The Soil Carbon Sponge

Carbon is the currently of the soil-plant ecosystem and when we fix the carbon cycle by putting carbon back into the soil there are multiple benefits.  Without organic matter (carbon) soil is just sand or dirt, compacted rock crumbs with inaccessible nutrients trapped inside its lifeless form. It repels rain water, which just runs off and is lost.

Once carbon and its associated microbial life gets into that dirt it opens it up and brings it to life. The organic matter in the soil separates the particles creating voids into which air and water can flow.  Healthy soil is 50% air and water!  Fungi and Glomalin - from the Liquid Carbon Pathway - drive more organic matter into the dirt, changing it to become a sponge, enabling it to infiltrate water. The newly created surface area within the soil now exposes once unavailable nutrients to the microbiology that populates these new surfaces, and converts minerals into plant available forms. This living, thriving soil is referred to as the Soil Carbon Sponge.

Rain water is no longer repelled but it now infiltrates into the soil, filling up the voids. The water no longer runs off but is now held in the soil where it can be slowly released to plants as they photosynthesise and transpire.  All of this increases the photosynthetic capacity of the soil-plant ecosystem and the system spirals up.

The Soil Carbon Sponge gives you water, it gives you access to previously unavailable nutrients, it gives you root-ability where roots can easily make their way towards more nutrients, it gives you microbial life and it gives you resilience.

In the Highveld of South Africa native soil carbon levels were around 2.8 - 3%, it is scary to contemplate that most of the agricultural soils there today are hovering around the 1% to 1,5% mark. This means the Soil-Carbon Sponge is not functional.  We have become so focused on getting carbon out of the atmosphere that we forget the function of that carbon. The carbon needs to be in the soil not just to get it out of the atmosphere but to build the sponge and enable the system that nature has given us to provide food and regulate the environment.

It is crucial that we reestablish the Soil Carbon Sponge in degraded soils in as many parts of the planet as we can.