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Carbon Farming
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.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6fIXznrh5k
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I wonder what the carbon cost of acquiring and spreading the compost is.
Interesting that the results seem to be mostly due to better water-retention.
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Water is SO important in California. Our grass growing season here is pretty short, on my Ranch it is usually from November to May. We have poor growth between Nov and the end of Feb because it is too cold and the days are too short. So our real growing time is March, April and part of May after which it is too dry especially for shallow rooted annuals. It doesn't take much extra moisture in May to give us a lot of benefit!! Perennial bunch grass does extend our season a tiny bit since its roots go so deep and can access water longer.
I've looked at a number of videos around this in the last week. The mechanism for sequestering carbon is the die off of the roots of plants. When grasses get grazed part of their roots die off, since they aren't needed to support the bunch of grass. THAT action sequesters the carbon. Then the grass grows again and, once it gains a bit of strength it gets grazed again so rinse and repeat. Shallow rooted annual plants only get the carbon down a very short way where it is vulnerable to being disturbed and released back into the atmosphere THAT is why the concept of deep rooted perennials is so key.
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My biggest worry is that climate change may change your rainfall patterns and lead to erosion of all that lovely new soil (but that's a risk all round the world).
It's really interesting that grazing is an important part of the sequestration mechanism. I'm guessing that calculating the optimum amount of grazing is one of the many things they are looking at.
Do keep me posted on any new news about this project - and I'm really looking forward to hearing how your manure application works. Do you have any way of measuring soil moisture or carbon? I know they may not be easy to measure. I guess you could measure soil depth and repeat after half a dozen years, but even then you'd probably have to dig too many holes for the effort to be worth it - and the act of digging holes releases carbon....