Bentonite: Infrastructure's Worst Enemy, Agriculture's Best Friend

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]So on one hand, we have civil engineers spending billions trying to neutralize bentonite. And then on the other hand, we have agricultural scientists that are actively utilizing it to build climate resilience. The very property that causes foundations [music] to fail, the ability to relentlessly hoard and trap water, makes bentonite an invaluable soil amendment in degraded or sandy agricultural lands. So, drought severely degrades soil quality because it halts biological functions. The soil fertility relies on enzymes for [music] nutrient cycling, and the drought halts this process. And then bentonite, due to its gel-like structure, retains micro-reservoirs of water that protects soil organisms and directly increases the enzyme production and activity even when surface water is critically low.