every month. It's advancing at an absolutely blistering rate. And, you know, for example, as you know now growers are able to have these very, very high tech drones that can measure moisture levels, can measure all kinds of different soil, physical parameters and nutrient parameters so that you only irrigate exactly where water is needed in exactly the right amount.

You apply exactly the right level of nutrient, not too much, not too little. And this movement towards precision agriculture generates improvements and growth in yield reduces costs. And also, you know, it's a side benefit, reduces pollution.

[00:11:17.390] - DS
How does carbon sequestration fit into soil and regenerative agriculture?

[00:11:21.920] - PG
The amount of carbon in soils far, far greater than all the carbon in our atmosphere. When we move towards sustainable and regenerative agricultural practices, they have the ability to become one of the largest, if not the largest carbon sink on our planet. So not only do you make your solsbury growth better food, but we have the potential to sequester gigatons more of CO2 than we conventionally are.

[00:11:48.500] - DS
How are scientists measuring soil carbon?

[00:11:50.900] - PG
 measuring carbon source had been in a lab like there isn't like a little gizmo that you can stick in the soil to measure it. And a lot of people are working on that, trying to figure out a technology that allows you to to directly measure it very quickly.

[00:12:01.850] - PG
But different soils in different parts of the world have I would call a natural carbon content that can vary wildly. It can be as high as 17 percent. And, you know, for talking humid jungly soils and it can be as low as half to 1 percent and very Aird soils. We in most agriculture, we want to see around 3 to 5 percent organic carbon and most agricultural lands that have been used for monoculture have seen their soil carbon levels decrease.

[00:12:31.910] - PG
You know, when we do crop trials, it could take months to do a trial. And that is I mean, that's just the nature of the game. So what's happening is your your data points are slow in coming, so you have to pick your trials and your experiments very, very carefully with as many metrics as possible.

[00:12:48.380] - DS
Are there any major barriers that your research is facing right now?

[00:12:51.800] - PG
We're not seeing a lot of barriers. And this mostly we're seeing a tremendous amount of support and excitement from not only the investment community, but also from government and financial support and research facilities being made available to us. It all just makes sense because when you think of how profound the problem is of not being able to grow enough food. One of the innovations that is getting a lot of attention you've probably heard about is when we're talking about pesticides and everyone's like, oh, pesticides are bad.

Yeah, no farmer wants to put a pesticide on their field, but if you're given the option, oh, here come the caterpillars, am I going to lose a million dollar crop or am I going to spend, you know, five or ten thousand dollars applying a pesticide? You're going to choose the pesticide. There's some absolutely fascinating research being done now on funguses as highly, highly effective pesticides. And what actually there's one. Researcher that I greatly admire, Dr Deborah Henderson at Kwantlen Polytech. And she's doing research into precisely that.

One of the most interesting conversations I had with her in is we were talking about this problem of, you know, how to deal with pestilence and in large scale monoculture. And they've been successful at Cape You of treating a one hectare field with two to three grams of a fungus sport that's at two to three grams. It's fascinating because the fungus is absolutely harmless to bees, it's harmless to the crops. But these funguses have been specifically selected to inhibit the pests that would normally feed on that field.

And these funguses are benign for humans. So it's like a it's it's a perfect technology. So these are the this is another example of not only how rapidly biotech's accelerated, but how profound the impact can be, because man. I mean, if you could, you know, instead of spending ten or fifteen thousand dollars or more, you know, in some operations on one application of a pesticide or herbicide, if you can use bio control such as fungus, which costs less, is more effective and doesn't have any undesirable side effects on your food quality.

I mean, that's that's what everyone wants. The crazy machinery that we see on farms, like everything is laser guided and g._p._s. This isn't, you know, an old guy in a straw hat driving a tractor, you know, anymore.

Yeah. You know, all these big operations now. I mean, farming is very much transition to a very, very technology oriented, technology driven industry where a lot of growers now are, you know, people with advanced degrees. And instead of, you know,  'why I did this, because my pappy did it and his pappy did it before me. And we've always grown this way.' No, we're seeing the industry embrace and move with technology very rapidly because the smart growers know that it's going to affect their bottom line in a positive way. But I'm optimistic.

I see this as not only just technology, but also practices and attitudes changing and embracing information and data as opposed to embracing tradition.

[00:15:59.760] - DS
That was Peter GROSS from Lucent Bioscience. A Vancouver based biotech company. They're working on some amazing sustainable solutions for agriculture. And I'm sure we'll be hearing more from them.

Reworking sustainable agricultural methods into current practices requires increased farmer knowledge and the skill base. Studies have found that the transition into regenerative agriculture involves more than climate smart mitigation, such as agritech advantages. Policy change and education. The subject factors associated with culture, values, ethics, identity and emotions are just as important. And that means you, my friend, and congratulations, because just by listening to me, you're educating yourself and forming beliefs that guide your decisions and how you behave.

Never stop learning. This podcast was produced and edited by me. Devon Simpson brought to you in part by Capilano University with special thanks to Janet Waters, Peter Gross and the Simpson family. Thanks. You can reach us on Instagram and WildWaypod or email at wildwaypodcast@gmail.com. You can find our show notes on our website and please subscribe to our channel and invite your friends. And that's the WildWay

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References:

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Gosnell, H., Gill, N., & Voyer, M. (2019). Transformational adaptation on the farm: Processes of change and persistence in transitions to ‘climate-smart’ regenerative agriculture. Global Environmental Change, 59, 101965. doi: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2019.101965

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Hawken, P. (2017). Drawdown: the most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming. NY, NY: Penguin Books.

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Mishra, B., Gyawali, B. R., Paudel, K. P., Poudyal, N. C., Simon, M. F., Dasgupta, S., & Antonious, G.     (2018). Adoption of Sustainable Agriculture Practices among Farmers in Kentucky, USA. Environmental Management, 62(6), 1060–1072. doi: 10.1007/s00267-018-1109-3

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ProleteR. (2012). April showers. On Curses From the Past[mp3]. Free Music Archive: Dusted Wax Kingdom. 

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Roser, M., Ritchie, H., & Ortiz-Ospina, E. (2013, May 9). World Population Growth. Retrieved from      https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth

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