Christine Jones -- Nitrogen: The double-edged sword

The use of inorganic nitrogen in agriculture is recognised as a highly inefficient - and polluting - practice. Globally, over $100 billion of nitrogen fertilisers are applied to crops and pastures every year. Between 10 and 40% of the applied nitrogen is taken up by plants. Much of the remaining 60% to 90% is returned to the atmosphere as ammonia or nitrous oxide - or leached to aquatic ecosystems as nitrate. Due to its high mobility, inorganic nitrogen has become a key stressor for terrestrial, freshwater and marine environments. This session will explore how a whole-farm approach to the restoration of soil biodiversity can replace the need for inorganic nitrogen fertilizers.
Christine Jones, PhD, Founder of Amazing Carbon (Australia) and soil ecologist
...speaking at the 2017 Soil & Nutrition Conference

[@pedintx]

Thank you for this amazing presentation. I have study these AG technics for several years and I am getting ready to put these practices to use on 875 acres in central Texas. I am so excited to experience the results of what I have studies and what you teach. I consider you one of the foremost experts in the world on regenerative AG. Thanks again for everything you do. Paul E Dulin

[@jackson8085]

Good luck Paul! Hope you're doing well

[@denniskemnitz1381]

Thanks so much for this info. The science is surely more "complex" than the 100 level plant and soils class covers.

[@jcjensenllc]

Dr Jones, you are a treasure, a wealth of knowledge, a pearl of wisdom, a vast resource. THANK YOU. Be well, be happy.

[@TS-vr9of]

Great lecture, so much good information. Thanks for posting this for free and making it available to people who couldn't make it the conference, your Changing the world with this information one view at a time.

[@centpushups]

This is next best person in agriculture rejuvenation after Gabe brown.

[@leelindsay5618]

I would add Ray Archuleta to that list somewhere - she has wonderful info, but I like how Ray is changing farmers and ranchers minds from "conventional" practices

[@courtneyheron1561]

Incredible information!!! Thank you Christine Jones for sharing this information. 🙏❤️😊

[@NS-pf2zc]

I just cannot figure out why this type of information is not just exploding in the scientific community, other than it would cut profits for chemical agricultural companies. Hopefully this can be overcome by this information spreading through farmers bucking the system and creating change through grassroots (no pun intended) movements.

[@nicolasbertin8552]

Scientists are not working alongside farmers in France for example, they tend to do their own thing and not consider the immediate needs of farmers. In the same way, farmers haven't taken over on experiments in their own fields, while they do this all the time in Brazil or Argentina where soil erosion is much much worse due to their tropical or subtropical climate, so they have no choice. But don't get this wrong : farmers KNOW about no till agriculture, seeding directly in cover crops and stuff like that, with a lot less fertilizer. But they're just too scared to make the jump. They've heard that farming cereals in cover crops takes too long if you come from tilled fields, that it takes 10 years before making a profit. It actually only takes 2... And then you hardly need pesticides, your running costs plummet so you're a lot less stressed out. And for vegetables, they know what's called "living soil farming" exists, with permanent mulches like wood chips or straw. It's more successful in fact because you don't need as much surface to grow vegetables, so you can do little trials, and see that it works very easily. In France, about 80-90 % of the new vegetable farmers starting in the business do no till. Mentioning Brazil and Argentina again, 75 and 90 % of farmers respectively are cultivating using a form of no till. So the conclusion is this : everyone knows about this in the business : whether it's farmers, scientists, industrialists... The ones who don't know are politicians, and the voters. This is where the key issue is. Inform politicians and voters that no till soil are protections against erosion and floods, that they bring back biodiversity, and that they trap excess CO2, and you've got a winner... Unfortunately it takes time... The common people still believe they should till their soils, and politicians don't really care about all this.

[@b_uppy]

Because of something one writer called "funder bias", think it was Elaine Ingham. . If scientists provide, or support, data that is contrary to the desired outcomes by people who typically pay for grants (usually big corporations), they are less likely to receive future funding. Corporations "shop" who they want to produce studies. That puts a kibosh on unbiased data...

[@teun7477]

Natasha S. the same reason it took a while before they accept the earth is not flat

[@ali88881]

@@b_uppy same applies to medical science too, sadly for us.

[@b_uppy]

@@ali88881 Think in part that they're so married to established theories. Proof to the contrary is automatically ignored. Think the 'stomach bacteria as a cause of ulcers' is a great example. Reaction to Helicobactor pylori took a while to get acceptance.

[@OddWoz]

@14:42 she just nails that point about the soil testing that’s been done and only using dead soils so therefore the only thing positive that they could respond to is the N fertilizer that is added because the soil has no life to provide it on its own.

[@DocSiders]

I know an expert ocesnographer who works in the great barrier reef. She says the reef is in no risk of disappearing. Warm currents from the last ElNino causesd bleaching...it always does. The corals just re-colonize new bacterial parasites when temperatures return to normal. Recovering as she expected.

[@nilminijayalath8177]

A great talk.

[@VeganChiefWarrior]

bless you people for making what i complain to my government about a big deal

[@jcjensenllc]

At about 35:00, answer is nitrogen in chicken manuer is 75-80% organic.

[@jjime1175]

This holds true for people that eat processed foods and junk food, you will grow but not be healthy and be more susceptible to disease and illness just like an unhealthy plant will attract pests and disease.

[@davidmorriss-benoit523]

I'm not sure if this question can be answered in this format, but I figured it is worth asking anyway. Christine keeps talking about the difference between organic and inorganic nitrogen, which as she defines it, is differentiated by the addition of a carbon molecule. However, many organic farming fertilizers contain inorganic forms of nitrogen. I am thinking particularly of fish manure. I have spent some time studying aquaponics, which seems to grow food primarily on the conversion of fish waste from ammonia to nitrate. In a system in which the nutrients are contained in the water (i.e. solution), nitrate doesn't leech, but rather is cycled through the system continuously. Also the roots are almost always clean, apart from the vermicompost which moves about the system. All that to say, in aquaponics, is it possible for organic forms of nitrogen to exist, or is it an entirely different system than soil based plant production? Another way to ask the question, in aquaponics, are inorganic forms of nitrogen more natural and sustainable, therefore forming symbiosis with different plant partners in their microbiome?

[@mikeknetzger8703]

I’m not very familiar with aquaponics. The point Christine is making however is that organic nitrogen when coupled with soil health principles (encouraging living soil) is a more stable reserve of nitrogen in the soil that allows plants to receive nitrogen when they need it. Inorganic nitrogen, nitrate and ammonium is the only form of nitrogen that is available to plants so eventually the organic nitrogen in the soil will be converted to inorganic nitrogen by bacteria and will be taken up by the plant. Her argument is that application of inorganic nitrogen makes the plants weak kills bacteria and often volatility’s or leaches as it does not stay long in the soil. That’s my understanding. Does that answer your question?

[@KompostLiebe]

@@mikeknetzger8703Nitrate, Ammonium and? You missed Urea. And what else? They eat complete bacteria, complex stuctures, like Aminoacids. Endozytose

[@hosoiarchives4858]

Wow this is great

[@jordanlouis7063]

Is a little inorganic n ok to start growing quickly on virgin soil without harming worms.... Too much? Calcium nitrate seems about 10x cheaper than blood meal.

[@johnrochester3551]

I've been a gardener and certified arborist for many years Now I find i know nothing. Starting over john rochester charlotte n c. U S A

[@simonmasters3295]

Yes. It's important to acknowledge how little we know.

[@jasperbruns6598]

Crops only take up only 10% of the N in anorganic fertilizers? I mean it can be easily caluculated what ammont of N is in the harvested product and that is what farmers put on their fields.

[@nicolasbertin8552]

In tilled soils, plants need more nitrogen in the form of fertilizers, because there is no humus, no other plants that share nitrogen, no (or rather a lot less) micorrhizae. If you do direct sowing in cover crops, like the Brazilians and Argentinians do on a massive scale, you need twice as less nitrogen. Tilling mineralizes the organic N in your soils and destroys your organic matter, so that you simply have less organic N reserves. And of course that mineralized N gets washed up by rains, and you pollute your rivers.

[@nicolasbertin8552]

@UCiEwSAIiFMLCqI8Me9vERQQ That's totally false, no till is there to PROMOTE soil life ! Microbes benefit both from living plants (root exudates, micorrhyzae...), and decaying organic matter. So when your crop is done, your decaying mulch will keep feeding your soil life and keep it happy. That's how (real) no till works. Of course if your soil is naked, no mulch, it's a lose-lose situation, but no one does that.

[@hosoiarchives4858]

@@nicolasbertin8552 thank you for your knowledge, what books can I read?

[@chrisshepherd8708]

Hey, how about those Dutch farmers iand the BBB.

[@TitusAugust-l6n]

Hernandez Donald Gonzalez Linda Miller Dorothy

[@microsoilenhancersinspirey5750]

323.75 pounds of N per acre is 800 pounds per hectare...that’s A LOT!!!

[@jamesbutterson5218]

👍💚💨✌

[@jasperbruns6598]

What this video is suggesting is to not use inorganic nitrogen or any chemicals, to just use manures and compost and instead and to dont disturb the soil life. Isn't that just what farmers did until maybe 150-100 years ago? Still, with the invention of inorganic fertilizers and "pesticides", yields obviously increased drastically. It really sounds right what she is telling but this is disturbing me so maybe someone has a logical explaination?

[@michelangelou7]

That's it. High yields but lower quality and more environmental costs.

[@nicolasbertin8552]

No farmers didn't do that. Yields were very poor centuries ago, that's how you got famines. Back then you didn't have to fertilize, because you still had humus in your soils, organic matter. And humus stores a lot of organic nitrogen, but it leaks mineral nitrogen slowly over time, just enough to grow plants in a healthy way. If you till that soil, you accelerate that process and start to lose your nitrogen reserve. It's not fast, it takes decades. In the meantime things grow though. So over time we had poorer soils and then we discovered machinery and fertilizers and pesticides. That's how world hunger was pretty much solved. Now it's back because we've destroyed our soils, robbed them of organic matter. That's why we need to add more : mulch, compost mainly. People didn't understand that if you feed carbon to your soil, it gives you nitrogen back. Bacteria eat carbon and fix nitrogen from the air. Worms eat degraded matter and bacteria and poop back nitrogen in the form of worm castings, and pee nitrogen on plant roots. The soil and plants are a machine to produce and recycle carbon/nitrogen, taking most of it from the atmosphere. Plants take CO2 and make sugars, wood, soil life eats wood, takes N2 from the air and give N back. Mushrooms take P and K from the bedrock, eat sugars (carbon) from the plants and give P/K back. It's a virtuous cycle. A very complicated one though...

[@PeterBruce]

Our focus should be more on biological deficiencies in soils rather than chemical deficiencies. Dr Jones talks of the liquid carbon pathway, created by photosynthesis. This is the key to fertility. Have a look at John Kempf's videos on regenerative agriculture too.

[@hosoiarchives4858]

@@nicolasbertin8552 great information

[@hosoiarchives4858]

@@nicolasbertin8552 where can I learn more about adding carbon and getting nitrogen back?

[@tinfoilhatscholar]

Qurom sensing in Taos nm

[@jcjensenllc]

Start suing the farmers and ranchers for the damage they are doing. Sue the chemical companies and put them out of business, start with Monsanto, and Bayer.

[@marlan5470]

When they are receiving government money and the gov says for them to use those chemicals, in some cases forced by law to use the chemicals, I think you are not really understanding the full problem here.