Soil

Sometimes the enormity of climate change can seem overwhelming.  What can one person, or even one nation, do on their own to slow and reverse climate change?

Chihuahuan Desert Charities has found a route.  We are teaching Las Cruces students sustainable food production and consumption practices that can help mitigate and even reverse impacts of climate change.

The progressive international nonprofit, Food Tank (founded by Danielle Nierenberg and Bernard Pollack), had its NYC summit yesterday and addressed one of the food industry's most urgent issues: waste. "40% of all food is wasted. If food waste was a country, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gasses." — Roy Steiner, Rockefeller Foundation

Doña Ana County is in a unique geographic border region known as the Paso del Norte, that is presented with the difficult community challenge of environmental conservation issues that threaten water, soil health, and biodiversity. Converting deserts into arable, green landscapes is a global vision, and desert farming is a strong growth area of agriculture worldwide.  Chihuahuan Desert Charities is being proactive and preparing our youth for the future. A large part of the DYGUP regenerative agriculture curriculum is learning the value of composting, biodiversity and enriching soil.

Throughout history, civilizations have risen or fallen depending on the fertility of their topsoil.

Great civilizations have fallen because they failed to prevent the degradation of the soils on which they were founded. The modern world could suffer the same fate. This is according to Professor Mary Scholes and Dr. Bob Scholes who have published a paper in the journal Science, which describes how the productivity of many lands has been dramatically reduced as a result of soil erosion, accumulation of salinity, and nutrient depletion.