Soil Regeneration with Volcanic Rock Dust

1. Sustainable Ecological Earth
Regeneration with Rockdust
© SEER
by Moira Thomson
ROCKDUST IS CATCHING THE IMAGINATION
of gardeners and farmers and its use is spreading
in the UK and beyond. Consumer demand is bringing Rockdust’s miracle effects into our gardens and
farms and into the environmental, farming and
food debates.
The SEER Centre Trust was established as a
Recognised Scottish Charity in 1997, following 13 years pioneering work by co-founders Cameron & Moira Thomson,
advocating Rockdust as The Solution to achieving Sustainable Ecological Earth Regeneration. The SEER Centre
is a working model for conversion to sustainable organic
“remineralised” agriculture by application of rockdusts and
recycled municipal composts for soil creation, maximum
soil fertility, minimal soil erosion and maximum protection
from climate-change weather extremes. The charity aims to
attract scientific research into the benefits of Rockdust.
Since 1997, on the foothills of the Grampian
mountains in Strathardle, Perthshire, the infertile, acidic,
upland grassland site, although exposed to severe weather at
1000 feet, has been transformed into an ecologically diverse
environment by the Thomson’s soil creation with rockdusts
and municipal composts. (This growing medium is called
“SEER Rocksoil”). Remarkable terraced gardens have
been created. Deep fertile soils produce convincing heavy
mineral-rich crops of tasty organic vegetables, fruit and
bright flowers.
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Star & Furrow Issue 109 Summer 2008
Cameron & Moira share how they achieved this
and why they are so enthusiastic about spreading the benefits of Rockdust.
Moira points to her daughter holding a huge
freshly cut calabrese head weighing 1.75 kg, saying, “this
kind of food contains all the nutrients, energy and natural forces
that nature intended our food should bestow to us - all food sold
in all markets and shops should be grown with rockdust!
Mineral Replacement Therapy (MRT) with Rockdust is natural fertility treatment. NPK chemical fertilisers,
which cause ecological imbalances and soil erosion, are not. If
we humans can manage to cover the Earth’s soils with various
chemicals several times a year to chemically grow our crops, we
can surely cover Earth’s soils with Rockdust!
We believe that using Rockdust on a global scale for
sustainable organic gardening, agriculture, forestry and composting can boost fertility and regenerate natural ecosystems which,
in turn, can nourish our increasing populations with nutrient-rich
organic foods for current and future generations”.
SUSTAINABLE SOILS
Soil is our most important and fragile resource. The fertile
soils in volcanic areas like Lanzorotti are productive and
high yielding due to the abundance of minerals and trace
elements in volcanic soils. BBC Horizon, “The Blue Nile”
in 2004, traced the Blue Nile to its origins in the highlands
of Ethiopia where the weathering of volcanic rock flow-

2. ing down the river is deposited on the Nile delta making it
famously highly fertile. The Blue Nile is called so because it
is coloured with blue-grey rockdust.
It is possible to create such mineral-rich soils in
your very own garden by spreading a dressing of SEER
Rockdust. Quarried from ancient 420 million year old Scottish volcanic rock, it is rich in the minerals and trace elements
that are deficient or missing from the majority of our soils
globally, having been used up by vegetation and eroded by
weather over the last 10,000 years since the last ice age ended.
Soil is the mineral-rich sponge that enables the Earth to sustain life and absorb carbon. Without fertility, this sponginess
disintegrates and erodes.
Glaciers crush rocks during the 90,000 year long ice
ages. Their advancing and retreating action releases enough
minerals and trace elements from the crushed rocks to grow
and sustain soils which life uses and depletes during the 10
- 12,000 year long interglacial periods between the ice ages.
The exact length of each interglacial is determined by the
amount of rock that was crushed by the glaciers and the
minerals and trace elements released. There have been 25 of
these Earth fertility cycles in 2.5 million years resulting in 25
fertile interglacials. The present interglacial is 10,800 years old.
We can simulate the beneficial effects of glaciers
when we spread Rockdust to “remineralise” our soils.
Earthworms digest rock particles in the soil and decomposing vegetation and deposit “remineralised” organic matter
in their wormcasts which contain nitrogen, carbon, minerals
and thousands of micro-organisms which ultimately become
organic, mineral-rich plant food. The more worms in your
soil, the better the rockdust will be worked into the soil.
Many of today’s medical conditions are attributed
to mineral and trace element deficiencies in our bodies and
our diets which result from eating food grown in mineraldeficient soil. We would need to eat five apples to get the
nutrition we would have got from one fifty years ago! We can
take mineral supplements to address some of these deficiencies in the food chain. For those of us who grow our own
food, spreading Rockdust puts minerals and trace elements
back into our soil, increasing microbial activity which makes
our soil grow gradually darker and the crops more vigorous, mineral-rich, flavoursome and heavier yielding. We can
really feed the world this way, promoting health and wellbeing, reducing disease and costs of disease management.
CREATING THE OASIS IN THE GLEN
Deep fertile soils and dense forests once covered this poor
Perthshire grazing land. The soils have been used up by vegetation and eroded, leaving the glacial moraine, dumped by
the last ice-age, covered by shallow soil with a PH of 4.5 - a
challenging site offering the perfect opportunity to demonstrate soil remineralisation and soil creation.
In April 1997, with our two shovels and a wheelbarrow, we built dry stone walls then started making the first
two terraces with 200 tons of recycled resources donated by
Dundee Council’s Discovery Compost and Tayside Contracts Collace quarry.
We filled the terraces with “SEER Rocksoil” a
strip at a time so we could start planting right away and keep
up with the growing season. We finished a few months later
in July 1997. By this time the five children were tucking into
the first-sown juicy crops. By 2000, the young remineralised
trees were beginning to grow profusely, providing shelter
and wildlife habitats around the perimeter.
ROCKDUST EXPERIMENTS
The large spruce trees that towered above the house shaded
and impoverished the soil and were cut down in 2001. We
spread 2 inches of “SEER Rockmix” (the SEER top dressing) on the surface of the poor soil and grew impressive
potatoes. The soil was transformed in one growing season.
We made the fourth terrace, the soil terrace, with
topsoil we’d saved from the car park construction. Plants
in this poor acidic soil got smaller, going blue and yellow, so
we added a 2 year dose of Rockdust on the southern half of
the terrace. The following year brassicas were gown in both
halves and were noticeably bigger and higher-yielding on the
rockdusted half. A year later, potatoes on the rockdusted half
showed an obvious effect yielding twice as many potatoes
and they were twice the size than those on the untreated
half. We’d quadrupled the yield! There were also bigger
plants and yields on the “soil only” half, directly next to
the rockdusted half – the worms had been taking rockdust
to the poor half and doing their own remineralising! This
proved that rockdust does boost fertility without the addition of compost.
We erected a Greenhouse in 2001. We made a path
using bricks and cement and deep rubble infill between the
two borders to ensure worms couldn’t travel from side to
side to mix the two treatments and skew the results. Compost and Rockdust (Rocksoil) fills the east side. Poor soil and
rockdust fills the west side. We grew equally giant organic
tomatoes in both sides! The rockdust achieved equal results
on both sides in one growing season.
In 2003 we ploughed some flat land that hasn’t
been ploughed in living memory. We spread 8 inches of
“Rocksoil” on top of the ploughed bed and planted potatoes. Seven weeks of drought followed but we didn’t irrigate
because we’ve observed that remineralised soil can retain
moisture in the particles of stone. We grew the biggest potatoes ever and they stored with perfect shelf-life, lasting until
the following June.
The first two terraces are now in their 12th growing season and are still producing bumper nutritious organic
crops, year after year! Everything is healthy, lacking nothing,
no pest damage or disease. We really don’t know when these
deep terraces will run out of minerals!
THE EARTH’S FERTILITY CYCLES
Cameron explains that Planet Earth’s natural soil history,
soil creation and soil demineralisation patterns during the
present interglacial are part of Earth’s natural fertility cycles
that cause climate changes and how our species responded
to these changes in the past or may respond to the present
climate change chaos.
“Soil erosion and climate change threaten the survival
of civilisation. The world’s weather becomes extreme and
unpredictable when Earth’s soils become severely demineralised.
Climate change is pre-glacial tension. We’re convinced that
spreading Rockdust on a global scale could enable Earth’s soils to
absorb sufficient amounts of excess atmospheric carbon to stabilise
global climate change!”
Star & Furrow Issue 109 Summer 2008
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3. © SEER
Mesocratic
Oligocratic
2,800 years
3,000 years
5,000 years
10,800 years
(Dr. Johannes Iversen, State Geologist, and
Svend Th. Andersen, Geological Survey of Denmark, 1960’s)
170 yrs
The Present Interglacial has four main phases.
These phases are approximate due to varying localised conditions around the globe.
Protocratic
Telocratic
Record cold temperatures, such as -9°C in Greece
in January ’04 with 1 foot of snow and the lemon crop
frosted, are becoming the norm. Record hot temperatures
and forest fires, torrential rainstorms, floods, giant hail,
mud/land-slides and soil erosion, are becoming the norm.
Increased frequency and size of hurricanes and earthquakes,
extreme climatic catastrophes are becoming the norm, globally, due to climate change.
Can we continue paying the cost of cleaning up,
rebuilding and “prevention” over and over again? Can we
actually solve any of the problems? There is one do-able
solution to the whole problem that lies beneath our feet in
the soil. To shape the future we need to understand the past.
These climatic catastrophes indicate that we are living during the final stages of the present interglacial. Twenty five
glaciations, in 2.5 million years, each lasting about 90,000
years and 25 interglacials, each lasting about 10,000 years,
are more than coincidence.”
HUMAN RESPONSE TO CLIMATE CHANGES
At the end of the Mesocratic phase there was a slight global
cooling. Our species response was to stop being nomadic; doDuring the Protocratic phase the Earth turned green. mesticate our animals; build villages and towns and introduce
Pioneer trees grew in the crushed rock and dropped leaves politicians and taxation.
which biodegraded to form soil.
At the end of the Oligocratic phase 170 years ago,
our species response was to apply lime to the acidic land; mine
During the Mesocratic phase Global
for ores; cut down forests to make charcoal for iron smeltaverage soil depth was 7.5 feet.
ing, emit more carbon into the atmosphere. This response,
Trees during this “post -glacial climatic optimum” phase
170 years ago, was the Industrial Revolution. The Telocratic
were up to 8 times bigger in bulk than any trees left on Earth phase lasts 170 years! Our species response, at the end of the
today. Deserts of sand and rock in the Tropics were minimal, Telocratic phase is the Technological Revolution!
as were the ice sheets. Atmospheric carbon was 270ppm (today it is 378ppm). The carbon that was once in the deep soil WARMING OR COOLING?
and giant trees has returned to the atmosphere, along with
Oceanographers are telling us “global warming” is melting
our fossil fuel emissions. Today soil depth is 4.5 – 7.5 inches. the edges of the ice caps and we may be in a stage of transition into global cooling because the melting freshwater ice
The main feature of the Oligocratric phase is
cools the warm ocean currents, such as the Gulf stream, that
soil demineralisation and soil acidification.
keep our British climate warm.
As the minerals in our soils were depleted, the soil chemistry
When the sun’s rays strike the Earth, there is more
and the type of tree cover changed. The Caledonian forest
heat impact in lower latitudes, the Tropics, than in higher
appeared 6,000 years ago in Scotland. Before that, during
latitudes. Also, the sun shines on lower latitudes all year long,
the Mesocratic phase, a mainly deciduous thick impenetra- but not on higher latitudes. Since the Industrial Revolution
ble forest covered Scotland. People lived on the coasts.
our species has been, and still is, “turning up the volume”
of the greenhouse effect - the Earth’s warming mechanism
The main feature of the final Telocratic phase,
- mainly in the lower latitudes. Because the lower latitudes
which lasts 170 ± 45 years, is soil erosion,
are hotter than normal, more water than normal evaporates
when torrential rainstorms wash whatever minerals are left and is transported to the higher latitudes. It passes over
in the soil into the rivers and seas, ending in an approximate the temperate zone middle latitudes in both hemispheres,
20 year transition into glaciation.
producing more cloud than normal (contributing to global
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Star & Furrow Issue 109 Summer 2008

4. CLIMATE CHANGE
Large surface area
EQUATOR
Small surface area
Large surface area
ALBEDO EFFECT
High reflectivity of the planet turning lighter in colour - The
Earth’s cooling mechanism. As we turn up the volume of the
greenhouse effect in the lower latitudes, the Earth automatically turns lighter in colour with deserts of sand, rock, cloud,
snow and ice, reflecting more and more heat back into space.
Sir George Simpson, a Scottish scientist, postulating on the possibility of glaciation in1939 said that in order
for glaciers to build up in the higher latitudes, a lot of water
would need to be transported to the higher latitudes.
The overheating of lower latitudes is the engine that
drives the water to the higher latitudes.
When our weather in the middle latitudes of the northern
hemisphere comes from the south, summer or winter, temperatures are warmer than normal. When our weather comes
from the north, summer or winter, it is colder than normal.
26.5°C is necessary for a hurricane to form. If
tropical oceans are hotter than normal, we have increasingly
more destructive hurricanes than normal.
Warmer than normal ocean currents, coming from
the overheating tropics are melting the edges of the ice sheets
at the higher latitudes. The fresh water ice melting into the
salt water oceans is closing down the warm Gulf Stream.
All of these extreme climatic catastrophes indicate
that we are fast approaching the end of the present interglacial. We can put this into reverse if we reduce the impact
from the greenhouse effect and the albedo effect simultaneously, by reducing levels of atmospheric carbon using several
possible methods such as remineralised soils absorbing
carbon, reducing carbon emissions, sequestering carbon into
oceans, mechanically recovering carbon (Prof. Wally Broker,
Ohio State University, USA). The most simple achievable
method is to remineralise the soil, whether window box,
garden, farm or continent. It’s so simple and achievable.
S U N ’ S R AY S
“dimming”); causing more rain, floods and mud/landslides
than normal. Any water not falling on the middle latitudes
falls at the higher latitudes as snow.
This evaporation and transportation of moisture
causes a weight-loss at the lower latitudes and a weight-gain
at the higher latitudes. This difference of pressure on the
Earth’s crust results in increased tectonic activity causing
more earthquakes and volcanoes.
SUN
CAN HUMAN INTERVENTION
STABILISE CLIMATE CHANGE?
Rockdust contains certain minerals which can combine with
atmospheric carbon to form carbonates in the soil and lock
them into the soil, improving the potential for soils to absorb
excess carbon from the atmosphere.
Dr. D Supkow PhD, has degrees in geology from
Rutgers University and the University of Maine and a PhD
in hydrology from the University of Arizona. In his paper
on the “control of CO2 build up and the greenhouse effect”
in “Remineralize The Earth”*, issue no. 7-8, 1995, Dr.
Supkow estimated that in order to keep atmospheric carbon
stable at today’s level, 0.8 - 3.2 tonnes of rockdust would
need to be applied to every acre on Earth, every year (apart
from Antarctica and Greenland). He says, “When rockdust is
applied to the land, the calcium and magnesium content combine
with atmospheric carbon, forming carbonates”.
By increasing the mineral availability in soils, along
with carbon absorbed from the atmosphere, it is possible to
recycle excess carbon and re-grow soil, simulating that 7.5
feet which covered the Earth during the Mesocratic phase,
thus reducing the impact from both greenhouse and albedo
effects.
The SEER Centre has demonstrated that 20
tonnes per acre of Rockdust can be applied every 10 years,
(5kg per square meter). We think this is an achievable, local,
sustainable solution.
The SEER Centre trading arm “Rockdust Ltd”
works in association with Angus Horticulture Ltd. to supply SEER Rockdust products to retail outlets throughout
the UK and beyond. www.seercentre.org.uk and www.
angushorticulture.co.uk ■
Star & Furrow Issue 109 Summer 2008
* “Remineralize The
Earth” magazine
and website followed
on from the work
of Americans, John
Hamaker and Don
Weaver, and their book
“The Survival of Civilization” that founded
the theory that climate
change precedes
an ice age and soil
remineralisation can
prevent one.This
possibility influenced
Cameron and Moira’s
aims in achieving nutritious self sufficiency
and sustainable Earth
management. www.
remineralize.org
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