Listen to this PodcastMore 60-Second Earth
-
The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
Read More »
[Below is the original script. But a few changes may have been made during the recording of this audio podcast.]
We may be running out of dirt. The intensive farming of recorded history, accelerated by the last several decades of industrial agriculture, now strips the soil of some 20 tons of dark, rich organic matter per hectare per year.
That's not just a problem for farmers, much of that carbon ends up in the atmosphere, contributing to climate change, which then goes on to exacerbate other food-growing issues such as drought or floods and extreme temperatures. Plus, degraded soils spur farmers to clear yet more land, contributing to the rapid destruction of the world's forests, further exacerbating climate change.
So the future of farming is, in large part, a future of fighting climate change—and battling to preserve soils.
Fortunately, there are several promising methods. No-till farming, in which soil is left undisturbed by plows, can help restore some 600 to 900 megatonnes of carbon to the earth over several decades.
And organic matter can be put back into the soil more directly, via a method known as biochar. Basically, waste plant matter is burned into charcoal and then added to the soil. In addition to keeping carbon out of the atmosphere, such biochar may also improve fertility, though it probably can't be practiced on a global scale.
Ultimately, the future of farming will also be decided by the future of eating: the amount of land needed for farming in the first place could be radically reduced if people stopped eating as much meat.
—David Biello
See what we're tweeting about
16 Comments
Add Commentlet me put in a plug here before the vegans. concentrated animal farming is not sustainable. rearing animals for meat can be sustainable. the prairie ecosystem supported over twice the biomass of grazing ruminants that we have now in cattle. intensive bison grazing kept the fastest growing grasses in check, ensuring a healthy diversity of plants. perennial plants whose roots reached down as much as 2m brought minerals up into the food chain, and stored carbon far underground. sure grazers consume much more food mass than they produce in meat mass, but in a healthy system, what isnt converted is returned back to the soil as manure. meat produced this way is good for us, good for the planet, and, yes, expensive. but, the sooner we discard the ridiculous idea of spending <10% of our income on food as we do now, the better.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaking a living soil, crop rotation can go a long way to keeping yields high and inputs low.
As for meat one can do many other animals that improve the soil and only need grass, bugs to eat thus not a CO2 hit. Bison, deer, elk, moose all need hunting to keep healthy and can be a sustainable meat source.
waste plant matter burning is not good. Direct mulching of waste plant matter control weeds,supply organic matter,conserve moisture and control diseases in No-Till Farming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBiochar Soil Technology.....Husbandry of whole new orders of life
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBiotic Carbon, the carbon transformed by life, should never be combusted, oxidized and destroyed. It deserves more respect, reverence even, and understanding to use it back to the soil where 2/3 of excess atmospheric carbon originally came from.
Wise Land management; Organic farming and afforestation can build back our soil carbon,
Biochar allows the soil food web to build much more recalcitrant organic carbon, ( living biomass & Glomalins) in addition to the carbon in the biochar.
Biochar, the modern version of an ancient Amazonian agricultural practice called Terra Preta (black earth, TP), is gaining widespread credibility as a way to address world hunger, climate change, rural poverty, deforestation, and energy shortages… SIMULTANEOUSLY!
Modern Pyrolysis of biomass is a process for Carbon Negative Bio fuels, massive Carbon sequestration,10X Lower Methane & N2O soil emissions, and 3X Fertility Too.
Every 1 ton of Biomass yields 1/3 ton Charcoal for soil Sequestration (= to 1 Ton CO2e) + Bio-Gas & Bio-oil fuels = to 1MWh exported electricity, so is a totally virtuous, carbon negative energy cycle.
Biochar viewed as soil Infrastructure; The old saw;
"Feed the Soil Not the Plants" becomes;
"Feed, Cloth and House the Soil, utilities included !".
Free Carbon Condominiums with carboxyl group fats in the pantry and hydroxyl alcohol in the mini bar.
Build it and the Wee-Beasties will come.
As one microbiologist said on the Biochar list; "Microbes like to sit down when they eat".
By setting this table we expand husbandry to whole new orders of life.
Unlike CCS which only reduces emissions, biochar systems draw down CO2 every energy cycle, closing a circle back to support the soil food web. The "capture" collectors are up and running, the "storage" sink is in operation under our feet. Pyrolysis conversion plants are the only infrastructure we need to build out.
Another significant aspect of bichar and aerosols are the low cost ($3) Biomass cook stoves that produce char but no respiratory disease. http://terrapretapot.org/ and village level systems http://biocharfund.org/ with the Congo Basin Forest Fund (CBFF). The Biochar Fund recently won $300K for these systems citing these priorities;
(1) Hunger amongst the world's poorest people, the subsistence farmers of Sub-Saharan Africa,
(2) Deforestation resulting from a reliance on slash-and-burn farming,
(3) Energy poverty and a lack of access to clean, renewable energy, and
(4) Climate change.
The IBI fostered the application by 20 countries for UN recognition of soil carbon as a sink with biochar as a clean development mechanism will open the door for programs across the globe.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.biochar-international.org/biocharpolicy.html.
Reports:
This new Congressional Research Service report (by analyst Kelsi Bracmort) is the best short summary I have seen so far - both technical and policy oriented.
http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/R40186_20090203.pdf .
This is the single most comprehensive report to date, covering more of the Asian and Australian work;
http://www.csiro.au/files/files/poei.pdf
Biochar data base;
TP-REPP
http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/?q=node
Given the current "Crisis" atmosphere concerning energy, soil sustainability, food vs. Biofuels, and Climate Change what other subject addresses them all?
The first North American Biochar Conference, at CU in Boulder , August 9th -13th
Keynote speaker Secretary Tom Vilsack & Dr. Susan Solomon (NOAA's head atmospheric scientist)
http://www.regonline.com/builder/site/Default.aspx?eventid=684390
There is real magic coming out of the Asian Biochar conference.
15 ear per stalk corn with 250% yield increase,
Sacred Trees and chickens raised from near death
Multiple confirmations of 80% - 90% reduction of soil GHG emissions
The abstracts of the conference are at
http://www.anzbiochar.org/2009presentations.html
I come from a farming family and our land has been in continuous cultivation for 80 years or so. Our land and those of our neighbours has been getting increasingly fertile at least in the last 30 years or so. And that is even without modern seed and fertilizer. Moreover, all we can really say is that we are curious about the effects of global warming. We are in Canada and the prospect of longer growing seasons is awfully appealing but we are wary of the possibility of lower precipitation. In everything there are winners and losers and we up here think we may be the winners of climate change.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGlobal warming is all because of felling of trees and reduction in green cover. The CO2 level increases because of amount of CO2 utilized by plants and trees is getting reduced day by day. Climatic change, global warming etc., all are because of green cover reduction
Does no one remember the rich rewards of bio-intensive farming?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot only does it replinish and "grow" new fertile soil, but can be easily done well by most inhabitants of our planet - both urban and rural - to an acceptable degree.
Further, it cultivates (no pun!) "family farming" using no chemicals and reduces dependence on the mechanized commercial, land-wasting mega-farming techniques.
How did the ecosystem work before agriculture? Humans as hunters and gathers ate what they could gather and catch. Agriculture revolutioned production, but also upset many interactions in the ecosystem, from soil, to plants, to animans, and always the micro fauna and flora. Diversity and interactions were extensive and tended to interact in special ways with many "buffers" internalized. Agriculture changed the patterns of interactions at many scales, generally moving toward system simplification and reducing interactions among forms of life and habitats. These can be restored to a large degree by using what we have learned in the past several thousand years. Biochar is short cut, but not a replacement of the dynamics. Using "Nature" as a model, we see many many features of the system can be replaced, integrated in many ways, some of which seem to be unique. Using "Nature" as a model we can learn much. Indeed, we have active awareness and social changes moving in that direction. "Industrial" agriculture is about simplification, and generally is contrary to this complex system dynamic. By looking at the complexities, we can learn and simulate to recover many aspects of a sustainable system. One such example of studying this kind of "progressive return to sustainable dynamics" is The Land Institute near Salina, Kansas. Read their web site for more details. Progress can be in the direction of patterns of complexity and reverse the over simplification of the "Green Revolution" by designing human benefits of biodiversity and protect the atmosphere with reduction and maybe elimination of our use of fossil energy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am always struck by how these articles are so US centric and don't consider what happens elsewhere around the world. Ruminants and crops do compete for land and resources in the US, but in many other places that is not the case. Many societies have realised that converting grazing lands to crops has been a disaster and the best use would have been to have stayed with grazing. Well managed grasslands can store lots of carbon on a global scale and that should be a priority. NZ work showed even in that fertile country that when trees replaced grassland it took an average of 19 years to restore the carbon to what had been under the grassland. In more marginal lands grazing is the only landuse that can help feed an over-populated world.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile researching for a recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution story about aspects of tomato growing, I happened on "vertical farming." This is a system, designed by Columbia University's Professor Dickson Despommier in the late 1990s, wherein urban highrises or "farmscrapers" feature floor-by-floor self-sustaining means of producing fruits and vegetables. Tomorrow's city dwellers may rely on recyclable resources, and methods like hydroponics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs urbanites have a ready source of fresh produce, outlying "traditional" farmers are free to return much of their acreage to the natural state. This, in turn, could ease the depletion of animal and plant species.
Successful versions of this concept can be found in Dubai, and in Florida Disney World's demonstration gardens for the future. Professor Despommier may have taken his cues from Teera Preta - an ancient Amazonian system of farming. Food for thought.
The key to this is really to use our intelligence to observe and learn from how the natural systems in different areas work and work *with* these systems, no-till being a good example of allowing the soil system (chemical and biological) to work in the best way rather than breaking it up and having to put in a huge amount of energy and effort to 'mend' it. At the same time, we do have to accept limits to our 'freedom' to eat as much (cheap) meat as we want. Above all we need to end the insane approaches of feeding good grain and, worse, fish protein to livestock when these make good food already. I for one would happily eat free-ranging buffalo from the restored prairies, but until then I'll limit my meat intake to occasional meals of locally-produced and naturally-fed meat (mainly lamb round here).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGreat comments. Yes, biochar, if done right: go steady on the science and permutations. Yes on soil carbon in general. Ecosystem C lost to the atmosphere represents 1/3 of CO2 up there. Because statistically all C in the atmosphere cycles every 14 years, our task really is to bring balance to the C cycle, not so much balance huge C budgets. The cycle is out of whack. Good C, bad C. Depends where it is. More C in soils feeds more people better quality food, and does similar good for other animal and microbial species. Don't forget glomalin, produced by soil fungi, at 30-40% C, and responsible for soil health and aggregation. Protects soil C from oxidation by microbial metabolization.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOnly soil C can draw down the 'legacy load' of CO2 already emitted that is yet to effect temperatures and sea levels. Nothing else can act fast enough, and this has been tested for nearly 500 million years. This mechanism first made atmosphere viable for human ancestors, will do same for our descendants?
No shortage of sink capacity with rangelands covering over 50% of planet's land surface. Massive ecosystem regeneration now on the horizon. Massive wealth creation on all continents.
This is mostly to comment on the Biochar part of the minute - which (by script) was:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"And organic matter can be put back into the soil more directly, via a method known as biochar. Basically, waste plant matter is burned into charcoal and then added to the soil. In addition to keeping carbon out of the atmosphere, such biochar may also improve fertility, though it probably can't be practiced on a global scale. " Just to add a few more thoughts. 1). The term "burn" should be replaced by "pyrolyzed" - wherein roughly half the initial carbon is available for much-needed renewable energy. 2). The term "may" should be replaced by "almost always" - evidence of a failure to do so is sparse, and 3). "probably can't" should be replaced by "probably can for everywhere plants are now growing" (We can't claim that Biochar will allow plants to grow where conditions are so harsh as to preclude growth - so the sentence is correct - but leaves the wrong flavor. Ron
The carbon nitrogen cycle is not an abstract concept that we are seperate from.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is our consious form.
Care for her and all her creatures
I hope this it will help you
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this“The Biochar Revolution” with “The Biochar Solution”
http://biochar-books.com/
It is a truly biochar Bible.
I believe this is the most beautiful holiday gift for your loved ones.