Webinar: When life springs up where we tread - Partnering with soil biology in ecosystem restoration

Welcome everyone to the second of the three-part webinar series for Restoring the Earth, here with the ecosystem restoration communities that are around the world. Today I'm operating from the University of Manitoba campuses located on the original native lands of the Anishinaabeg, Inuak, Anishinaabeg, Dakota, Ioway, and Dene. And national homeland of the Red River Métis. The Kitikii ecosystem, which is the ecosystem restoration community I'm involved with, is located in a Métis community and is on the Anishinaabeg lands of Saginaw and Brokenhead. It's known as the land where rice sits upon the water, so there's wild rice in these communities, and that's how people were attracted to this very beautiful area. Today we're going to have the webinar "When Life Springs Up Where We Tread: Partnering with Soil Biology and Ecosystem Restoration." We're lucky to have John D Liu, who's a fabulous filmmaker and the ecosystem restoration ambassador. So he goes all around the world helping communities, and we're so lucky to have him here. And participating in the workshop in June. Heather Unger is a human rights lawyer who's been drawn to ecosystem restoration and has special skills in soil food web permaculture, and she's part of the ecosystem restoration community's Northern Growth, as is Paul Kruse, who is a Manitoba arborist and conflict resolution trainer. So lots to learn. I just want to at this time mention the third webinar, which will occur Wednesday, May 14th, on Indigenous knowledge systems with myself and Dr. Stuart Hill, who is Innu and focused on the Kitigay ecosystem restoration community. I will as well let you know that this is just a sample of what you'll get at the ecosystem restoration course that's going to occur June 16th to 20th. It will be a very hands-on workshop Some of it will occur at the University of Manitoba, but we'll be at the ecosystem restoration community at Northern Grove and in Kitigay, and we'll be doing monitoring and restoration techniques with a ts'k'oo of experts from all around the world. So please join us, and I'll now turn the mic over to John D Liu, who will share his wisdom. We're so lucky to have him here. And of course, you know, he's juggling a million things. So we appreciate you taking the time.

Hello everyone. So looks like I'm at Mount Shasta, but that's not really true. That's where I stayed during COVID actually for 5 months. Can you see that okay? So I'm so thankful you're here. These are my parents. My father has passed away, but my mother is still with us at 105. And I'm going to her birthday so I can see you. This is what I was doing when I was a young person. I helped to open the CBS News Bureau in China and watched China transform from a very poor and isolated country into a modern superpower. Then I was covering the collapse of the Soviet Union and other really big geopolitical events. And such as all of these global kinds of summits. But it was in 1994 when I was first asked by the World Bank to start to look at this area, which is the Loess Plateau in the upper and middle reaches of the Yellow River. And this was known as the most eroded place on Earth. And when I went there, I had to compare what I was seeing with all the recent geopolitical events I'd been covering for the news. And I came to the conclusion that understanding ecology was more important than the sort of things that seem so important at the moment, but actually no one really remembers after a little while, although they are important for the people whose lives are changed by egotism or by violence or these other issues. But what I found was that the ecological destruction was connected to poverty and that after civilizations have destroyed their ecosystems, then they end up being extremely poor. And usually in the past, it was possible for the privileged and the powerful to move somewhere else and start up. But what this was, was this giant project put on by the World Bank. And in looking at this, I really questioned, you know, is it even possible to do anything about this? It was so massive and, and looked so hopeless. But as I learned more about it, I found out that actually they were serious about this and they didn't— they had they had done a lot of research and they had techniques that had worked in microcosms. And then they started to do more and more of this work. I'm not sure— this is using fish-scale terraces. This is terracing at very large scale. The fish-scale terraces work pretty well, but they're expensive generally for one tree. But this type of thing— and they were using people. I started realizing, oh, this requires people. And it's not only that it's the people who are doing the work. It's that by doing the work, they began to understand the ecological function. And this is what was able to be done in— this is 14 years after the first pictures were taken. So there are some new pictures that show that it's even better. There was a— on PBS, there is a thing. And you can find something about it on YouTube too. The Age of Nature Awakening. There's a short segment from the piece they filmed about me and my work there. So this is what could happen in 14 years. And what it showed was that the production of food is connected, or the production of any kind of vegetation is connected to the ecological function, the natural landscapes. And this is kind of different than the whole idea of, of agriculture. It's saying that actually the natural vegetation, the accumulation of organic soils, and the ability to infiltrate and retain moisture and circulate the moisture in the lower hydrological cycle is more important than the production. In fact, the production is dependent on the ecological function. And this suggests that the economy could be false because we're thinking that the production is the primary good, but the true value is in the, in the function. So I started to realize that I was only seeing function and dysfunction and that if we continued to follow this dysfunctional thing, what had happened in the Loess Plateau was that it was headed for, or really had collapsed the ecosystem already. But then the Chinese started this effort and they made an intervention which completely changed the outcome. And that showed me that this is the paradigm shift. That determines how people can survive. Now, if we don't do this, then we can't return to evolutionary systems. Then I started— it's been now 30 years since I started this study, and I just keep studying because it's never-ending. But I found that what they were doing was this very simple techniques like putting straw in grids in the sand in deserts. And just doing this would mean that the wind would blow seeds and any moisture that came into there would go down the straws and start to deteriorate the organic material. And without even planting anything, they would end up with vegetation. The bird droppings and so on would distribute the seeds. And if you did that, just decided, if humanity realized that this is what could be done, we could trans—

A biodynamic gardener or farmer is really feeding the soil with compost, with organic material. We give the manure, we give the compost to the soil, and there we feed the life in the soil, all the microorganisms, all the earthworms. And that means that they will see that the right nutrition is available for the plants, not only from the compost but also from the soil. So this This is a compost heap which we put up with that material 2 months ago, and the first thing which happens is that it turns warm. And if they put up the material in the right way with the right moisture and air and so on, all those beings, they come by themselves. Here they are.

Yeah.

There is no warmth but lots of organic material and they have to do. So they are here. Yeah. But after some time they will have done their work and who knows, perhaps they go over there. The worms and other beetles and microorganisms have been eating all of it and produced this wonderful soil. That's in a way the secret of organic material. It improves the soil. It's not only nutrition, it's also structure. And it keeps the nutrition, it keeps the water and the air in the soil.

Now this is something, this is the Taklamakan Desert and even in this kind of— this is the second largest shifting sand desert in the world. And even here, the Chinese have done massive restoration by putting a road right through the middle of this thing. And in doing that, they had to grow vegetation here. Now, what's especially interesting about this is that in doing this, you could measure on the sand 70 degrees— I'm just going to pause for a second— 70 degrees temperature on the sand and below this vegetation that they put in artificially. And it's very special because they used halophytes. They were able to find an aquifer below, massive aquifer, but it's all highly saline. So they were planting salt-tolerant plants here. But the temperature below the vegetation is 25 degrees centigrade when the temperature on the surface of the sand is 70 degrees centigrade. That's a 45-degree centigrade difference. It's enormous. So when we think about the— 2 to 5 degree climate or temperature differentials that we're concerned about in climate change. If we did this over a vast area, of course, it would have an enormous impact on temperature averages. And then I wanted to show you this. This is something I've been looking at and learning more about recently, and the Chinese have already built 25 enormous systems to restore, um, wetland areas in cities and in estuaries, and for the purpose of cleaning pollution in the water. And when you understand that this is doing all these functional things, but it's also really useful and, and beautiful. It can remove eutrophication, it can remove toxins. You could make the rivers drinkable again if you understood how this works. So it seems to me, since this is the paradigm shift that determines whether you humanity can survive or not, we need to do all of these things. And so what's interesting is I saw that the only thing that required to do this is the understanding and the determination, the intention to do it. And it also changes— if it changes our mind, about the value— and I think the indigenous people knew this forever— that the value of the ecological function is primary and the production is secondary. So the most important thing is to understand that. And if we go to this— this is in Britain where we're building a living water garden, and this is another area where we're building a media center. But if we do this as humanity, we can transform our society, not only the ecosystems. We have to realize that we've made mistakes. And it's absolutely people, and people all over the world are realizing learning and ready to do this kind of thing. So as I was studying this, I began to have dreams about people going camping, and that's actually the basis of this, because I'd seen all this and captured all this information. And then I was dreaming because I was a little bit frustrated by the time and complexity of governments and giant agencies and corporations. And I saw that the people are the ones who understand this, and they know that it's going to benefit them directly, and it gives them agency, and it shows that we're all equal, basically, that, that if we understand and if we take on the responsibilities, we're also going to reap the rewards. And if we don't, we're going to see some pretty terrible outcomes. We're already seeing some pretty terrible outcomes. So this is, I think, the the way forward both for the economy and also for health and for happiness and, and for peace ultimately, because I can't see that we could escape if we have such a huge population as we do. And there are now— this is, this is it Imbécrom in the UK, and they're doing a lot of training in a beautiful area, and there are more and more things happening there. I'm pretty excited by the happenings in the UK, but what we're looking at is how can we make all of these places exemplary, and that includes the ones in Canada, of course, and more and more coming from all over the world. So I do hope that the thing, the event coming up in June will be helpful, and I hope that more and more people are going to feel the same way as others. And then I just wanted to share a few of the things that I've seen around the world in doing this, because this is inspirational to me, and it shows the difference between looking at the natural world and looking at the things that human beings have made. And it has been quite a lot of fun to do this, and— And it has given me hope that things are just not hopeless, that we have many chances to restore and to protect the remaining existing beauty. And of course, I know from the internet that if you have cat pictures, then people like you. So I thought I'd show you this one. So that's me, and I hope we can answer some questions if you have some, but maybe later on. So thanks so much.

Thank you so much, John. That was great. We also have some cat pictures, so hopefully that will go over well. Welcome here. We're Paul and Heather, and we run one of the ecosystem restoration sites here in Canada, central Canada. We We run a business, so we're not just doing restoration, but trying to think about how to integrate that into how to feed our kids. And so we do tree work. I'm an arborist, so I climb trees and take care of trees. We do permaculture design, and we're moving into soil health services in the next couple years. So we're just learning about those things and wanting to pass that on to you.

And if I can interject, one of the biggest inspirations for us in making such a big and significant life shift was the work of John D Liu. So John, thank you so much for your work. It was the documentary of your work in— of the work done in Los Plateaux was so remarkable. And And it's not just us. We hear it again and again that people are so inspired by the work that you've done. So thanks so much for, for your work and for being with us today. That means a lot to us.

Yeah, it does. Okay. And what we, we also know is that there are systems that, that we're all really interested in that came out in John D Liu's video, soil systems, plant systems, ecosystems. Heather and I were trained as— well, I'm a mediator and Heather's a human rights lawyer. And so that was the work that we did before we started on this journey inspired by John D Liu. And so we get a chance to see the patterns and the similarities in systems between humans, which are part of nature, and nature. And so we're going to bring a little bit of that into our presentation today. But why don't you talk a bit about the role of soil building?

Sure, and you can answer the door. Our kids are outside parenting themselves, so we'll see how this goes. So, so yes, so our focus today is on soil building and as a key part of ecosystem restoration. So, but before we really get into the details about soil building and what, you know, the nitty-gritty of that, what that means and what that looks like, We want to start with a picture that I think demonstrates pretty well why it might be important that we have a focus on soil building. Paul is going to manage our slides here.

Oh, this was supposed to be up while we were introducing ourselves.

Hi.

Anyways, there's me in a tree. And Heather helping out at an event building a swale by hand there. Okay, so here is the picture that we were referring to.

So what can we see here in this picture? This is actually a neighbor of ours, a local farmer. Who called us and said, can you give me a hand? My trees don't look well, they look sick, they're getting these brown needles on the bottom half of the tree. What is going on and what can I do to help my trees? So, well, and let's— before we— again, before we dive into the soil systems underground, let's just objectively look at what we see here.. We see, in fact, yes, trees that are struggling. They look a little stranded. We see exposed root systems. We see Manitoba's classic dark brown soil, and we see water. We see water, in fact, moving soil. I'll try to move to the next slide. Here we go. So, yes, so we see that every time it rains, because of this exposed soil, the water is taking topsoil off of the fields and into the ditches. Here is another picture.

Oh, here's the cat. This is the cat, John D Liu.

Here's the cat. So this is just to provide a bit of a contrast, and we can kind of dive into what is going on here. When we moved into our place a few years ago, we noticed a few things. We had anticipated, you know, moving out to the country with our kids, and we would be surrounded by wildlife and insects and, you know, birdsong, and it would be incredible. And what we encountered was, and we'll show you pictures of the yard site and the property in a bit, but what we noticed was complete silence. There was no birdsong except the call of crows and magpies and blue jays, which are predatory birds in our area, and just really silence. We didn't come across, encounter wildlife. And so then one of the first things we did was set aside some places that we wanted to rewild. Of course, one of our motivations for moving out into the country was to find a depleted area and explore this area of regeneration and bringing a depleted area back to life. So if we go back though to the— sorry, Paul. So what do we see? What is— what are the ways in which we can contrast these two pictures? So if you go back to the next one, here in contrast to the last picture, the soil is covered, it's undisturbed. So this is maybe two— after two or three years of not mowing. So this was a depleted lawn We haven't mowed, so we see that the soil is now covered. It's undisturbed, and these trees that have completely just volunteered, they've popped up here, are sheltered and are provided protection from the mature trees nearby.

And these two pictures, this one and this one, are literally a mile apart, so this isn't just stock photos from Google. Yeah, yeah.

So, why does this make a difference? Well, first of all, the COVID provides protection from erosion, so we aren't losing soil here. If water, you know, if rain falls here, it slowly soaks in. But the COVID also allows for something else to happen underground., that we can't see. So we're familiar with the concept of food web above ground, uh, the idea being that all living organisms, the humans, the insects, the animals, the plants, the bugs, we're all part of a predator-prey cycle. And so as, uh, the cycling happens, nutrients are cycled. Well, the same thing is happening, in fact, underground. We just can't see it except with a microscope. So for this next little bit, we're going to share a video with you that was put together by Dr. Elaine Ingham's Soil Food Web School. It explains the food web in the soil so well, and so we'll just— it's just about 3 to 4 minutes long.

We all know about the food chain. The animal kingdom, on top of which are us humans, right? Well, if we look a little closer, we can see that some members of the food chain don't just eat one thing. That goes for humans too. So the reality is more like a web than a chain. This is the food web. There happens to be a food web in the soil too. This is the living part of the soil made up of insects, earthworms, and much smaller microscopic creatures such as fungi and bacteria. Dr. Elaine Ingham has pioneered research into the microorganisms in the soil over the last 4 decades and has worked with a team of research scientists to understand how they interact with each other and with plants. The soil food web can be thought of as the soil biome. Just as humans have a gut biome responsible for digesting our foods, so too the soil has a biome which breaks down organic matter and releases nutrients in plant-available form. This is how nature has been feeding plants for billions of years. The major groups that make up the soil food web are bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and nematodes. When in balance, these different groups interact with each other and with plants to create abundant ecosystems such as the great forests of the world. Have you ever wondered how forests can be the most productive ecosystems in the world without the need for any fertilizers or pesticides? The answer lies in soil biology. With a healthy biome, the soil can provide plants with all the nutrients they need, and with a number of other benefits such as protection from pests and diseases, protection from drought and from flooding. The soil food web is, essentially, nature's operating system. Unfortunately, we humans have disturbed the soil food web in almost all of the soils that we manage, causing it to become unbalanced. As a result, the plants we grow struggle. Plowing is the major cause of the problem, as it destroys the larger microorganisms, such as fungi and protozoa, leaving the soil food web out of balance. This results in a system breakdown. Nutrients are no longer made available to plants, and protection from diseases is compromised. Before the Industrial Revolution, humans would plow using oxen or a bull, which provided around 3 or 4 horsepower. Modern tractors can yield 400 horsepower or more. So far more damage is done to the soil biome by modern machinery. The use of chemicals has compounded the problem. The good news is that we can restore the soil food web to most soils within just a few months. This results in a number of benefits, both for farmers and for the environment. With a balanced soil food web in place, farmers need not use fertilizers at all. They don't need to use pesticides either, as nature's operating system protects plants from attack. Herbicides, used to kill weeds, are not required either, as weeds only thrive in conditions where the food web is out of balance. Restoring the soil food web means farmers save money on chemical inputs across the board. It also means that their yields increase dramatically. In some cases, farmers working with Dr. Elaine Ingham have seen yields increase by over 200%. This is because the soil food web provides plants access to a constant flow of nutrients from soil organic matter and from the soil particles themselves. That's right, sand particles contain nutrients. And guess what? Fungi and bacteria can harvest those nutrients. They then make these available to the plants in a process that the plant actually controls. This means that plants get access to the type of nutrients they need precisely when they need them. That's how you maximize yields and optimize profits. For the environment, there is a whole host of benefits of having a balanced soil food web. Humanity is facing a number of existential threats. Let's take a look at how some of these are related to the soil.

Okay, so I think we can stop there. Uh, to sum up the video then, when we restore balance in the soil, we set the stage for all kinds of benefits. We stop erosion, we start growing topsoil instead of losing it, sometimes rapidly, and we support the thriving of all life above ground: plants, insects, animals, humans. Now, the video talks about— is focused on increased yields and profits for farmers, which is the case within the realm of ecosystem restoration. We can also see that Restoring balance in the soil means or results in recreation of habitat as well, essentially creating a home for diversity of life. We have our slides again. Oh yeah, I'm bringing this up again. So shifting then to what we have seen at our farm as part of our permaculture demonstration site, as part of the ecosystem restoration community's work here. So here's a picture of our farm. I'm guessing based on the vehicles and some other features that it might have been in the '70s. The farm was established in the '70s, so, and here we've got the, the farmyard, and then you can see cultivated fields behind. So as I said, mentioned earlier, when we moved out here, we expected this abundance of life in the country. And we found it quite vacant. When we arrived on the yard, we could still smell Roundup in the air, and we encountered, as I said, we encountered so little life except for the predatory birds and a plague of crickets. Crickets are really cute when they are— there are one or two and they're singing, serenading to you in the evening outside, Less so when they're in the thousands marching across your lawn and showing up in your—

like your light fixtures and like in like they're in your bed and like not, not pleasant.

So pretty clear that things were out of balance here, but it's only taken a short time for us to see noticeable change here. What— while we didn't know about soil biology, we did know that We wanted to increase habitat, so we needed to cover the bare soil in our fields, stop using chemicals on the property, and start creating habitat. Do you want to talk for a bit or should I continue?

Yeah, let's, uh, okay, so we're right, yeah, yeah, or I could, why don't I, yeah, I'll keep going and then I'll be an assistant for the slideshow.

Okay. So the first thing we did was seed our fields with a diverse perennial hay mix made up of different grasses, diverse clovers, leafy greens like plantain, alfalfa, chicory, and flowering forage for pollinators. Then we left it for a year to establish before touching it with any kind of grazing. We also installed thousands of feet of swale to soak and slow and soak water, which it was intended to hydrate life above and below ground on the farm, which we can see here worked. The property is remarkably flat, so one might ask, why would a swale— why would you install a swale here? But where there is any slope, water of course will flow downhill. So we have over a span of about 800 feet, we have a slope of about a foot, very slight, but even so this swale catches an enormous amount of water, particularly with this spring melt. It soaks in all of the, the spring melt coming across the property. The other thing that, right, so just these two things, the COVID crop and the swales, have resulted in an explosion of life here on our farm. So diverse insects, we no longer have the plague of crickets, we have frogs, we've got a diverse set of birds, sandhill cranes, eagles, swans flying overhead. We've got, and I mean, those, we can also say it's not just our activity that is making this happen, but there are neighboring properties also in the area and in the region that are making changes. So, and also songbirds. This has been one of the most delightful things that has happened. So early on in our time here, very little bird song, and now if you go out in the morning I don't even know all the different kinds of birds that have shown up on our property. It's really just very delightful. So just these two things alone, the COVID crop and the swale, have resulted— created habitat for all kinds of wildlife creatures and even fairies.

There we go.

There we go. Our kids, yeah, in the swale.

That's right. So moving on then to some more, some additional techniques for building healthy soil beyond the COVID cropping and the water harvesting.

Okay, so we want to be able to keep that soil kind of sponge or web that was talked about in the video and also John D Liu's video, the gentleman talking about the compost and and looking at all the life there. When we till, we break up those networks and that web every year. And so there is this kind of annual cropping that is so common here in our part of the world where, you know, seeds are put in the ground, they pop up in, you know, early summer, they mature, they're harvested, and then you till it all under, and then in the spring you start all over again. And it's like a reset, but not in a good way. This is where all of those bacteria and fungi networks and so on began to establish, but then broke down when the tilling happened. So one could adopt a no-till approach to gardening and farming. We also— yeah, so it preserves the food web in the soil. And allows the soil biology to establish.

So here we have another area of our yard where here it's a no-mow approach, I suppose, and again we've got, you can see a poplar forest popping up in our front yard.

Yeah, so over here this is the lawn and then this is neglected lawn, which means that there are all kinds of seeds just waiting for the right conditions. And this is so often the case with ecosystem restoration, is that we're creating a certain habitat or condition for things to do what they want to do. And so these poplars were waiting and wanting to sprout, but not able to because they had been mowed for I don't know how many years.

So again, here, the COVID cropping, which we discussed. Another way to cover the soil would be through mulching. That's basically just getting the organic matter down onto the ground. You could— I mean, forests do this all the time, right? Especially we see it here in willows and maples. They just shed so much biomass and that accumulation on the soil is all food for that soil food web underground.

And one of the great things about having a business like ours where we're doing a lot of tree care means that we always have what most arborists would consider waste, right? Wood chips, all kinds of biomass. And so we've not thrown anything in the garbage in the last 5 years as an arborist company, there is a lot of wood on our property, a lot of chips, and this is something we see as a resource and not as some sort of scourge or waste product.

I'm looking at the time. We should probably motor through our stuff here just to get to some Q&A before we wrap up. So here's another method, which is, you can call it a dead hedge. It's basically deciding not to clean up, or in this case, making a mess. Again, these are the branches that are a byproduct of Paul's work doing tree care. This creates on our— what we've done is we've dumped the branches on our northern property boundary to block from northern winter winds, and it forms what's called a dead hedge. So it does a few things. As it decomposes, it will protect and feed the soil. But in the meantime, it protects trees that we plant just to the south of the dead hedge from the northern winter winds, and then it also offers habitat to songbirds that nest in low-lying brush.

And this is very similar— this is to what John D Liu's video had, where there's the kind of the pushing in of straw in the desert. This is just kind of a larger version of that catching and creating soil.

Again, the swales here frozen in winter. You can see the summer melt or the spring melt and all of the, all of the water that would have just run off the property now staying and infiltrating down into the subsoil. Thank you. Just a few more slides here. Next would be another method for contributing to soil building efforts would be to plant diverse species. So we saw through cover cropping, we have also planted diverse trees and shrubs, either supporting species or fruit and nut bearing species, which feeds wildlife, also feeds us. Again, a pollinator bed in front of our house. Another cat cameo there. And then finally, this is the area that— so all of those, the measures that we have discussed so far are pretty within reach, accessible. They're pretty low impact low effort and low input. The area that we're actually really excited about is launching into creating composts and compost teas that have within them an intact soil food web, so assessed through a microscope and can be applied onto gardens or cropping or pasture or trees and providing that to our tree clients specifically, which is a bit of a probiotic. It's an inoculant, so just a jump start, and like we saw in that video, it can turn things around very quickly. In a matter of months, you can start to see a difference. Okay, and the final area Paul's gonna chime in on in terms of I guess, ecosystem restoration is around creating habitat for community.

Yeah, so I mentioned earlier that Heather and I are both trained in, in other disciplines, and so we had many years of interacting with human systems and kind of the intricacies and patterns around conflict, particularly Heather as a lawyer and me as a mediator. And so What we've noticed going from one discipline to another is that there are certain patterns and systems that, if not in balance, don't produce the good that we hope for. And so one of the things as a mediator that I'll tell people who are in conflict, and sometimes even stopping mediations midstream and doing a little training sessions so that people can get a zoomed-out picture of what they're experiencing in the moment is this notion of trust. Trust in human relationships is like currency. It's the thing that kind of makes everything go or not go. And so we already all know what broken trust looks like and how it happens, right? People acting in bad faith, betrayal, lying, selfish behavior. These are all things that we've experienced and maybe done ourselves. But there are 3 things that build trust. And as, as community members and as part of nature, our, our working towards this is what makes the projects that we're so passionate about work. So the first thing to build trust is consistency. If people are inconsistent, it's hard to know what to expect. And so it's hard to trust them. We also have commitment. When people show their commitment to a relationship, to a project, there's a trust that starts to form and solidify.. And if those were the only two, it wouldn't actually be enough. Just consistency and commitment aren't enough. There needs to be care in there. And so we know the people that we trust, they're people that are both consistent, committed, and caring. And so we know that things like volunteers coming out, even though they're not as much help as you'd like them to be sometimes, right, are important because they are the people that make up that network of, you know, at that layer of ecosystem restoration. We've got neighbors that we've partnered with to graze cattle on our land. They're not like us. They don't think about the world in the ways we do. But they're partners and they're part of the community that we're in. We also hold a harvest feast every year that brings about 120 people every year. We've done it 2 years now. Food brings us together, music, and talking about some of the things that we're talking about here today. Okay, that's the finale of our harvest feast every year, a huge bonfire with with music, but that's kind of the finale of our presentation as well. So I think now it's opening up to questions.

I think just to— before we close off, I just want to make sure— chime in one more time to remind everyone about the upcoming events. May 14th will be our webinar on Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Ecosystem Restoration, and then our June event from the 16th to 20th here in Manitoba will be really phenomenal. It'll be a hands-on workshop for ecosystem restoration and regenerative practices. So yes, and we'll open the floor to any questions or thoughts.

For the great content today. I had a I guess fairly general question. So I'm currently working in Colorado, USA, working in a corporate consulting firm as a healthcare technology consultant, you know, trying to educate myself first, obviously, but in the long term want to transition a career to more sustainable endeavors, if you will. So I was curious if you have any like general feedback on people looking to, you know, network with others and educate themselves so they can be, I guess, better aligned to make that transition.

Do you have thoughts?

Well, the first thing that comes to mind is whether we have an ecosystem restoration community nearby. I don't have a map open.

Uh-huh.

There is one in Boulder.

I've I like follow them on Instagram, but I haven't interacted with them in person at this point.

I can help answer that. If I just can step in. Thank you. I'm with the Ecosystem Restoration Communities Foundation, and we have over 80 different restoration communities around the world now. We've grown exponentially. Everyone wants to be part of a good thing, and this has been a success story because it's come at the right time when people are hungry and eager and keen to to get involved. People are also recognizing that the action has to come from people on the ground. It's time for people to take the restoration of the Earth into our hands if we're to move quickly enough. John D Liu always says that this has to be a community up movement, and it's the individual acts of all the people who want to be inspired and who want to physically get involved. I strongly encourage you to to go to the website. It's really easy, I'll pop it in the chat right now. It's erc.earth. There are two things you can do. You can pop onto the Discover page where you can actually sort by continent, as of today, all the restoration communities around the world. Every restoration community has got a little Volunteer at this ERC button and a little dropdown will inform you of which skills they're looking at to get involved there. Alternatively, if you go to the Participate page, On the website you'll find a whole list of current volunteer opportunities that you can sign up for and get involved in. That's a really great way to start your ecosystem restoration journey, is just by spending time at a restoration community. The workshop that's taking place in June is another brilliant opportunity really to join other like-minded people on the ground and learn the techniques for doing it, whether you start on your balcony or your backyard or on a friend's garden. Garden, guerrilla gardening in your city or town. There's always an opportunity, there's always something you can do, and if you don't have any ideas and you're stuck, feel free to reach out to us. I'm going to pop my email address here in the chat as well, and we can connect you with some other people and we can also show you how you can start your journey or suggest, because everyone's journey is different. And of course you can look for an opportunity to join Northern Grove as well if you're in Canada and head out to them to get involved in their activities. Thank you. I hope that answers your question a bit.

If you're near Boulder, Drylands Agroecology Research is in Longmont, wonderful place.

I want to add just one—

I'm south of Denver, so It's a bit of a trek for me, but I'm hoping to get out there at some point. Thanks for plugging them though. Yeah, go ahead, Paul.

Yeah, thanks, Connor. And I think the shift for us from one very kind of embedded version of life to another very different type of life, the thing that comes to mind is this quote. I think it's anonymous, so I don't know who to give it to, but nothing changes until the pain of staying the same outweighs the pain of change. And so this idea that we really only learn in a couple of ways. One is through really intentional focus, like doing something like this where, you know, you're coming to a webinar or you're connecting with other people. It takes effort, right? But the other way we learn is through pain, it seems like. And it seems that that was our journey where it was like COVID shook things up enough that we had to make some, some hard decisions and think about, well, what, you know, what side hustle are we going to turn into our primary hustle to, to feed our kids? And so we decided to, to kind of follow the beauty path. We'd spent a lot of time looking at the broken things in the world as, as kind of justice-minded people and realized, you know what, we could also just spend time looking at the good stuff and doing that instead of slapping the hands of people that made mistakes or power that's being abused. So, I think sometimes it takes a real shake-up to cause change.

And I don't know if I advise it.

Yeah, I know it's not the comfortable way for sure.

There are another model is, well, one thing we did do is even in the middle of our professional careers, we pursued the things that interested us. So we already had— Paul was already a certified arborist. He was like, you know, I kind of feel like climbing trees, I want to pursue that. And so he allowed himself to learn about that.

And you allowed me to learn about that. That's also— thank you.

Yes, welcome. And we pursued permaculture design certification. So following, just following those interests led us to opportunities. Other folks that we know in the permaculture area or realm come to mind: Verge Permaculture in Alberta. They are folks that also made a dramatic shift from work in the oil patch as engineers to creating a permaculture business, and they did it more gradually. So one of them left their their jobs at their, I guess, engineering jobs to start a business. And so the other person's income continued to feed them while they launched their permaculture business. That's another option. I also see a question here from Kim Lee. How did you design the pathway of your swales? That was another networking opportunity through our watershed district. And with the Manitoba Habitat Heritage Corporation. Through a discussion with both of those regional organizations, we were able to map out how water moves on our property, and then it was a bit of just kind of taking a plunge, really. Another quote I heard recently is, "A bad plan is better than no plan." So, So, not to say we want you to do bad plans, but sometimes movement is just what it takes, and it's sometimes so challenging. You have an empty canvas, right, of, in our case, a really depleted cultivated field, and how on earth are we going to shape this? So, we started thinking of it a little bit like an art piece, working with the elements that are there. How is water moving? And then starting to draw and playing around with ideas and then just having confidence and moving ahead. I guess that's another part of art is that in a way confidence is everything. You just take a plunge and move ahead.

So, any other questions?

And then we worked with another neighbour to actually survey, do surveying and the actual swale implementation. He had the machinery, so he came in with his backhoe.

Yeah, but he thought we were crazy, but he's like, well, you're paying me, so that's fine.

Any other questions? Oh, there are more messages here. Do we use soil for mulching?

How does that work?

Can you say more about that, Saraswati?

Hi, Heather and Paul. Yeah, I, um, okay, I noticed you, um, are using, um, uh, wood chunks, uh, for mulching, right? So I heard many people are buying soil from stores and just, uh, pour on the top of soil which are fallow for on, on fallow land. And it means like people are hoping like that soil mix up with the other soil which are, we can say, not very useful for agriculture. And then later it becomes very fertile for plants. So you're also doing the same, I mean, like just buy soil with fertilizer or getting fertilizers from store and then just pour on the top of fallow land and then for mulching. Do you do that as well or not?

We haven't. I mean, when establishing a new garden, we've sometimes brought in new soil, especially when we've had to bring the grade up. But what is true about even the most depleted soil is that the parent material, the sand, silt, and clay, has everything in it that plants need to thrive. It's just that because the biology is missing, the plants can't access— the plants can't extract the nutrients from the parent material, from the sand, silt, and clay. They need the soil biology to cycle the nutrients and convert it into a plant-available form. So our focus has been more to create the conditions that soil biology needs so that they can start doing that work. Other than that, we haven't done mulching with soil.

Katie, you have a hand up there.

Yeah, hi. I am the— well, maybe I see how my video looks. I'm the executive director of a local nonprofit society, and we do programming that allows people access to, you know, fresh whole foods. We do gleaning programs, and a few years ago, we were given a 36-acre farm, which is just this beautiful piece of land. We lease quite a bit of it, but we still have about 7 acres directly under our purview right now. Anyway, my question is, I mean, obviously there's a lot going on and a lot to manage. I got into this project because my heart is really in the ecological restoration side of all this, and really that canvas, that art, you know, that artistic canvas of having 36 acres and deciding what to do with it. I've done quite a bit of permaculture training and looking at the systems and all this stuff, and Now it's funny because I find myself in it and just the busyness of everything that goes on and the amount of, you know, kind of focused dedication it takes to really train yourself and learn through the sort of the systematic application of converting a large piece of land. It always seems to be the thing that falls off, you know, is having that time to just like sit down and apply oneself to really learning and doing. Anyway, I do have a question here. So this year I've decided it's like, okay, I'm gonna just do this step by step. I'm gonna take it from the top. We're gonna do everything as like educational training for everyone who comes, right? All of our volunteers, all of our participants. So starting with the soil, I was wondering if, you know, you guys have any recommendations for you know, programs that kind of already exist that would be easier to just like plug into to sort of walk through with people on our farm, learning about our soil, creating a plan for how we go about restoring, you know, the soil from, you know, we have very highly managed and cultivated areas that we do like under, you know, natural cultivation, but still they're heavily managed. But then we also have, for instance, like a 5-acre riparian area that we're looking to like keep really wild, but it still needs like some cleaning up and some management and, you know, how to like move it in the proper direction to sort of really rewild it. And, you know, everything having along the way this kind of educational component as we do it, but then also looking at it as, you know, this really is a community farm. It's again, owned by a nonprofit society and meant to be educational, but also an opportunity for people to participate in learning about food, you know, cultivating food, and then also, you know, our big thing is just like allowing people to take home food if they need it, you know. So yeah, the question is about soil programs and any recommendations on how to kind of get started with something like that on our farm.

Where did you say you are, Katie?

I'm in Kelowna, British Columbia.

Okay, so you'd be looking for someone locally who can come out and do a bit of consultation with you and/or education, am I getting that right?

Or something you can access like virtually that you can pass to your your people at the farm there, which would be more preferable?

I do like, I think either or. I mean, I do definitely want something on the ground. That's the whole point, you know, we're restoring the, you know, the landscape. And I think, yeah, probably, but I would, I imagined it would be maybe a little bit of a both and. We don't have a lot of like regenerative ecological types in our area. There are a few, but I'm not sure there's any sort of experts, super local. So I sort of— that's why I was kind of asking. It's like, are there programs like that Elaine Ingram program? I know she does a big thing, but I'm just not sure how to integrate some of that stuff into like you know, sort of simple programming we kind of walk through on our farm at the same time?

Like, yeah, sure. The, the first thing that comes to mind is, well, first of all, uh, in terms of online materials, Elaine Ingham has much available, uh, so many free online resources to start, and, and then of course has her paid, uh, programming as well. They also list on the Soil Food Web website all of the people who have been certified as Soil Food Web lab techs and Soil Food Web consultants, so people who would be able to come and offer soil health consulting and kind of lead you through that aspect. But I'm also thinking there must be other ecosystem restoration folks, permaculture folks in that area who would offer either consulting or training.

Yeah, there are.

Ask Caps, uh, that comment earlier about connecting there.

Right.

Okay. Does that help at all?

Uh, yeah.

It reaffirms, I suppose. Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, we can connect again, uh, Katie.

Okay, question around Johnson-Sue bioreactors. We, uh, we are— know of them. We don't have any personal experience with them. Um, do any of you, maybe John or Paul, or—

yeah, the question is around these Johnson-Sue bioreactors.

Do you have any experience with them?

Yeah, I think basically they're highly fungal compost, which generally people use for inoculates rather than try to spread that. And it also takes about a year generally, although there is a guy in the UK who's, who's doing it faster. I don't know exactly how he does that, but I put my contact information. Katie, if you would like to write to me, I think I put my— did I put it in there? Well, do you see my— yeah, there it is.

Yeah, you have. Yeah.

Yeah, so if you want to contact me, I can put you in touch with Johnson himself. And I can also put you in touch with this young person in Britain who has a methodology to make it much faster. Not sure. He says he doesn't do it in exactly the same way. So Johnson told me himself that he only discovered it accidentally because he was too lazy to turn his compost pile. And he had used— the main part of it was leaf mold. So if you pick up the leaves in the forest, especially an old-growth forest would be a perfect place for this, with lots of deciduous trees. And you pick it up, and underneath there you see just white strands of filamentous fungus. Fungi throughout that thing. Then don't disturb it, like don't break them up, but take it from the bottom and the top and just like move it carefully into your compost pile. And then put all the other layers and put that like the special sauce in a lasagna. And so that's your special sauce in the lasagna. But then don't turn it.. And so you could put manures, you could put straw, you could put leaves, you could put whatever you wanted in there. And you also put 6 tubes that you, after it settles for a while and you water it, you get it pretty watered, and then you pull out those things and then you don't touch it for a year. And it just is completely covered in this fungal, white fungal stuff. And then after that, he found that he could take 1 kilogram per hectare, something like that. I'm not sure if that's exactly the— it was like 1 kilo per acre or 1 kilo per hectare, but he would put it in water solution, and then just spray it all over the fields. And he had similar blooms of fungal activity that he could monitor to— if he tried to pack on huge amounts of compost. So you can basically grow compost in the field if you inoculate with the right fungi. That's how that works. So inoculates might be better for really big work than trying to compost, and you can't compost enough to put a foot of compost onto everything. It's not possible.

Interesting. Thank you, John D Liu. Any other questions coming up in the chat or in person? I mean, you're all in person, but you know what I mean.

Virtually in person.

Yeah, virtually in person.

Well, there's one thing I would like to add that I think we should all be thinking about, is that there's some instability in the economy, as we might be noticing. I don't see how you could not notice it. But I think there's also some things in the economy which are just fundamentally wrong. And so we really need to be talking about what's right. I mean, it's pretty easy to point out what's wrong.

And—

but that doesn't really change the situation. Very much. It can make you a little more anxious and angry, possibly, but I don't think that works either. So if you look at what is right, then I think this is kind of more important. So when we understand what is true value, so now we're often, even permaculturalists or people who are doing such wonderful things, They're still thinking that all the money that they can get is from selling either their services or selling products. And they're not realizing that the ecological function is more valuable than anything that human beings have ever made and everything that human beings will ever make. And that the whole concept of an economy or a currency or money is made up. It's a concept, and it's a concept which is in many ways now sort of based on this mercantilism which was spread out around the world by colonization. And it's connected to this kind of colonization and spreading of one culture around the world or cultures from Europe, basically. And they, they, they were not as sort of spiritually aligned with nature as the indigenous groups. So the, the indigenous people were the places where there were beautiful, massive, functional ecosystems. With massive herds, with rivers flowing, and everything was beautiful. And then the idea in a very short few hundred years, really, of consuming all that beauty and all that functionality, that was a mistake. We have to look at it. We have to look at it. You can measure it. Basically by looking at core sampling or other methodologies to look at what kind of pollen and what type of— you can see petrified wood. You can see all of these things, massive amounts of giant ancient trees. We also really— I didn't hear it mentioned here. We really need to talk about ancient DNA. And the fact that if we're looking around at trees and they're all 30 to 50 years old, this is kind of ridiculous. You know, really, I mean, go find yourself a 4,000-year-old tree and get to know it, because this is different. And the atmosphere, the hydrological cycle, the soil fertility, this has been going on for a very, very long time. And humans have not been around that long. And so really we need to understand that this ancient DNA is what created, constantly filtered, and continuously renewed the systems that we depend on for life. And humans over a very short period have massively degraded this to the point that it's an existential threat. Threat to human civilization. So when we understand this, we have the power to decide, well, we invented money, we can reinvent money in another way. And when we reinvent money in a way that encourages everyone to do the right thing, that's good for all life. Not just all human beings and not just some human beings. Actually, now we're in the place where we're going to have trillionaires, a few trillionaires, and billions of desperately poor people around the world if we don't get our minds around what's happening. And when we get into that situation where the inequality becomes so enormous. This is a recipe for disaster, really. As an old journalist covering wars and revolutions and things, this is not good planning. You know, your idea of whether we need a plan, well, let's not have a plan where we we institutionalize poverty for billions of people. That's not a good idea. And let's not have a plan where, you know, vast amounts of weapons and socializing everyone into violence is the plan. You know, it's like a really bad plan. And we get to choose what the future is. And so if we get it right, then our children and future generations are going to be very grateful. And if we don't, it's going to be ugly. So it's our choice. And we need to make the right choice here. And we have a great opportunity. There is a window of opportunity, but it's closing fast. Let's, let's get on with it.

It makes me think of a document that the Canadian government put out recently estimating that by 2040 things will, will look pretty grim economically, but the basis of the report was this conclusion that things will start to struggle because people will lose confidence in the Canadian project. They'll actually stop consuming and focus more on human flourishing.

Well, that would be a good thing.

Yeah, so it's kind of like it's doom and gloom, but it sounds like, oh, we're forced into doing something right.

So it's an interesting— I think for me it was very revealing because, I don't know, maybe it was naïveté, but I didn't know that it was so explicit that our project, the Canadian project, is based on consumption. And where consumption falls off, there's this understanding that people will focus on flourishing and what is good. What I find so hopeful is that in light of even that, we're already part of a network of people who are rethinking these systems, right? All of these ecosystem restoration communities all over the world are already doing what the Canadian government is saying may actually be problematic economically, but will offer so much hope for communities and for human flourishing. So—

Well, actually, strangely, when you realize that money is essentially whatever we choose it to be, if we as humanity come together, we created it. So we can create it in a different way. So if we have an economy which is based on just extracting and using and wasting, and, you know, more is better, when it's not even needed— I mean, half of the industrial agriculture is wasted when you really realize it can't be sold because they only sell perfect fruits with no dots on them or anything. Well, that's ridiculous. Where's all that food going? And anyway, that's probably— I wouldn't want to have it anyway because it's got so much pesticide and herbicides and is probably tasteless. But the micronutrients are missing. That's what you get with the diverse, healthy, living soils. And so the, you know, it's great to understand what's happening with microbial and fungal communities which are making mineral nutrients bioavailable to plants and then to animals. We are animals. So, you know, we know that now. So what we understand and what we do and what we, what the Chinese are showing in their extraordinarily ambitious projects to, like, restore the Lys Plateau or to restore these water systems. It's like, oh my goodness, you can do that? They've already done hundreds of those. And they're quietly doing this because it fixes their land. Fixes their water. And we have to— the rest of the world has got to listen or notice what this is. They're not hiding it. They're just not— they just have recognized it. They're talking about something which is very high level. They're talking about ecological civilization. They can see beyond materialism. And that's actually back to the future because the indigenous people already were worshiping the fundamental systems, the rivers, the sky, you know, the megafauna, the huge ancient trees. And the fact that they basically— I mean, they're not really defining it in the same sort of scientific terms. But when you look at it and you say, well, we're in symbiotic relationship with all these organisms. I don't think the Neanderthals or earlier people were aware that we're in symbiotic relationship. With all these organisms, but the indigenous, many indigenous tribes were. So that's kind of interesting how this shapes up now. And we've made some mistakes, and those mistakes lead to consequences. But if we, if we don't correct those mistakes, we already know what the outcome is because we can see it We're repeating historical outcomes. I mean, war is a historical outcome, which essentially from any logical perspective is irrelevant now, because we can blow up the whole world. We can kill everything. So how is that a thing? You know, it should not be a thing.

Sorry.

No, that's great. And I think I would love to pick up the conversation about alternative forms of economy in the ecosystem restoration communities network. I think that's a really fascinating topic. I do see— what's that?

You can look at Will Ruddick's work with grassroots economy. He's already doing it now.

We have one more question and then we really should sign off. We thank you so much everyone for hanging on here. Have we used water dowsing to inform where to plant trees that align with underground veins of water that work in conjunction with swales? No, but I'm so fascinated by that area and I've actually YouTube trained myself to to douse for water. So we'll keep you posted. Yeah. Thank you all so, so much for joining us today. It has been such a pleasure. And thank you, John D Liu, for presenting with us today. And we look forward to many more opportunities to work together and to see you all again down the road. Okay, bye for now.