Building on the work of Australian carbon farming pioneer P.A. Yeomans, and his son Allan's book "Priority One" - there is a race among farmers to capture carbon from the air and sequester it in richer soil.
In 2007, billionaire Richard Branson announced the Virgin Earth Challenge. He offered a 25 million dollar prize to the best method to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, with no harmful impacts.
Out of 2600 submissions, Allan Savory and the Savory Institute survived to the current short-list of 11 technolgies to do it.
We talk with Allan Savory, the 76 year old pioneer biologist and agriculturalist from Zimbabwe.
Then to Abe Collins, a Vermont farmer using those methods to capture carbon with agriculture. The extra soil also helps with flood control. Collins credits Yeomans as a thought-leader in the field.
The program wraps up with a new presentation from the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas conference in Washington D.C. in November 2011.
Aaron Newton is the Local Food System Program Coordinator for Cubarrus County, North Carolina. He'll tell us how to develop a local food-shed, even in hard times. And why the most important crop may be... new farmers.
It's a really helpful short presentation from Aaron. The ways the County used the tax structure to both keep farmers, and to fund community organizing around local food. Lots of good tips for localizing your own community. The Newton talk is dead-on for how to create a local food-shed ready for Peak Oil.
Listen to/download this one hour Radio Ecoshock program here:
http://www.ecoshock.net/eshock11/ES_111130_Show_LoFi.mp3
Read this new interview with host Alex Smith in Grist magazine:
http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2011-11-28-eco-shocking-the-airwaves