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Programme 3: Transforming the Earth
Moira and Cameron Thomson started experimenting with different growing techniques in their garden outside Dundee in 1983, when they sought a self-sufficient lifestyle. Initially, nothing much grew - they blamed it on the poor soil. Then they heard a review on BBC Radio 4 of The Survival of Civilisation, a book by John Hamaker and Don Weaver, which inspired them to test the ideas of soil remineralisation. The theory is that many rich soils on earth are created during glaciation: as glaciers crush rocks they pass over and release minerals and trace elements into the soil. Human beings have always understood the richness of these glaciated soils, and known that it is lost over time. Growers now add all sorts of chemical fertilisers to soil to enrich it, but the Thomsons drew on Hamaker's knowledge of glaciation and decided to add rock dust to their soil. Early on they opened their garden to the public, to show their achievements, and made contact with scientists in universities and government agencies. As interest in their ideas grew, a local landowner offered them a larger site to work on, in Pitlochry, in the foothills of the Grampians. When the Thomsons moved to
Pitlochry in 1996, they found the soil was very poor -
infertile and poorly drained. Nothing had been grown in the
glen for almost 50 years. They challenged these conditions
by mixing volumes of rockdust and municipal compost
to create new soil. They called this 'SEERMIX' and spread it
on the ground in a deep raised bed system.
No one doubts the amazing results in terms of the size and quality of the produce, but more research is needed to test whether it is the result of the rock dust, the compost, the Thomsons' green fingers, or a combination of all three. However, there could be even more important implications. The Thomsons believe that remineralised soils take carbon out of the atmosphere more effectively than normal soils, which could have a major impact in reducing the quantities of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (released by industry, cars, forest fires, etc). Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas which affects climate change. So the key tests for the field trials will be whether applying rock dust and compost to Scottish soils has significant implications for soil improvement, crop yield, atmospheric carbon sequestration and nutritive cycling. A useful side-effect of SEER's work could be that, if it is shown that adding rock dust to municipal compost does dramatically improve compost quality as a fertiliser, it could add huge value to the composting industry. This could increase demand for a product using a form of waste (organic matter) which could soon be creating major problems for waste authorities as organic waste will soon not be allowed into landfill: organic waste rots down and produces methane, another greenhouse gas. So, creating a useful product from these wastes is of particular environmental value - especially as the Thomsons have found the combination of rock dust and compost means they can grow their produce organically as the mixture improves the soil as well as reducing pests and diseases, so there is much less need for chemical fertilisers and pesticides. 
It seems impossible that a discovery of such importance can start in a Dundee garden, but the Thomsons are on the brink of finding out whether their work really has all the benefits they think it has in terms of better produce which improves human health, taking more carbon from the atmosphere, holding it in the soil and therefore helping fight climate change, making positive use of waste (including stockpiled rock dust), reducing the use of chemical pesticides and fertilisers, and improving poor soils in some areas of Scotland with few other economic opportunities. If it is proved to work in just some of these areas, it will be of enormous significance for all of us. Sustainable Ecological
Earth Regeneration (SEER) Centre
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Scotland's
leading supplier of plant nutrients to the
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Cabbages the size of footballs and onions that fill the palm
of your hand are now being grown in the barren soil and
harsh climate of a Scottish glen where nothing has been
grown for human consumption for the past 50 years. Moira and
Cameron Thomson put their success at growing such healthy
vegetables down to rock dust - powered rock from the local
quarry. 
They also created separate terraces containing poor soil
only, poor soil with rock dust, and compost only - for
comparison visually and scientifically. Now, their six acres
of organic gardens and smallholding are producing
astonishing yields of fruit and vegetables: enormous
cabbages, onions and gooseberries and other produce of high
nutritional quality (if soils are high in minerals so is the
produce grown in them). In 1997, they set up the Sustainable
Ecological Earth Regeneration (SEER) Centre as a 
