HSA supports soil scientists who see the soil as a living network whose relationships with plants affect us all, rather than seeing the living network in the soil as incidental to soil structure.
Institutionalised soils research is highly fragmented with hydrologists, chemists, geo-morphologists and biologists each having a different perspective on the formation and function of soil. In addition, agricultural scientists and ecologists operate with widely divergent mindsets.
The specialist discipline of soil science tries to bring these divergent views together, but lacks a coherent over arching framework that enables soil scientists to do so.
Further complicating the issue is that the different scientific approaches to soil in the public domain are in direct competition with each other for funds and research priorities are all too often determined by political and commercial rather than scientific considerations. In the private domain, research efforts are about developing and exploiting intellectual capital, not about enhancing agricultural production as a common good.
Fortunately, innovative farmers and land managers are trying out new ideas and demonstrating their practicality long before there is a precise scientific understanding of how and why it works.
Healthy Soils Australia is committed to fostering such innovative practices and opposes attempts by bureaucratic extension advisers to frustrate and block such innovations.
Over the last 10,000 years, from when farming first began, some farming practices have proven themselves to be totally sustainable, while others have failed, in some instances failing repeatedly. For example traditional rice production in China and Bali has operated sustainably for millennia. Compare this to the irrigation practices in the Middle East which collapsed due to salt.
In other parts of the world, for example Europe, the Amazon basin and New Guinea, agricultural practices radically changed landscapes through forest clearing. However soil nutrient levels were so high that traditional agriculture could continue for very long periods without appreciable drops in productivity. Contrast these areas with areas where initial nutrient levels were not high, for example in North Africa and Australia where agriculture collapsed or is in danger of collapsing.
There is also growing evidence that land clearing associated with agriculture, as well as certain farming methods, are changing local and global climates. The aridification of North Africa during Roman times is sometimes cited as an example. The reverse is also true. For example vegetation in Sahel region (south of the Sahara) is increasing along with rainfall. Climate scientists are divided about whether the vegetation is bringing the rain or the rain is bringing the vegetation, but the fact that both processes are occurring at the same time in indisputable.
Research areas of interest to HSA members include:
Although ultimately worthwhile and needed, research is time-consuming, complex and beset with shifting parameters, egos, and commercial and political vested interests. HSA aims to cut across this frustrating mix by promoting what is working now in a practical sense on farms, without having to wait to dissect it into a set of statistics that are meaningful in one context but useless in another. Results based action is needed now by the planet and its inhabitants.
http://mycorrhizas.info/#fungi
http://www.idosi.org/wjas/wjas2(1)/4.pdf
http://www.ibiblio.org/rge/faq-html/b-add.htm
http://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Carbon_cycle_including_GHG,_decomp,_soil_OM#The_Carbon_Cycle
http://www.agron.iastate.edu/~loynachan/mov/
(This page contains 18 movies on life in the soil.)
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