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Incentivizing healthy soils through sensible policy
Healthy soil is a win-win for everyone, but converting from conventional to regenerative agriculture is a process that needs to be incentivized. Land Core is an organization that’s doing just that. Their mission is to advance soil health policies and programs that create value for farmers, businesses and communities. We talk to founders Aria McLauchlan and Harley Cross.
Show Notes
0’28 how did Land Core get started
3’04 how have soils gotten so unhealthy and what are the costs
6’30 60 years of topsoil left
8’19 what are the incentives to build healthier soils now, how could they be better
12’19 what is the NRCS
14’30 healthy soil mitigates against soil and drought both
15’46 crop insurance … food lost and farms destroyed
17’00 roots of industrial agriculture
19’20 healthy soil and carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation
22’49 how does regenerative agriculture challenge unhealthy and inhumane animal agriculture
26’34 animal-crop integration
29’05 breaking away from the idea of giving specific practices to farmers
29’20 incentivizing farmers’ creativity and ingenuity
30’18 taking soil improvement to a large scale
32’39 soil health and risk mitigation
33’00 how much of our land is regenerative, organic, conventional
33’59 what are farmers asking for
34’53 incentives preferable to regulation
36’09 are politicians understanding all this
37’13 is anyone pushing back
38’21 bi-partisan potential of soil health issues
38’58 soil health leasing programs
40’32 risk assessment and soil health
44’10 relationship between healthy soil and rural communities
46’15 investing in communities
47’25 how can people get involved
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Episode 130 – Sustainable development, climate mitigation, and biochar
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Episode 129 – Bringing dead land back to life: a filmmaker’s perspective
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Episode 128 – Sustaining Southwest Agriculture
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Episode 127 – A vibrant pecan oasis in the desert
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Episode 126 – The food-housing nexus
Professor Phil Warsaw noticed that in urban Black and Latino neighborhoods the price of housing near grocery stores was higher––but the same wasn’t true in more affluent White neighborhoods. Why? And how can planners balance food access and gentrification?
Episode 125 – Leveling the growing field: promoting a fair farm system
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Episode 124 – Big Team Farms––a new economic model?
Both big ag and small family farms have their problems…but what’s the alternative? We talk with agricultural journalist Sarah Mock about the some possible models.
Episode 123 – The USDA goes after a small sheep farm
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