This bullsh*t might save the world | Thomas Rippel | TEDxZurich

Thomas Rippel has a vision to turn the world's soils into a lush paradise, reverse global warming and reduce world hunger by living in symbiosis with cows and composting their manure with biochar. For this vision, cows should only eat grass and clover from pastures like the alps and from crop rotation. And the number of cows on this planet should not be determined by our appetite for meat, but by the amount of grass and clover available to us in this wonderful symbiosis. And lastly, farmers should compost the manure of their cows with biochar, giving us all the organic fertilizer we need to grow grains and vegetables for humans without needing any chemical fertilizers.
Thomas is a globetrotter who has settled down in Switzerland to live his life as an organic farmer. Sustainable agriculture is central to his life’s philosophy and combines his passions for cutting edge science, healthy nutrition, animal welfare and combatting global climate change.
About TEDx, x = independently organized event In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)

[@DylanBegazo]

Video starts at 10:58 Biochar wood chip beds, cows poop on it, when it's full, they lay another layer of woodchips and biochar, cycle begins again until full then all is removed to be worked on by the microbes outside as compost before being put in ground as fertilizer. Carbon negative. "Please buy locally grown, grass fed, beef and cheese." Gotcha.

[@tynagr.9716]

this video gives me faith in youtube.

[@shoshanas6096]

He is just dead right. But the large fertilizer companies will not be amused...

[@mostismail9638]

sure it is a good video , I did compost and adding biochar and it started to heat right away with very good results , thank you I am waiting for your upcoming videos

[@bettycole1760]

I will have my kids check this out,,, so good and thank you so much!!

[@ThomasRippel]

Please do. Thank you

[@Mine-yu7mz]

omg this is adding to the innovation of Allan Savory, check him out too, the cow is actually can be our savior

[@josephluisi5114]

AMAZING!!!

[@shellderp]

"Human food like grains and corn and soybean".. Humans shouldn't even be eating this stuff either!

[@gabrieln3613]

Especially when it get processed into soybean oil and corn syrup.

[@francesca3347]

Can't believe you have so many good videos!

[@dale6869]

Keep it up!

[@midwestribeye7820]

Excellent talk! So true!

[@terrybear5398]

Thank You! I was vegan for 6 years, and thought it was the best for the planet. I found out it was the worst. I am now a (grass fed) meat eater. I lost most of my vegan friends because they thought I was killing the planet by killing the animals. I now can try to explain that I am benefiting the soil, the planet and humanity....doubt they will listen though.

[@juliamarple3202]

@Panthera there are plenty of livestock that at older than 2 years old. The ones that are slaughtered are mostly the animal s not suitable for breeding. You and most vegans forget that there is also the breeding side of farming livestock, giving life, and the animals that are retained for breeding can often be kept for 10 years or so. Okay, not many die of old age, but they do have longer lives, and it is our duty to make sure that they have the best life possible by grazing them and having as natural life as possible. Also to ban life exports. these are more important to the animals.

[@scotcoon1186]

@Panthera - justice & wellness & fairness advocate. cattlemen rent corn stalks to run their cattle on in winter. It reduces the amount of herbicide needed the next growing season, as they eat the ears that fell off the stalk, or bounced out of the combine header, etc. It also requires less land devoted to hay, less labor and fuel than baling and feeding hay. You will starve to death eating the leaf, husk, and corn stalks. A cow can go all winter without much else. And the resulting fertilizer stays right in the field. In dry climates (we are borderline desert in my area, with only 25 inches of precipitation a year) stover takes a few years to decompose, and can be blown off the field first, if not processed by livestock.

[@richsambale5791]

I love all of your work.

[@plejaren1]

GREAT JOB! Brilliant man

[@annie278]

love what you are doing

[@alopiasotv4260]

This is amazing!!!!!!!!!!

[@pragavirtual]

Thank you sr.

[@ronaldyawn]

Great video, opened up my eyes!

[@ThomasRippel]

Glad to hear it!

[@Filipsan]

Thomas Rippel Sir, i must thank you for the great work! I can only hope such techniques will be soon applied all over the world. Of course, the sooner, the better :)

[@scotcoon1186]

The lagoon he shows is on a hog farm. Feedlot manure is applied solid, and a lot is composted.

[@bethanybouley6679]

😍😍😍hope for the world.

[@noras2493]

This sounds like a really good idea- I think it'll also reduce eutrophication. I even saw the biochar on Look North a few months ago!

[@rdelrosso2001]

This is really amazing! I remember reading about how "Grass-Fed" beef is much healthier to eat than "Grain-Fed" beef. But where do you find the "Grass-Fed" beef? It seems the next step is to require that beef be labeled in the supermarket as either "Grass-Fed" or "Grain-Fed".

[@Wigzelleleven]

+rdelrosso2001 I get my grass-fed beef at the Farmers Market. I usually look for the guy wearing a cowboy hat standing next to a trailer.

[@peterb6245]

it is....in australia

[@juliamarple3202]

tastes better too :)

[@ks_hunter7327]

Local farmer’s markets is the best place to find pasture raised and finished, beef, pork, lamb, and chicken.

[@mceliniak]

Sounds great, exept if every farmer would start to use biochar there would be a biochar production problem.

[@nicolemat513]

I want more....nice video!

[@d.lindholm8047]

You Rock!

[@truthseek1790]

Inspirational x10^3!

[@mattMcLovinisbae]

great opening line

[@scotdeboyase4500]

Great job with the video. Keep it up.

[@kondacutsh9955]

I LOVE VIDEO. THIS IS AMAZING

[@zatar123]

A point he didn't touch on that's worth noting: chemical fertilizers can be turned into explosives far more easily than the organic stuff he's advocating for.

[@wendyscott8425]

Another good reason to avoid them then, seems to me. :)

[@thomaspus5808]

Wow. Just WOW!

[@davidj2778]

you make really good videos.

[@NeilBlanchard]

They should be using methane digesters over the winter - use the methane for heat, and the resulting slurry has fixed nitrogen. And no ammonia. They should also be using biochar, which holds all the nutrients intact. Edit: I am glad you got here at the end of the video.

[@ThomasRippel]

+Neil Blanchard experience has shown that anaerobically digested manure has such a high concentration of anaerobic bacteria, and the material at the end of the digestion process has been transformed such that it becomes quite hard to compost it successfully. it is not impossible, but biogas material should make up no more than 35% of the total volume of the material to be composted. overall the infrastructure investment needed for a biodigester does not pay for itself on small and medium scale farms, which is what i would like to promote. add to that the difficulty you will face composting, and bio digesters are not the right way to go in my opinion

[@NeilBlanchard]

At the end of the digestion process, the material IS COMPOST. No need to do anything else. That is the beauty of anaerobic digestion.

[@ThomasRippel]

+Neil Blanchard i am sorry to tell you that this notion is quite incorrect. anaerobic digestion, as the name suggests already is a process where anaerobic bacteria are active - it is a putrefying process. composting on the other hand is an aerobic process. only aerobic bacteria have a positive effect on soil microbial life.

[@maituub]

+Thomas Rippel +Neil Blanchard :Absolute correct Thomas, besides cow ( or pig) manure only, is not so (economically) productive in a biodigester. In Germany where there are many big ones build in recent years ( thanks only to subsidies ) they start with cowshit but they grow or buy chopped-up corn, maize plants as the real gas producing feedstock ( starches becomes sugars that then turns into CH4, CO2 etc) . But the output is problematic, the water fraction is high COD and need after-treatment and the solids as Thomas said is anaerobic & phytotoxic , so it need to be mixed up with structural material ( like straw ) and have to go through a conventional Aerobic composting process. Lots of investment and trouble for the little farmer and may not be so sustainable & ecological for the big Ag-industrial farmers.

[@NeilBlanchard]

What happens if biochar is added to the resulting slurry?

[@gerald3701]

Hey Man, you are a fu*kin' genius!!!!!!! Greetings from Italy.?

[@genocanabicea5779]

In earlier years we fed animals with hemp. The hemp provided CBD The CBD ended up in the meat and milk. When this happened we all started getting sick.

[@anniek.8096]

these vids are always awesome xD

[@taylormajor9610]

I buy local all the time, crazy manure pit!

[@ThomasRippel]

Keep it up! Talk to you farmer if you can. Spread the message if composting

[@scotcoon1186]

@@ThomasRippel you can't compost everything coming off the feedlot, though. And feed lot manure is applied solid, not as a slurry. Those are hog barns at the lagoon. And I'm not sure what you think we did with manure between the introduction of chemical fertilizers and your experiments.

[@michaelhasdot5896]

Very well....!

[@downbntout]

Btw, the compost at 70° wasn't in Fahrenheit.

[@tinaelmills]

That was a great talk! I’m wondering how your efforts have advanced and what is the current state of bio char manure farming? Also: I board dogs. I have 7-18 dogs on site at any given time and they poop- a lot! Can I compost their poo? How? Thank you.

[@georgkonig118]

Yes you can. You can compost nearly everything that is organic. You only have to make sure that the carbon nitrogen ratio is correct for composting like 20-30 to 1 and that there is always enough but not to much water and oxygen. The rest is magic :-)

[@MarcoPolo-yt3ew]

You are awesome keep up the good work I will pass it on to the nky farmer about biochar feed it to the hogs it will help more

[@acaciatarp6284]

How many videos this good do you make daily?

[@plejaren1]

Then our grass fed HAPPY cows can produce RAW milk to make us all healthy again

[@angelo8196]

i really like ur vids

[@genocanabicea5779]

This revolutionizes sewage waste. Our waste and animal waste can be used for fertlizer.

[@Charles-fs5sm]

I'll download this :P

[@rycenpartion7159]

Coolest Video in a long time!

[@enistines]

run it through a bio digester get the nat gas then add bio char at the manure which is changed in compost and more fertile

[@jesscozz3828]

love it ;)

[@jennifermccas8881]

Perf !!!!!!!!!

[@goprochef6352]

Brilliant

[@ThomasRippel]

Thank you.

[@metcalfe7056]

It was good. I love it.

[@kennethka4166]

I like it. nice nice!!!

[@carol5146]

can u make more vids plz?

[@clinda417]

Nice channel

[@edward3814]

dude i really want to start making videos because of this

[@jacksonmyra2244]

good video :D

[@ikluso9773]

The only question I have after watching this video is how can we get this video to have 8 billion views?

[@tonytony1035]

Outstanding. Cattle and livestock are part of the solution. This talk fits right in with the theories of Allan Savory, whose videos are highly recommended although somewhat difficult to understand. I was a vegetarian in my youth. No longer. However, I will eat meat only from animals treated humanely. Animal agriculture done right is actually less harmful to the environment than row cropping. A veggie burger can be extremely more damaging than a real burger.

[@lifevvevvo6868]

WOW WOW WOW WOW!!!

[@welbornboys1888]

Subscribing now to you mate

[@victoriastory9583]

love it

[@hazelblair6634]

i loved you presentation but would it not have been easier and quicker to have used worms to break down the cow poo and at the end you would have pure soil (worm castings) to put back on the land.

[@scotcoon1186]

The lagoon he shows is on a hog farm. Feed lot manure is applied solid, not as a slurry, and is not kept in lagoons. The ponds on a feedlot are only for catching runoff, and generally lined with clay. A lot of feedlot manure is composted, which involves turning it over regularly to allow it to dry and to get oxygen back into it.

[@teresablack6077]

cool

[@georgea.8994]

Nice Videos? man, never stop please :)

[@jasonswan6350]

This video is so popular!!!!!

[@wdjans3643]

4:13 Dangerously ill from China's food, This shouldn't be that common...

[@wellenwerk3357]

1:30 manure lagoon :-)

[@scotcoon1186]

Hog barns, too.

[@danmarinkovich5223]

I love the smell of coq dudi...

[@walkthroughonthego2476]

Any solution to buy locally nourished beef? I'm not sure if cattle farms would want to listen to what he has to say because they'll have to spend more on feeding their cattle only to slaughter them later on for profits. In a cattle farmer's point of view, his method is not economically viable for me. I think to solve this, one should turn to plant based meat or lab grown meat both are no-compromise alternatives to killing these animals who're helping us save ourselves from a natural catastrophe. Would you kill someone who is helping you?

[@scotcoon1186]

Are proposing we just keep livestock around as useful pets, and not derive any profit from them? We already have beef cattle that almost do what you say. It's the cows that eat the grass on ground that isn't suitable for growing any kind of crop. Some of their calves get held back for breeding stock, the rest go to a feedlot around 9-10 months old to be fattened for consumption.

[@downbntout]

This concept will work only where forest byproducts are abundant and equipment to transport the compost to the field keeps running. And eating meat and cheese, negative health impact from the lipid profile?

[@scotcoon1186]

What he left out is that those are hog barns at the lagoon, a lot of feed lot manure is composted, and feed lot manure is hauled out and applied solid, not as a slurry.

[@elveganocordobes6708]

Delutional and missleading, there is no space enough for grassfed animals for 7.000.000.000 people.

[@pepper419]

If you can grow enough wheat for loaves of bread for seven billion people, then the grass is available. We just need to take if from the crazy corn and soy and sugar growers. Too much junk food is grown where the cows should be grazing. We can't afford not to.

[@DDavis-oz3gw]

hey dude i love you no homo

[@brandonmusser3119]

Sound a lot like permaculture and MOB grazing

[@Fuar11]

I agree that we should eat less meat and the meat that is produced naturally. If you know what I mean.

[@pepper419]

If we only eat meat, it's one meal a day. If we only eat vegetables, it's six meals a day. Which is logical? Which makes sense? Which makes soil?

[@anab9624]

what are you doing on youtube? go contact hollywood!

[@mdkalam-xe9sq]

The dashing ikebana consequentially clean because rabbi reilly point midst a dizzy wing. apathetic, acidic frame

[@everett2542]

Can't believe you have so many good videos!