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Carbon Farming
Feb. 5th, 2017 04:37 pm Thanks to Ranunculus for telling me about this.
(apologies for the random font and size changes. It happens when I cut and paste bits and I can't work out how to make it all the same)
Carbon farming looks like a really interesting set of techniques.
in a nutshell - Carbon Farming involves implementing practices that are known to improve the rate at which CO2 is removed from the atmosphere and converted to plant material and/or soil organic matter.
One of the basic techniques is to spread compost on low-fertility rangeland. the compost encourages grass growth, the grass increases the amount of organic matter in the soil, which takes carbon from the atmosphere and adds it to the soil.
With more organic matter, the moisture holding capacity of the soil increases, and this encourages more plants to grows, etc.
There are lots more techniques - 'no dig' is very important as ploughing causes a lot of carbon to be lost from the soil. Seed drills are part of the solution. Other things include techniques to reduce erosion, so planting wind breaks, encouraging vegetation on river banks, wetland restoration, etc.
If you live in the USA and want to donate to the Carbon Project (which is actively researching these techniques), then donations are (currently) exempt from Federal tax. (In other word, if you want to help some genuine science which has the potential to lock up carbon and improve soil quality at the same time, do it quickly before the president decides to try and stop it)
I just tried to send them some money, but I'm having problems with Avast Passwords and I'm not recovered well enough from the asthama to have the mental energy to struggle finding my Paypal password. (I can remember my Avast master password, but Avast is causing other screw ups...)
There's also a partner project called Fibreshed that aims to produce carbon neutral yarn.
Fascinating stuff all round and a rare glimmer of hope on the environmental front.
(apologies for the random font and size changes. It happens when I cut and paste bits and I can't work out how to make it all the same)
Carbon farming looks like a really interesting set of techniques.
in a nutshell - Carbon Farming involves implementing practices that are known to improve the rate at which CO2 is removed from the atmosphere and converted to plant material and/or soil organic matter.
One of the basic techniques is to spread compost on low-fertility rangeland. the compost encourages grass growth, the grass increases the amount of organic matter in the soil, which takes carbon from the atmosphere and adds it to the soil.
With more organic matter, the moisture holding capacity of the soil increases, and this encourages more plants to grows, etc.
There are lots more techniques - 'no dig' is very important as ploughing causes a lot of carbon to be lost from the soil. Seed drills are part of the solution. Other things include techniques to reduce erosion, so planting wind breaks, encouraging vegetation on river banks, wetland restoration, etc.
If you live in the USA and want to donate to the Carbon Project (which is actively researching these techniques), then donations are (currently) exempt from Federal tax. (In other word, if you want to help some genuine science which has the potential to lock up carbon and improve soil quality at the same time, do it quickly before the president decides to try and stop it)
I just tried to send them some money, but I'm having problems with Avast Passwords and I'm not recovered well enough from the asthama to have the mental energy to struggle finding my Paypal password. (I can remember my Avast master password, but Avast is causing other screw ups...)
There's also a partner project called Fibreshed that aims to produce carbon neutral yarn.
Fascinating stuff all round and a rare glimmer of hope on the environmental front.
