Spencer explained that, while half the food the human population consumes requires synthetic fertilizers to be produced, the excess use of chemicals causes pollution. However, using rock dust, biochar, and seaweed can help reduce the need for these fertilizers. She highlighted the importance of healthy soil or microbial communities and explained how the combined application of rock dust, biochar, and seaweed can create a habitat for these communities. The biochar (which is high grade charcoal) is so porous that it retains everything in its vicinity, including the rock dust, thereby preventing it from washing away. She also explained how seaweed can serve as a prebiotic to facilitate the growth of healthy soil microbial communities and improve plant growth.

       Brian von Herzen, an expert on seaweed, added that seaweed can also provide essential soluble fiber and other plant growth regulators that can help upregulate gene expression in plants. Moreover, the rock dust supplies cations, which provide habitat for soil microbial communities and mycorrhizal funghi that excrete enzymes, which help unlock phosphate and other minerals, making them bioavailable to the roots of the plants. Thus the experts agreed that a whole-systems approach is necessary to combine various methods and materials into a unified strategy to mitigate climate change and enhance soil fertility.

       The group discussed the benefits of using seaweed as a natural fertilizer for plants, which can increase yields and reduce the need for expensive chemical fertilizers. Seaweed contains plant growth regulators that can improve the uptake efficiency of nutrients by plants and reduce nitrous oxide emissions in the soil. As a liquid biostimulant, it can have a catalytic effect when applied even in such small amounts as one liter per hectare per week.

       Seaweed can be grown offshore, and up to 25% of it falls off and sinks to the seafloor, sequestering carbon in the process. However, there are lifecycle costs associated with transporting the seaweed to agricultural operations, and it is best to minimize truck transport and use ships and rail instead for all these soil amendments.

       The group also discussed the use of rock dust as a natural fertilizer, which provides trace elements but can be costly to transport. Pyrolyzing seaweed to make biochar is not effective as it burns off the nitrogen and loses half the carbon. Instead, using seaweed extracts as biostimulants is a better option as it provides enzymes that can help plants grow more and increase yields.

       In a discussion about the potential of seaweed, biochar, and rock dust for addressing climate change, the experts highlighted the benefits of using these materials for soil fertility and improving crop yields.

       Thomas Vanacore emphasized that seaweed has a function that can stabilize soil, even in areas with high environmental stress such as stream banks, ocean lines, and land used for broadacre farming. He also highlighted the potential of these materials for permaculture management, in which trees, shrubs, perennials, and annuals are combined to create a sustainable and diverse growing environment.   

       David Demarey added that using these materials is economically worthwhile for farmers, as they can get a significant increase in their earnings, especially if the government provides subsidies and incentives to adopt these practices.

       Brian von Herzen stressed the importance of the long carbon cycle and the role of healthy soil microbial communities in sequestering carbon in the soil, which can last for decades or even centuries. He explained that recalcitrant carbon, which is formed by soil microbial communities, is a key part of the long carbon cycle, and using seaweed, biochar, and rock dust can help build soil carbon capital, making land more fertile and valuable over time.

       The experts agreed that there is a lack of understanding of the long carbon cycle and the potential of these materials for addressing climate change, but with government support and investment, it is possible to overcome this and adopt sustainable and regenerative practices.

       The group discusses the challenges of finding mine tailings and rock dust, but notes that these resources are widely available if properly located and analyzed. Seaweed is also abundant and has many nutritional benefits, including stress resilience for plants and animals.

       The group also discusses the potential for these methods to improve the health of livestock, as well as the economic benefits for farmers. In some cases, a single application of a soil amendment will yield benefits for the next twenty years. These methods could be adapted for use in developing countries, where seaweed is abundant and transport models could be developed to improve logistics.      

       Finally, the group explores the potential of using excess seaweed from Hudson Bay to manufacture biostimulants, which could provide a livelihood for indigenous people in the area. Overall, they conclude that the science behind these methods is sound and that they have the potential to transform agriculture and improve human and animal health.       

TRANSCRIPT

The following transcript has been machine generated using “otter.ai.” Prior to using information from the transcript, please watch the video to catch any obvious errors.

Metta Spencer  00:00

Hi, I’m Metta Spencer. Today let’s talk about rock dust, shall we? I want to talk about enhanced rock weathering, and biochar and seaweed, all of which make a wonderful combination of a soil amendment that I think we can help save the world with. And if that seems surprising, it surprised me a while back until now, I’m beginning to sort of believe in this. So we we have a scattered group of people here in Northampton or someplace, Massachusetts, is David Demary, who is a farmer and soil chemist. In Vermont is Thomas Vanacore, who owns a rock quarry and is a real expert on rock dust and what that will do to make soil more fertile. In Australia, where are you in Australia these days? Brian,

Brian von Herzen  01:08

I’m in the hinterlands of the sunshine coast of Queensland, Australia.

Metta Spencer  01:12

Okay. He’s also underwater, so it’s remarkable how well he does down there with with all those fish. And he is an expert on on seaweed and marine permaculture. He’s the founder and executive director of something called the Climate Foundation in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And we will have various Pugwash members joining us coming in and out.  I only see two now and I may not introduce the others as they arrive late. But Evner Taran is here in Toronto. And Peter Meineke is someplace near Ottawa, if I’m not mistaken. Is that right, Peter? That’s right. Yes. Peter is my former dean when I first went to teach at the University of Toronto’s Mississauga campus. He was the dean of sciences a long time ago. Anyway, it’s nice to see all of you. And this is a topic that is especially I’m hoping that it will reach a number of Pugwash members again. The Pugwash movement will be having its annual general meeting in a few days and I’m going to be pitching a proposal that I hope they will take on as a collective endeavor, which involves several different measures that are intended to mitigate or reduce the effects of climate change. And one of them is enhanced rock weathering, and the use of rock dust too as a soil amendment. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. And, and these experts are all people who know something about the subject, and different aspects of it. So they will have a conversation about the whole general idea. But let me tell you what it is what I think I have learned in the last six months or so about this topic, and that is that I’m a great believer in in the notion that we must do more than stop co2 emissions, or even methane emissions. We must in fact, remove carbon from the atmosphere that’s already been put up there, because we’re double the amount that we really should be. So in order to go back to the climate climate that we had, which was livable, we must actually somehow suck carbon out of the atmosphere that has already been put there over the last several 100 years. And there are various ways of doing that to restore the climate as it used to be. And nature has its own way of doing that. And that is that we have rocks that simply absorb carbon. So when it rains, carbon is captured in raindrops falls on on rocks, and these rocks will capture some of the co2 and eventually it gets washed off into the ocean. It makes fizz water if you will, you know like bubbly water and and then it’s it’s taken up by clamshells and and lobsters and corals and things and falls to the bottom of the ocean. So, it’d be nice if we could speed that up. And indeed we can. Because the the amount of carbon that is taken up by the rocks depends on the surface of the rocks. And if you pulverize rocks and make them into tiny pieces or even powder, there’s more surface area, and therefore they can absorb more of the co2 and, and handle it for us and really put it away permanently, because for all practical purposes, once the the carbon is absorbed and taken up by the rock, it’s, it’s there for maybe a million years. It doesn’t get out again. As a chemist, I think I got a C in high school. So my ability to explain this is probably a bit lacking, but somebody can make up for it. Now, my other concern is that this this measure, which is I’m going to promote the idea of smashing rocks into powder, and as dispersing that powder on the soil or in the soil that has value in itself, because we have to get away from using so much fertilizer. Fertilizer has been the blessing and the curse of it’s a very double edged sword, because it has about half of the food in the world today is produced by using fertilizer. And if we didn’t have the fertilizer, we wouldn’t have the food. So this is a very important essential ingredient to farming. But at the same time, the excess amount of nitrogen and phosphorus and potassium that gets left in the soil and gets washed off into the ocean and so on, that causes pollution which causes eutrophication of the lakes and streams and so on. It is a very serious global problem, yet, we’re going to have to produce more food because we know our population is increasing. So we have to produce more food in the future, but doing with less fertilizer. So what are we going to do to make up the difference? Well, rock dust, that that’s part of it, but then rock dust, you don’t want that to go washing away into the ocean immediately either. So how are we going to hold it in place? Well, there’s this stuff called biochar, which is basically just charcoal. But you could put charcoal in the soil along with the the rock dust, and that will retain everything that’s nearby, it sucks it up like a sponge, and holds it in a very long period of time so that you don’t have stuff washing away. And that’s the reason you want to put your biochar in with the rock dust. And in addition, there are other ways of capturing co2 in the ocean in large scale by seaweed, so is extraordinary in the amount of co2 that it can capture. So if we can take out some of that seaweed after it’s been captured, and use it for the purposes, as well as expecting some of it to fall to the bottom of the ocean, and sequester carbon that way, but the amount that we take out could be made into a biostimulant, that is actually helpful to producing more and more and better food. So the combination of these three ingredients, rock dust, biochar and seaweed, I think has a great deal of promise. And I didn’t invent it all myself, I have to say other people have mentioned some version of what I’m proposing. And my experts here can all explain how I have just completely garbled the whole story, and how I got it all wrong. But please straighten me.

Thomas Vanacore  09:11

Well, you’ve done a great, great job. I think you’ve captured it in a nutshell, and I guess the question is, is how do these materials actually work together in the field? In other words, how do you combine various rock dusts and biochar and seaweed together in a whole system’s approach so that you’re not wasting effort, whether it’s going over the field more than once or building in efficiencies into the program, so to speak, in order to mitigate climate change? I’ve done some writing on it and quite a quite a bit of work in the field. In order to mitigate catastrophic climate change within a reasonable period of time, which is what we really need to do, we have to combine various methods, materials and methods into sort of a unified strategy. And so that’s really the thrust of my approach — not just working with a rock dust material, or biochar, or seaweed together, but try to put these things together into a unified strategy. And also look at the way large-scale land use and land management is currently being practiced to see if there are improvements that can be made. As you mentioned, use of synthetic fertilizers. Monoculture in general tends to take up a lot of fertilizers the way it’s being practiced right now. So there’s a number of things that we could do, and a whole-systems approach that would integrate these materials and methods into a unified strategy. But I do think that your description was quite good, actually.  I think you’ve presented it quite well.

Metta Spencer  11:19

Thank you. Brian von Herzen.

Brian von Herzen  11:21

Yes, I agree with what Tom saying and embracing that and adding to it,  we do need to get these systems to work together in an integrated way. And I’d say one key part of all this is having rock dust available, which provides the mineral phosphate, and other micronutrients that are important for plants to grow. Healthy soil microbial communities are provided by appropriate compost, and that compost is going to be very important. In fact, the biochar that you mentioned is a high quality charcoal that tends to have a large surface area per gram, sometimes hundreds of square meters per gram. So it’s a really impressive surface area, and also high cation exchange capacity. And it turns out, a lot of those cations are supplied by the rock dust. And that’s really substantial. They also provide habitat for those healthy soil microbial communities. And so if you end up developing a compost with biochar and rock dust, it ends up really developing that integrated blend, and those healthy soil microbial communities have within them, mycorrhizal funghi and other funghi that will excrete enzymes and help to unlock the phosphate and other minerals from their mineral form and to bioavailable form. And those mycorrhiza form a network that actually convey a lot of that bioavailable phosphate to the roots of the plants. The roots of those plants actually convey sugars and what which are developed into higher molecular weight organic molecules that form humus, and that effectively regenerates a healthy soil microbial community. And then finally, seaweeds can serve as a prebiotic that provides essential soluble fiber and other plant growth regulators that facilitate the growth of those healthy soil microbial communities in the soil and facilitate and help to upregulate the gene expression of the plants that they’re growing in those soils. So it is a very integrated picture. But that’s our improved biological understanding of the soil, and how the chemistry and biochemistry of the rock dust combined with the habitat-forming properties and the structure of the biochar and the soil microbial communities to facilitate improved plant growth with a reduction or even elimination of traditional NPK fertilizers.

Metta Spencer  14:05

You’re the seaweed man, Brian. I can even see some seaweed right behind your ear, which is a good thing to show us. I think it may be kelp or something. But please, I didn’t even attempt much to explain what the value of a seaweed admixture would be. I presume that we’re not talking about putting large quantities of seaweed into the soil or into the mixture, but some which would add certain kinds of nutrients. Can you tell us what the value, if any, is of adding some seaweed, either as pulverized and mashed up or as chemical bio stimulant.  I suppose you make it into a liquid that can be poured or something. Explain the seaweed part.

Brian von Herzen  15:00

There’s that sort of thing all across Canada, I would say and the more subtropical regions. Seaweed can be grown offshore, whether it’s off British Columbia, Hudson Bay or the east coast of Canada, and effectively provide well-established agricultural amendments that have a proven ability to increase the yield per hectare, in the range of 15 to 30%, for most flowering plants. Especially in this day and age of fertilizer costs, it’s possible to actually reduce the amount of nitrate fertilizer that’s required on agricultural crops while maintaining yields. And the significance there is that the liquid plant growth biostimulants actually have in them a variety of plant growth regulators, including cytokines and oxygens, all within an organic whole-food product. And when applied as a small amounts as one liter per hectare, they have almost a catalytic effect on the up-regulation of gene expression of the plants. And you’re able to do a one liter per hectare per week, across

Metta Spencer  16:20

That’s phenomenally small!

Brian von Herzen  16:22

Yes. That’s because this organic product has these plant growth regulators, including oxygens, cytokines and gibberellins. And these effectively get sprayed onto the leaves of the plant in the morning; they go into the stomata, and they upregulate the gene expression of those plants and improve the uptake efficiency of the macronutrient nitrate and the micronutrients including the micronutrients from the rock dust into the plant. And so the plant actually produces the same yield with 20% less fertilizer, 20% less runoff and 20% less nitrous oxide production in the soils. That’s a huge emission reduction. We’re estimating 30,000 tonnes of either emission reductions per square kilometer of kelp that you grow and sustainable yield that results in the agriculture associated with it providing a profound amount of carbon emission reduction. And that comes from 20% less nitrate fertilizer produced, 20% less nitrous oxide emitted, and effectively around 1000 tons per square kilometer per year of seaweed that falls off the platform during growth and sinks 1000 meters a day to the seafloor, where it can remain for centuries in deeper waters.

Metta Spencer  17:46

Okay, well that’s itself is very, very interesting, the notion that what you’re doing is taking the carbon out of the atmosphere by the the kelp or the other seaweed. Some of it is automatically going to fall and you’re pretty sure it’s going to go to the bottom where it’s going to stay. Say, if you have a kelp farm, what fraction of the kelp is going to fall off  and be sequestered as carbon as opposed to the amount that you want to use into making into a valuable commodity?

Brian von Herzen  18:32

Well, up to a quarter of the seaweed on an offshore seaweed mariculture will fall off the platform during growth. And we have some of the deepest platforms. So far, we energy-meter depth in the Pacific and we’ve already established the sink rates of these at over 1000 meters per day. So that results in a matter of hours getting beyond 300 meters and in less than a day getting beyond 1000 meters, where it remains for centuries in most parts of the deeper ocean.

Metta Spencer  19:08

Well, thank you. Okay, let’s go back to the first item on our agenda, that is the rock dust.  David,  you have had experience as a farmer using rock dust. I remember coming across something that you wrote extolling the beauties of something called Black shale. As a matter of fact that may be in the background of what Tom’s green screen shows.

David Demarey  19:37

I think you’re correct about that rock behind Tom being the one that I trialed. It does have an amazing impact on on the growth of a greenhouse crop. What I did is incorporate it at a relatively low percentage into the potting soil and it had quite a good response from it. It provides a lot of trace elements. That’s the key to how it works. Now remember, those experiments weren’t designed to trap carbon, they were looking at that rock for the quality that has on growth enhancement. But in fact is that rock does have carbon capture capabilities. Quite significant, actually — at least a couple hundred pounds of co2 per tonne of the rock. And I think what Tom had said or Brian earlier, you do need a comprehensive approach to the problem of co2 capture. It’s not as simple as just saying, oh, grind up rock, throw it out there, and it will do it do its thing. Yet, in my role in this whole thing has been to basically do the lifecycle analysis of the rocks. And that is an eye opener, because you’ve got to be honest with yourself and look at all the ancillary costs and in terms of co2, generating that rock can cause it. In other words, you gotta mind your crushing costs, you’ve got a drying process, you’ve got  bagging costs, you’ve got a shipping cost. And all those things use energy, generally in the form of fuel, which gives up co2 in the atmosphere. So you might have started out with 400 pounds per tonne of carbon capture, but you may end up with 200 pounds per tonne of carbon capture.

Metta Spencer  21:30

Yeah, I actually was watching a video a couple of days ago, where there is a report on a study done in Brazil, about the net effectiveness for co2 sequestration. And they say that if you have to transport the rock more than 500 kilometers, it’s not worth it.

David Demarey  21:55

Well, let me interrupt you on that one. I actuallysaw that study and there’s a mathematical error in the study. Oh, believe it or not!  I don’t know how he did it. It is a very good study. It’s very accurate, for the most part. I went through the whole thing. And I picked up a difference by a factor of 10 between his reported values that were in the study, and then what he actually concluded at the end, and he got bogged down in the somewhere in there, he made up literally an error factor of 10.

Metta Spencer  22:34

To the good or to the bad? Are we happy about his mistake? Or should we be?

David Demarey  22:39

Yes, we’re happy, we’re happy. He completely overestimated the cost of co2 cost of transport. Just a mathematical error. And he actually referenced it correctly, later in the report. So it was just one of those things that got out there and it became like gospel. And I it’s hard for me to believe that actually happened.

Metta Spencer  23:03

Okay, so it is not true that if it’s more than 500 kilometers, don’t bother.

David Demarey  23:12

You can you can transport the ship 3200 miles and still have 75% of the co2 captured, still available. So just to put that in perspective, yes, it does matter. And, and hauling it by truck matters a lot, because then you’re you’re talking 400 miles, 500 miles. You’re going to chew up a good portion of  the co2. And also keep in mind that that co2 is not the only thing you’re considering here. It’s it’s the cost to the farmer or the gain to the farmers. Just like Brian was saying, you can get 25% yield. But if you chew that up shipping the rock to the farmer, well, you’re not doing the guy any favors. So

Metta Spencer  23:56

Brian has his hand up. He’s obviously keen to correct somebody. What’s up, man?

Brian von Herzen  24:02

Well, I think the lifecycle cost is really important. I just wanted to add that we see approximately 20% lifecycle costs in terms of the carbon cost for cultivating the seaweed for bringing it in, converting it to a biostimulant for example, and getting it to agricultural operations. Now, transporting a leader isn’t very expensive, but I think David’s right, you want to be shipping by sea by ship, and then as necessary by rail, and minimize the amount of truck transport that’s needed for the soil amendments.

Metta Spencer  24:35

Okay, that’s good to know. Now, actually, I don’t I don’t want to get into making a criticism of anybody’s approach. But my my original thought was, why don’t we take the seaweed and make it into biochar and use that form of biochar? But I believe that that there’s a problem that the nitrogen gets burned off while you’re pyrolizing the material.

David Demarey  25:13

Yeah, you’re exactly right. Metta, there’s a double problem. You’ve pyrolized the nitrogen out of the mix. And then you lose half your carbon to the burning to paralyzing it. So yeah, there’s no point and taking something as high quality as seaweed and then pyrolizing it.  I’d rather get my my seaweed from Brian. Direct. Yeah.

Metta Spencer  25:44

Here’s the alternative. And that is this thing called biostimulants, which Brian has already mentioned, which is a more effective, more transportable form of the seaweed,

David Demarey  26:05

It’s a great application for it; it’s really an extract Brian’s talking about and I’ve used seaweed extracts, I know what they’re like. And what they effectively do is they inhibit the inhibitory processes that happen in plants, so that are under stress, cut down the yield. And when you spray something like the seaweed extract on them, you provide the enzymes that kind of override the inhibitory signals to the plant. So the plant says, Oh, it’s a beautiful day, I’m going to grow more as versus saying I’m hurting, I’m not going to grow as much.

Metta Spencer  26:56

However, originally, my thought was, let’s just make all the seaweed and use it, but then it goes back into the atmosphere very soon. So the only reason you would want to use it would be if it also does a lot of good for the soil and fertility, for the food production. But, uh, but if you combine it with something like biochar, it will keep it from going back into the atmosphere. I have the same concern about forestry. Because, yes, you can raise a lot of trees, but they’re all going to fall over and die in short, you know, few years. So you’re, you’re not getting anywhere, if that’s all you’re doing, unless you make it into something like biochar, which is permanent.

Thomas Vanacore  27:54

I like to expand on the physical qualities of using seaweed. If you take the seaweed and and apply it to a soil, and this has been done for many years. This isn’t exactly a new thing. But you can improve the quality of the soil itself. And especially where you have a lot of environmental stresses, whether it’s, for example, where we have a lot of wildfires going on, and steep slopes are denuded of vegetation. And then in a short period of time, this is followed by heavy rainfall, which causes landslides and things like that, the seaweed itself has a function that could actually stabilize soils, whether they’re stream banks or ocean, eroding ocean lines or other types of soils,  even broadacre farming where there’s a lot of environmental stress. So there’s potential beyond biostimulants, beyond extracts, just through the raw material, and again, it’s going to come down to proximity of the material to the fields and that’s what Brian was talking about for transport and logistics. Or combining the material into formulated goods so that the farmers can use that or the growers or whoever it is that’s involved in land management so that they can put out materials together in one pass that would actually do more than one year’s worth of work, which is one of the great benefits of all of these types of materials. Biochar, seaweed, rock does have very long benefits over over many, many years. There has been some studies to show that you get 20 years benefit for one application and forestry and other types of

Metta Spencer  30:01

There’s benefit in terms of the fertility of the soil — how productive it is, right?

Thomas Vanacore  30:07

And the growth of trees or whatever you’re trying to to accomplish. There’s going to be more and more interest in permaculture type of management. In other words, converting some of the annual production into more permaculture or mixed permaculture. So these sorts of techniques and with these materials, where you establish a permaculture type growing environment, whether you’re planting trees or shrubs or combine perennials and annuals together, you want to maximize the benefit of every time that you go out to put any sort of input and so the this sort of work that we’re promoting, whether it’s biochar rock dust, seaweed,or combining with horticultural growing plants, where the plants themselves are providing the energy through photosynthesis, etc. This is the sort of thing where you will really gain ground on addressing climate change. We are sliding backwards at the same time that we need to actually be gaining ground. So these types of materials will do that, as long as they’re looked at in a whole system approach. And I think that’s the discussion we’re having today.

Metta Spencer  31:44

Well, we want at some point to have some numbers. I won’t try to calculate these myself. But one of the things people want to know is how much value we’re going to get in terms of a carbon sequestration per tonne, let’s say of rock, under what circumstances and so on. How much of the world’s excess co2 can we remove from the atmosphere now, if a certain number of farmers it let’s say in Canada, apply this now. Are you saying they will have to do it every 20 years?

Thomas Vanacore  32:25

In certain circumstances where a single application is all that you’re going to get, they will get 20 years worth of benefit. Whereas, if they’re going out every year where their work, they can work these materials into crop rotations where they may be in a two- or three-year or even longer rotation, they can come around to that ground every three or four years or five years. In other words, they can work these materials into agronomic benefit based on their management strategy. That’s the beauty of these materials. So you can put these materials into an economic framework, which is what David has done. During the lifecycle analysis and transport analysis and horticultural and agronomic benefit analysis, we can actually show the farmer, if you do these things, these are your return on investment, including transport logistics. So these are all measurable benefits. And it it gives you permanence as well, which is one of the problems that we’re seeing, through some sorts of approaches where they’re looking at just soil organic matter, looking at just the top few inches of soil for carbon sequestration, those types of approaches can be reversed quite rapidly, especially if they’re not accompanied by true regenerative management practices. In other words, if you just throw material out there and hope for the best, those those benefits can be lost. So we’re looking for permanence. And these can be these materials can give you permanence.

Metta Spencer  34:07

And as I understand it, it really is economically worthwhile for the farmer. It’s a good investment, they’re going to get value from their investment, so you wouldn’t theoretically need to have subsidies from the government to get people to use it, because it’s to their own advantage to use it. However, it might be that you’d need the government subsidies to get people to adopt it early if people are cautious and scared to try something new. Then the government might need to pay some people to take that initial risk, so that they can show that it works. Is that a reasonable point of view or not?

David Demarey  35:00

When you do a lifecycle analysis on this, I’m looking at the gain for the farmer. Because if there’s no gain, no one’s going to do this but you’re talking about with the government subsidy. When you look at the end of it all, you might be looking at only $50 a tonne benefit to the farmer. Okay, now that doesn’t sound like a lot. Except when you figure out that average farmer might make 100 bucks an acre on his $1,000  acre investment. So you add 50 bucks an acre to that, and you’ve just given him a 50% increase in his earnings. Now they’re going to take notice if you include the carbon credits, so if the government were to step up and say, Okay, we’re going to subsidize you getting this rock, or the seaweed based on the carbon credit value of the capture. That might be 20 bucks a ton, in turn, in terms of the carbon credits, but that $20 is just 20% of the guy’s income in the field. So it does make a big difference if the government does get involved and make an incentive. It doesn’t have to be a large amount of money to make a big difference, as long as it shows up on the end, in the guide, putting the stuff on the field and getting the yield increase that he wants. So yes, very important that the government be involved, especially in the beginning. I think

Thomas Vanacore  36:32

Early adoption is where if government has a role in this. It would be to put some of the largesse that they’re already putting into other sorts of crisis management and huge annual outlays towards climate mitigation. Not to continue to dole out subsidies, but to create the environment and the infrastructure, and including the distribution channels for early adoption. One of the problems that we’re seeing right now, because the globe seems to be into a multi year crisis, many of the supply chains and transport, infrastructure, labor shortages, all of these things, fuel and fuel costs, these things are now compounding the problems of addressing probably the largest long term crisis, which is the destabilization of the temperate zone and climate catastrophe. So government does have a role, as long as they’ll take an active view by treating it as an emergency. Because if we just use the the traditional trajectory of market development, generally to introduce anything new, you’re talking decades, and to form a good, solid business around a new venture, that can be generational, that can be to two generations, if not three generations. We just simply don’t have that time. So yeah, for sure. There’s a role for organized investment, government or private investment, but and it’s a significant investment that’s required. It’s not a few million dollars to actually roll these things out. So yeah, they’re going to have to do some real calculations.

Metta Spencer  38:29

What do you have to say, Brian?

Brian von Herzen  38:34

Yes, Thomas is right.  There are tipping points that we need to address immediately. And they go from the fact that if you cut down another few percent of Amazon rainforest, the Amazon goes from a net carbon sink to a carbon source, which is terrible and nonlinear. Other problems include the Arctic, including Canada, as the sea ice disappears, you’re now absorbing so much more sunlight during the summer that you’ll melt the Greenland ice sheet, which is a tipping point, resulting in 26 feet more sea level rise. So we’re looking at tipping points in the soil, tipping points in the seas that need to be addressed immediately. And the best role for government is to provide this predictable and rising price to reward and incentivize the first 10% adoption of these integrative techniques for agricultural practices because, quite frankly, we have to overcome agricultural sprawl. You’ve heard of suburban sprawl, but agricultural sprawl has an enormous effect on the wild forests of Canada and the wild forests around the world. With revolution and food producing technology on land and in the sea, we’ll be able to enable half of that cropland to be rewarded and to enable huge amounts of biodiversity to come back again. That’s an enormous hopeful message for the future. In the meantime, we need to incentivize the first 10% have early adopters enable these integrative soil regenerative properties. We have a better biological understanding of the soil today than we had just a few decades ago. So what was a chemical Green Revolution in the past millennium is now an opportunity to actually, through that improved biological understanding of the soil, rebuild healthy soil microbial communities, including inputs like rock dust, biochar, and seaweed agricultural amendments to build those healthy soil microbial communities that can tap into the mineral nutrients that actually fix recalcitrant carbon in the soil for decades, if not centuries, and ultimately improve the soil productivity at the same time. Now, there’s something that you’ve alluded to, that there is a short carbon cycle that involves seaweed being grown and rotting and going back into co2, and a short carbon cycle on land, which includes crop residuals or residues that rot during the year and form carbon dioxide again. That’s the short carbon cycle, but the long carbon cycle includes in the soils, the recalcitrant carbon that’s formed. In other words, there’s a partnership between plants and healthy soil microbial communities. Those microbial communities unlock the mineral phosphate and the mineral nutrients, convey it to the plants, and the plants return and reward that with sugars and other carbohydrates that go back to the soil microbial communities. And those soil microbial communities produce recalcitrant carbon in the form of humus and other organics that can remain for decades, if not centuries.

Metta Spencer  41:42

Tell me, you use this word recalcitrant carbon. Have we got two different kinds of carbon — recalcitrant and ordinary or what? What is recalcitrant carbon?

Brian von Herzen  41:55

That means longer chain molecules that can last for a long time. For example, we were invited to the plant carbon drawdown conference at the Salk Institute and gave a keynote lecture on the the marine plant carbon drawdown techniques, but the folks at the Salk Institute are actually researching varieties of plants that will produce an example of recalcitrant carbon. They’ll produce melanin in the roots of the plant. Now you’re familiar with melanin because it gives a pigment to your skin, and actually, against ultraviolet.  Well, it’s also a longer chain molecule that lasts in soils much longer when you have soil microbial communities. The thing is, you have to keep those soils growing. In other words, you need a variety of plants and microbes in the soils to have healthy soil microbial communities remain and add more carbon and more carbon each year. And that’s where the long carbon cycle comes in on land. In the sea, the long carbon cycle comes from seaweed that sinks to the abyssal seafloor. And dissolved in that seawater, that seawater will take centuries to return to the surface where it actually is melted again. So that’s a long carbon cycle. And of course, the United Nations gives a carbon credit for any sequestration, in average timescale of a century or longer becomes a certifiable carbon credits. So that’s an essential part of what’s going here. We are working with folks like Professor Johannes Lehmann from Cornell University, who has demonstrated that you can actually build soil carbon and Professor Lehmann likes to call it “carbon capital,” soil carbon capital, because the biochar that you put in, and the healthy soil microbial communities that you form,  will pay dividends for decades after the intervention. That’s really key and magic because you’re making your land more valuable when you’ve got a more fertile land. And these integrative amendments are what will really enable  that land to become more fertile over time and overcome a lot of the the losses of soil that we’ve had in previous decades,

Thomas Vanacore  44:08

Metta made an interesting observation that the rock that’s my backdrop for this conversation is a black rock, and the color of it is actually derived from carbon, which was deposited in very, very deep ocean sediments. So the the actual foundation of this somewhat miraculous rock, when you spread it on land, is the result of extremely deep sediments, carbon-rich sediments because the carbon wasn’t oxidizing and returning to the atmosphere. So here’s a proof behind us that this this actually can work. And not only in the maritime environments, but also also on land. So I think these are real foundational principles that should be easy to describe to the Pugwashites or any of the other people that have a stake in shaping the future. It’s the problem that I see right now:  a lack of understanding of the long carbon cycle. In other words, how this is a geotectonic period that we’re in. There’s extreme variability in terms of how it presents itself on the planet right now, but it also requires a concerted effort to mitigate the worst effects. And this is not something that is going to be over in a day. It’s going to take 50 years, even 100 years of dedicated effort. That’s a tough thing to sell to people who are used to having their attention spans be in milliseconds.  I agree. But my notion here is with these particular four interventions that I’m choosing. I’m picking them because I think they’re things that Canada could do without having to organize the whole rest of the world and could do something within five years. So my sense is that you’ve got rock dust and it wouldn’t take very much effort for people to pick it up in and spread it around. So we know that something could be done within five years. Well, we have pilot projects right now.  In Saskatchewan there’s a mountain of material of very high quality rock does that even enhance rock weathering. Academics have been studying for several years. I’ts stockpiled in Saskatchewan right in the middle of broad acreage, farming, with regenerative growers all around.

Metta Spencer  46:56

I’ve heard also that mine tailings can be used. And I tried to find where all the mine tailings in Canada, but there’s no map and I couldn’t find anybody who can tell me where they’re keeping their mine tailings.

Thomas Vanacore  47:10

Tailings aren’t something that you can just look at the Yellow Pages and find, and the rock dust that was transported up to Canada for this project is a form of tailing. It’s an undersized material. It’s a byproduct from commodity aggregate production. So there are a number of resources that are available and in the hundreds of millions of tonnes if you know where to look for it. But that’s just the beginning of the project. That’s not the end of the project. So each one of those tailings has to be characterized for mineralogy, carbon capture potential, transport, logistics, and all the rest of these things. So there’s a lot that can be done and should be done. But we don’t have to wait. I mean, these projects are looking for sponsors, they’re looking for benefit as far as demonstrating these things at scale. And, as I said, you actually had Ryan Brophy out there in one of our previous interviews. He’s a trained agronomic specialist and touches hundreds of thousands of acres a year of farmland in Canada, and understands all these materials, including the Black Rock and the basalt in agronomic setting. So I don’t think that this is theoretical anymore. It’s really needs support now, rather than two years from now,

Metta Spencer  48:48

I agree. Okay. In fact, we also have people at the University of Toronto who are willing to do support work for us. I’ve been talking to two professors there in the last couple of days, and one specializes in lifecycle analysis and even says there’s going to be a course offered in it. And so they might take us on as a class project or something if we asked, you know,

Brian von Herzen  49:12

I think one of the points that Tom brought up earlier about the benefits of seaweed supplements, including seaweed foliar biostimulants, is stress resilience. And I think that’s really worth touching on because in this day and age of climate disruption, we’ve got a number of enormous stressors to deal with — not only the normal stressors you’d have for monocropping in an agricultural context, but beyond that, you’ve got drought, and you’ve got heat that you’re dealing with on an increasing basis, as we’ve seen off in British Columbia just in the last summer, and being able to manage the drought and heat resilience is absolutely essential. And we’ve seen enormous improvements in agricultural yields during high stress conditions. Especially with drought and heat, we’ve seen it with rice fields and in Southeast Asia. I’ve also seen it with row crops. Even in Canada, for example, I think that can have a transformative effect. As we are faced with increasing stressors from climate disruption, there’s a great opportunity to effectively build more resilience into our agriculture.

Metta Spencer  50:24

Tell me what that resilience would look like. Are you talking about like: can they tolerate more salt? Can they tolerate more heat? Is that the kind of thing that you would measure when trying to ascertain the resilience of a piece of soil?

Brian von Herzen  50:42

Yes, drought stress and heat stress are well documented in plants. And you can measure those quantitatively when you do trials under stressful conditions. That’s where you see the biggest differentials between baseline production, even with replete NPK fertilizer, and these plant growth regulators are present in the organic seaweed foliar biostimulant products. You can see 15 to 30% higher yields in a high stress context over replete NPK application.

Thomas Vanacore  51:16

That will also benefit the consumers. In other words, if you if you translate stress resistance, drought resistance, freeze/thaw cycle resistance and growing plants which you can with the seaweed, you can do the same thing with a micronutrient boost through green mineralization. That will translate also into resiliency of whoever is going to be consuming the crop, whether it’s forage for livestock, or whether it’s human beings where they’re getting the secondary and higher plant metabolites that these plants are actually producing, that they may not otherwise be producing in the absence of these these micronutrients and biostimulants. Now you’re starting to talk about the benefits to society, whether it’s the health effects of the individuals in their own lives, or the health effects and in raising livestock, of any sort; whether it’s poultry, or any sort of meat product, these sorts of things can be quantifiable, and the benefit is there in the form of returns on investment, whether it’s human populations or livestock. So these things will continue to be necessary, The pharmaceutical approach to health has proven to be a failure over time. We see it right now through the increased morbidity in western population. So wiith these sorts of things, health will start in soil and in the ocean. And I think that it’s not a science that needs to be proven. It’s science that has been proven, it needs to be demonstrated at scale.

Metta Spencer  53:19

In the chat, I think Adele has problems with her microphone or something, so I’m going to read her question. She says, “How would this technique translate to the third world issues of transportation, source of rock dust? Seaweed is presumably available in every ocean coast area?”

Brian von Herzen  53:45

We’re working in the Philippines right now. And yes, seaweed is enormously valuable, having those micronutrients, whether they’re coming from the sea, or coming from existing mining operations. And it’s a whole approach that includes the soil microbial communities. That’s enormously important. I think that it does translate very well. In fact, we’re able to because seaweed can be labor-intensive. We’re developing the seaweed foliar biostimulants in the developing world first, and it’s something that we could initially import into Canada, because it is very catalytic and effective at small quantities. And then furthermore, that can ultimately turn into local production of seaweed as well, where ultimately they’ve become domestic industries for the biostimulants that go directly into the into the agricultural amendments. I do want to touch on something that Tom mentioned, and that is the effect of these integrative approaches on livestock. I’ve seen studies in Canada, for example, that show that if you get rid of the antibiotics that they feed chickens now and instead use seaweed as a feed supplement, it actually improves the immune system of the chickens so much that their survival rate is higher on the seaweed supplement feed than it is on the feed that has antibiotics in it. So instead of producing antibiotic resistance and MRSA and all those other problems, were actually building healthier chickens that have a higher survival rate than if you use antibiotics. So that’s what we have to get off of  — better life through chemistry, only better.

Metta Spencer  55:29

But that’s not just chickens. I mean, the thing that I’ve read is that certain kinds of seaweed, if you feed it to cows, it stops their belching and, and reduces the amount of methane that they’re producing, which is a very important. I think cattle are really a very significant source of methane. I didn’t even mention that but I think you ought to talk about that a little bit, Brian.

Brian von Herzen  55:56

Some 40% of all agricultural methane emissions come from the rumen of the of ruminant livestock. Do you know that 11% of the feed energy for these livestock actually goes up in smoke as methane? That’s how much energy it takes to produce methane. So if we put a cork in it by adding a one to 10% feed supplement to ruminant livestock, including dairy, including cattle, including goats and sheep, you can actually eliminate most of the enteric methane emissions of ruminant livestock, and at the same time, have several percent more feed energy available for the animal. That means your feed conversion ratio can improve. And when the feed conversion ratio improves, that’s dollars in the bank, because even a 1% feed conversion ratio improvement can double the profitability, as David has mentioned, to the farmer. And so ultimately, these regenerative techniques have an enormous positive net present value economically, as well as improving our ecological outcomes and our greenhouse gas reduction.

Metta Spencer  57:12

Thank you. I had one other brainstorm that I tried out on you  by email, because I didn’t want to bring it up on on the talk show until I’d ascertained that it wasn’t totally crazy. Apparently, for some reason, Hudson Bay is just overflowing with seaweed now. And you know, the problem is the indigenous people living on the shores are having a hell of a time because their livelihood has been destroyed by the lack of ice, they have trouble there. And with another one of these projects we hope to be able to restore some of the ice to Hudson Bay within five years by spraying seawater over it. That’s not going to fix the whole of Hudson Bay, which is a huge body of water, and those people still need some way of making a living. So one of the thoughts I had was that they could harvest a lot of that seaweed that’s almost in excess growing there now. There’s  a freight train that goes from Churchill, Manitoba to Thompson, Manitoba. Maybe you could set them up with some sort of little factory where they could make this biostimulant out of the seaweed. So we could have these people make a living by harvesting some of the surplus seaweed from Hudson Bay, making it into extract and sending it to David to put it on his garden.

Brian von Herzen  58:51

That’s a great point. Metta and I think there’s two reasons for it. One is, there’s far less ice on Hudson Bay, and that means a much longer growing season. And there could be runoff in the Hudson Bay; that would increase that nutrient level. And the seaweed does a fine job of trying to absorb those nutrients and turn it into useful carbohydrates.  I think you’re correct that you could take the raw seaweed from Hudson Bay, and we’ve developed a transportable containerized bio refinery that will produce multiple food products, feed products and fertilizer products, including biostimulants from the raw seaweed, and then you can ship container-loads of each one of those across Canada by train and enable those agricultural amendments to have transformative results. It turns out seaweed’s pretty good for people too. I eat a few grams every day and look what happened to me! So, as a nutritional supplement, it is highly recommended. I’m amazed at how it improves the digestive system and the knock-on effects of the improved immune system. It doesn’t apply just to chickens (not all of us are spring chickens) but we can improve the immune response that we get from eating a bit of seaweed every day.

Metta Spencer  1:00:05

I’ve started eating it myself as little snacks.

Thomas Vanacore  1:00:12

I’d like to go back to the second part of a dose question. What about the rock dust and transport? In other words,  how does this work for Third Worlds now? My company, Rock Dust Local, developed a regional sourcing model for taking rock dust where it is and delivering it to the nearest locations. And we also develop long transport models. The benefit of these types of rock dust is that they occur globally. They’re not concentrates that are only occur in one place and need to be transported all around the world. Many of the best of these broad-spectrum rocks occur in many, many places, on all the continents, and it’s also on some of the island environments that are volcanic in origin. So there’s a very good potential to use the same local model to reduce transport logistics. And also, once you get the material onto ship, you can go great distances and still maintain a good amount of the co2 benefit, once it’s landed. So there could even be a transition period where you’re you’re starting to ship initially long distance. And as you develop these technologies and manufacturing capacities overseas, you start reducing dependence on importation. So these things are very doable. Transport modeling has been also done. And the metrics work at scale.

Metta Spencer  1:01:54

Well, we’re on something I think. I’m going to pursue it further. I think Pugwash will probably get back to each of you and say, Tell me more. So we’ll have other meetings and other opportunities to bring in other people who might have criticisms or alternative points of view. We want to listen to all issues that arise in this connection so that we know what we’re talking about when we finally maybe go to the Canadian government and say: Here’s a plan. Okay, thank you all it’s been fun and and really valuable. I really appreciate it. So carry on.   Project save the world produces these shows, and this is episode 513. You can watch or listen to them as audio podcasts on our website to save the world.ca people share information there about six global issues. To find a particular talk show. Enter its title or episode number in the search bar, or the name of one of the guest speakers. Project save the world also produces a quarterly online publication piece magazine. You can subscribe for $20 Canadian per year. Just go to pressreader.com on your browser, and in the search bar under the word peace. You’ll see buttons to click to subscribe.