Can Soil Microbes Slow Climate Change?

One scientist has tantalizing results, but others are not convinced.

This article was in Scientific American online but is worthy of being more widely dispersed into the wider agricultural and soil science community.  Worth a read!

By John J. Berger on March 26, 2019

Can Soil Microbes Slow Climate Change?

With global carbon emissions hitting an all-time high in 2018, the world is on a trajectory that climate experts believe will lead to catastrophic warming by 2100 or before. Some of those experts say that to combat the threat, it is now imperative for society to use carbon farming techniques that extract carbon dioxide from the air and store it in soils. Because so much exposed soil across the planet is used for farming, the critical question is whether scientists can find ways to store more carbon while also increasing agricultural yields.

David Johnson of New Mexico State University thinks they can. The recipe, he says, is to tip the soil’s fungal-to-bacterial ratio strongly toward the fungi. He has shown how that can be done. Yet it is not clear if techniques can be scaled up economically on large commercial farms everywhere.

Johnson, a trim 67-year-old microbiologist who is as comfortable using the latest metagenomics technology as he is shovelling cow manure into a composter, thinks society can only maximize carbon storage, increase soil’s water-holding capacity and grow plentiful crops if it restores the soil microbiome. “We currently have very degraded soils physically, chemically, but mostly biologically,” he says. “Microbes restore this balance.”

Johnson conducts precise soil-biology experiments into how to increase the capacity of agricultural systems to absorb carbon from the atmosphere. In a recently completed four-and-a-half-year field trial, Johnson planted fast-growing cover crops and applied a microbe-rich solution derived from a vermiculture (worm) compost produced in a low-tech composter of his own design. The bacteria, fungi and protozoa fed a soil food web of nematodes, microarthropods and other beneficial organisms.

Through photosynthesis, the cover crops pulled CO2 from the air, sank roots deep into the earth, and towered over the land. The results were unusual—and highly controversial. Johnson reported a net annual increase of almost 11 metric tons of soil carbon per hectare on his cropland. That’s equivalent to removing about 16 metric tons of carbon dioxide per acre from the atmosphere annually—roughly 10 times the increase that other scientists have reported in many different soils and climates.

Johnson ascribes these improvements, along with large increases in crop yields, to improved soil health stemming from the application of the microbes from his vermiculture, leading to an increase in the soil’s fungal-to-bacterial ratio.

Professor Rattan Lal of Ohio State University, widely regarded as a leading authority on soil carbon sequestration, says he was “intrigued” by Johnson’s outcome. “I want to understand why he’s getting such exceptional results.” Lal thinks that further, larger-scale trials are needed to validate Johnson’s work, of course.

Johnson is also conducting meticulous laboratory studies. They focus on the correlations among fungal-to-bacterial ratios and soil health, fertility and crop productivity. He reports finding increases in fungal-to-bacterial ratio, plus large increases in soil carbon and other nutrients as a result of his management practices.

In all this work, Johnson maintains that as the ratio of fungi to bacteria increases, the soil biome becomes more efficient in utilizing carbon and other nutrients and that the soil therefore releases less CO2 to the atmosphere. The jury is still out, however. Although peer-reviewed soil science literature contains some confirmation, other findings in submerged, forested and subarctic soils—admittedly different circumstances—failed to confirm the relation.

Keith Paustian, a professor of soil and crop sciences at Colorado State University, says he has seen some “quite high rates of carbon accrual” in degraded croplands that were converted to productive perennial grass systems. But he has not seen strong evidence that the same outcome can be produced by adding microbes.

EXTRAORDINARY CLAIMS

Johnson asserts that if his approach were used across agriculture internationally, the entire world’s carbon output from 2016 could be stored on just 22 percent of the globe’s arable land. He says that would provide net benefits of $500 to $600 per acre rather than net costs, if credits are provided for carbon capture and related benefits are counted, such as reduced irrigation and increased soil fertility.

To arrive at his global carbon-capture numbers, Johnson projected results from cropland plots of three to 75 acres of various soil types in five states. That is still a fairly limited sample. Henry Janzen, a research scientist at Lethbridge Research and Development Center in Alberta and a professor at the University of Manitoba, cautions that such a projection is risky. “Every ecosystem is unique,” he says. “A practice that elicits soil carbon gain at one site may not be effective at another. And always, the rate of carbon gain will depend on a host of interactive factors, including soil properties, previous management practices, climatic conditions and the vagaries of human whims.”

Janzen also points out that soils do not absorb carbon indefinitely. After some years or decades, they inevitably approach a new steady state. For that reason, he says, soil carbon sequestration is rarely seen as a long-term solution to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.

Johnson acknowledges those factors but says managing soil to improve the health of its microbial life can provide strong carbon gains before the soil’s capacity levels off. He is in the process of scaling up his experiments to try to replicate his results on even larger plots in different geographies with a variety of cover and commodity crops, “to assess the impact for the rest of the world.”

A NEW PARADIGM?

Johnson’s work is based on a somewhat different paradigm from that of most conventional soil scientists. They often seek to boost agricultural productivity in traditional ways by adding fertilizer and using pesticides and herbicides as needed. This approach is anathema to Johnson. He decries almost every conventional farming practice—ploughing, bare fallowing, and the application of herbicides, insecticides and fungicides. All these, he says, “assault soil microbiota.” He claims that glyphosate (sold in commercial products such as Roundup) will kill Aspergillus fungal species in soil. Aspergillus is often regarded as a marker of fungal presence and is important in carbon and nitrogen cycling.

As for fertilizer, Johnson believes he has demonstrated that microbially inoculated soil enriched with tilled cover crops naturally accumulates more than enough nitrogen for vigorous plant growth. (Nitrogen is the limiting nutrient in most agricultural situations.) In one of his plots where he reports having increased net primary productivity five times, the soil accumulated 770 pounds of nitrogen per acre per year.

Much of this fixation is done by free-living nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Because a normal crop only requires about 180 pounds of nitrogen per acre, Johnson says it would be unnecessary to add artificial fertilizer to a system like this.

As with all of Johnson’s work to date, this result has appeared only in the form of reports and other “grey literature.” Harold van Es, professor of soil and water management at Cornell University’s School of Integrative Plant Science, is one of Johnson’s severest critics.

“In science, we strongly believe that research should be subjected to peer evaluation,” van Es says. “His ideas should not be at all presented as scientific facts.”

The fungal-to-bacterial ratio is indeed important, van Es says. “But there are many ways to increase that ratio,” not just Johnson’s approach. “Reducing tillage has similar effects and this has been much more widely documented.”

Although Johnson has irked some soil scientists and even aroused some ire, as climate change intensifies in speed and fury, many scientists believe it is important to leave no stone unturned in the search for ways to limit carbon emissions quickly. Perhaps the soil’s microbiome can be a powerful tool.

Rights & Permissions

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

John J. Berger

John J. Berger is an environmental science and policy specialist who has written numerous articles and books about the environment and climate change. He is the author of Climate Peril, The Intelligent Reader’s Guide to the Climate Crisis.

Recent Articles

Crisis in the Cryosphere, Part 2

Crisis in the Cryosphere, Part 1

Published online here on Blogger with acknowledgments to the author and Scientific American online

More Carbon in Soil - Better Soil and Better Environment

Special Report: Food for Tomorrow

A Boon for Soil, and for the Environment

By BETH GARDINER MAY 17, 2016

Photo

At a farm in Peru, charcoal from bamboo burned in special ovens is used to fertilize the soil. Carbon farming is seen as a way of replenishing depleted farmland and helping reduce damage to the environment. Credit Enrique Castro-Mendivil/Reuters

LONDON — When Gabe Brown and his wife bought their farm near Bismarck, North Dakota, from her parents in 1991, testing found the soil badly depleted, its carbon down to just a quarter of levels once considered natural in the area.

Today the Brown farm and ranch is home to a diverse and thriving mix of plants and animals. And carbon, the building block of the rich humus that gives soil its density and nutrients, has more than tripled. That is a boon not just for the farm’s productivity and its bottom line, but also for the global climate.

Agriculture is often cast as an environmental villain, its pesticides tainting water, its hunger for land driving deforestation. Worldwide, it is responsible for nearly a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions.

Now, though, a growing number of experts, environmentalists and farmers themselves see their fields as a powerful weapon in the fight to slow climate change, their very soil a potentially vast repository for the carbon that is warming the atmosphere. Critically for an industry that must produce an ever-larger bounty to feed a growing global population, restoring lost carbon to the soil also increases its ability to support crops and withstand drought.

“Everyone talks about sustainable,” Mr. Brown said. “Why do we want to sustain a degraded resource? We need to be regenerative, we need to take that carbon out of the atmosphere and put it back into the cycle, where it belongs.”

Since people began farming, the world’s cultivated soils have lost 50 percent to 70 percent of their natural carbon, said Rattan Lal, a professor of soil science at the Ohio State University. That number is even higher in parts of south Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean, he added.

Globally, those depleted soils could reabsorb 80 billion to 100 billion metric tons of carbon, reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide by 38 to 50 parts per million, Mr. Lal said. That does not include the carbon that could be simultaneously sequestered into vegetation, but the numbers are significant on their own, equaling up to 40 percent of the increase in concentrations since pre-industrial times. Last year, atmospheric carbon dioxide for the first time hit a monthly average of 400 parts per million, a symbolic threshold but one that many experts say could indicate that warming will soon spiral beyond control.

When carbon escapes from soil, it combines with oxygen to form carbon dioxide. Sometimes the loss is gradual, the result of plowing that leaves upturned layers of earth exposed to the elements, or of failure to replant or cover fields after harvest.

Sometimes it happens more suddenly. The thick prairie sod of America’s Great Plains was a rich carbon store until settlers tore it up for farms, leaving hundreds of millions of tons of topsoil to be blown away in the Dust Bowl years. The destruction of millions of acres of carbon-rich Indonesian peatlands for palm oil plantations is helping to drive climate change today.

Low carbon levels leave the ground nutrient-poor, requiring ever-greater amounts of fertilizer to support crops. They also make for thin soil that is vulnerable to erosion and less able to retain water, so yields suffer quickly in times of drought.

To bring levels back up, a set of techniques known as carbon farming, or regenerative farming, encourage and complement the process by which plants draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, break it down and sequester carbon into soil. They include refraining from tilling, or turning, the soil; mixing crops together rather than growing large fields of just one type; planting trees and shrubs near or among crops; and leaving stalks and other cuttings on fields to decay.

Mr. Brown keeps his fields planted for as much of the year as possible to minimize nutrient loss. When he mixes clover and oats in the same field, the clover fixes nitrogen into the soil. After the oats are harvested, livestock graze the clover and leave their manure behind.

Such strategies have allowed him to stop using synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, reducing costs. And the rich soil not only yields higher volumes, but the crops are more nutritionally dense than those grown on depleted land, he says.

“Economically, it’s much, much, much more profitable,” he said.

Mr. Brown’s approach is very different from the techniques of industrial-scale farming that have taken hold in the United States and other wealthy countries, where single crops stretch over many acres, and fertilizers and pesticides are used heavily.

Things are worse in poorer nations, where farmers’ desperation often means they are unable to care for the soil, Mr. Lal said. He recalled seeing a Mexican sharecropper carting corn straw away from the fields to sell: “I said, ‘Why don’t you leave it on the land? The land will be better next year.’ And he said, ‘This land will not be mine next year, and I need money now.”’

There is some momentum behind a shift. The French government, which helped broker last year’s landmark Paris Agreement on climate change, is pushing an effort to increase soil carbon stocks by 0.4 percent annually, which it says would halt the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.

Mr. Lal called the target unrealistic, but said achieving just a quarter of that sequestration would be meaningful. In a generation, he said, agriculture could become carbon neutral, removing all the emissions it creates, for example through the energy used by farm equipment.

Worldwide, 5 percent to 10 percent of growers are using regenerative, climate-friendly techniques, said Louis Bockel, a policy officer at the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. That number is likely to increase, he said, as multinational institutions and wealthy nations start incorporating carbon sequestration incentives into existing aid to farmers in poor countries.

“More and more additional funding will be available” to encourage such efforts, Mr. Bockel added. “We are moving quite quickly on this.”

Farmers need financing to help them adopt new techniques, though generally only through a two-to-three-year transition period, said Eric Toensmeier, author of “The Carbon Farming Solution.” That money could come through a higher price charged for foods whose cultivation encourages sequestration, via a carbon tax or through trading systems in which polluters buy credits to offset their emissions, he said. Programs known as payment for environmental services, in which governments or others pay farmers for stewardship of land, are another potential avenue.

With that kind of support, the industry could be ready to do things differently, said Ceris Jones, a climate change adviser at the National Farmers Union in Britain.

“People say that farmers are pretty conservative, but actually practice can change quite quickly,” she said.

Another obstacle is the lack of an agreed-upon system for measuring carbon sequestration in soil, which will be required as the basis for any payments, Mr. Toensmeier said.

Technically, though, many elements of carbon farming are ready to be put into practice quickly, he said. Something as simple as planting trees around fields drastically increases the amount of carbon fixed into soil, Mr. Toensmeier said.  “I would love to see a huge, major transformation of agriculture in the industrialized world, but if we started with just adding trees to the system we have, it’s a huge gain,” he said. “We can sort of meet farmers where they are”

It’s not just crops. The earth beneath the world’s grasslands, from America’s Great Plains to the Tibetan Steppe and the Sahel of Africa, holds about a fifth of all soil carbon stocks, the Food and Agriculture Organization estimates. In many places that soil is badly depleted.

“This land is waiting to be filled up again with carbon if we could manage it sustainably,” said Courtney White, author of the book “Grass, Soil, Hope.”

That means moving livestock frequently so each patch of land is grazed just once a year, mimicking the patterns of the native bison that once roamed the American West, he said. The combination of stimulation during animals’ brief presence and long periods of rest encourages plants to lay down more carbon, Mr. White said.

With policies that encourage change, Mr. Toensmeier said, agriculture could benefit the climate rather than harming it. “There do seem to be a remarkable number of win-win opportunities, which is great news,” he said. “You don’t hear a lot of great news about climate change.”

A version of this special report appears in print on May 18, 2016, in The International New York Times. 

Related Coverage

1. SPECIAL REPORT: FOOD FOR TOMORROW

   Farms That Rise to the Challenge MAY 17, 2016

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When the New York Times runs a special series of reports on agriculture and soil issues you know that issues such as soil carbon are nearly in the middle of the focus by those without a great interest in agriculture.

This is one of those times.

While ag scientists have long focussed on restoring soils and improving conditions for plant growth many others  have not noticed or cared.  Rattan Lal has long been an advocate for better soils and a transformative agriculture even as far back as when he worked for international agencies based in Nigeria in the 1970s and 80s.

The time for caring about our soils is now here.

This is a good read and worthwhile to bring a little understanding that agriculture is not always the "bad boy" - many farmers and scientists are out there doing a good job to improve environmental issues for all.  Better soil means better agricultural productivity.  And most soils can be improved! 

Acknowledgement - This post is based on an article in the NY Times of 18 May 2016.  It deserves the widest readership and understanding.

More Compost Benefits - Biological and Economic

Alternative ideas about compost benefits are coming thick and fast.  Are there any more out there?

These are some additional ideas about the benefits of compost and very succinctly worded!  Remember that the previous post included those that were well recognised and testable - claims that could not be refuted easily.  There are a few that could be extended, but overall - comost has many beneficial attributes and definitely worth using or making - even at home, and it can be done in apartments too [ using bokashi, a microbial culture that aids organic breakdown].  Look it up if you have not heard of it - plenty of articles available.  Compost bins for domestic use are easy to make - and come in various options, but having a lid is usually a good idea as well, as some animals might access the compost bin.  Many are made in heavy duty plastic similar to the common mobile garbage bin.

Benefits of Compost

Enriches Soil
• Adds organic material
• Improves fertility and productivity
• Suppresses plant diseases
• Discourages insects
• Increases water retention
• Inoculates soil with beneficial microorganisms
• Reduces or eliminates fertilizer needs
• Moderates soil temperature

Prevents Pollution
• Reduces methane production in landfills
• Reduces or eliminates organic garbage
• Reduces or eliminates sewage

Fights existing Pollution
• Degrades toxic chemicals
• Binds heavy metals
• Cleans contaminated air
• Cleans stormwater runoff

Restores Land
• Aids in reforestation
• Helps restore wildlife habitats
• Helps reclaim mined lands
• Helps restore damaged wetlands
• Helps prevent erosion on flood plains

Destroys Pathogens
• Can destroy human disease organisms
• Can destroy plant pathogens
• Can destroy livestock pathogens

Saves Money
• Can be used to produce food
• Can eliminate waste disposal costs
• Reduces the need for water, fertilizers, and pesticides
• Can be sold at a profit
• Extends landfill life by diverting materials
• Is a less costly bioremediation technique


Source: U.S. EPA (October 1997). Compost-New Applications for an Age-Old Technology. EPA530-F-97-047.

Soils Benefit if Compost or Mulch is Used

Twelve Benefits of Compost

 Many scientists and farmers speak highly about the use of compost and mulch in soils.  There are often soil and crop improvements attributed to using these organic additions but are they real benefits?

While there is a certain amount of quackery over many soil additives, with some very dubious clams being made for them, it is now considered that there is a reasonably comprehensive set of truisms that can be attributed to compost use, with compost consderd in a broad sense to also include organic mulches.

These benefits and soil improvements are seen in temperate regions in the US, Europe and Australia as well as in tropical regions, with the latter often seeing very big improvements as the soils are tending to be lower in soil organic matter anyway.  Small additions of organic materials can mean big crop performance improvement.

The twelve well recognised benefits of compost are listed below. 

The following list of compost benefits have been approved by the Association of American Plant Food Control Officials (AAPFCO). This organization is made up of state Department of Agriculture regulatory officials from every state in the US. These claims are permitted to be made, and are considered as valid, on compost labels, literature and websites in the US and are also relevant elsewhere.

Compost -  

a. Improves soil structure and porosity – creating a better plant root environment;

b. Increases moisture infiltration and permeability, and reduces bulk density of heavy soils – improving moisture infiltration rates and reducing erosion and runoff;

c. Improves the moisture holding capacity of light soils – reducing water loss and nutrient leaching, and improving moisture retention;

d. Improves the cation exchange capacity (CEC) of soils;

e. Supplies organic matter;

f. Aids the proliferation of soil microorganisms;

g. Supplies beneficial microorganisms to soils and growing media;

h. Encourages vigorous root growth;

i. Allows plants to more effectively utilize nutrients, while reducing nutrient loss by leaching;

j. Enables soils to retain nutrients longer;

k. Contains humus – assisting in soil aggregation and making nutrients more available for plant uptake;

l. Buffers soil pH.

There are many articles and newspaper stories about the benefits of compost - so if you are not using compost or any other organic additions such as mulch, why not?  The photo shows mechanised compost production using a row turner.

In the tropics where rainfall is often in short higher intensity storms, surface mulches and composts provide a very effective surface barrier that prevents the dislodging of soil surface particles caused by the energy of impact of rain drops - this dislodgement commences the process of soil erosion.  A mulch cover can greatly reduce that problem while also controlling the infiltration of the rain.   "Cover"is a significant term in the universal soil loss equation [ USLE] used to calculate erosion, and is a factor that can be easily modified - as distinct from some of the other factors.  And soil cover is why dense grassland or rainforest is less prone to erosion.

The carbon in the organic materials often remains in the soil for some time so it also contributes to sequestring carbon, although not always for really long periods. [ that is another complicated issue - you could read about biochar or terra preta soils]
Surface mulch and compost are great contributors to better soils and the products grown in them!. 

Restoration of the Loess Plateau in China

Things tend to be done on a large scale in China..............new cities, new roads and now landscape restoration.

The loess plateau in China has traditionally been a key part of productive agriculture, but it has suffered some terrible erosion in achieving some of the production and many many areas are now totally lost to agriculture. There are many images on the net of this damage, and I have previously blogged about it. But all may not be lost.

The article below is reproduced in its entirety...........and worth reading.

The concept was, to my best knowledge, originally espoused by CSIRO scientists in the early 1980s.......as landscape ecology. Especially relevant to arid zones, and at that time after a long drought, but also for any disturbed landscape in which the key is to get basic biology re-established in the soil. Often low forms of plants establish first, lichens, worts etc along with microbes......and things go from there as organic matter starts to accumulate.

Needless to say, add organic matter and you get a big boost, and this naturally happens in minor soil depressions where organic residuals accumlate, but a liberal dose of added mulch is just fine!!!

We used similar technology to deal with erosion and soil restoration on a major mine development in Indonesia in the late 1990s, by adding significant organic matter to help kickstart plant re-establishment in a monsoonal environment where erosion control was also a key factor in its success.
As the article says:
"It starts as a physical intervention, but it becomes a biophysical intervention once the biology stops gravity being such a destructive force,” Mr Liu said.
“The principle is to start the accumulation of organic matter and total vegetation coverage, and at a higher level understanding the role of biodiversity.”
“It’s an advance over the concept of simply tree planting, which is simplistic and doesn’t talk about other factors like soil condition or other forms of vegetation.”

This is the key issue............absolutely!


--------------------


Restoring China's lost Loess Plateau
MATT CAWOOD 11 Jun, 2010 10:18 AM

ABANDONED 1000 years ago by one of the first civilisations because of land degradation, China’s Loess Plateau has become the focus of a modern land restoration effort that has transformed agriculture and the local environment.

Key to restoration of 35,000 square kilometres of the 640,000 sq km plateau was the surrendering of farmland to purely ecological plantings.

According to a film made by soil scientist John Liu, in Australia last week to talk to the National Business Leaders Forum, local farmers strongly resisted the idea of giving over farmland to trees, but were persuaded by compensation payments on land taken permanently out of production.

As reported in Mr Liu’s film, Hope in a Changing Climate, available on the internet here , engineering landscapes and re-planting vegetation across key ecological recharge areas has changed the environment in ways that have lifted farm incomes threefold.

The Loess Plateau, which takes its name from the mineral-rich wind-borne sediments that make up much of its soil, was for several thousand years the base of China’s Han people.
It is thought the plateau was the second place on Earth to have a settled agriculture based on cultivation of the soil, after Mesopotamia.

Mr Liu said that China’s extensive written records show that over thousands of years, the plateau progressively lost its ability to sustain the Han. Their primitive agriculture degraded the landscape and destroyed the ecology, until about 1000 years ago the Han power base shifted east to what is now Bejing.

The plateau has since earned the distinction of being the most eroded place on Earth. Eroded loess provides the “yellow” in China’s Yellow River.

In 1995, when Mr Liu was invited to record the initial stage of the landscape restoration project, the plateau was being farmed at a subsistence level by desperately poor farmers who unwittingly compounded their own ecological troubles.

According to Mr Liu, Chinese scientists calculated the cost of sediment loss against the cost of restoring the landscape, and decided that restoration would be a quarter of the cost of allowing degradation to continue.

Less wealthy in 1995 than now, the Chinese borrowed US$500 million from the World Bank and set about rebuilding the landscape - mostly by hand. In typically picturesque Chinese terms, the project aimed to give the eroded hills “a hat, a belt and shoes at their feet”. That translates to tree cover on the upper slopes, farming terraces on the lower slopes, and dams in the valleys.

Massive landscape engineering was involved in the transformation - an approach unlikely to get much traction in Australia - “but the results are stunning”, Mr Liu said.

At one level, the project is an endorsement of the “front of pipe” approach to water management floated earlier this year by Australian landscape campaigner Major-General Michael Jeffery of Outcomes Australia.

On the Loess Plateau, more porous vegetation-covered soils and the flat terraces now catch and rainfall that once ran off the plateau during the rainy season, leaving it in drought during the dry season.

Water captured by the soil instead filters down through the terraces, fuelling crops. Waterways run clear, and farm productivity has soared.

Better productivity on the slopes, and the dams below, have allowed greenhouse agriculture to flourish in the valleys, extending the income-making opportunities for the local communities.
“It starts as a physical intervention, but it becomes a biophysical intervention once the biology stops gravity being such a destructive force,” Mr Liu said. “The principle is to start the accumulation of organic matter and total vegetation coverage, and at a higher level understanding the role of biodiversity.” “It’s an advance over the concept of simply tree planting, which is simplistic and doesn’t talk about other factors like soil condition or other forms of vegetation.”

Since 1995, Mr Liu has travelled to 60 countries looking at landscape regeneration techniques. He is a founder of the Environmental Education Media Project, which numbers the World Bank, Rockerfeller Foundation and Syngenta among its sponsors.

Although only briefly in Australia, Mr Liu was introduced to the environmental benefits of time-controlled livestock grazing practices in use here.

Also see here with more photos -

http://qcl.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/agribusiness-and-general/general/restoring-chinas-lost-loess-plateau/1854215.aspx?storypage=0

[article reproduced from the Land online]

Soil Stability Enhanced by Using No-Till Agriculture

Nothing new in that statement, you say.

For users and advocates of the conservation farming approach, it would seem to be old knowledge. But similar outcomes might also be expected for areas where similar practices are now also being used. For example, use of recycled organics in transport corridors, rehabilitating mining sites with similar products and similar off farm uses.

A recently concluded 19 year study across a wide region of the US has delivered some quite definitive results. Using plant residues on the soil surface, along with no till farming delivers significant improvements in soil stability and resistance to erosion.

The "cover" term in the universal loss loss equation has been so modified as to bring modifications to soil loss. And as said above, the same should apply to other areas where surface cover with organic materials is practised.

read more here - http://www.plantmanagementnetwork.org/pub/cm/news/2010/SoilStability/

The critical part is this - "No-till stores more soil carbon, which helps bind or glue soil particles together, making the first inch of topsoil two to seven times less vulnerable to the destructive force of raindrops than ploughed soil.

The structure of these aggregates in the first inch of topsoil is the first line of defense against soil erosion by water or wind. Understanding the resistance of these aggregates to the erosive forces of wind and rain is critical to evaluating soil erodibility. "

Get your soil cover in place.

Especially so in the tropics where erosion impacts from high intensity storms can create erosion problems very quickly. And it is a wise practice for many civil engineering developments as well.

Soil Carbon Primer or Soil Carbon Economics 101

The following article is worth a read, as are the attached comments.

A touch of reality.

But it does not say do not build up soil carbon. More soil carbon is in the interests of the land owner, the farmer, the pastoralist as well as everyone. BUT......in reality, do not expect to make anything from it in a trading sense, but look to improved soil performance and agricultural performance as the payoff.

That is very real, and there is much evidence to show it to be so. Across states, countries, horticulture and agriculture. South Australia has a very active core of producers into this right now. And carbon sources are scarce in the state, with demand for compost materials outstripping supply. Other states are tending that way.

The article highlights a few overarching problems, although a significant impediment is not mentioned - the logistical costs of getting carbon into soil. Products such as biochar / agrichar offer some hope, as does the develoment of high density organic fertilisers, based on organic residuals that will lower transport costs. As would locally based sources of these types of products.

There is progress.


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When soil carbon is not in the national interest

In sporting parlance, the Coalition plan has soil carbon peaking too early.

By making soil carbon a foundation stone of its policy, and a commodity that all Australian taxpayers will be investing in whether they like it or not, the Coalition has invited rigorous scrutiny of the issue.

I’m not sure that soil carbon is ready for that scrutiny.

Taxpayer-funded soil carbon trading is a concept that needs some massaging and makeup before it is shoved into the glare of prime-time TV, and the demolition job that will now result.

That’s regrettable, because the ideal of tradeable soil carbon is something worth working on.

As a big picture concept, soil carbon is brilliant: improve farm soil and save the world.

Such crusty organisations as the United Nations agree that soil carbon is a possible panacea for many of the world’s ills, from climate change to food and water scarcity.

Dedicated individuals have shown that it is real; that soil carbon levels can be lifted, sometimes substantially, in many soils under many farming enterprises.


The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) has demonstrated that the market will pay for soil carbon credits—albeit not much under the CCX model.

But while many can see the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the route to it remains hazy.
It’s one thing for a farmer to build soil carbon: it’s another to have all the nation’s farmers building soil carbon and have them each interface with an accounting system that will give them credit for their efforts.

As has been tirelessly pointed out, soil carbon levels differ from soil to soil, farm to farm, paddock to paddock, season to season. Seen as a whole, the nation’s soil carbon is a complex and ever-changing picture.

What do you measure, and when, and how? And what happens when the carbon disappears in drought or fire? These are questions that tax intelligence and science, but there is a process that will help work through them.


A carbon market

Given a framework to operate in, a market will decide how much risk it is prepared to take on, the level of accountability it needs to support that risk, and pay accordingly.

A market also provides a learn-as-you-go environment. Initially, like most free enterprise, a soil carbon market is likely to have its share of shonks and cowboys on both sides of the fence. But the more money poured into the market, the more rigour will be demanded of it. Farmers, traders and buyers have the ability to adapt to each incremental tightening of the trading framework.

The Coalition has now plunked soil carbon blinking into the spotlight, and there’s not a free market in sight.

In fact, there is very little in sight in the two lines that the Coalition dedicated to soil carbon in its press release, except for this statement: “The Coalition will use the Emissions Reduction Fund to deliver about 85 million tonnes per annum of CO2 abatement through soil carbons by 2020 with an initial purchase of 10 million tonnes of abatement through soil carbons by 2012-13”.
(The Emissions Reduction Fund is a government body, kick-started with government/taxpayer funds. Businesses that push their emissions above a “business-as-usual” level pay the Fund a penalty; businesses that go below business-as-usual emissions get rewarded from the same fund.)

Which suggests that the plan is for you and me, the taxpayer, to pay you, the farmer, for sequestering carbon.

There is no provision for a market to provide a learn-as-we-go environment: instead, we will have government laying down legislation and a bureacracy attempting to govern an unreliable and messy commodity.

Government dabbling in areas that are the natural realm of private enterprise has always ended in tears.

Soil carbon promises tears for anyone who tries to harness it, public or private, but the private sector doesn’t mind a few knocks. Especially if they are being delivered to someone else.

In the meantime, the Coalition’s plan for us all to share in the ownership of the nation’s rebuilding of soil carbon will see a long queue of critics lining up to point out flaws in the soil carbon concept.

Yes, we are shy of a few answers, but that doesn’t mean that the idea of tradeable soil carbon is wrong. It’s all in the execution. Better that we hand it over to the free market cowboys who will tinker with it, soup it up, prang it—and in the end, make it work, if it’s workable.

Only then should the Coalition consider making it part of the national interest; but by then it won’t matter.

[Posted By: MATT CAWOOD on 8/02/2010 4:00:00 AM

Source: http://www.theland.com.au]


Comments

Market-based schemes are certainly neat in theory. In practice, organised crime has made $7.4 billion in the last 18 months on the European ETS, selling bogus credits.
Posted by morrgo, 9/02/2010 12:30:34 PM, on Farm Weekly


Inviting halfwits to trade with buckets full of mud does have a certain attraction.
Posted by Mud pie, 9/02/2010 1:34:04 PM, on The Land

There are a lot of points raised here but the basic factors that agriculture is subsidized in many countries and not in ours begs the question how do our farmers do it well a lot of them are not? People are constantly telling me how expensive food is here but really it is not it is just what it costs. We the taxpayer may have to pay for it as the consumer cannot confront the added cost. Adding carbon through improved soil management, whatever the incentive, will improve the nations' health through increased micro nutrients provided through increased microbe activity that the presence of increased carbon,which goes hand in hand indicates. Of course there are accounting issues... when are there not. Some will benefit and some will not as much but we will all benefit by better health. I have 3 books being launched today on soil carbon issues for children and lay people at the Trinity Grammar school in Kew Victoria. You are welcome to attend. Please visit my website to see the books online www.infinart.com.au
Posted by jewel, 10/02/2010 6:56:17 AM, on The Land


Imagine what Australia would be like if all the farms and land holdings had been managed as carbon farms for the past 10 years. Carbon rich soil, good ground cover, well-established vegetation, moisture retained in the landscape for far longer, less erosion, heathier soil microbes hard at work manufacturing more carbon and making more nutrients available for plants to grow. The cooling influence of vegetation sees microclimates joining microclimates and expanding to include districts and regions, forging feedback loops that cascade through mineral and energy cycles, unleashing processes long hidden that have unanticipated impact on production and productivity. And all the while this same vegetation and soil are extracting vast amounts of 'the airborne fraction' - the Legacy Load, the CO2 and other greenhouse gases that are the real cause of the climate chaos battering our planet. Imagine your own version of that. Then think what the place will be like if we have to wait another 10 years for carbon farming to become widespread. If the doubters and delayers get their way. If it's 'too hard' to try. If the cynics and the deniers win. Then we lose hope. And we are left with despair.
Posted by Michael Kiely, 10/02/2010 10:24:24 AM, on The Land

Australian Red Meat is Carbon Efficient - near Carbon Neutral

This story has been reported in various forms recently, but actually finding the source material has been elusive.

But it will now soon be published in a peer reviewed credible journal.......so there is a bit of cred behind it.

There are many ways to skin a cat goes the old adage............reporting carbon figures is a lot like that! Depends on what is and is not counted, and where and how, and what might be excluded or where 'general" data is used as a substitue in the absence of any real world trial data.

However, this recent quite rigorous examination of pastoral land production of red meat shows that it is a carbon efficient means of production. Most of Australia's red meat is produced in this style, with smaller amounts on slightly higher productivity pastures that receive fertiliser.

It will not stop the counter arguments about cattle and sheep being land vandals, gross methane producers, etc etc. But is clearly shows the production is carbon efficient, and can be made even better......with considerable opportunities for being carbon positive, ie sequestering carbon. Further R and D is also being conducted into improving nett methane emissions from livestock through a range of advanced technologies. But lets not forget, that higher plant digestibility generally means lower methane emissions too. This can be a serious issue with lower inherent digestibility in many tropical forage plants, although most legumes are better.......yet tropical legumes seem a bit out of favour with grasses the now preferred plant type commonly.

Solid evidence and worth applause from all those in the pastoral industry.

And please note.........the pastoral industry has actually reduced greenhouse emisions since 1990. Hmmm......haven't sheep and cattle numbers also fallen since then too??


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Red meat proved to be carbon efficient

AUSTRALIAN red meat production is much more carbon-efficient than often reported in the media, says an important study by the University of NSW.

The three-year Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study of production systems in Victoria, NSW and WA showed carbon emissions from sheep and cattle meat production were among the lowest in the world.
It showed sheepmeat produced 7-8kg of CO2-equivalent per kg of meat (carcase weight) while for beef, values ranged from 8-11kg.

Based on figures from the research, eating red meat three times weekly results in 164kg to 258kg of CO2 emissions a year - vastly different to claims of emissions up to 1.5 tonnes.

The research will be published soon in the Environmental Science and Technology Journal.

Meat and Livestock Australia managing director, David Palmer said the "credible and reliable data" gave an accurate reflection of carbon emissions for Australia's meat production systems. "Most Australian cattle and sheep are raised in a natural environment feeding on pastures with little or no use of fertilisers and it is unfortunate that until now inaccurate and exaggerated figures have been used," he said.

LCA quantifies the important environmental impacts of all processes in a production system, but does not take into consideration the ability of soil and trees on farms to absorb carbon.

A recent Queensland Government report on total carbon balance on grazing lands in the state with 47pc of Australia's cattle production, found they were close to carbon-neutral and in the near future might be a net carbon sink. "Importantly the new figures give us a baseline from which to continue to improve the industry's performance in regards to emissions. However they do not paint a complete picture and should never be looked at in isolation from other environmental factors such as water and biodiversity," Mr Palmer said.

Most people were not aware that the livestock sector was the only production industry in Australia to have reduced greenhouse emissions since 1990. The Australian Greenhouse office said it had reduced emissions by 7.5pc, compared with increases in other industries such as transport and electricity, up 26.9pc and 54.1pc respectively, he said. "We now have a better basis to track improvement in the future."

The UNSW study shows that when assessed across the supply chain from paddock to processing, more than 80pc of carbon emissions come from the natural process of digestion of feed by the animal.

It was for this reason that MLA had co-invested with the Federal government and other partners in a $28 million program covering 18 research projects looking at how to reduce emissions from livestock.

The Australian Lot Feeders Association noted the UNSW report addressed the popular misconception that beef feedlots were energy intensive and worse for the environment than other forms of beef production. "The report concluded that beef from lotfed cattle had 50pc and 38pc lower methane emissions than organic and grassfed beef production respectively," ALFA president Jim Cudmore said.

This was because of superior nutrition and digestibility of feedlot rations and meant that cattle slaughter weights could be achieved at a younger age.

By improving the efficiency of beef production (through increasing the proportion of feed energy that is converted to beef) lower methane emissions per unit of product were obtained, he said. "Notably, this goal can be achieved by both grain and grassfed production systems. In addition, given that grainfed cattle spend the majority of their lives in a grassfed environment prior to feedlot entry, and consumers rarely differentiate between the two, the issue of improving the beef industry's overall emissions profile is something that the sector as a whole is looking to address."

[partially sourced Qld Country life]

North Australia Land and Water Taskforce Reports

Now available here -http://www.nalwt.gov.au/files/337281_NLAW.pdf

There are additional reports on the main web site see - http://www.nalwt.gov.au/

It is not as gloomy as early media reports were indicating.

Mosaic development and some modest expansion are likely, but a more detailed examination of the report is still to come. Local commentators in the NT are mostly positive, especially those closely connected to industry. A few politicians are not positive, but I would suggest they are not being realists.

As a player in north Australia for 30+ years, I among many, realised a long time ago that broad sweep development was highly improbable. There would never be the broad expanse of a US or Canadian prairie type development for agriculture. Tyranny of distance will nearly always influence issues - smaller, dense, high priced commodities would drive agriculture, or the opposite - large areas of ultra low cost production - typically livestock production, were seen many years ago as the likely options. This report seems to confirm that, with a lot of options in between or influencing the structure of the business model. In this scenario, then may be little that may have changed.

However, indigenous participation will increase significantly in coming years, across a range of different models of involvement. That will be a positive thing. Yet the north will remain mostly lightly inhabited, and no doubt those open spaces may be inviting to outsiders.

There is more R and D to do if the vision is to realised.

No doubt the report will be debated across north Australia, at least in the near term.

BUT...........action to capitalise on the outcomes and actually implement development is still urgently needed. Not necessarily today.........but soon.

It is Time to Recycle the Organics

Organic recycling will be vital to recover the vast amounts of nutrients that come to the city in food.

I posted some material from Singapore in 2009, a place where organic recycling is a joke, and where incineration is the norm. YET.........some commentators wax lyrical about using organic food, and how wonderful it is, in a city that imports over 95% of its food, and then burns the residuals. One needs to be a little bit real about the issue.

So many nutrients, so much carbon is in the food we eat, and in the city, most is wasted.........wasted.

In Australia, particularly in southern cities this issue is slowly being addressed. It fits with the emerging potential technologies of vertical wall and roof top gardens as well, potential city sites for food and green production, currently being developed and enthused over by for example, Prof Julian Cribb of Sydney.

the following article has been lifted from "Inside Waste" and was written by Gerry Gillespie, an ardent advocate for carbon and nutrient recycling and recovery.

Unfortunately, I think it will be a considerable time before it happens in the Northern Territory in any modest fashion, even. But it should, as local soils scream out for better soil carbon levels to both hold water and nutrients, as well as needing a great boost in soil nutrients to aid production in both agriculture and horticulture.

It is a important story...........

The organic base
Tuesday, 19 January 2010

As Australia’s waste industry gears up for 2010, the president of Revolve - Canberra, Gerry Gillespie, urges people to focus on the root issues of organic waste management. He argues valuable organic materials must be returned to soils, and experience shows this can be done very effectively when communities are empowered to become part of local solutions.

Every individual, regardless of their social standing, produces organic waste as long as they continue to eat.The true value of this product, both in terms of its nutrient value and its value as a catalyst for the soil to generate more food, has never truly been capitalised on in western society.

It is only in Asian communities that the true value of returning organic materials to soils has been appreciated and developed.

Yet even in western societies, where the public (with the exception of gardeners) has long been seen as ignorant of the value of this material, a substantial shift has begun to take place with the advent of new programs focussed on food.For the first time in its modern history, western society has begun to truly look at its waste organic outputs.

In the first instances this was mainly from the western perspective of wasted food as a waste of money, but now also and more importantly, for its value to the food chain.This in turn has lead to a consideration of the value of clean, quality organic products as a catalyst in the production of quality food from quality soil.The Groundswell project in NSW has clearly demonstrated that, given the right tools and information to act, the public will respond with enthusiasm to the collection of food waste for reuse in agriculture.

This project, using the City to Soil collection system, has demonstrated that at our very animal base we fully grasp the importance of soil as our mother, in the sense that it feeds and clothes us.As individuals, parents and grandparents, we see that the security of future generations is firmly based in the soil. The response to this project has seen the collections of organic waste with extremely low contamination rates of less than 0.5%.

This project has clearly demonstrated the public wants to be involved. Indeed it has demonstrated the collection of organic waste, once it is embraced by the community, will not only empower them to become part of the solution but will also provide the basis for a link into a much bigger picture of behavioural change.

Compost and carbon

In developing the City to Soil process, the project managers needed to reduce the cost of compost manufacture and so designed a new system where the organic waste requires no shredding and very little turning. This process importantly also produces no odour.

Material is sprayed with water and a two part biological inoculant, covered with tarpaulins and left for six weeks without turning. The material can achieve temperatures in excess of 70 degrees in the first week. It then settles back to around 55 degrees for the remainder of the process.

The material produced in this compost process, returned to the soil, provides the basis for supported land management change which dramatically reduces fertiliser use, improves moisture retention water in soils, increases yield and increases soil carbon.

If the legacy emissions currently in the atmosphere are to be addressed, improving our soils worldwide is the only way of doing it. While climate change may be the largest threat we have brought upon humanity, the generation of carbon in agricultural soils and the opportunities for change that it brings could be one of the greatest benefits humanity has ever given to the world. We have at our fingertips the means to end poverty, we have at our fingertips the means to feed the world, we have at our fingertips the means for a new world economy.This new direction, this new hope, is based on the simplest and most disregarded of the products of humanity – our organic waste.

Source-separated organic waste provides the tools to link the community back to its food supply, it provides the tools for us to rebuild our relationship with out soils, it provides the means to support local regional economies. The only thing we need to do to be part of this great revolution is to maintain ownership of our own organic waste.

Conclusion

The greed of the global economy has forgotten that you can’t have a labourer in China make cheap clothes for the world market without food. And you can’t feed that labourer without soil.

The global economy has forgotten that it is nothing without soil. Every cheap shirt, every cheap car, every cheap tool, represents some part of a nation’s soil. We are nothing without soil. We don’t exist without soil.

Peak phosphorus spells the death of chemical agriculture. There is a new way. There is a better way – for humanity and for the planet.

Owning your organic wastes in your home and in your community provides you with the power to help local farmers produce food and to generate local wealth in the emerging carbon market.

No economy, rich or poor, exists without food – because no economy rich or poor exists without soil. The soil is your mother – you are nothing without your mother.

The issues of ‘peak oil’, of ‘peak phosphorus’ and other matters of assumed criticality are all indicators of our humble human need to replace one problem with another by addressing only the symptoms of our disease. In the same way that ‘peak oil’ tells us that we have been too reliant on an unsustainable supply of oil, ‘peak phosphorus’ tells us that we have relied for too long on industrial chemical farming.

Good quality soil and soil carbon can provide humanity with the direct link back to its very basic roots. It can be part of our individual responsibility to ensure that the farmers are given the right tools and the capacity to utilise their soil based on the experiential management skills of themselves and past generations. In linking personal behaviour with soil carbon we will be weaving the tapestry of soil quality into the reality of our daily existence. To achieve this we need to have a community understanding and response to the ability to grow our soils. The only place this can be achieved is on the farm.

It is that same place that grows our food and is the home and heart of our repeatable economic base.

In the world voluntary carbon market we have been presented with the first opportunity in human history to include our environment in our economy. We as humans have finally reached that same point that every monkey, bird and bee awoke to as it was born new into its circumstance, its natural economy. Every species lives within its economy because to do otherwise is to perish.

We can now join the evolution of economy by including the obvious in our accounts. Everything we now do and make can be predicated on its carbon value. You as an individual in this place are at this exciting starting point.

We must begin.

[partially sourced from Inside Waste]

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]