Maintaining and sustaining soil health

With ~2/3 (and growing) of Earth’s land area being arid, you’d expect there to be a lot more interest in reverse-desertification. It’s pretty well established by now that it’s almost entirely a labor allocation issue given that there’s success stories all over the world [1] (including in the US [2]) to just create earthworks that slow and divert water. Water seems to be the biggest single issue and so many deserts actually get enough of it during flash floods. With how much Elon is interested in terraforming Mars why not just start here?

[1] https://youtu.be/UAmai36XJDk?list=PLoU8oWWwU-06BGLH5y7AMbybv... [2] https://youtu.be/3JyEHdJS94s?list=PLoU8oWWwU-06BGLH5y7AMbybv...

Amending with biochar is a very good way to jump start the soil life, but regenerative agriculture should go much further than that. There's a bunch of techniques developed in the last few decades, notably permaculture and syntropic agroforestry, as well as techniques for preventing erosion in difficult topography such as keyline planting and scales.

But for the soil to be really alive, lots of plants must be planted, in a polyculture context. It's the photosynthesis that feeds the soil's fauna, which then support the plants, increase fertility and carbon content.

Huh, I actually do some of this but I'm planning on doing a bit more that I'd like to get their feedback on. For background, I live in the PNW among the trees. My soil is part of a long dead riverbed and thus is mainly silt and sand. I have chickens, a worm bin, and a medium sized compost pile. The trees have the same erosive properties that trees in the Boreal forest have. Douglas firs have shallow roots but are towering trees, the soil just doesn't do them any favors.

I'm building a chicken coop that's designed to take pine shavings and be completely emptied once a month with relative ease. The idea is to take the chicken poop and pine shavings and add them to the compost pile. I'll further introduce new worms from my separate vermiculture bin and add them to the compost. This should speed up the break down, but the pile will primarily rely on the Berkeley method to accomplish faster cycles. Each month I should start getting pounds of fresh compost that I can move around my yard.

Secondarily to my chicken and worm hobby I love to smoke meat and cheese. I use all of the ash from the pellets to amend the soil as well. I pile it up in a box and spread it around when it gets full. I then till the soil, working it in over time. The natural acidity of the soil from the fir needles has slowly started regressing, but that's the most progress I've gotten thus far.

wow. that took a real turn! Using coal to amend soil.

I have some serious question about the heavy metal contamination that might result, given that both Lead and Mercury occur at ~ PPM levels, not to mention Chromium.

I was a touch surprised at coal. I can see how it would work, its highly carboniferous and really porous.

Thinking back to the clinker paths (perhaps clinker isn't coal-y enough though) that have been ripped up and re-planted, they did seem to be moister than the rest. Whenever I came across coal in the soil, the soil was moist.

However the thing I'd be worried about is the accumulation of heavy metals.

This is very one sides - not necessarily wrong, but in general simple solutions to complex problems are wrong and this pushing of biochar/coal is likely to be another one. Maybe part of the solution but not enough alone.

I'm surprised there was no comparison between biochar and good old fashioned composting. The cost $1-$2 / pound of biochar (organic matter pressurized or burned under low oxygen) seems high compared to a natural composting process. Anyone know how they compare?