Dave Montgomery - Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations 

I own 5 acres in Kentucky, I have alpacas, horses and poultry. I found this video very educational, after reading a couple of Montgomery's books, I've started looking for solutions. I'll do my best to restore my soil, but this is going to be an uphill battle, even after 24 years out of production, 13 years as pasture, the soil barely has a layer of topsoil on it.

Fascinating lecture, indeed, strategic resources are fresh air, clean water and fertile soil, not oil

Fascinating that the last symbol Dr. Montgomery used was a heart. Some of the world's religious writings talk about planting the seeds of divine wisdom in the pure soil of the heart, and "In the garden of thy heart, plant naught but the rose of love." Soil, therefore, is considered the heart of our planet's life, and like the heart, its true mysteries are hidden away. We can't see the soil microbiome, but it is there and working as hard as it can to keep life growing in it. Fantastic lecture. I've changed how I've been taking care of my garden since learning about all these things. And my roses are going nuts!

Hmm, he gives great lectures, watched a few now and all of them are jam packed with info and a wonderful delivery. 👏👏👏

Interesting. I had heard some of these arguments before from other authors but it was nice to hear from a scientist. And one with great communication skills. Will have to check out his books

His book is amazing, a personal favorite, and absolutely jammed with knowledge. His perspective it a new paradigm which needs to get more attention in the public realm.

This book was a great inspiration for us. We have the privilege of documenting a fantastic example of what the book means. Agroforestry systems that produce soil as a surplus of food production. It can be watched on our page.

Excellent. I read the book and am watching this video. I will be working on soil improvements during the construction of a large tourism project in Tunisia.

I read the book, "Topsoil and Civilization" in college around 1970. It said much the same. Since then Neo-liberal economics has taken over economic thought. It rejects the idea that we need to worry about nature, i.e. things like soil erosion. That is still the dominant thinking. So, we moved away from the right thinking. In the past the problem was war, nations had to keep the population growing to fight off invaders, to do the invading yourselves. I'm a believer in Modern Monetary Theory, that says that the Gov. that issues its own currency is not like a family or corporation that uses the currency. The main difference is that such Gov. should not save, they should deficit spend to replace cash being lost to a trade deficit or people saving (like buying Gov. bonds). This gives Gov. more money to work with to solve problems. OTOH, I'm a doomer who believes that it is likely that we have sailed past to point in adding CO2 to the air at which tipping points are already putting us (more likely than not) on a downward fall to a collapse of our civilization. We need a massive immediate change in our behavior to have a chance to save civilization, aka rationing. The dark age will last 100K to 1M years until nature removes enough CO2 from the air. Humanity will likely no last 100K years.

A site I chanced upon about the depletion of our sands was quite unsettling. I don't remember how I found it or where it is. But it claims our easy to get sands are depleted, sands on remote islands have been scrapped or dug bare and now the oceans are being dredged; all for our high rise buildings, roads etc. Certainly makes one think about sand with a little more respect. Namaste and care, mhikl

The book is very good too. It's the one I wish I had written.

This issue needs to be talk more by people.

you had me at 1:30, and then i bought the book

"guess what we have a surplus of in most cities? Organic material and labor." One of a bunch of nice punch lines

also, its incredible how concentrated his speaking is; im pretty sure he memorized it. which is incredible.

All of these theories and speculation make a lot of sense with unlimited examples in the present period on smaller scales - common sense, observable, makes sense, Occam's Razor survives. So, my speculation of Dave Montgomery's lecture and theory would be the same. Great lecture, evidence, and research. Thank you. We can now put forth these findings to help calibrate Mathematic soil erosion models and simulations..

Do not use roundup, because it doesn’t only kill weeds, it kills decomposers that help restore carbon levels.

you are right although your wording is a bit off npk fertalizers are not sustainable at all because they are created from fossil fuels for one. also it is a common misconception that npk fertalized crop yeilds are higher. it has been proven that many natural and organic methods can produce the same and in some cases more yield than modern npk fertalized crops. there are many factors to it. including crop covers and the fact that npk is not the only nutrients needed for plants to grow.

great speaker!

How do we project this problem off to the Right

why does he state that organic agriculture is sustainable when the picture at @36:29 shows that "sustainable" agriculture erodes soil 4 times faster then it is formed?

Agricultura Sintrópica❤

This talk is profound, and while he does go into solutions, the youtube channel Understanding Ag goes into more depth on solutions for small to large scale farming. Soil principles can even make a difference in potted plants and in your yard or garden.

Empires never ever last !! Do they?!

I am a soil scientist. Yes, don't call it "Dirt". Agriculture is the act of keeping plants and soil in a stage of primary succession aka the first step after a landslide or forest clearing. #annuals

I guess NPK fertilizers are not sustainable enough to keep the soil fertile long -term even though in the short-term crop yields are alot higher than with tradtional methods? Am I right?

"Fertiliser prices will go through the roof within the next century". Here we are 11 years later ...

All of these problems pare in comparison to what liberalism has done.

"Peak oil", my ear. (Note how old this talk is. Fracking has re-invented the whole oil world since then).

I totally agree with Dr. Mongomery, , only ill go further and say that people such as him should be running things, and economics, needs to be flexible focusing on long term not short term gains, the current system of capitalism as it currently exists seem more interested in transferring land, wealth and power to the top one percent, is a horrible way of running things, forcing farmers to run their farms maximizing crop yields year and profits etc..simply wrong. The solutions are out there but we have the wrong people putting short term profit first. However since power us never never given up without as they put it compensated for their loss, i would say you have been robbing the land and people fir centuries it past time to change by giving the land and power back to those who care about the future. Thank you David for a great lecture on “Dirt”... very informiy educational... 😀✌️

Wild

Just like organic material and bacteria can rebuild our soil, they can do the same for crude oil. Since this video was published, we know we aren't near peak oil at all.

I think we need to hurry up and invent the CHON extruder.

how about addressing the obvious rip off of that Harvard Lecture, which, conveniently has no comments.

The world would be better off if the cities were forced to feed themselves, growing their own food.. Less time for the inhabitants to come up with authoritarian, dystopian ideas

It is not erosion that is the problem. That is chump change. The ag land that is still there is dead. It must have microorganisms to be healthy and plowing kills it. Regenerative ag is useful in restoring it.

Dirt!!! Let us say DIRT!!!!

See "Unstoppable Global Warming - every 1500 years." The chart looks too close to ignore. Times of global cooling reduce food production - obviously. This was VERY interesting though....

the speaker is falling into the Malthusian argument. Thomas Malthus made the plausible argument in 1790 the population was increasing faster than farming could produce food so humanity was going to starve to death in the future. Malthus has been wrong for 220 years because he did not take into consideration human ingenuity. people invented tractors and ran the tractors with wood, then with coal then with gasoline or diesel. People discovered chemistry and tested soils for what was missing and added Nitrogen, phosphorus and potash to improve productivity. People developed biology and began to breed food producing plants to produce larger edible portions of fruit or seeds etc. You only have to work out a cost effective method of building soil on farms so the farmer can make a profit while producing his crops and it will be used to solve this problem.

Lost me around 42:00 when he starts talking about how we can rebuild soils. Permaculture and agroforestry are the realistic ways to rebuild soil. Not hauling around banana peels and leaves.. He is spot on with the problems but not the solutions.

Very good lecture, definitely a thumbs up, however, the notion that CO2 is a pollutant is simply false. I keep my Greenhouse at 1200 ppm CO2 as do many commercial Greenhouse operators. The plants thrive and this is well documented. Also well documented is a plants significantly reduced consumption/need for water. This reduced aspiration of water allows more water to make its way into streams and ground water reservoirs, win-win for everyone including the stream/river creatures.

"faster than nature"

God created everything in 6 days.

Joaquin Phoenix is way smarter these days whoa

Hydroponics.

Deforestation of Southern Iraq?

I find David Montgomery very uninformed

Seed drills lol just use wood chips. Google back to Eden garden film, problem solved

Way too complicated. Just use a wood chip mulch, no problems

I agree with the conclusions that there is plenty of proof the earth and all its creation was created at the same time. This would agree wit the bible.