Humus - the essential ingredient: Graeme Sait at TEDxNoosa

It is a pleasure to be here with so many passionate people. I have spent the last 20 years of my life researching and sharing information related to the links between soil health, human health, and planetary health, and I will continue to share that here today. It was about two or three or four weeks ago, in fact, I was on the steps of City Hall and La talking to a large group of climate change activists and after that talk, I was inundated with people, many of them asking the same question. Upon asking what that word was, I immediately assumed that they were referring to a word I used called mic rizle, which actually has a kind of special spelling, but to my surprise, the word they were looking for was the word

humus

and for someone who is As passionate about the subject as you will soon learn.

It was a shock to realize that people have become so divorced from the source of their food that they weren't even familiar with the word and these are people trying to save the planet, so we'll start by talking about what hummus is. Interestingly, if we look at the iology of this word, we find that the words

humus

and human mean the same thing that they mean of and for the Earth and, interestingly, the word humility. means exactly the same and ironically it is our lack of humility that has seen us and our constant quest to dominate nature that has really brought us to the brink, which is why humus is made by microorganisms and is the base of operations in which those microorganisms these incredibly important creatures live humus is the glue in the soil that determines whether our rivers run Brown after a rain humus is a painful glue that determines where dust storms strip our thin veil of the precious top layer red humus is the storage system for three incredibly important substances: carbon, water and minerals, and it will be this trio that will have the greatest impact on the health of the soil, plants, animals, humans and the planet in the very near future. to catch up on climate change, the latest on climate change science before this presentation and many times I was on the verge of tears, it seems that now we are talking about irreversibility, we are talking about whether we are stuck in three, four, five or 6 degrees increase in temperature.

Now someone needs to tell someone at some point that 5.5 degrees is considered beyond human adaptive levels. We have seen a degree to this point and we have seen the enormous changes associated with that, we have seen the hottest January in this region and recorded history, we have seen the worst drought in New Zealand which is still in the midst of it, we have seen in Germany coldest March in recorded history and that's just The beginning, basically two degrees is not twice a degree, this is something exponential, we don't even know what two degrees will be like, what we do know and what in certain The way I understood it from the research is that our current focus on reducing emissions or controlling emissions and reducing emissions will not actually save the day now if we were to cut emissions tomorrow morning by 100%, which of course we will never do. , but if we did it in 200 years.

CO2 levels in the atmosphere fell to the levels we had in 1975, which unfortunately is still too hot, the oceans continue to warm, the oceans continue to acidify, and in fact, it is this problem of ocean acidification that is actually It's more serious than global warming uh and it's more urgent and I'll explain how it works. The oceans have absorbed 50% of the CO2 produced by man up to this point and it is fortunate that they have done so because we would see many more changes than we have seen. currently seen if they hadn't, but when that ocean absorbs that CO2, it turns into carbonic acid and leads to ocean acidification and we've had a 30% increase in acidification up to this point, now the problem here is that there is some creatures that are dependent on calcium to build the outer wall of the shell that increasingly struggle in increasingly acidic conditions this includes coral includes shellfish includes Elie and krill and includes some phytoplankton now there are some things you need to know here are 500 With millions of people directly dependent on coral reefs for food, algae and krill are the basis of ocean life as we know it.

Phytoplankton is responsible for 50% of the oxygen we breathe and 40% of those little ones we have already lost. this is serious business this is not someone else's life this is your generation your life your next in fact the research regarding el and crru suggests that 20 years is the time frame that many people when faced with the enormity of that stage close and uh, and go back to the couch and watch Sport and what this is like a call to action and try to convince yourself that apathy has no place in this scenario, there is something you can do and it's a message that I want share with you in the time I have left that message is basically the following: there have always been the same amount of carbon molecules on the planet and those that carbon circulates between the soil, which is, by far, the most big, biomass, which is all the plants on the planet and the atmosphere and much of what used to be in the soil as humus is now in the atmosphere of CO2 that sickens the mantle of greenhouse gases that warms the planet and changes the weather.

Sorry, I'll just have a quick drink of water if we want to get some perspective on how much we're talking about here: that's 476 billion tons that used to be in the soil now in the atmosphere and everything else we've done to contribute to that. CO2 in the atmosphere coal power plants industry six 7 billion lungs breathing CO2, which is equivalent to 250 gatons, so almost double the amount comes from the soil and there is a desperate need to return this carbon to the soil in form of humus and it exists and we can all be involved in this process.

This is what happens with not knowing how to fall into the apathetic scenario. It's just that this is something we can all play a role in and we need the first of those strategies to save the planet. uh, we choose to buy our food. Of those who practice regenerative agriculture we now work with farmers in 44 countries and I can tell you one thing for sure, those who practice conventional chemical farming are losing their temper annually and we prove it with evidence from those who practice organic organic farming. We are generating humus annually and of course that keeps it out of the atmosphere.

We need to take care of the people who are doing the right thing. Farmers markets are increasing and the increase in farmers markets gives us that opportunity that we can put a face to. our food we can buy our food research The producers who we buy our food from and we buy our food from those who are literally going to save the day the second, just put this in motion, uh, the second of those Planet saving strategies tra St, uh, we need to pay carbon credits to farmers for increases in soil Humes and this is something that everyone can get involved in perspective with politicians we are paying carbon credits for people to plant trees.

The biggest storage, by far, is the humus we are talking about. our primary producers, food producers, the most important profession on the planet and we will realize the importance of that in the very near future. We are talking about a group of people who are fighting. Can you imagine being a farmer in Rockampton for three 100 years? floods in the last four years are really struggling, we need to motivate them to do the right thing, we need to pay carbon credits to generate humus and we need to do it very quickly, compost so that the decomposition of organic matter results in humor and Composting is where we come in history and we accelerate and magnify that process and composting must become the mantra for everyone, in every home, Gardeners, every food producer, every council, think about dealing with councils, currently, we throw food scraps into the conventional garbage that garbage goes to huge landfills that have become the second largest source of methane, which is another greenhouse gas 23 times more potent in terms of thickening than CO2.

It's a huge problem, it's huge and it's easily solved. We put pressure on our city councils that we want. In a separate container we put our green waste and our food waste and we want you to take it and we want you to put it with the rest of the green waste and we want you to compost it and then we want to buy it. compost for you to feed that whole scenario, something incredibly important composting now that we're starting to do a lot more counts of life in the soil, the discovery has actually been quite alarming, we discovered that the key creatures responsible for forming humus in our soil have been absolutely decimated, the most important of those creatures is a creature called a risle microfungus, so here is this little creature that hides in the root of the plant and it expands and increases the surface area of ​​the root tenfold and this enormous expanse of root extracts minerals and takes them to the The plant retains and retains moisture and produces biochemicals that stimulate the plant's immune system, so we don't have to come in with as many chemicals.

Check that plant now. Sorry, sorry, I'll keep moving here. Microle fungi are responsible. For 30% this is a new finding. This is a woman named Sarah who discovered that this creature produces a sticky substance called glamin and it turns out that glamin is the spark for the formation of humus in the soil and now we know that this creature is responsible for 30% of all that humus and also We know that we only have 10% of this creature left. We have eliminated 90% of our soils. We can return them $10 for Hector. It was difficult for us to re-inflect them. You can also prepare other organisms that digest cellulose and form humus for $5 and there is something that can be done and it has to be done very quickly and then we put this workforce back in the soil, we need to legislate to protect these guys in the soil what that's hitting them The agricultural chemicals that we now know are really hard on these critical humus-forming organisms we know that the herbicides or some of the herbicides are actually harder on soil life than they are on the plants we know that glyphosate is the most widely used in the world chemicals used, new research suggests it's kind of a horror show for soil life and then we have other things that we are overcultivating in many cases and cutting and freezing those fungi that form humus and we can See how we can handle them. some of you may have seen Alan sa's wonderful presentation from a few weeks ago.

I had a million viewers on Ted uh, where Allen demonstrated without a shadow of a doubt that you can intelligently manage large numbers of livestock and bring them in with what's called cellular grazing or intentional grazing and completely change entire landscapes, in fact. It reverses desertification and has a huge impact on climate change, so that's probably the other part of the equation, we're talking about more humus, but they're two sides of the same story of soil management and plants burning waste. of crops must be stopped immediately this is this is something this is food for organisms that would have been carbon in the soil that now rises in a huge cloud of CO2 into the atmosphere and you will often see these little, sorry, these little particles up there in the ash and that is the ash, uh, and those that the ash represents the minerals, that is, 5% of ash of every 100 kilos that you burn, those are the minerals that made that crop grow and that mineral is now landing on the neighbor's farm or maybe the next town, so the demineralization and loss of food that would have gone up in smoke doesn't make much sense and we have to stop that pretty soon. a carbon source with every nitrogen-based fertilizer, so we are talking here about nitrogen being the most widely used chemical or mineral in agriculture. we have nitrates in our waterway that are carcinogenic and we have no nitrogen in the reef etc, nitrogen also stimulates bacteria in the soil and this is the most abundant creature in the soil and the bacteria will go into overdrive after a foot of nitrogen and consume carbon, it's actually the main way we lost much of our soil humus.

We didn't understand this. We need to add carbon to our fertilizers. It can be fertilizer. It may be a material called humates. Humates are this type of humus concentrate that we can extract from lignite and humic acid humate, one of these concentrates turns out to be the most powerful stimulant known for fungi that digest cellulose or form humus, so it is a tool indispensable of enormous importance for the formation of humus now that We are looking over here, uh, it is Norfolk and one of my favorite places in the world, uh, and on the left there is asmall workshop where we dug a lawn, uh, we put a little humus, we put a little vermac fertilizer, uh, we put.

The mineral micral fungi toured the area and returned exactly 4 weeks later and we are seeing an incredible food garden with foods with forgotten flavors, greater medicinal qualities, etc., so we are teaching the locals how to produce their own food, as we can . everyone has to do at some point uh finally in this little segment something outside of the hummus and it's really been pioneered by John Houon and in some notable work that he's been doing that's getting international attention right now. John's argument is simply that super funds represent our future and our money and currently 55% of our super funds are invested in companies involved in non-renewable resources, bhps, Woodside oils etc. ., 2% of our money in our future is invested in those who are involved in pursuing renewable forms of energy, human initiative knows no limits, it is well funded, we can change that equation as John is pushing for super funds and directing that money into something that will really save the day.

Humus does more than simply offer climate change reversal. We see, for example, the National Bank saying, look, we are here. By lending all this money to farmers to buy the neighbors farm, loans are falling, we need to redefine what determines profitability in agriculture, that's why they did a pretty comprehensive study for 3 years and the end result surprised everyone . The determinant of profitability in agriculture was humus. The amount of organic matter you had every 0.15% made a significant increase in your profitability. So how good is it that we pay carbon credits for farmers to increase their profitability? The most important profession for which they have been fighting for so long.

It is a good idea. Humus. It is our best water management tool, we are talking about three parts of the earth covered in water and 3% of that water is fresh and of that 3%, 90% is used for irrigation, but it is not used very Smart, we store our water in huge dams. come back here we are only going to get this in huge dams with massive amounts of evaporation, we pump that water with a huge carbon footprint to the farm and we pump it out and we lose more to evaporation during the irrigation process, compare it to humus.

The humus remains firm. By weight in water, humus is below the soil so it cannot evaporate. The root of the plant takes it when it needs it. A 1% increase in organic matter per hectare results in 170,000 L of water that can be stored in that soil, which Before I couldn't this and this this mat that measures 2 sare m 34 L now we can store because you decided to compost your green waste and your food scraps. There is no better way to manage water than that. Hemus also has a huge impact on the nutritional value of our foods. There are numerous studies that have quantified many minerals in our foods.

There is an argument that the foods we consume today contain only 20% of the nutrients found in the foods consumed by our grandparents and a large part of that is soil. we are what we eat what we eat comes from the soils and the soils are a shadow of what they were a large part of that destruction of our soil is a loss of humus humus is the only thing that contains all the minerals stores all the minerals in the soil and humus is the basis of the organisms that supply the minerals there is a microbe behind each mineral the humus or microbes are the bridge between the soil and the plant we literally build the humus we build the nutrient density we build the health of each of us humus also reduces chemical pollution of our soils.

We have consistently seen that the higher the humus levels, the less the need for chemical intervention. We are talking about several problems regarding chemical contaminants in our food bioaccumulation. We are talking about what is called the cocktail effect. The bottom line is that our need for chemicals is based on, you know, a fungus. A fungal disease is not a fungicide deficiency. We are looking at a plant that did not have the mineral. base and it did not have the micro base to protect itself otherwise we build the humus we change that humus it is also the nitrate nitrogen storage system our waters our drinking water is even contaminated with that carcinogen the humus is the only thing in the soil that can store it, It is also a carbon filter that isolates heavy metals and chemical residues and keeps them away from us.

It plays a very important role in the structure of the soil. Here we see some Verma compost added here to the soil. You can't push a penetrometer any further than this far. in the soil six weeks later, you can push it to the bottom, the soil can now breathe, the soil can produce nutrient rich foods, with forgotten flavors and many more medicinal qualities, so in conclusion, humus is literally the life blood of this planet and We have used and abused this magical substance to the point that our future is at stake when we build humus in the soil we recover carbon from the atmosphere we increase the health of soil plant and animal life we ​​improve soil management precious water we increase the vitality and resilience of each of us we need to return to that ancient wisdom that saw the definition of humus and human being as being of and for the Earth and we need to recover the humility to work with nature instead of In this constant battle and the constant effort to master it, we can all participate.

Push your super funds, push your tips to change compost, compost, compost, buy your food from those who are doing the right thing and each and every one of us can help save. the day with hummus thank you thank you peter