Grass-Fed Cattle To Solve Global Warming?

[Eclipse Now]

Hi all,

 

If only I had time to study all these claims! Anyone believe these stats? It sounds right to me after watching 'Food inc' and another DVD from the PolyFace farms guy, Joel Salatin (who featured as a solution to the problems raised in 'Food Inc'.) I want it to be true. But are the sheer statistics involved in this piece justified?

 

http://www.smallfootprintfamily.com/grass-fed-beef-and-global-warming/

[Essay]

Hi all,

 

If only I had time to study all these claims! Anyone believe these stats? It sounds right to me after watching 'Food inc' and another DVD from the PolyFace farms guy, Joel Salatin (who featured as a solution to the problems raised in 'Food Inc'.) I want it to be true. But are the sheer statistics involved in this piece justified?

 

http://www.smallfootprintfamily.com/grass-fed-beef-and-global-warming/

 

I finally read that article. It seems basically correct. The system also needs water to successfully store carbon in the soil; but if we can pipe oil all over the country, we should be able to get enough water to the new grasslands. The choice of "grasses" used in the system might need to be some compromise between nutritious edibility and carbon storage, but the net should still lead to a buildup of carbon-rich soil.

 

After studying biochar, I realized that soil is the key to regulating the climate--if we should ever choose to intentionally try maintaining a stable climate.

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Our problem is less than 10 gigatonnes Carbon per year (of emissions), yet the biosphere sucks down over 120 gigatonnes per year. Of course these usually get respired and thus returned to the atmosphere; but if just 1% of that yearly biomass turnover could be shunted into building richer soils, then our problems would be solved or could even be reversed.

 

The root biomass of grasslands can contribute to that shunting.

Also, about a fifth of that 120 gigatonnes, becomes humus in the soil--of which about 1% naturally remains to help build up new soil--and if we would stop oxidizing humus with our agricultural chemicals, then we could instead (intentionally) increase the percentage of humus naturally stored in soils as a climate management (geoengineering) strategy.

 

Biochar restores the benefits (water, nutrient, and humus retention) that natural fires brought to wildlands, but without the destructive side effects of natural fires.

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It is interesting to note that the "Little Ice Age" coincides with the "rewilding" of the Americas, which occurred after the "die off" of tens-of-millions of indigenous land managers who existed there before the 1500s--as detailed in Mann's book, "1491."

 

On a larger scale, one can observe the cooling of the planet as mammalian (herbivorous) megafauna evolved along with the grasses, grasslands, seasons, temperate soils, and temperate latitudes. The recent (15-40Myr) evolution of temperate soils has become the key to fine-tuning the planet's climate.

 

It worked so well that Ice Age cycles eventually developed, but humans have interrupted those cycles with agriculture--as documented by Ruddiman, in "Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum."

 

As your linked article points out, since we've unintentionally been affecting the climate with our high-intensity industrial-scale agriculture system, restoring soil's natural function will help balance many dimensions of our environment. I've been giving presentations based on this same idea:

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The books "Vestal Fire" and "Changes in the Land" and "Larding the Lean Earth" (Pyne, Cronin, and Stoll, respectively) detail the more recent (400yrs) and more drastic effects we have wrought upon the "rhizo-organism" that we call soil. It is easy to see how this history must have affected the climate. For technical details of the science, see "The Rhizosphere."

 

 

 

~

[Eclipse Now]

Hi Essay,

great post! Yeah, I love biochar too, and wish I had time to study it some more and also compare the costs involved in running these "moving herd" schemes. I wonder how they move the herds: do they just introduce them to certain wildernesses and let the predatory and herding instincts take over? Do they drover them from horseback? From helicopter? (The Australian way!)

 

The TED talk did not mention piping water, did that article I linked to? I read most of it, but must have missed that bit. The TED talk seemed to indicate that streams were fed by a slower release of water from the more spongy soils. Or are you thinking of piping water in addition to these measures? Because another recent sustainability happy-moment for me was realising that the Seawater Greenhouse concept is back in a big way, only it's getting a 'Steve Jobs' workover. Read more on that below.

 

However, before I let you go, have you had any thoughts on how we're going to connect moving herds, biochar, and our sewers all into one giant phosphorus recycling agricultural system? How do we get the phosphorus before it goes out to sea? How are we going to solve peak phosphorus, and is this connected with biochar in some kind of crop & cow rotation scheme.

 

Now, meet food from solar power + desert + seawater!

 

 

Seawater Greenhouses meet the Sundrop company!

 

 

 

 

 

I read about this as a concept years ago. Now, it’s going commercial!

 

“It’s an inspiring project, more important, it could be argued, than anything else going on in the world. Agriculture uses 60-80% of the planet’s scarce fresh water, so food production that uses none at all is nothing short of miraculous.”

 

Not only that, but…

 

“So well has Sundrop’s 18-month project worked that investors and supermarket chains have lately been scurrying down to Port Augusta, making it hard to get a room in its few motels, or a table at the curry restaurant in the local pub. Academic agriculturalists, mainstream politicians and green activists are falling over each other to champion Sundrop. And the company’s scientists, entrepreneurs and investors are about to start building an £8m, 20-acre greenhouse – 40 times bigger than the current one – which will produce 2.8m kg of tomatoes and 1.2m kg of peppers a year for supermarkets now clamouring for an exclusive contract.”

 

And let’s not forget the lack of pesticides!

 

The Sundrop Farms System™ harnesses the sun’s energy to desalinate seawater to produce freshwater for irrigation, produce electricity to power our greenhouse and provide the energy to heat and cool our greenhouse. Our seawater drenched greenhouse ventilation cleans and sterilises the air, making it possible to grow crops without chemical pesticides. The Sundrop Farms System™ system relies mainly on renewable inputs to achieve the best possible outcomes for our planet and the best possible produce for our customers. To learn more about our greenhouse solutions for arid climates, please contact us.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/nov/24/growing-food-in-the-desert-crisis

 

http://www.sundropfarms.com/grow-positive/technology/

 

They know how to convert the salt into one of the nutrients, or sell it on to other agriculturalists. The Israeli’s have also learned to do this in their desert oasis!

 

Deserts get little or no rainfall, but often there are aquifers deep below the surface that may hold an abundance of water. The problem is getting the salt out of this water so it can be useful for farmers to grow cash crops. The new oasis solves the problem with an ecosystem that produces a variety of freshwater and salt-hardy crops that feed on saline wastewater from the desalination process. It’s in tune with Mother Earth and affordable for some of the poorest farmers subsisting on areas of encroaching desert.

 

http://israel21c.org/environment/israel-confronts-world-hunger-with-a-solar-powered-desert-oasis/

 

It just gets better. The Israelis then use the salty brine to grow… fish! Ornamental fish!

Nemo, in fact!

[Essay]

Hi Essay,

great post! Yeah, I love biochar too, and wish I had time to study it some more and also compare the costs involved in running these "moving herd" schemes. I wonder how they move the herds: do they just introduce them to certain wildernesses and let the predatory and herding instincts take over? Do they drover them from horseback? From helicopter? (The Australian way!)

 

The TED talk did not mention piping water, did that article I linked to? I read most of it, but must have missed that bit. The TED talk seemed to indicate that streams were fed by a slower release of water from the more spongy soils. Or are you thinking of piping water in addition to these measures? Because another recent sustainability happy-moment for me was realising that the Seawater Greenhouse concept is back in a big way, only it's getting a 'Steve Jobs' workover. Read more on that below.

 

However, before I let you go, have you had any thoughts on how we're going to connect moving herds, biochar, and our sewers all into one giant phosphorus recycling agricultural system? How do we get the phosphorus before it goes out to sea? How are we going to solve peak phosphorus, and is this connected with biochar in some kind of crop & cow rotation scheme.

 

Now, meet food from solar power + desert + seawater!

Seawater Greenhouses meet the Sundrop company!

 

The solar stuff seems as if it could be a great supplement; but for a fundamental fix, we need to rebuild the global balance of carbon-rich, nutrient-cycling and water-retaining, soils.

 

Perhaps the greenhouses could be a part of establishing borders of rich soil surrounding our deserts (preventing the spread of desertification), which can be created by mixing sewage and biochar with the desert sands. Sand contaminated with oil can be remediated in a similar fashion, or it can be added to other remediation efforts. But it needs to be kept wet enough for algae to grow on the surface of the newly forming soils.

 

We should be piping sewage and water excesses around the country, instead of piping oil and gas around the country, to combat desertification and drought--and to help restore those grasslands.

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"Convertible Husbandry" might describe the grazing system needed on these proposed grasslands (see below). Biochar should be introduced to the soil during conversion to grassland, so that it can help the soil more easily develop biodiversity, carbon richness, and more resilience. Char can also be spread later into established grasses, with the char becoming trapped in the thatch layer--while that layer decomposes to help form new soil.

===

 

Keeping Phosphorus out of our waterways is a key, it seems to me. Preventing the leaching of all nutrients, out of our arable lands, is a property common to both humus and biochar. Humus is fairly transient in soil, so it exchanges nutrients easily--but those more mobile nutrients also can be leached away under various seasonal conditions. Biochar is very stable in soil, so it retains nutrients more consistently and resists leaching of nutrients--but those more stable nutrients need more diverse biological (rhizosphere) activity (encouraged by biochar) to help transfer (at seasonally appropriate times) those nutrients to the plants.

 

So both humus and char are important to building (or restoring) soils that remain productive, retain nutrients and water, and resist leaching. That is the genius of the "grassland strategy;" it restores the naturally rich soils that existed before we turned the grass upside down.

 

You might enjoy a few lines from Steven Stoll's book, "Larding the Lean Earth;" especially the first quote about phosphorus. The other quotes reveal hints of a continuing problem surrounding land exhaustion, which have been driving history forward from our country's founding--through migration, invention, politics, markets, and war, among other social forces.

 

"After corn rich in Florida phosphorus rises on the Illinois prairie, it is sold to New England dairy farmers, who feed it to their Holsteins. The cows void what they can't use. Now at least three times displaced, the phosphorus is discharged into the watershed of the Connecticut River Valley, where it leaches through grainy tilth to foul streams and groundwater. There are all sorts of overlapping cycles linking agriculture to the rest of nature, not all of them beneficial. Soil fertility now depends on far-flung networks and can be implicated in the debasement of ecological systems, but this was not always so. The renewal of nutrient elements once took place within individual farms, conducted through an elegant orchestration of soils, plants, and animals." --p.3 "Larding the Lean Earth" [2002]

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[fyi: "marling" worked by "liming" the soil with a clay-rich limestone, marl]

Said one planter from North Carolina, marling "had the effect of stopping emigration." Never had such a magnificent solution come from so common a source.

 

The discovery that a substance literally underfoot could turn sour land into sweet should have caused commotion. Marl offered planters all sorts of benefits at little or no expense but labor and transport. It could be applied for adequate results just once a year at a minimum quantity of two hundred bushels per acre, according to Ruffin. All the work to enrich sixty acres for one year could be accomplished by one man and a horse, and not every acre needed to be marled every year. Compared with convertible husbandry, marl demanded less time and labor.

[ Ruffin made this kind of statement in many places. He recommended 100 bushels per acre on ten acres as an experiment but two or three hundred bushels per acre typically, depending on the quality of the marl ~Farmers' Register 6 (December 1838). ]

To some it assured a new rural landscape by offering a stay of execution for the declining forest, in the way that all improvement translated into landscape conservation.

--p.156 [LTLE]

...."convertible husbandry" was a longer crop rotation cycle that included fallow and grazing/manuring periods.

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See also: "Edgecombe Method" on p.154.

Ruffin's restoration--exemplified by marl itself--endorsed an open system, an extensive land-use regime. He said one thing over and over and over again with every particle of his body: the lands of the South contained all the elements of their restoration. On a tour of lower North Carolina just before the Civil War he paid close attention to the "composed manure" he saw in Edgecombe County. Every year at about the same time planter made a mash by selecting from a menu of ingredients: earth, marl, ashes, barnyard dung, cottonseed, salt, and guano (imported bird droppings). Ruffin saw one hundred mule carts of earth brought to every acre on one plantation, followed by thirty bushels of cottonseed. Slaves gathered dead trees and drift logs and burned them slowly to keep the ashes from flying. Of the 600 cleared acres on one plantation, 350 were covered with this compost, 50 more with bird guano. Ruffin declared that the improved planters of Edgecombe had invented a perpetual system: "Increased products and profits have been made on lands cropped almost every year... and without any thing like a rotation of crops. Cotton occupies the same ground almost continually, and always for at least four of five years in close succession." Planters could have their way--no rotation and constant tillage without the cost and bother of grass or cattle. They could develop their own version of restoration to rival the northern farmers. In fact the Edgecombe compost mostly came from sources external to the plantation. It pinned fertility to exploitable land and so only replicated the problem it attempted to solve.

[Ruffin, Agricultural, Geological, and Descriptive Sketches of Lower North Carolina, 288-293]

--p.154 [LTLE]

"...and burned them slowly to keep the ashes from flying." This may describe some charcoal production. Charred biomass remains in the earth, holding the oil in the soil, so "living off the fat of the land" can be sustained longer.

Historically, in Japan, they called it (char used to amend soils) "fire manure."

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150 years ago, Scientific American published this:

April 1863: A Prairie's Value

 

"It is a singular fact that what were vast treeless prairies in Illinois, twelve years ago, are now covered with a dense growth of thrifty young trees, comprising various species of oak, hickory, cottonwood, ash, etc. So rapid has been this change in many localities, that where some of the early settlers located, twenty to twenty-five years ago, without a tree around them, they can now cut and hew good building timber a square foot. Prairie land, when kept from the annual fall burning formerly practiced by the Indians, rapidly produces a growth of trees. Some of the old citizens, who greedily located the timber land when they came to this country, and were careless about acquiring prairie, now find the latter of more value than the former; their timber has grown faster than they used it."

...note the role fire played in management of those grasslands. Except for keeping trees out, biochar can replace many of the soil-building benefits that fire historically provided to the grassland ecosystem.

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btw....

Although the "nutritional value" of organically grown crops may be the same as hydroponically grown or industrially grown crops, the "micro RNA" profile is very different.

[note: -the almost unreadably too small jlr.org quote is from Journal of Lipid Research- "...proteins in HDL, strongly implicating the lipoprotein in inflammation and the innate immune system."]

 

...there are many reasons to restore productive, carbon-rich, more natural soils.

Edited March 24, 2013 by Essay

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Grass fed cattle may help save the world if we let them roam free like nature intended!