Many people blame science for our surpluses of farm products. They say the trouble is that science taught us how to grow two blades of grass where one grew before. I think the trouble is that that is exactly what science did not teach us. Instead it taught us how to grow something else where two blades of grass grew before. -- Henry A. Wallace, June 21, 1940, Secretary of Agriculture, The Strength and Quietness of Grass

Wallace wasn't the only Secretary of Agriculture in the 40s who understood grass and farming. In 1948 Clinton P. Anderson, then Secretary of Agriculture, stressed the need to expand grassland farming, which, he said, is "the foundation of security in agriculture." 1948 Yearbook of Agriculture: Grass has become a cult classic among grass farmers and general farmers who use leys or pastures in their rotations.

One of the special projects of The Leopold Center is to reissue that book.

The 1948 yearbook places grass-based systems into the ecology of agriculture, addressing the role of grass as it relates to production, practice, image and philosophy. In the editor’s preface, Alfred Stefferud pointed out that the book was for “city people as well as farmers” because it addressed the place of grass in our food and agriculture system from a comprehensive perspective. The Leopold Center and many others believe the volume can and still should serve that purpose and that is important to update and revise this important work.

Managing consultant and co-executive editor, Walt Wedin, co-executive editor Steve Fales, and a nationwide project steering committee are now working with the Center’s Ecology Initiative leader Jeri Neal to identify topics and design context for the new book. The book is scheduled to be completed in 2008, which will be 60 years after the first book was issued. Support for the initial work of the project is supplied by a grant by the Wallace Genetic Foundation, Inc., and the Center’s Ecology Initiative.

This is a decent page for an overview of current best practice and links to relevant information and resources.

However, I think that Wallace wasn't quite correct. Science didn't teach us "how to grow something else where two blades of grass grew before". We've known that for eons. But it is fair to say that there was a paucity of research about grasslands and a lack of appreciation for their value, a condition that persisted despite the efforts of both Wallace and Anderson as well as others until fairly recently.

Interest in soil and grasslands has increased in part due to ever better methods for identifying and analyzing microbial life. A stream of discoveries about the "secret life" of bacteria and fungi in undisturbed (i.e. not plowed for crops) swards continue to amaze and delight. Oddly perhaps, some of the renewed interest comes from recognizing the role of grasslands in the carbon cycle, something of high interest due to atmospheric carbon overload. [via Transect Points]

What's new in the world of belowground impacts of the ongoing rise in the air's CO2 content? How about the ever-increasing production of a protein that is created by fungi that live in symbiotic association with the roots of 80% of the planet's vascular plants, which is being released to almost every soil in the world in ever greater quantities with the passage of time, and that is working ever greater wonders with a variety of processes that benefit the biosphere? It certainly has our vote as something up there near the top of the list of highly-desired biological phenomena; so let us explain how and why it works. . .

The amount of fungal-produced glomalin in the soils of the CO2-enriched treatments in all three of the ecosystems they studied was greater than that observed in the soils of corresponding ambient CO2 treatments. They also observed increases in the mass of small soil aggregates in the treatments exposed to elevated CO2; and the stability of the small soil aggregates in the CO2-enriched treatments was greater than the stability of the aggregates in the ambient CO2 treatments. In addition, in one of their studies, where six CO2 concentrations ranging from 250 to 750 ppm were imposed as treatments, they found that "the proportion of soil mass in aggregates of 0.25-1 mm showed a linear increase along the CO2 gradient," and that "glomalin concentrations followed a pattern similar to that of the small aggregate size class," indicative of ever-increasing soil structure benefits with ever-increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2. . .

Consequently, as the air's CO2 content continues to rise over the years and decades ahead, the potential for soils to sequester carbon will likely prove much greater than what nearly everyone had previously anticipated. Not only will the capacity of soils to store carbon grow ever larger due to the ever-increasing aerial fertilization effect of atmospheric CO2 enrichment - which enhances plant growth and results in more carbon being transferred to the soil - it will also grow ever larger as increasingly active soil fungi help to keep ever greater portions of that carbon better preserved in increasingly more stable soils.

There's more about other significant benefits. It won't solve the rising CO2 problem though it will help, and it's another reason to be sceptical about the idea of growing crops to provide feedstocks for energy systems in hopes of reducing CO2 emissions. It may be that this actually increases CO2 more than just leaving the land uncultivated. It may be that restoring some current cropland to grassland would be a more effective strategy.