I’ve been thinking lately about how I call my project “Build Soil” bit the big pilot activity is “Plant a Million Chestnuts” the connect is there but i understand it’s not completely obvious and it’s worth exploring. 1/

I talked re: the “scales of permanence” before, Which is a way of thinking of organizing parts of human and natural systems by their rate of cycling. Things like climate set the stage for everything which influence water, then access, then vegetation, $ so on w soil at the bottom

It seems counterintuitive because of the idea that soil takes so long to form an inch, but it’s more that all of these other things need to be present and they can often take millennia. When the scales are in alignment soil can form rapidly. 3/

So Soil production is a measure of the quail org of many other systems: water, well designed human landscapes, proper economic relations, just communities, good plant mangement. 4/

In these systems where things go through a series of transformations, power flows from the many different diffuse sources to be concentrated. Power in these diagrams flows from left to right. But the energy that is used to concentrate and direct, Control flows the other way 5/

why Soil is more then a measure of larger success: it also -changes those systems:
stores carbon &regulates CLIMATE
stores WATER & stops incision
Grows microbes that regulate &feed BIOLOGY
holds nutrients to protect the OCEANS
grows VEGETATION to feed life
5

Soil is something we can shift that shifts everything else. Changing as much as we can to improve soil production will have larger effects in the scale that humans can operate at. 6/

so for me”Build Soil” is a directive & a measurement of success. Project should be weighed on their capacity to put things in line in ways that build soil from the biggest perspective. It’s one total system so projects that indirectly build a lot of soil will still weigh high 7/

So I have a lot of project I’d propose for Building Soil. They include designing the street & landscape patterns of residential areas to store water and spread it to optimal soil areas, large scale intentional grazing to restore grasslands, moving bear scat to help plants move 8/

But when I zoom in on the biggest threats to soil What I see is an agricultural system that is methodically burning through the worlds soil at a terrible rate and causing nearly every problem we face. 9/

We grow a lot of things with ag not just food but the truth is ag is just not as space efficient as gardening. We already put a ton of energy and water into lawns: It’s not that hard to imagine folding them together and bringing a significant part of Food Production closer in 10/

Chestnuts can be huge trees and they store carbon directly and they do build some soil but like trees in general grasslands are quicker pathways for carbon storage. But chestnut do have a few things going for them. They can grow food above where we live, walk, & garden. 11/

Beech family trees are amazing trees. I’ve explored some of their ecological benefits before and we can replace grain agriculture with much more space efficient plants that can like for thousands of years. 12/ https://twitter.com/buildsoil/status/1156324192989487104?s=21 https://twitter.com/buildsoil/status/1156324192989487104

So it actually possible to plant oak Savannas where we get the benefits of healthy grassland under food producing trees. Amazing for farms, parks, yards. 13/

I keep pushing these trees because we want to reduce the load on the larger landscape so that it can heal into Native & climate-refugee vegetation. So we can stop fertilizer and tillage application. So the large area devoted to extraction can do the work of building soil. 14/

In addition to all of that the trees do produce biomass, they can be coppiced, they can grow above hazelnuts for biomas& oil fuels. feed people without annual tillage right where we live and require minimum processing to be delicious & Versitile food. They make life easier 15/