Skip to 0 minutes and 6 seconds SPEAKER: We’re facing serious environmental challenges and the increasing impacts of a change in climate. GROW offers you the opportunity to join a global observatory in which those kinds of people will collaborate to observe and care for the environment. Two of the key challenges GROW focuses on are soil degradation and the impact of a changing climate, both impacted by unsustainable food growing methods. GROW is creating a community of growers, small scale farmers, scientists, and policymakers all working together to help address these challenges and learn from each other. This community of citizen scientists will help space science by providing vital ground data to validate the research undertaken by satellites.
Skip to 0 minutes and 47 seconds The shared vision is to support and build sustainable custodianship of the land and soil across Europe. Soil underpins life. And healthy soils are essential to healthy and productive ecosystems. Soil is vital to our future, but it is a threatened resource. There is an urgent need to adopt more sustainable agricultural practices. This data can also inform international policy decisions on land use, soil management, and climate change, as well as supporting growers in different countries to share, discover, and taste sustainable soil stewardship and growing practices. We invite you to take part in the GROW observatory through this MOOC, and if you can, through our other activities.
Skip to 1 minute and 30 seconds Whether you are a new or a more experienced grower or a citizen scientist, you can learn to gather and make sense of data for yourself. Together, we will have opportunities to take part in more complex observations and experiments in the coming weeks and months. We know that soil loss and degradation are serious issues across the world. What can we do about it? Some ways of growing food can help to reduce the rate of soil degradation and even reverser to rebuild healthy soils and robust ecosystems. Finding effective regenerative practices is critical to solving many local and global challenges.
Skip to 2 minutes and 7 seconds In this course, we explore some of these practices in more detail we look at the existing scientific knowledge and invite you to share your own experiences and learn from other growers around the world. Importantly, this course will also help you learn how to design and conduct rigorous investigations in your own growing spaces and communities so you can discover what works well for you and your local area. We invite you to continue collaborating with the GROW Observatory after the course. You will be able to continue with this collective experiment and participate in other GROW citizen science activities. Sign up for this GROW citizen science online course. And join a community of soil champions.
