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[Music]
so the next talk is Homo sapiens by
Julia Moo it's shall a melt Ellison and
Maya Minda and it's about their open
soil research please giving them a great
round of applause and welcome them to
this stage if you have and if you have
questions during the talk from the
internet please use our channels on IRC
or mastodons or Twitter and just use the
hashtag Eliza are you guys ready totally
awesome looking forward to it thanks for
the introduction and glad you all made
it here today and yeah we're really
excited to tell you about our project so
to get started we want to summarize like
I would like to give an introduction a
short introduction into soil science the
definition of humours and some matter of
facts to get us all in the same page
here and Julian will introduce the human
sapiens project and what it's all about
and after that Maya will give a short
introduction of open science and art and
we actually reserved 30 minutes of our
time for an open discussion at the end
because we think it's mostly very
fruitful to have discussions rather than
having a monologue on you so we're
really looking forward to that and yeah
first thing humans so what comes in mind
it's probably that and I can assure you
it's really delicious but we want to
talk today about the soil the human soil
and therefore we yeah want to give you a
definition of what soil actually is and
there are a lot of definitions
historically the
science about soil arose from different
perspective foreign scientists
scientific research from ecological
perspectives to agricultural
perspectives and the perspective is
really matters if you define something
so you can see it as a productive system
for your agriculture efficiency but you
can also see it as a four dimensional
natural entity that contain that
actually is made of sand silk and clay
also a base layer of rock and soil
actually develops over over time by
climate influences direct or indirect
and another content of soil is houmous
and this is what we want to talk about
today and humans essentially is the dark
layer that you see on the top which is
actually made of organic matter and this
organic matter this houmous part is also
found in deeper layers of the soil so
there's always a mobilization of humans
by water for example in deeper law soil
levels and the humans is super important
for the soil because it contains the
major part of carbon and nitrogen which
is essential for plant nutrition and it
holds a very complex and diverse
multitude of species yeah
fungi bacteria protozoa arthropods there
countless of individuals per square
centimeter and yeah it's massively
influenced by climate factors so to give
you a short introduction about the
complexity I oversimplified with
sketch I made it on my phone this
morning to give you a short introduction
of the soil food web it's actually you
can consider it as a bioreactor it's a
very complete complicated system and to
just give you an idea the first stage
the first level of the soil food web is
the photosynthesis is you can say it's
the input parameter so we have organic
waste from bacterial residues we have
planned and that give residues from the
roots but also plant matter like litter
from the top and all this is processed
in on the second level by the decomposes
and decomposers our fungi essentially
bacteria and the third level they feed
on those decomposes those are the
shredders grazers or also pathogens this
is a protozoa or a movie in German yeah
and the level for predators so the
organisms they grow larger and then we
come to a level where we have a lot of
predators they feed of the smaller
organisms and those nematodes and
arthropods and on the next level we have
for example larger animals like birds or
yeah yeah
different different kinds of mice yeah
moles yeah so one important thing to
mention is that trees act as a nutrient
pump or base pump you can also say in
science so if you have a soil you always
have the release and the binding of
carbon and nitrogen and this fixation
and this mobilization that of course is
very important to understand
that if you have water like the rain is
coming and it flows down those nutrients
that are released so it's very important
to have vegetation because the deep
rooting vegetation is actually sucking
up those nutrients and bringing bringing
it up to the tree and every autumn it's
falling down as leaves for example and
those leaves accumulate in the soil top
layer and will become sumus and this is
very important to understand when we
think about climate change and rising
temperatures and the microbial activity
will increase and this leads to more
greenhouse gas releases and to show you
why this could be a problem or already
now with the rising temperatures it's
important to understand that the carbon
stock distribution is if you look at the
latitude of the of our planet on the
southern hemisphere the equator this is
where we are based right now and the
northern hemisphere you can see that the
accumulation of carbon stocks in the
deeper soil levels so we are here at 150
centimetres increasing the further you
come to the north of the planet and this
is due to the fact that it's quota so
the microbial activity is slower so the
accumulation of carbon is increased and
even though that the vegetation stock is
relatively low in comparison to the
equator the carbon stocks are really
high so if we speak about global
temperature rise we have to keep in mind
that we will have an increase in
microbial activity prospectively
and you can also see there's also the
greatest amount of soil microbial mass
in the northern hemisphere so another
drawing for my phone super-important to
me to mention as well is that vegetation
covers
from sunlight it covers from wind
erosion and also from water erosion so
if we want to preserve the fertility of
the soil the healthy soil if we want to
build up humans it's very important to
to protect the soil and there's a
natural system that evolved over
millions of years and it doesn't need
any maintenance and is actually
sequestering that carbon for us it's
called a forest and it's actually
hosting all those microorganisms in all
the varieties they have and if we
protect the systems that we have and we
increase the number we can actually
sequester quite a huge amount of carbon
so there's quite a lot of studies about
the topic and I just read this morning
that we could sequester roughly about
20% of the carbon emissions from the
last 20 years if we plant 1.7 billion
trees and it's a rather cheap option to
sequester all those carbon emissions and
our problem nowadays is that there's not
enough Drive not enough force and we
have yeah we have to deal with really
inappropriate land management practices
worldwide and there is a tremendous
amount of work we have to do and this is
the reason I will hand over the
presentation to you yeah now and why we
started with the project thank you thank
you very much Martin you can all hear me
so yeah it's my honor to introduce a bit
about the project itself main questions
who where and what and also how did it
all start here I would like to tell you
a bit about the clinton biohack retreat
in 2017 I see some people in the
audience who have been there
and it was organized by wonderful Maya
Minda who will talk afterwards after me
and mark do say ye also founder of
bacteria who can unfortunately not be
here today and yeah so at this retreat
we were sitting together and the three
of us kind of developed a plan to work
on soil in the future and then we had
another meeting later and we decided to
basically integrate what we were doing
already so our own networks and throw
them together to create something new
and bigger so with all those projects
that people were involved this is in
complete summary of the of the network
which was partly already there before
the project and partly it grew together
through the last two years of Homo
sapiens so there are universities
involved like the CERN and vemma there's
also Fab Lab and hackerspaces bio hacker
spaces and art association and yeah some
communities and and camps and yeah
several things all together and yeah
then we thought were so many people who
are interested in these topics we should
try to raise some money and we did a
crowdfunding campaign we actually we
also hacked it a bit I can tell you more
about that later
so we got a bit of money I would like to
show you the video oh can I play it just
to give you some impression of how it
looked like there in include house or
the footages from from Kunta and so it's
artists and hackers and biologists
makers engineers nanotechnologist
biochemists all sorts of people coming
together there
and also filmmakers so it was nicely
documented several short movies came out
of that and some also people with their
family so kids were jumping around and
we we worked with what we found there so
we did excursions in the mountains and
got inspired by everything that that is
around and yeah try to implement it in
our in our daily work and yeah a few
interesting projects and also new
collaborations came from that and that's
also the spirit that we then integrated
into the retreats in homo sapiens
so it's about diversity
interdisciplinarity and this
interdisciplinary collaboration and
mainly about long term project so it's
not so much about finishing something
within these few days but to think about
what we want to focus on in the future
and who we want to work with yeah and
also about having a good time together
so definitely meeting interesting people
yeah yeah I just yeah that we integrated
some images of what is going on right
now
we suggest that these two projects in
the crowdfunding campaign to retreat and
actually no it's not working no actually
we did much much much more so there's a
wiki which is even incomplete with all
the stuff that happened within Homo
sapiens in the last two years and it's
been in 2018 alone three retreats and
loads of workshops and yeah I will
shortly go through a bit of the where
and what so
three pillars of homo sapiens that I
would like to introduce mmm
one is the retreats open collaborations
so you already know what it's about
we did one in Switzerland we were
sitting at the campfire a lot which was
very great but we were also working hard
and soldiering stuff in the open and
working on the soil respiration chamber
I will tell you later and we were
talking a lot and doing a lot of
excursions so as you see we like to sit
around in forests and we also did that
in Germany a lot recently
this autumn in the last retreat and yeah
we also sometimes get into cities this
was in Stuttgart container city in
cities we like to sit on chairs and go
to the local urban garden and get some
samples there and yeah as I said before
it's about getting together and yeah
meeting interesting people and growing
the networks together so this map of
networks that I showed before it needs
to the people need to meet in real life
it's nice to collaborate online but it's
much nicer to really sit together as you
know here on the Congress it's the same
kind of thing only a few more people
so the retreats were usually about 15 to
30 people and focused on soil also mark
went to Finland for for quite a while to
do some projects there and together with
Maya they went to Indonesia this year I
had a three day workshop in Lithuania
where we found this wonderful soil
profile in a local park which where you
can see like the picture that mother
showed before the homo Slayer and then
the human waste layer and then the rocks
so they were quite creative
and in Flaminia maybe some of you know
pith camp I was there this summer yeah
but let's go to the second pillar the
workshops so it's about sharing
knowledge and and making science
accessible basically also through open
source instructions and just getting
people again together to get their hands
dirty and and work with soil and we also
again like to do excursions and be
outside but usually those workshops are
more in a urban setting because that's
where the participants are this was in
Paris it's it harder to find the soil
there and fablabs
sometimes like spaces hosted us to do
workshops there this was in lucerne at
the Fablab and this was in in berlin and
in that case we go out with all the
participants and we collect samples and
we just have to bring the dirt inside
basically yeah to continue to work with
it and we also did children workshop so
it's again open for everyone and even
old people sometimes join the workshops
and at the end of these workshops it's
usually a big mess maybe this is a bit
dark but it's a table full of stuff and
in this case this was in Stuttgart we
afterwards just declared it to be an
installation now so it was open for
another two weeks I think and people
could watch what the mess we were
leaving after I said after our workshops
and retreat so and third one is the open
hardware you are probably quite familiar
with this stuff again on soil research
so this is I'm not real hardware
soldiering kind of person but I actually
did assemble this soil respiration
chamber
it has been developed quite a lot
further if you're interested look at the
act Iria wiki it's well-documented
their stuff on github but everything is
there and it works really well and it
also works with the solar panel if
there's a lot of Sun maybe use a bigger
panel next time but it did work and yeah
so I am personally a biologist so I'm
actually more interested in the wetware
so what about openwetware maybe if you'd
like to discuss about that later or
outside in the tea tent or whatever I'm
very open to that now I hope I kind of
clarified a few questions on the project
itself and would like to give over the
word to Maya so hi everybody I'm Maya
not a biologist I'm not a geologist and
not by oh I'm coming from the arts and
I'm calling myself now affirming teesta
so what I do I learned it all myself so
I have this DIY approach I would like to
give you my view on soil through
fermentation which is a altered history
science as well a science which is
10,000 years old compared to academic
science which is 150 years old and I
want to talk about like how Homo sapiens
tries to open up disciplines as well to
involve the people who are dealing with
the soil because we're digging into the
soil and touching it to grow gardens and
there's this question is it enough to
grow your own garden so your own garden
at home and the city you shape a carton
or you have a farm and the question is
is it maybe it is so fermentation has
being knowledge or a cultural heritage
10,000 years or people started to
ferment something which is magic as well
like yeast itself has a Greek origin
word of machia and they did not know
what they do there because they couldn't
see it microbes and organisms but within
those ten thousand years we developed
something which is always regional
adapted to the climate adapted to the
soil as well and to the nature so
fermenting means you become aware of
your seasons in your country if your
seasons have seasons or not and you
become aware about what is growing where
and how and how it grows better and how
to preserve the food how to make food
more more tasty and less toxic so
there's maybe the link to the soil as
well because soil needs to feed us and
the question is how we're gonna feed us
within the next 50 150 and 200 years
well so what I wanted to say is that
maybe maybe can also say that we always
been biohackers in that way that we
always were dealing with microbes and
the organisms which I also like to call
the invisible helpers and through
fermentation science now has started to
have this approach to talk about the
hollow pie aunt or you can also say like
the microbiome most of the people know
about microbiome we carry each one
carries 2 kilograms of microorganisms
inside himself but there's also 2
surrounding which is around us which we
carry around us like a halo which we
also exchange when we talk to people and
which is always connected to the
environment as well so through breathing
through eating we
in continuous exchange with our
environment within science which is
mainly a male-dominated sector there has
been Lynn Margulis
and Lynn Margulis she came up with the
theory of the endogenous
Sirte symbiosis and the idea of like how
the boycott Excel maybe some of you
remember remember from biology
interesting biological classes so how so
he is see like the the micro organisms
are divided by archaea probe via the
acharya and the bacteria so the step
from the bacteria to the boy Caria lynn
margulis made up this theory that it was
made by one bacteria eating up the other
bacteria and then instead of that just
digesting it realizing hey we can also
live in a symbiosis lynn margulis she
marked like a change of concept in
biology of the history of evolution
itself so when you go to Charles Darwin
as well Charles Darwin he was marked by
the term the survival of the fittest and
Lynn Margulis his concept is like
contradicting this concept when the
survival of the fittest has been as well
emblematic for a slogan of capitalism
and hyper capitalism we could now say
that within the time of entropy seen we
could now maybe change back again to the
idea of the semiosis as well and what I
also wanted to say that Louie Pasteur we
pastor he marks also this time when we
started to vaccinate ourselves so his
the inventor of the vaccination as well
the inventor of fermentation so similar
G and he
I always say he was a promoter of how to
haunt the germs down
so through pasteurization there's this
start of phobia against microbes which
has now been marked in agriculture how
he tried to erase just everything in the
soil through fungicide has pesticides
herbicides and tried to break down this
diversity which is maybe for humans
invisible but it always been here the
forest as we had before as an example it
always was self-sustaining and living
for itself
so through bacteria what we do in our
workshops we try to make those microbes
visible as well and we try to teach
those beautiful take pictures to the to
bring them to the people as well because
we're still human so we have our senses
and the visual visual senses something
which is very strong like pictures talk
more than thousand words and so to show
to people that there is much more in a
drop of water and the soil makes them
also become aware of this invisible
force so now again we are in the
interest piscine and i would maybe say
let's just skip to Anthropocene and go
further I have one one interesting
aspect of the entropy scene its we can
use this word entropy scene or climate
change
Clemmie weren't but the what was before
the entropy scene was the Holocene and
there's the parallelity as well the
Holocene oh so it started 9,000 10,000
years before so with the settlement of
humans with humans becoming farmers as
well we just killed
and we just get agro-industry is the
biggest industry in the world and it
implies 1 billion people I just skip no
just skip them so here I just wanted to
show you want to show you now small
projects of people getting involved into
soil or microbes and our projects that
those are mainly and approaches projects
which have a different approach of how
to bring these things back to the people
and I don't want to say like the Homo
sapiens is like superior and thought ah
but I I noticed is that more and more
people are starting to distribute and
show this knowledge in form of our
pieces and practices as well so it's
like similarly similar like to
fermentation it started to become like a
movement as well like a global movement
farming urban farming urban gardens also
community gardens and committee form all
those projects we all get involved to
you know this was the circular soil
chromatography by Amenia Ascari and this
is a really nice technique which is
which is based on a technique of
photography sir invented 150 years ago
she uses silver nitrate and mixes it
together with soil probes which she
dilutes in water and this is the result
we have afterwards after the test and
what I think is the beauty in it here it
combines the art with the science as
well because for the interpretation of
those samples you have to use the
creativity creative potential of
analyzing and interpretation and this is
something which is still belongs to the
human not as much
and so it's quite a beautiful way how
pictures again the pictures can help to
activate human's creativity as well this
is a project I would like to introduce
you because it's done by a single person
in the city of Zurich this person
Maurice Maki he now becomes a lot of
rewards for this project but he was
doing this project flower-girl young
since 30 years secretly and just just
one person who was seeding seeding the
whole city every small green quarter and
square meter he found he would seed new
seeds and within those 30 years suddenly
the city of surrogate really stroked
about the diversity of plants and
flowers we have within the city and so
this shows for me this this is example
that it shows how we might or
intoxicated about all the weight and
heaviness of responsibility we have to
take care about against global warming
and stuff but how much just one person
can do with consistency and as well it's
time this is another project about ok
yeah so this is the last project I
wanted to show you it's from Sasha's
palette and she works with with
mycobacteria together which is just
recently scientists found out that this
bacteria lives in the soil and it has
healthy benefits that it can improve
your immune system and can make you
happy
that's a wonderful dishes now okay so we
like direction thank you very much
[Applause]
[Music]
thank you so much guys so we have time
now for some questions please queue up
by the microphones and we'll get to you
thank you so much
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there are some people microphone number
two please
yes first of all I would like to make a
comment and I think it's really
important also to stress that I first
station is not a very good tool for
carbon capture because what we're doing
is removing carbon from the genic from
the geo genic space to a biological
space and the biological space is
labelled highly level as you can see
with the forest fires so I think it's
really important to consider that but I
really nice to talk nevertheless and I
would like to talk to you about maybe
building a soil moisture sensor but
maybe later on there are several
versions of soil moisture sensors
documented as well the one funniest is
in the shape of a mole you can find it
on the wiki yeah but there are more
serious applications the mole just make
sound and blinking LEDs according to the
moisture but you can also plug it to a
how do we know okay great I'll have a
look at that thank you thank you
microphone number fee-free please maybe
to the question or you it was just a
comment that yeah if you want hard I
said no we can talk about it but there
are other people also having questions I
guess yeah may be very short no did I
understand the question correct you you
said reforestation is not a good choice
all right well it it is good choice we
should reforest definitely but we
shouldn't view it as a carbon capture as
a good carbon capture option because by
genic you know how to say fascia it's
very labile and what we're doing is when
we are burning carbon in fossil fuels
we're taking it from the soil or from
actually a geo genic source moving it to
a biological so storage would you
basically say is it's a fossil carbon
stock that we release into the
atmosphere
exactly by just capturing it via the
biosphere we should actually put it back
into the ground that's what you're
saying right yeah it's not possible
which is why afforestation is still a
very good option because they're not so
many other options but it sometimes in a
lot of newspaper articles it gives the
impression that oh we can fix this we
just need to plant more trees and that's
just that's just one part of it it's
also very real that trees are very
vulnerable to storms to climate change
to forest fires to land-use change all
these kinds of things and what a lot of
papers also don't consider is that they
work with geo data of course but they
don't sometimes consider who is already
living on that land and a lot of
recommendations for a first stations go
to the global south where people
actually use the land to live yeah one
comment to that a narrative is horrible
because the narrative just implies that
we can do business as usual and plant a
few billion trees yes and that's the
problem
but I think anyway regrowing forests
makes a lot of sense and also maybe food
forests that we can actually use but we
can discuss about that later I think
it's a too big topic our message would
be that it's not only same I mean same
plight planting tree but also create
more Houmas so we forgot to talk about
composting there's this one technique of
the pie release people easy ok you know
it yes there are Preta techniques where
you burn like those those things you can
put into compost so like citrus citrus
skin and dried bread and stuff and you
paralyze it and make a carbon out of it
and then you can put it back to this I
think there's always small ideas and
creative solutions which we can use and
but we're speaking about like
large-scale carbon sequestration here
and maybe this next question I mean it's
it's a super important topic I mean just
give your input I mean if you're
interested in just shout out your
questions I mean it should be a living
for discussion right so I think it's a
very very important point and we can
talk a lot about that probably we skip
it for later and just listen to the
other questions and I think the topic
will arise again and I have way more
things to say about that but just around
so we can do about it sure thanks a lot
microphone number three please yes thank
you for your talk I found your workshops
and they look very interesting then you
said a lot about it but I still have
some no clue but actually you did could
you get bit more into detail what
exactly you were exploring and the
workshops ordered retreats the workshops
you do and also the the field
explorations and stuff with all the
sensors yeah
so the workshops are mainly so what I
call a workshop is usually like a
three-hour format or something like that
sometimes it was longer but that's
around the shortest that I did and
that's more or less science
communication that is getting City
people to dig in the soil and doing
microscopy with it and seeing whoa it's
full of life
everything's going on in there
and falling within these retreats the
combinations of workshops we do is
always based on the participants so it's
changing every retreat is changing a lot
and we start with like brainstorming we
gather idea like people introduce
themselves and tell about what they have
to teach to the others and so it's this
idea of unlearning and do it together as
well so I think if you want to describe
it it's science communication yeah but
what kind of research did you do you
have this feud explorations with all the
sensors I still have no clue what you
were looking for actually so what I'm
interested in is the microbial life and
I will just by the next question is
asked put a few videos of microscopy I'm
trying to get a clue with low tech
equipment get a clue of the microbial
diversity in the soil and activity the
activity is relatively easy if you just
abstract it and say it's equivalent to
co2 so then you can use the soil
respiration chamber and and measure the
co2 and you get an ruff activity you
don't get like how much nitrogen is
fixed of course but we can work on that
in the future and with microscopy
actually low-tech microscopy you can get
an idea about the diversity I'm still
not sure how well it works nowadays if
you talk with soil scientists I did a
lot of talking with soil scientists they
all say add this is old-school we all do
made a genomic sequencing that's the
only thing how to do it now and might be
true might be also like a bit too much
for what we want to do like have a
simple tool for gardeners to assess the
soil quality but we might also work on
metagenomic sequencing it gets cheaper
and easier
accessible everyday basically so next
year maybe we talk about that it's about
breaking down science but also the
approach from the other side bringing
science low-tech approaches for people
and community also mainly community yeah
I mean we're at the brink of a
fundamental change how we do agriculture
how we do our economics and I think
where we're trying to be on the
forefront of that and try to deliver
knowledge try to like we're still in the
process of involvement so to look okay
what kind of solutions do we need what
kind of research do we need to do what
kind of workshops do we need to perform
it's matter like it's a very organic
process I would say yes and and those
were fun oh and so the idea of open
services everybody could make RIT yeah
great thanks a lot and we have a
question from the internet please are
you aware of any accessible
do-it-yourself methods to detect heavy
metal pollution in the soil should I
yeah I know of a project in Indonesia at
the life patch with some collaboration
partners who basically work with I don't
know which species but they grow
microorganisms that are sensitive to
heavy metals and by doing a dilution
basically and growing them you can see
you can see what amount of heavy metals
you have it's not specific like you can
say this is which kind of heavy metal is
in there but you can see that there's
something very toxic in there and
roughly how much if you standardize that
on
on some stock solutions where you know
the concentration and also a smaller tip
of the documents are most of the
projects are documented on the heck
teria wiki and there's also a forum
which is freely accessible it's a key
area forum for bacterial org and you can
just ask questions inside the forum
which then links to a great network of
artists DIY scientists and people who
are talking on this topic thanks a lot
microphone number two please hi great
thanks for your really interesting talk
I have two short questions so the first
one is what is the microorganism which
was mentioned in the last or what is the
exact name of the microorganism
mentioned in the last project which
makes our immune system active and makes
us happy yeah this is the micro
bacterium oh sorry let me go back to you
Miko cocktail that's a but I can I can
write it down from the or they call it
golden bacteria also have you heard of
it before but you can it's a known that
yet unfortunately that's that's the
thing that's why we become happy if you
learn but one one one thing to that I
think it's also a bit of
oversimplification science always tries
to get the one bacterium that does
something nice like that's the one you
need to be healthy and then you can buy
it and the pharmacy and eat it and then
you're healthy but I think that's not
how it works
yes but if you look at the human gut but
diversity is actually the key to
stability and therefore fee a stable
health psychological help yeah good
because health healthy food and
gardening compost they're composting
makes your hands dirty
okay thanks and my second question is
when is the why have you planned any
retreats for the upcoming year when and
where yes the idea to be in Slovenia
sometime in 2020 came up but there's no
fixed date or anything but there's a
newsletter and we rarely send it like
every two months or something but if we
send it then there's news in there like
you can you can organize one yourself or
you can invite people as well so just
get in touch yeah if you have a place
invite us take a hint
thank you microphone number three please
a supporter of the project already and I
would like to ask if whether they
already had the experiences in a context
with for example pollution from toxic
waste
I come from Napoli and there's a example
normal incidence of certain kinds of
cancers and a malformation so my I try
to develop project a sort of research
lab
with projects similar to this for
detection of low-cost distributed
detection of nutrients for example I
don't know if you have previous
experience with this I I heard you
probably this is a more general question
of the one or the previous one about
heavy metals so far I mean so far we
don't have phone techniques but I know
like the heavy metals how to measure
them is mostly by spectrometry and
that's even people here in the audience
who do they build or they give workshops
on DIY spectrum which we've built like
build your own spectrometer which is
actually it's not so difficult with
Arduinos and small qubits and and this
is the first approach about detecting
them and then for sure there must be
some mushrooms around which can help us
the mushrooms would actually be then
remediating the soil so to get all the
toxic stuff out that's what the
mushrooms do doesn't don't they yeah
depending on the mushroom depending on
the soil it's I wouldn't say it's an
easy approach excuse me
well I to be honest I don't know too
much
yeah the mushrooms are not enough he
just said if the mushrooms are not
enough to get the heavy metals out of
the ground yes I just saw some statistic
that the most use of fungicide is mainly
by fruit tree plant - so like all kinds
of apples pears and peaches certain
things and just like massively use of
fungicides and there are some people who
say like that on the country side you
have left you have less fungi stand
inside the city because we are using
fungus fungicides inside the city makes
sense
thank you and microphone number two
please yeah thanks a lot I wanted to ask
a practical question there is a small
forest in Canton burg that I wanted to
have for us three forests because it's
like it's a very sad forest it only has
this kefir and no in English just need
needle trees and so also the soil is
like only these needles and looks very
sad so I wanted to ask if it would be
maybe a good idea to get a small soil
samples from other places so that
mushrooms can grow there or what if you
have any tips there yeah in Germany
what's happening right now is the so
called bite in bow it's it's a
transformation of our forests back from
those coniferous trees or in that case
pine trees - yeah a broadleaf tree
forest or a mixed forest and this is
essentially the best measure you can
take
so by just changing the kind of
vegetation you have you don't have to
bring in any compost you don't know just
just leave nature do the work for you so
what you can do is I mean I don't know
the site I don't know how the stock
actually looks like but you can thin it
out and plant manually or if you have
broad leaf trees around your site they
would actually see it and germinate if
they have the right conditions but it's
totally up to the stocking and the kind
of trees we can have a discussion about
that later
this is actually my major this is what I
studied so you can I also live in I know
about those forests and I know that the
problem is that the soil of those yeah
Nido humours is very very acidic so
there's not much life in there but just
come to me after the discussion and I
will explain it to you what you need to
do thank you but as far as I understood
if you just do nothing it will transform
by itself because our climate is not
appropriate for those trees only the
mountain clan but it wants the
experience yeah sure you want to
accelerate story there was a huge storm
in 2008 in Switzerland which broke down
many many thousands of trees and big
square kilometer and by then it was a
catastrophe and now 12 years later they
found out that those trees which are
regrowing there by nature those are
mostly like purchase and trees that are
much better adapted to climate warmth as
well so that nature is reinstalling
itself then another another direction is
also that people start or scientists
they start to imply you know microbes
around seeds so they provide the seats
with natural resilient like resilient
self-defence as well so there's this
this is the whole idea of bio
virtualizer as well like how to bring
back the microbes into the soil and I
think for land which is debated and you
have no organic living anymore you can
as well help
so vermicompost as well that's the
nicest thing you do you just if you have
too much soil when you do produce soil
through where my compost you just throw
it out into the street yes
yeah she's bringing a lot of different
topics now if you want to get into
McCurry's a and why you have to bring in
sports sometimes we can also go into
that conversation I can teach you
probably something about that and yeah
the the storms that she was speaking
about and the vegetation that is arising
after that is called P
via the potential natural vegetation
that is actually adapted to the site and
if you if you leave a conventional it's
a plantation you can call it so if you
if you have a pine tree forest it's it's
basically a plantation of really young
same aged trees for wood production wood
pulp production or whatever so it's an
industrialized agricultural site you can
say so if you leave it it will die
sooner or later insects will come storms
will come and it it's just eradicating
all the plants that are not naturally
adapted to the site so you can just
leave it I don't do nothing and everyone
will complain oh my god the bark beetle
is coming and it just kills all the
trees but it's natural they're not
adapted so yeah next question great
thank you so much and microphone number
free please thank you so much for the
presentation and sharing this beautiful
collaboration project I come from an art
science background as well
so I'm familiar with the language
however from what I've seen with
international environment policies and
also our economic driven industries we
are mostly focusing on carbon emissions
and how to measure our impact on the
environment through that and minimizing
and our industrial impact based on this
without noticing that biodiversity and
soil health is more essential to planet
health and our overall sustainability
whatever we like to call it so I will my
question is more of I would like to ask
you to share your visions
for example science communication how
can we convey the idea to the majority
of the population who are under you
mentioned and their eccentric
perceptions so we are fundamentally
separating our human population from
nature and majority of the people would
still found and soil being dirt and
would like to everything to be
sterilized and cleaned in our human
perceptions the these are what's what I
am struggling in in my life because
personally I love nature I love like
swimming soils and fours and dust and
everything so I just would like to I
would like to ask you to share your
visions how we can share this love for
nature with others thank you some short
words so sharing the love spreading the
love is really nice that you say it like
that we also sometimes talk about social
humans building social demos and within
those retreats and it's I think the way
to go is to involve your direct
surrounding your family your friends and
so on and start talking with them about
these things and people who really never
get out of the city just take them out
of the city but I'm actually not that
optimistic that we we just spread this
love and then everything will change and
be fine I think there's a much more
fundamental problem deeply rooted in our
capitalist society and we need really a
fundamental system change and talking
about reducing emissions especially
talking about reducing emissions doesn't
help and
in reference to the soil what what I
usually use are just two very simple
numbers one is from the United Nations
which talks about the certifications of
erosion and it's something really insane
like 23 billion tons of soil that we
lose each year due to land mismanagement
praxis it's hard to imagine this number
and I've still didn't come up with a
good comparison but it's not that the
soil gets less good and that we lose
kumo or fertility no it's gone it's the
ground beneath our feet is gone it's
washed into the rivers into the oceans
that's the one thing with the rest that
is still here in our so-called developed
countries we like to build things on
them so in German we have a nice word
for that it's called flaking for us so
eating up the country and it describes
the conversion from agricultural land
and forests to building land and each
day in Germany at 61 hectares for that I
have a comparison so the big class hall
at the centre of this place here as to
Hector's so about every 47 minutes this
area is lost and this goes on day and
night day and night cities are growing
and growing and growing and growing
infrastructure is growing we build
logistics centres everywhere it's just
quite crazy and we need to embrace a
real ya D growth economy and D growth
political system whatsoever how it might
even look like - I mean 2019 has been a
good year for us at least that I think
the world of climate change is the the
word of 2019 so to talk if language is
the virus as well like this is
communication communication about
sharing ideas and
thoughts and concepts and with with this
phobia of dirt and microbes as well like
through fermentation again you can teach
the people like building up your
microbiome because babies are born
sterile is to let them play in dirt and
this is this dis basic knowledge like
you have the first three years to build
up your microbiome is slowly slowly
likes sedimenting in society as well so
this first experience as a child with
nature as well as most important thanks
yeah i think education knowledge is the
base to understand something and to
protect it i mean if you know about the
vulnerability of the systems that we're
living in and how much we depend on them
it's obvious that we shouldn't speak
about protection of nature as some yeah
I don't know detached entity that we are
not connected to but we should actually
speak about the conservation of human
living conditions or human preservation
human habitat preservation or something
probably we relate more to it then
because if you argue about topics like
that especially to people who are
totally into that capitalistic world
they're also they're always really
detached to it and our language is also
detaching us from those biospheres from
those ecosystems but we're not and
basically I think there's just a big
lack of knowledge and that's the reason
I'm working with you and because I I
believe in this alternative yeah
simplified yet or yeah alternative
simplified DIY hacking
environment because we can provide
provide the knowledge in my from my
perspective that is very important that
probably people wouldn't have access to
otherwise yeah by enjoying and sitting
inside the forest on the ground of
looking at whiteboards great thank you
so much I think the discussion has to
continue maybe outside we don't have
time for any more questions but thank
you so much my impression is that you
guys will hopefully be around to just
answer something out here maybe a bit
more elaborate but thank you so much and
please give them a great round of
applause
[Applause]
[Music]