September 27, 2024

AgEmerge Podcast 143 With Peter Donovan

54 minutes

Peter Donovan is the founder of the Soil Carbon Coalition. We're diving into his inspiring journey and experience in Holistic Management, decision-making, rangeland monitoring, and community development. Peter is a passionate advocate for collaborative learning where farmers and ranchers are sharing knowledge and experiences. His rich background in forestry, farming, and ranching has facilitated his understanding of natural systems and how to skillfully manage those natural resources. Join us as we explore Peter's remarkable work and his unwavering passion for the land while engaging the people and animals that call it home.

Peters has a background in forestry, farm, and ranch work, sheep and cattle herding, Holistic Management and decision-making, rangeland monitoring, and community development. His first effort in sharing what he was learning about ecosystem process and function was reporting on holistic managers in the 1990s (see managingwholes.com).

In 2007 he founded the Soil Carbon Coalition. This second effort was traveling around the continent for a decade measuring soil carbon change, with open data. Peter was spread too thin, not a good context for sharing or fostering a shared intelligence on the circle of life. Without a coherent group, the context of this work was vague and unfocused. Much of the conversation and buzz about soil carbon quickly turned to the commodification of soil carbon as "offsets" which to him was the wrong question—for both our intentions and our ability to implement them. (Vandana Shiva observes that the financialization of nature equals the rape of the earth.) soilhealth.app is the third try: can this help locally driven efforts to ask better questions, and engage more people in asking and answering?