Soil is the fuel that energizes life.

Recently, I listened to a blog by John Chester of Apricot Lane Farms. He discovered a lot about farming by looking at the history of the earth (4.6 billion years old) condensed into one calendar year. 

"Humans are 0.01 percent of life on earth, and we showed up in the last 23 minutes. The Industrial Revolution started in the last 2 seconds (260 years), so factory/chemical farming is essentially brand new. 

In the last 2 seconds of our time on earth, the industrial revolution has destroyed 33% of the world’s topsoil, 46% of trees, 50% of biodiversity and 85% of wetlands.  Clearly, this is not sustainable.  

The earth is resilient. We weren’t conscious of the consequences of factory farming before but we are now. The 'feed the world at any cost' mentality is disastrous. We need to respect what is right and wrong, what works and what doesn’t." John Chester

The top 12 inches of soil is the only alchemizer of death into life. Soil is the fuel that energizes life. 70-80% of insects require the top 2 inches of soil for life.  We need to treat soil as a living organism.  And livestock, particularly ruminants, helps soil do this critical