Dr. David Johnson, Soil4Climate Presentation, Aug 8 2022
About Dr. David Johnson
Dr. David Johnson is a molecular biologist at New Mexico State University, and has collaborated with Peter Byck at Arizona State University, Richard Teague at Texas A&M Agrilife Center, and the United State’s Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. His work explores paths to improve food security, reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide, and increase productivity and profitability through the development of beneficial microbial communities in farm and rangeland soils. Dr. Johnson is a co-inventor with his science collaborator and wife, Hui-Chun Su Johnson, of the Johnson-Su Composting Bioreactor. The invention allows for more biologically enhanced compost at much less the cost and energy requirement of conventional methods. By providing a non-disruptive aeration system, fungal communities can thrive resulting in higher soil fertility and crop yields once applied. Additionally, Dr. Johnson is lead author on a breakthrough paper in PeerJ scientific journal, titled “Adaptive multi-paddock grazing management’s influence on soil food web community structure for: increasing pasture forage production, soil organic carbon, and reducing soil respiration rates in southeastern USA ranches.” This paper finds that Adaptive Multi-Paddock (AMP) grazing - a common academic term for Holistic Planned Grazing - out performed conventional grazing systems in numerous important measures. These included standing crop biomass, pasture photosynthetic capacity, fungal to bacterial ratio, soil carbon accrual, and CO2 respiration reduction. Regarding the latter two measures, Dr. Johnson’s research shows if AMP grazing were applied on grasslands and savannas globally, the net yearly atmospheric CO2 load would be reduced by about 6.6 billion tons, or 18% of the total.