I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
The top inch of soil – that’s what Christopher Schueler wants to talk about.
I’m on the phone. Don’t know much about Schueler. But I’m about to learn. Documentary filmmaker, world traveler, winner of 17 Emmys, you might want to add evangelist to the list of Schueler’s descriptors.
Schueler, an Albuquerque resident, heads up Christopher Productions and is quite persuasive when you get him going on a topic he’s interested in.
And topsoil is one of those topics and how churning it up, working with it, can help in the fight against global warming.
It’s the theme of his documentary, The First Millimeter: Healing the Earth, which premieres tonight at 8 p.m. on KNME-TV.
“Basically it’s so simple. It is about changing the top soil,” Schueler says. “It’s healing the earth.”
The idea is to churn up the topsoil by allowing herds of animals to graze, urinate and defecate on the land. The churning up, as well as natural fertilizer, will spur the grasses to grow. And those grasslands will “pull carbon out of the atmosphere. Carbon is a fertilizer. The problem is that there is too much in the air,” Schueler says. “Three hundred years ago the grasslands in America … were chest high. The buffaloes would come in a herd and come in and chew off the top part of the grasses. They would urinate, (drop) dung.”
You can check out the idea at holisticmanagement.org.
Schueler came up with the idea for the documentary two years ago. His team then researched the idea for a year. Then they traveled to Zimbabwe, Australia and a farm in the Sonoran desert in Mexico to shoot the film.
Schueler gets even more excited than usual about the first time he drove onto the desert-locked ranch in Mexico.
“You think you are driving into an oasis,” Schueler says. “I asked him how do you irrigate it? I don’t irrigate, he says. His neighbor’s land is desert. He is using grazing techniques. It’s just mind-blowing what the difference is.”
Schueler’s documentary may premiere here in New Mexico, but PBS stations across the nation will start airing it in June, Schueler says.
Tonight’s New Mexico premiere has to do with Schueler and his team hailing from New Mexico.
Plus, there are other New Mexico connections. “The score was written by New Mexicans. It was performed by New Mexicans. Kids who sang it are from New Mexico,” Schueler says.
