Restoring the Soil - Canadian Foodgrains Bank

Restoring the SoiliiAcknowledgementsThis book could never have been written if it were not for a handful of people whohad the foresight to realize, 30 years ago, that sometime soon, the world demand forenergy would outstrip the supply, and energy prices would increase dramatically. Furthermore,they knew that a major increase in energy prices would inevitably increasethe price of chemical fertilizer, which would, in turn, mean that over a billion peoplearound the world who were dependent on chemical fertilizer would have no known,economically feasible way of maintaining their soil’s fertility. These people’s predictionscould not have been more accurate: energy prices have increased five-fold overthe last decade, real fertilizer prices have doubled in less than five years, world foodprices have soared and millions of smallholder farmers are watching their soils becomerather similar to infertile bricks.But due to the foresight of this handful of people, we now have a large selection ofeffective, very inexpensive alternatives to chemical fertilizer. Thousands of people haveworked on green manure/cover crops over the last 30 years, but the pioneers and leadersin this effort are fairly well-known:• Ana Primavesi has been the pioneer and theoretical leader of the entire Brazilianzero tillage and green manure/cover crop movement. Her classic book, TheEcological Management of the Soil, still has no rival worthy of the name.• Claudio Monegat probably did more than anyone else to further the earlyexperimentation with green manure/cover crops in Brazil. He later wrote his ownclassic, Green Manuring in Southern Brazil.• Valdemar Hercilio (Salgado) de Freitas and Aldemir Calegari have headed upthe state agricultural organizations for the Brazilian states of Santa Catarina andParana, where most of the early green manure/cover crop work was done in Braziland where over a million farmers now regularly use green manure/cover crops.• Rolf Derpsch worked with the movement in Brazil for many years, and thenspread it to much of Paraguay.• Steve Gliessman and Roberto Garcia did pioneering work with jackbeans on theYucatan Peninsula in Mexico.• In 1983, within a year or two of the time the Brazilians initiated their work ongreen manure/cover crops, those of us in World Neighbors/Honduras beganexperimenting with half a dozen green manure/cover crop species.• Milton Flores became the director in 1989 of the International Green Manure/Cover Crop Clearinghouse (CIDICCO), which was founded by World Neighbors/Honduras.He ably ran CIDICCO for two decades, spreading informationabout green manure/cover crops to more than 75 countries around the world.In addition to these pioneers, I would like to thank the members of the GreenManure/Cover Crop Taskforce organized by the Canadian Foodgrains Bank (CFGB)