The Great Dust Bowl of the 1930s

Blinded by a misguided faith in "science" combined with belief in "Manifest Destiny," humans destroyed large swathes of natural prairies and rangelands, replacing them with tilled, fertilized, and sprayed fields.

"The chemists war," as WW1 was known, had major advancements in chemistry, such as the Haber-Bosch process of producing ammonium nitrate "from thin air." Though this process helped the Germans produce record amounts of explosives for the war - Haber was awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery in 1920 due to ammonium nitrate's potential for use in farming.

Additionally, chemists had concocted all manner of poisons and chemicals - and industry had built factories to create these chemicals. After the war ended, rather than close these poison factories - they instead marketed their creations to farmers, who began engaging in "warfare against nature" and growing food using chemical sterilization of the land followed by artificial fertilization.

Crops began to fail with the onset of drought in 1931, exposing the bare, over-plowed farmland. Without deep-rooted prairie grasses to hold the soil in place, it began to blow away. Eroding soil led to massive dust storms and economic devastation—especially in the Southern Plains.

Today, it is estimated that 75% of Earth's Land Areas Are Degraded through rapid expansion and unsustainable management of croplands and grazing lands - not to mention mining, logging, development, etc.

Modern practices do not learn from past mistakes

So, why didn’t we return to natural farming after this tragic lesson? Because large marketing and “Public Relations” empires had sprung up around these chemical corporations. Slowly, these groups rewrote history and embarked on a global campaign to “industrialize farming” in order to solve the crisis of global food shortages which had, in fact, been triggered by trade wars and banking manipulation.

Ever since then, farming business models around the world have been addicted to these toxic poisons and chemical fertilizers. All the while destroying the natural ecosystems which had supported plant growth since the dawn of life on earth.

Any who dare to oppose or counter this chemical monopoly are discredited or silenced. After nearly a century of this narrative control, most people, and even most farmers, genuinely misunderstand the natural abundance of the Earth when living ecosystems are respected and protected.

Eat Up!

Permaculture represents a return to Earth-centered farming methods. However, I feel many in this group still view farming with the same mentality that helped turn the "Fertile Crescent" (and birthplace of modern agriculture) into the Arabian desert.

I have been studying permaculture and regenerative agriculture for more than a decade, and I have gained a lot of knowledge and experience around the world - working shoulder-to-shoulder with experts, locals, and activists.

Let's engage in respectful discussion (and even debate) about the concepts mentioned here - and hopefully we can all learn from each other and grow.

• What do you think is the primary cause of global land degradation?
• How do you feel we can and should address this issue?
• Do chemicals have a place in permaculture?

In the end, we only have 1 planet - and our natural resources are dwindling. I personally believe we can (and are) turning things around, but I would love to see what others in this community think a feel on this topic.

There are no wrong perspectives or opinions - but please be respectful of others and understand that we might disagree, but that doesn't make us enemies.

​

page 92 of \"The Green Vision of Henry Ford and George Washington Carver\"

Solarpunk is a new name for old ideas - of combining the best of technology with the best of nature, in ways only humans can!

There is an entire branch of science that has been mostly erased from our textbooks: Chemurgy, which sought to combine agriculture and organic chemistry. (SOURCE)

Founders of the chemurgy movement included Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and George Washington Carver, who shared a dream of seeing farm products replace timber and imported oil as sources for fibers, plastic, fuels, and lubricants. 

• \EDIT* some have raised issue with the unethical behaviors of Edison and Ford, and we acknowledge they had many misguided ideas, but we choose here to focus on their collaboration with G.W. Carver in the development of the chemurgic movement. We still use lightbulbs and assembly lines, so why not utilize other innovations of these same men and learn from them?*

The chemurgists operated on the premise that “anything that can be made from a hydrocarbon can be made from a carbohydrate,” or that anything made from oil can be made from plants. (SOURCE)

A group of researchers, industrialists, and farmers (chemurgists) came together at an exact replica of Independence Hall in Dearborn, Michigan to sign the Declaration of Dependence Upon the Soil.

July 4th, 1935 - Declaration of Dependence Upon the Soil

In it, these visionaries declared that:

"man must recognize that his basic sustenance issues from the soil, and not from merchants’ shelves; that, whenever industrial centralization causes harmful human congestion, and becomes destructive of the right of self-maintenance, man must turn again to the soil from which all new wealth springs except that from fisheries and mines. Otherwise, the right of self-government cannot endure." (SOURCE)

George Washington Carver, a freed slave who taught farmers how to restore their depleted soils, also shone a spotlight on caring for the soil rather than degenerative and extractive farming. Carver went even further, and pointed out that the fate of the people is directly tied to the health of the soil:

George Washington Carver tied the health of society to the health of their soils

We also believe that healthy soil is the foundation for a bright Solarpunk future!

In 2021, I personally began assembling an international team of researchers, farmers, and entrepreneurs - all looking to these visionaries for our guiding ethos - and a desire to work with land stewards to employ field-tested stewardship practices that improve soil fertility and crop yield without the use of any artificial inputs:

• Zero fertilizers, zero pesticides, zero herbicides!

This regenerative carbon farming process improves all surrounding ecosystems over time, and we can achieve this at a profit (by selling Carbon Credits or Proofs of Impact) – while allowing the farmer/landowner to keep 100% of any crop harvest, restoring local economies and food security.

Our goal is to restore soil fertility and aquifer levels on a global scale by incubating local farm-based economies built around the principles of restorative hydrology, regenerative organic farming, agri-solar, and permaculture. By teaching communities to cultivate healthy soils and align with natural carbon & water cycles, we empower them to become self-sufficient and eventually become net exporters of abundant harvests of natural products while simultaneously restoring health to local ecosystems and economies.

Each project will also include or be attached to a Solar HUB that will contain a soil research lab powered by onsite solar and always-connected via Starlink satellite internet. We will train locals to run the lab (in collaboration with Dr. Elaine Ingham, PhD of the Soil Food Web School) and store the soil data on a blockchain or distributed acyclic graph.

each numbered stream has been measured and calculated by our team

Our currency will not be mined and extracted - it will be harvested via measuring and tracking the health of our living ecosystems! Maintaining ecosystem health will earn a harvest of currency, and improving health in quantifiable ways will earn a more abundant harvest - mimicking nature's own abundant rewards for conscious stewardship.

Caring for our planet then becomes the basis for our currency. This builds in constant incentive to protect ecosystems - right into our monetary system. This also means all produce can have a cost that is equivalent to the ecological cost to produce and deliver it. Further, we can decouple the cost of food from economic or political fluctuations - as the cost of food is tied to the health of the ecosystems rather than the fluctuation of global markets.

Each local farm-based economy then becomes a node in a global network of interdependent earth stewards, learning from and inspiring each other. We don’t want to own the network, we simply want to help inspire and cultivate it. Each node can produce Proof of Impact via Carbon Credits or verified improvements to local biodiversity, water table/cycle restoration, and overall ecosystem health. There are a myriad co-benefits from our methods which would be ideal to measure, quantify, and verify. We can combine these with web3 tools that allow us to transmit value via the internet - and re-align with our Dependence Upon the Soil!

A future vision by one of my mentors: Jacques Fresco (thevenusproject.com)

This is our vision, and we would love to discuss this with the community here and invite you to help shape our vision and to BE INSPIRED to know that conscious corporations are starting to take note of the Solarpunk movement!

Thank you for welcoming me into your community - the future looks bright for all of us, once we successfully navigate the present troubled waters. I thank you also for your time, and I look forward to comments, concerns, and discussions!

- Darryl J. Nicke II