Soil Carbon May Come from the Tractor Exhaust

A Canadian inventor may have found a very useful tool that can inject tractor exhaust gases into the soil and help build soil carbon and stimulate soil microbes.

Yes.......there are many snake oil salesmen around, but this does sound possible. It fits well with some recent agronomic evidence that if small doses of nitrogen are applied to agronomic systems they may act first on microbial populations that are able to then grow and act on soil minerals and organic systems that have stored nutrients, to help release N and P in the soil in a form that can be taken up by plants, rather than directly on the plants themsleves.

Yes.......it is still relatively early days, but there are some serious scientists giving it a tick already.

Read about it yourself............and think.
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When the smoke from a tractor exhaust goes up, that’s pollution. But get those emissions down into the soil and they become fertiliser, as Canadian farmer, Gary Lewis, is demonstrating.

Mr Lewis has spent the best part of a decade developing and refining a system that pipes tractor exhaust emissions through a condenser and into the pneumatic system of air seeders, which then injects the carbon and nitrogen-rich emissions into the ground with the seed.

What is generally considered as pollution is in fact prime soil food, Mr Lewis said, and tractor exhaust has allowed him and other farmers working with his technology to grow excellent crops without using conventional fertilisers. The exhaust gases are believed to stimulate microbial activity and root growth, allowing the plants to more efficiently extract nutrient and moisture from the soil.

The United Nations has shown an interest in the system, which might not only reduce fertiliser dependency but cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr Lewis, an Alberta rancher and former auto mechanic who specialises in growing timothy hay for export, claims not to have used fertiliser on his 250-hectare irrigation farm for at least six years, instead fertilising it with his “BioAgtive” technology. Mr Lewis said he had seen no loss of production, his soils had moved from pH 8.0 (the same as the irrigation water) to a pH of about 7.0, and soil organic matter levels were now at about 10 per cent.

In testimonials quoted on the BioAgtive website, former Agriculture Canada scientists turned consultants, Dr Jill Clapperton and Dr Loraine Bailey, agree that something positive is happening in BioAgtive treated soils. “The obvious conclusion is that the exhaust had a positive effect on crop growth, yield and quality, and may have positively enhanced soil nutrients and nutrient chemistry,” Dr Bailey writes.

Meanwhile, Dr Clapperton is working on a scientific paper outlining how the technology works.

Understanding why BioAgtive is not just “blowing smoke”, as Mr Lewis feels many scientists think he’s doing, requires a different perspective on exhaust emissions.

Surprisingly, a breakdown of the content of diesel exhaust looks like a partial Christmas shopping list for plants. A Volkswagen analysis of light-duty diesel engine exhaust published in a World Health Organisation-sponsored report gave an analysis by weight of 75 per cent nitrogen, 15pc oxygen, seven per cent carbon dioxide and 2.6pc water vapour. Several other substances existed in quantities of less than 0.1pc.

Mr Lewis calculates a zero-till rig will put 1100 kilograms of air through the tractor engine to work a hectare.

Dr Bailey writes that the exhaust treatment “resulted in significant release of soil N and/or stimulated the crops to take up soil N”. She said there were also small increases in the uptake of phosphorus, potassium and sulphur and slight shifts in the amount of some micro-nutrients taken up by the crops.
If it proves viable, BioAgtive will also be a tool for farmers wanting to reduce their profile under emissions trading.

The system relies on attraction between negatively-charged ions in the gases and the soil’s positively charged alkaline component to hold the gases in the soil, as well as sealing it in.

Some Canadian farmers are now growing their own biofuel crops using BioAgtive technology, Mr Lewis said About 150 farmers around the world, including in Australia and recently China, had bought into the concept.

While the system doesn’t come cheap, at about $C40,000, Mr Lewis points to what he says is the potential to save hundreds of thousands of dollars in fertiliser in a year.

Gary Lewis is booked to talk at the Carbon Farming Conference and Expo at Orange, later this year on November 4-5.

[ partially sourced Qld Country Life]

Milk Company Manager in Court

While now many months after the events in late 2008, a recent short newspaper article indicated that the woman who was the Managing Director of Sanlu - the major milk company involved in the problems - has been in court.

Information available so far indicates she knew of the problem several months before advice went to the Chinese government.

There is potential for her to be executed if found guilty.

That will not bring back the dead children, however.

Glomalin - Not Heard of it Then Take Note - THE Soil Carbon Fixer

A soil constituent known as glomalin provides a secure vault for the world's soil carbon. That’s according to Kristine Nichols, a microbiologist at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Northern Great Plains Research Laboratory in North Dakota, USA.

Glomalin is a sticky substance secreted by threadlike fungal structures called hyphae that funnel nutrients and water to plant roots. Glomalin acts like little globs of chewing gum on strings or strands of plant roots and the fungal hyphae. Into this sticky “string bag” fall the sand, silt and clay particles that make up soil, along with plant debris and other carbon-containing organic matter. The sand, silt and clay stick to the glomalin, starting aggregate formation, a major step in soil creation.

On the surface of soil aggregates, glomalin forms a lattice-like waxy coating to keep water from flowing rapidly into the aggregate and washing away everything, including the carbon. As the builder of the formation “bag” for soil, glomalin is vital globally to soil building, productivity and sustainability, as well as to carbon storage.
Nichols uses glomalin measurements to gauge which farming or rangeland practices work best for storing carbon. Since glomalin levels can reflect how much carbon each practice is storing, they could be used in conjunction with carbon credit trading programs.

In studies on cropland, Nichols has found that both tilling and leaving land idle--as is common in arid regions--lower glomalin levels by destroying living hyphal fungal networks. The networks need live roots and do better in undisturbed soil.

When glomalin binds with iron or other heavy metals, it can keep carbon from decomposing for up to 100 years.
Even without heavy metals, glomalin stores carbon in the inner recesses of soil particles where only slow-acting microbes live.

This carbon in organic matter is also saved, like a slow-release fertilizer, for later use by plants and hyphae.

Glomalin is one of the factors that help build soil carbon stores. Othes include biochar or agrichar, another form of macro carbon materials, said to be the underlying factor aiding high productivity of terra preta soils in Brazil.

Perennial Pastures in Australia Shown to Sequester Carbon

The potential role for carbon sequestration in perennial pasture plants has received a boost with the release of some important research data that has put some quantified information into the public arena. The data is broadly supported by other information beginning to emerge from other parts of Australia.

Does this begin to really show that deep rooted perennial grass pastures can be effective in raising soil carbon levels? Is there a role for other grasses eg the very deep rooted Vetiver Grass used in mining reclamation for example. It does not address the issue of burning but there is some data about grazing.

Read the material below -----

Drought-tolerant perennial pastures could make a big dent in Australia's greenhouse emissions by helping soils to soak up carbon, says one researcher. But not everyone is convinced this approach really locks away as much carbon in the soil as claimed.

Tim Wiley, a pastures agronomist from Western Australia's Department of Agriculture and Food, says early findings from a trial of perennial pastures are "exciting". "They appear to have an exceptional ability to build up carbon in the soil," he says of the naturally drought-tolerant pastures. "If this preliminary data is right and you start extrapolating it over crop and pasture land in Australia, we could make a very big dent on Australia's emissions."

Soil carbon has decreased to between a half and a third its original levels since European agriculture was introduced. Today, 16% of Australia's annual greenhouse gases come from agriculture.

Wiley says trials of deep-rooted perennial sub-tropical grasses, such as Rhodes grass, on poor sandy soils in Western Australia show they can sequester much more carbon than traditional annual pastures.
He says results from a trial, which ran for more than three years on a farm in Lancelin, show Rhodes grass can capture and sequester nearly 7 tonnes per hectare of CO2 equivalents per year more than traditional pasture. CO2 equivalents are the units the Kyoto Protocol uses to measure greenhouse gases. The methane produced from the extra animals grazing on the perennial pastures only reduces this sequestration bonus by 10-20%, says Wiley.

Wiley says if these early findings are confirmed and the perennial pastures are grown on all suitable farmland in Western Australia, they could offset the state's entire annual greenhouse emissions.
He says the results are supported by data from farmers elsewhere in the area and trials across the country in Queensland. This suggests the perennial pastures could have a similar effect in areas with very different rainfall and soils.

'Doesn't add up'

Dr Jeffrey Baldock, an expert in soil carbon sequestration from CSIRO Land and Water in Adelaide, agrees perennial pasture holds the best potential for increasing soil carbon and no one has ever tried to quantify its impact. But Baldock thinks the level of sequestration that Wiley reports doesn't add up. He says an increase of 7 tonnes of CO2 equivalents sequestered per hectare per year would require a massive increase in plant growth, measured as the amount of dried plant material. "For [Wiley's] carbon numbers to be correct he would have to be producing about 8 tonnes of extra dried Rhodes grass compared to the annual pasture," he says. "I'm not going to say it's impossible but it's a big ask."

Mycorrhiza

Wiley says he has yet to complete a full measurement of dried plant material. But he says data gathered so far suggests the increase in dried material is not enough to explain the increase in carbon. He says the conventional assumptions that Baldock uses about how much carbon can be sequestered from plants into the soil could be wrong. He suspects the deep-rooted perennials are supporting a healthy crop of mycorrhiza, fungi living symbiotically on plant roots. Wiley says there is evidence that mycorrhiza are more effective than other soil microbes at producing humus and other stable carbon compounds in the soil, which Baldock disputes. But Baldock says more research of the kind that Wiley is involved in should be carried out.

Carbon trading

Wiley says he would not normally publicise such preliminary research but for discussions on whether to include soil carbon in Australia's greenhouse emissions trading scheme. He says soil carbon is already being traded in some parts of the world and while there are many uncertainties around how to measure soil carbon, findings such as his call for it to be included in a trading system.

Meanwhile, Baldock questions the economics of soil carbon trading, arguing that soil carbon should be increased simply because of the benefits it can bring productivity. "It increases water holding capacity, soil nutrition, provides carbon substrates for the soil microbial population to live on and enhances soil structural stability," he says.

[partially sourced from the ABC website]
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All of the above about what carbon in the soil does is true. But we still need to get it there, and keep it there. For horticulture, the role of annual green manure crops is important, as a sensible means of building soil carbon and which has a direct and fairly immediate benefit to following horticulture crops. Can we both build and then keep adding to the soil carbon stores in other ways - with applied compost for example.

Both of these concepts are definitely NOT new. There is recent research data that indicates organic production can add to the soil carbon store. But that is really in most part, about the use of organic amendments, not necessarily the other factors in organic production.

legumes can be used as a green manure crop

Recycling organic waste, sequestering carbon, green manure crops, maintaining soil cover..........does one get a sense of deja vu? After all these were considered wise, prudent and profitable soil management considerations for most of the history of agriculture, especially since the Middle Ages, and most certainly taught in most agricultural science university courses world wide in the 19th and 20th centuries!

incorporating green manure crops on a large farm

Some more reading:

http://images.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://www.vegedge.umn.edu/MNFruit%26VegNews/Vol4/601usda_clip_image006.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.vegedge.umn.edu/MNFruit%26VegNews/Vol4/608gm.htm&h=260&w=350&sz=25&hl=en&start=3&tbnid=sw520Ot7mca2YM:&tbnh=89&tbnw=120&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dgreen%2Bmanure%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG

http://www.echotech.org/mambo/images/DocMan/GreenMan.pdf