Soil science

Well, way back then I was born and bred in Van der Bergh Park.

Grew up there, went to school, and then studied soil science at University of Free State and University of Potsdam.

And, yeah, I enjoyed that for a while, lectured a bit on soil science.

I had a couple of postgraduate students doing work for me.

Yeah, and then I got a bit sick and tired of the publish and perish syndrome.

Interesting that you didn't have any childhood involvement with farming.

You never mentioned that? Because so often people that end up in farming, they have some kind of rural agricultural roots, but that didn't come out in your story at all.

No, no generational evolution of things, just directly into farming from soil science, yeah.

It wasn't so much that I'm obsessed with volcanoes or anything like that.

It just seemed like it was... subject that really like tackled geography and the natural sciences and one of my modules there was soil science and i really enjoyed it and when i'd look at what the lecturers are doing because they would say what their specialties are they were doing cool stuff like mind rehabilitation environmental resource conservation and obviously coming from the geology side i resonated with the mind rehabilitation But at the same time, the more I learned about geology, it seemed that it's an industry that's very extractive.

And that's just my ignorant view.

I haven't worked as a geologist, but it's mostly extraction.

And I wanted to use science for conservation.

So I was like, let me take a slight detour.

And then I did my honors in environmental soil science.

And then I did my master's in agricultural soil science.

sad? It's a dark side of human nature.

And what about Soil Science, the Ig Nobel Award?

They did underpants.

They buried 1,000 pairs of underpants.

Yes.

So we export it.

And so because we're ahead with our food production, the various state and federal governments around Australia refuse to invest deeply in soil science, getting ready for climate change, because they reckon we've got enough to get through.

And it doesn't matter that the productivity is going down.

And it's pretty easy to do.

Soilsaviors.org is where people can go and take the free Art and Science of Soil course.

Once they understand the soil, they will instantly be able to relate the soil and its health and what's in it to the plants, to the honeybees, to the cows, and to humans even, right? and understand that the soil is the key in having all those diversities of nutrients and biology, the soil borne probiotics in there that used to be there until we came along and destroyed it, that they can put that back in their garden, their orchard, their lawn, whatever they want to create a safe environment for them and their children.

If somebody only has like a small backyard garden, a few raised beds, what practical steps can they take then to improve their soil?

Fresh produce from the garden or at least something we've canned ourselves.

The first thing every gardener should do.

Understand soil and take the art and the free art and science of soil course at soilsavers.org.

I love that.

Brian has been a guest on the podcast before.

He's a professor and extension specialist in the Department of Plant and Soil Science at Oklahoma State University.

And his program primarily focuses on precision nutrient management.

And the guys focusing in that area and doing cropping systems tend to play a lot with technology and so always have some good insights.

All right.

My guest today has been Dr. Brian Arnold.

He is a professor and extension specialist in the Department of Plant and Soil Science at Oklahoma State University, focusing on precision nutrient management.

Repeat guest.

But anyway, I come back and that's when I decide to study whatever gardening I was doing on that roof, which turns out to be called agriculture.

And I always say like the closest I ever came to grass was the lawn in the Marina Green of San Francisco, which is like a very polished experience so yeah i pivoted to soil science specifically at uc davis thinking this is the reason why we have the minerals that we have a lot of the supplements that we take a lot of the food that we eat a lot of the materials that we use whether that's gypsum or phosphates or nitrates they're all from different mining and extraction mechanisms from soils

and A

lot of our aluminum and just you name it in terms of the periodic table of elements.