This World Soil Day, let's celebrate the lifeblood of our planet – our soil! 🌍
Healthy soils are the foundation of our food systems, biodiversity, and climate resilience. They play a key role in maintaining biodiversity, reducing erosion and pollution, improving water filtration, and building resilient and sustainable food systems. 🌾🌿 They also contribute significantly to climate action through carbon sequestration. 🌱🌏
However, in the face of climate change and human activity, our soils are being degraded. Erosion disrupts the natural balance, reducing water infiltration and availability for all forms of life, and decreasing the level of vitamins and nutrients in food.
At Kilimo Trust, we value the critical role that healthy soils play in our ecosystem. 🌍✨We are committed to protecting and restoring our soils through regenerative agricultural practices that help degraded farmland and increase crop yields by improving soil health. 🌾🌼
Here’s how:
Vermicomposting 🐛
Rice farming, while essential for feeding millions, generates substantial amounts of waste in the form of rice straw and husks. 🌾 These residues, due to their slow decomposition, often contribute to environmental pollution and soil degradation.
At Kilimo Trust, we have transformed this challenge into an opportunity through our Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Rice Initiative for Climate Smart Agriculture (R4iCSA) project. ♻️
Through the process of vermicomposting, where earthworms primarily red wrigglers convert the straws into vermicast—a nutrient-rich and highly alkaline byproduct created by earthworms as they digest the compost. This valuable organic fertilizer enriches the soil, improves its structure, and promotes plant growth.🌿🌾
Red wrigglers accelerate decomposition of rice straws
Biochar
Rice husks, another byproduct of rice farming, are transformed into biochar through a process called pyrolysis. Biochar, a charcoal-like substance, is a powerful soil amendment that improves soil structure, water retention, and nutrient availability.💧🌿 By enriching poor soils and locking in moisture, biochar helps to ensure long-term sustainability for farmers and the environment
Biochar applied on a coffee plant
Rice straws(right)
and the resulting biochar(left) after
This World Soil Day, join us in celebrating the power of soil and the creative solutions that protect it. By caring for our soils today, we’re investing in a thriving future for generations to come. Let’s keep the ground beneath us thriving! 🌱💚
#WorldSoilDay2024
#SustainableAgriculture