We are showing farmers this video at their first soil health workshop. The original animation was created by a group called Kiss the Ground. Because we thought the English would be difficult for non-Americans to follow, we cut out the actor and strung together the animation sections and erased their soundtrack. We then substituted our own narration, the script of which appears below the video file.
Animation script
The voice over was done in English. To explain to farmers in their own language, simply silence the soundtrack and make the following points in the local language:
- There’s too much carbon in our atmosphere and it’s a problem!
- Living things are made up of carbon.
- Carbon on earth cycles between atmosphere, ocean, living things and soil.
- There are also very large deposits of ancient carbon, from once living plants and animals that are deeply buried in the soil. These are called fossil fuels.
- The carbon cycle became imbalanced when people figured out how to extract fossil fuels to use as energy—for electricity, to run cars, motorcycles, and manufacturing plants.
- Using fossil fuel is releasing tons and tons of carbon into the atmosphere.
- Agriculture is also contributing to the problem. People cut down the trees to open up land for agriculture. Cultivation (here with a tractor) aerates the soil, which speeds up microbial processes and causes carbon to be released to the atmosphere rather than retained in the soil.
- Our atmosphere is trapping the carbon in rather than letting it escape to outer space.
- The excess carbon is absorbing heat, causing temperatures to rise, the ocean waters to be heated and our weather systems to become destabilized. In fact, these carbon imbalances are what is causing the climate changes that we are experiencing.
- The ocean has absorbed a lot of excess carbon but there is so much of it that it is causing the water to become acidic, which is killing life in the ocean that cannot adapt to the acidity.
- We must stop pumping fossil fuels and adding more carbon to the atmosphere.
- Plants are able to extract carbon from the atmosphere during photosynthesis–a process by which plants turn energy from the sun into the carbohydrates used as energy by all living things.
- Plants pump carbon into the soil during photosynthesis. This is a process that creates top soil. Carbon comes out of the plant’s roots and provides food for microorganisms who feed on it and release nutrients to plants in the process.
- Soil are able to store all of the excess carbon from the atmosphere and this makes soils healthier and healthier
- Recycling is essential. Adding a thin layer of organic matter, like compost, to the soil surface helps with the soil’s carbon enrichment and more carbon gets into the soil. Not tilling the soil also helps with carbon build up.
- Growing trees, cover crops and controlling animal grazing helps soil carbon build-up.
- Soils are able to store as much carbon as we can put into them.
- Soils rich in carbon are healthy, they provide more nutrients to our crops, and accept and hold onto more water, making them more drought resistant.
- They support a greater abundance of living things.
- Our soils provide many benefits when carbon levels are high.