Category: disaster mitigation

Newsletter (NL 2025-11) – Mine Restoration – Knowledge Resources – Global Voices

From Scarred Mines to Blueberry Fields: A Story of Restoration from South China. In Baisha Town, Yingde City, the scars of illegal rare earth mining once defined the landscape. Jagged rocks and barren soil stretched across Mendong Village’s Fourth Pond,…

Vedu and Nachu Thatha’s Vetiver Tale – A Green Gift to the World

Vedu and Nachu Thatha’s Vetiver Tale – A Green Gift to the World.   This downloadable  children’s book by Indian author Lakshminarasimhan Sridhar is very well written, engaging and understandable for young children, and is highly recommended. Here follows an AI…

Newsletter (NL 2025-09) 100 year old vetiver hedges! Slope Stabilization, Feedback from the Field and more

100 Year old Vetiver hedgerows still functioning Vonnie Roudette of St Vincent and the Grenadines – “the best project manager ever”.   Vonnie is one of a number of outstanding women who develop and execute Vetiver related programs. She is a…

Newsletter (NL 2025-07) Promoting the Vetiver System, Landscaping, Feedback, Learning from the past

PROMOTING THE VETIVER SYSTEM Getting people to change long used practices, whether they be users or advisor/designers/policy makers, can take many years. You can teach hundreds of people how to use vetiver grass technology, of those hundreds fewer will use...

Newsletter – Vetiver Secrets, Soil Health, Wastewater, Forage (NL 2025-01)

The Secrets of Vetiver. As research is carried out on various attributes and applications of vetiver we are coming to learn how the plant functions and what it can do. A recent Chinese study “Reshaping the microenvironment and bacterial community…

Newsletter – The Vetiver System in 2024 (NL 2024-12)

The Vetiver System in 2024 As we come to the end of 2024 – which marked about 40 years since John Greenfield and Dick Grimshaw began to explore the use of Vetiver grass as an alternative to structural soil and…

Slope Stabilization and Land Restoration (mining) in China

Feng Ziyuan who owns and manages the oldest vetiver service company in China (more than 20 years) has been a serious contributor to the advancement of the Vetiver System. He sets high standards resulting in above average VS applications, and…

Black Cotton Soils (Vertisols) and the Vetiver System

What follows is a reprint of a note by the late John Greenfield on conservation practices for black cotton soils (vertisols) – It should be an interest too many of you.   I was faced with the problems of managing…

Vetiver Grass Technology – Carbon Farming Management – Research – Global Outreach – Feedback (NL 2024-10)

CARBON FARMING FOR FARMERS – MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES “Soil organic matter is the elixir of life” . … Rattan Lal “A healthy soil should contain 2-4% Soil Organic Matter (SOM) half of which is Soil Organic Carbon.” The Potential of Regenerative…