The researchers found that no-till management in combination corn-soybean fields and corn-only fields created a carbon debt lasting 29 and 40 years, respectively. Soil tillage nearly tripled the debt: 89 to 123 years.
No-till farming on the conventional farm can have other environmental consequences. To avoid digging up the soil to remove weeds, farmers spray the herbicide glyphosate, best known as Roundup, in conjunction with glyphosate-resistant crops.
Robertson asserts that no-till methods need not be limited to spraying. Planting perennial, rather than annual, crops could outcompete weeds, removing the need for glyphosate.
Making a case for CRP
At the peak of CRP enrollment in 2007, the program was enabling the sequestration of 50 million metric tons of CO2, said Kent Politsch, chief of public affairs for the Farm Service Agency. In 2010, that figure dropped to 44 million metric tons.
As it stands, farmers who receive payments under the CRP are not allowed to harvest and profit from production on those lands. But alterations to the program are not impossible.
Yesterday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced changes in CRP rules to allow drought-stricken farmers to use harvested hay from expiring conservation land. The farmers could use the hay to feed cattle in exchange for a 25 percent reduction in their CRP benefit.
Combining the CRP with the Biomass Crop Assistance Program, another Farm Service Agency endeavor, could combine resources for both energy production and conservation, suggested Politsch.
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
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Add CommentProgress on cellulosic biofuel production has been slow and risky. Given the added complexity, energy conversion steps and engineering problems, I don't see how it will ever be competitive with inorganic (PV) solar power. It's one advantage is what it makes an energy-dense liquid fuel that has different emissions than gasoline.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, simply burning the biomass in a thermal power plant will still be a better use of the feedstock than trying to improve on hundreds of millions of years of evolution concerning cellulose digestion. The eventual conclusion might be that termites are just better at it than anything else we could imagine and we'd have to try and scale up what they do in their guts.
The OTHER problem with cellulose fuels is the energy density of the feedstock is very low. The biofuel refineries would have to be located in very close proximity to the fields where the plants are grown, requiring many engineering and economic compromises. Otherwise, the energy penalty for transporting the cellulose feedstock will steeply increase every mile between the field and the refinery. One way of limiting this penalty would be to graze ruminants on the fields and collect their...uh...byproducts to be dried and thrown into the biomass boiler. This would be a great way to get a good deal of our meat supply off the feedlots and back into their natural habitat.