May 08, 2008
Loose Sleeves
That's so there's room to keep lots of stuff up them. Diversified, low-external-input (LEI) farming systems offer one possible approach for maintaining adequate productivity and profitability while reducing pollution by agrichemicals and still improving water quality. Sounds kind of good, but what does adequate mean. In a world where there is a large and growing shortfall in ag production this doesn't sound so good after all. Conventional rates of synthetic fertilizers were applied in the two-year rotation, whereas composted cattle manure and reduced rates of synthetic fertilizers were applied in the three- and four-year rotations. Where did the manure come from? How was it produced? Isn't this just a hide-the-pea game again, a way to sneak fertilizer in by having some other grower launder it, like gangsters do with money by passing it through dummy corporations or offshore banks before they spend it at home? Weed management in the two-year rotation was based on conventional rates of herbicides, whereas...
May 07, 2008
Global Outlook
For agriculture. This USDA report says nothing new, but it's all in one place and could be a useful reference. Abstract World market prices for major food commodities such as grains and vegetable oils have risen sharply to historic highs of more than 60 percent above levels just 2 years ago. Many factors have contributed to the runup in food commodity prices. Some factors reflect trends of slower growth in production and more rapid growth in demand that have contributed to a tightening of world balances of grains and oilseeds over the last decade. Recent factors that have further tightened world markets include increased global demand for biofuels feedstocks and adverse weather conditions in 2006 and 2007 in some major grain- and oilseed-producing areas. Other factors that have added to global food commodity price inflation include the declining value of the U.S. dollar, rising energy prices, increasing agricultural costs of production, growing foreign exchange holdings by major food-importing countries,...
May 06, 2008
Shaky Ground
More Economist bashing. Reasoning from false premises gives false results. Fertiliser, which has enabled the world to generate enormous growth in agricultural output, is largely produced from petroleum. This seems to place a long-term constraint on food output, absent some new innovation. Nitrogen fertilizer is produced from methane, not petroleum, but that's not the first or only way to do it. Methane is just a convenient and still relatively cheap source of hydrogen - CH4 - and that is useful for making ammonia - NH3. Water is also a source - H2O. Though not as rich it is certainly abundant compared to methane. That's one of Mother Nature's favorite methods. There are many ways to make hydrogen, none as cheap as methane at current prices, but that seems set to change. It takes energy to make hydrogen from water. Mother Nature uses lightning. One recent suggestion is to use wind power, which is intermittent, but that doesn't matter when...
May 06, 2008
Dust Devils
It might be worth expanding on the significance of part of the description of Brazilian ag from Grim Romance: To give one remarkable example, the time between harvesting one crop and planting the next, in effect the downtime for land, has been reduced [to] an astounding thirty minutes. But in the Ukraine: Fallow agricultural land and steppe-formation processes are evidently capable of having a much greater effect on global air quality than was previously assumed, according to researchers who examined a dust cloud that formed over parched fields in southern Ukraine and led to extremely high concentrations of particulate matter in Central Europe. . . Since the 1930s wind erosion in what was then the Soviet Union has increased considerably as a result of collectivisation in agriculture and the resultant large field areas. In particular, this has affected the regions north of the Caucasus, the lower reaches of the Don river and eastern and southern Ukraine. It is possible...
May 05, 2008
More Precisely
The food crunch in India. India "needs another green revolution", the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (Unescap) recently urged. "Growth and productivity in agriculture are slowing, and the green revolution has bypassed millions." India has the most to gain from improvements in agriculture because it is home to nearly two-thirds of Asia's poor, most of whom rely on farming, Unescap said. Middle-class Indians are eating more and better food. Yet its population of 1.1bn is growing at about 1.4 per cent and food grain production increased just 0.9 per cent last year, according to ministry of agriculture statistics. Agricultural growth has steadily decelerated because of years of under-investment as attention has focused on high-growth manufacturing and service industries. It's somewhat understandable that this has happened given that the economic rewards for investment in manufacturing and service industries are high, and those for agriculture have been so low in the past. Food was cheap. But...
May 05, 2008
Gas-X Grass
When organic matter decomposes, rots, in anaerobic conditions the types of micro-organisms that do the work emit methane as a waste product. That's why swamps, rice paddies, lake bottoms and land fills emit so much methane. When there is air present, oxygen to be more precise, aerobic microbes that emit carbon dioxide wastes do more of the work. Ruminants such as cattle, sheep and goats harbor anaerobic organisms in their guts, something like human intestinal flora, that decompose the tougher bits of grasses and forbs, the cellulose, and emit methane in the process. Though this is completely natural and has happened for eons as giant herds of ruminants roamed the continents before humans ever domesticated some of them (think bison), it has become a target of climate change nutters. Scientists at Gramina, a joint biotech venture by Australia’s Molecular Plant Breeding Cooperative Research Centre and New Zealand rural services group PGG Wrightson Genomics, are developing a grass that will...
May 03, 2008
Grim Romance
Some interesting comments by the panel of economists at an FT blog. The remedy to high food prices is to increase food supply, something that is entirely feasible. The most realistic way to raise global supply is to replicate the Brazilian model of large, technologically sophisticated agro-companies supplying for the world market. To give one remarkable example, the time between harvesting one crop and planting the next, in effect the downtime for land, has been reduced [to] an astounding thirty minutes. There are still many areas of the world that have good land which could be used far more productively if it was properly managed by large companies. For example, almost 90% of Mozambique’s land, an enormous area, is idle. Unfortunately, large-scale commercial agriculture is unromantic. We laud the production style of the peasant: environmentally sustainable and human in scale. In respect of manufacturing and services we grew out of this fantasy years ago, but in agriculture it continues...
May 02, 2008
Dirt Deficit
Perhaps the various soil improvement agronomic system ideas that have been expressed here (and many other places, of course) will be more memorable if expressed in conventional crisis terminology: Peak Soil, like peak oil. By 2050, according to Rattan Lal, a professor of soil science at Ohio State University, "All the necessities of food, feed, fiber, and fuel are going to be met by less than one-tenth of an acre per person, on average. And we already have seriously degraded a lot of the available land. So unless you can restore some of it you will just run out." People have been improving as well as degrading soil for millenia. Some civilizations develop more successful systems than others. The results can be catastrophic. It may be that we can learn to make soil, in a formal way. Dick Haynes, a soil scientist at Australia's University of Queensland, has created a synthetic soil from industrial waste products: fly ash from...
May 01, 2008
As Specified
Horrors! Swedish researchers have discovered that adding biochar to soil causes microorganisms to increase in number! In their study, charcoal was prepared and mixed with forest soil, and left in the soil in each of three contrasting forest stands in northern Sweden for ten years. They found that when charcoal was mixed into humus, there was a substantial increase in soil microorganisms (bacteria and fungi). These microbes carry out decomposition of organic matter (carbon) in the soil, and consistent with this, they found that charcoal caused greatly increased losses of native soil organic matter, and soil carbon, for each of the three forest stands. Much of this lost soil carbon would be released as carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. Therefore, while it is true that charcoal represents a long term sink of carbon because of its persistence, this effect is at least partially offset by the capacity of charcoal to greatly promote the loss of that carbon already present...
April 30, 2008
Agro-perversion
A perhaps not so loosely related thought on the Agriculture of Tomorrow. [via Cosma, in an indirect way which involved some searching inspired by a tossed off comment that he probably could have given a citation for and saved me the work, but no, he speaks mostly to insiders who don't need to search it up. Their jokes may be numbered, to save them the time needed to tell them. ] The chemical or physical inventor is always a Prometheus. There is no great invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god. But if every physical and chemical invention is a blasphemy, every biological invention is a perversion. There is hardly one which, on first being brought to the notice of an observer from any nation which has not previously heard of their existence, would not appear to him as indecent and unnatural. Consider so simple and time-honored a process as...
April 30, 2008
Dryland
Continuing an old thread most recently discussed in Rootless Bloviation: More about African Ag The wheat is a new variety, one that is high yielding and resistant to drought. As a result, small farming families are realizing harvests on farmlands once considered too poor to cultivate, to the country´s social and economic benefit. The progress is life-saving at a time when wheat crops in Kenya and other African countries are plagued by a virulent new strain of fungus called "wheat rust" that threatens the region´s farmlands. . . Scientists and crop researchers at Kenya´s Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) developed the new wheat seeds over the past decade. Through a process called "mutation plant breeding", they applied radiation-based techniques to modify crop characteristics and traits. The story is from the International Atomic Energy Agency. I've always been stonkered about the acceptance of mutagenic cultivars produced by heat, chemical and radiation induced mutation, while controlled genetic alteration is treated with suspicion....
April 27, 2008
Food Energy
There was once a food economy and an energy economy, but the boom in biofuels is now merging the two. . . Global fertilizer prices rose more than 200% in 2007 as farmers applied more fertilizer to maximize production of corn -- now used for ethanol -- at record prices; hardest hit are African farmers who need fertilizer to replenish nutrient-depleted soils. The unprecedented rise in fertilizer prices - more than 200% in the past year - is creating a fertilizer crisis for resource-poor farmers in developing countries. . . Particularly hard-hit are farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. Farmers there need fertilizers desperately, to replenish their nutrient-depleted soils. But fertilizer use in Africa is the world's lowest - about 8 kg per hectare. The lack of fertilizers in Africa accentuates hunger and poverty. The biofuels debacle accentuated and accelerated a problem that was always there and growing ever more focused. There never were two economies - food and energy -...
April 08, 2008
Plastic Food
An example of the environmental consequences of the grain shortage. Thousands of farmers are taking their fields out of the government’s biggest conservation program, which pays them not to cultivate. They are spurning guaranteed annual payments for a chance to cash in on the boom in wheat, soybeans, corn and other crops. Last fall, they took back as many acres as are in Rhode Island and Delaware combined. . . Such problems were never contemplated when the Conservation Reserve was conceived as part of the 1985 Farm Bill. Participants bid to put their land in the program during special sign-ups, with the government selecting the acres most at risk environmentally. Average annual payments are $51 an acre. Contracts run for at least a decade and are nearly impossible to break — not that anyone wanted to until recently. . . “If the government lets the land out and then crop prices fall, that’s going to hurt a lot of...
March 31, 2008
Old Tech
Researchers propose designer soil to sequester CO2. A team from Newcastle University aims to design soils that can remove carbon from the atmosphere, permanently and cost-effectively. This has never previously been attempted anywhere in the world. . . The concept underlying the initiative exploits the fact that plants, crops and trees naturally absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) during photosynthesis and then pump surplus carbon through their roots into the earth around them. In most soils, much of this carbon can escape back to the atmosphere or enters groundwater. But in soils containing calcium-bearing silicates (natural or man-made), the team believe the carbon that oozes out of a plant’s roots may react with the calcium to form the harmless mineral calcium carbonate. The carbon then stays securely locked in the calcium carbonate, which simply remains in the soil, close to the plant’s roots, in the form of a coating on pebbles or as grains. Well, it may never have been...
March 24, 2008
Sweet Nothings
Piles of dung attract flies. The new study. . . used . . . an open-air research lab that can expose the plants in a soybean field to a variety of atmospheric CO2 and ozone levels – without isolating the plants from other environmental influences, such as rainfall, sunlight and insects. High atmospheric carbon dioxide is known to accelerate the rate of photosynthesis. It also increases the proportion of carbohydrates relative to nitrogen in plant leaves. The researchers wanted to know how this altered carbon-to-nitrogen ratio affected the insects that fed on the plants. They predicted the insects would eat more leaves to meet their nitrogen needs. When they exposed the soybean field to elevated carbon dioxide levels, the researchers saw the expected effect: Soybeans in the test plot exhibited more signs of insect damage than those in nearby plots. A closer inspection showed that soybeans grown at elevated CO2 levels attracted many more adult Japanese beetles, Western corn...
March 13, 2008
Post Toasties
On second thought . . . Over the past years Biopact has been instrumental in getting a simple message across: if biofuels are going to produced, it would be interesting to take the potential of the Global South into account. . . In order to help small farmers in Africa - which has always been our prime goal - there are perhaps more elegant and straightforward strategies. . . There is a new land use strategy that could make more sense. It is based on biochar - charcoal obtained from the pyrolysis of biomass - used as a soil amendment. Biochar cures unhealthy soils and makes them fertile. This way, slash-and-burn farmers can halt deforestation, and grow more food and biomass. Biochar also doubles as a carbon sink for which credits are available. . . The Biopact sees an interesting opportunity in the concept. This is why it has created the Biochar Fund, a small social profit organisation aimed...
March 09, 2008
Partners
Acid soils occur all over the world and have limiting effects on agriculture. One approach to improving production on such soils is to amend them using higher PH materials such as lime or ashes. This can be expensive since large amounts of material need to be spread. Another approach is to select cultivars that tolerate acidity better. The effect of rhizobial strain and lucerne genotype on the nodulation of lucerne seedlings growing in solution cultures maintained at pH 5 was measured in two greenhouse experiments. . . The work demonstrates that there remains substantial opportunity to increase the potential of lucerne to nodulate at low pH. Gains would appear to be most easily made by changing the strain of rhizobia that is used for inoculation. I've often been frustrated by less detail oriented growers who pay little attention to rhizobial strains, considering it a nuisance activity rather than a management control with large potential to affect outcomes. This research...
February 24, 2008
Fat Soil
I've noticed a slow evolution in paleo-environmentalist dogma regarding land management in general and grazing in particular. Stewart Brand could add this to his list of environmental heresies. Over the next ten years, I predict, the mainstream of the environmental movement will reverse its opinion and activism in four major areas: population growth, urbanization, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power. Reversals of this sort have occurred before. Wildfire went from universal menace in mid-20th century to honored natural force and forestry tool now, from “Only you can prevent forest fires!” to let-burn policies and prescribed fires for understory management. Environmentalists still have only the dimmest glimmer of comprehension, so they get the specifics munged up and can't reason usefully from such faulty premises. The result of conventional agricultural practices such as artificial fertilizing, ploughing, stubble burning, bare fallows, etc is to run down the organic matter in the soil, and it is this organic matter that is the source...
January 30, 2008
Hysteresis
Speaking of willful ignorance. The benefits of the industrial agriculture era are high productivity, cheap food and relatively high levels of sanitation . . . At the turn of the century, Americans were spending close to 50 percent of household income on food, he explained. Today, the figure is closer to 8 percent. But big problems exist with the state of today’s agriculture industry, Mackey said. Fossil fuel consumption by the food industry has soared and environmental degradation is rampant. Plus, animal welfare concerns are largely nonexistent in industrial agriculture, he said. CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) have been around for just 40 years, enabling the U.S. population to consume animal foods, which was not the case at the turn of the century. Ignorantia affectata, a contrived ignorance, an ignorance too useful to abandon. At the turn of the century almost half the US population worked in agriculture, though that number was rapidly declining due to automation and industrialization....
January 20, 2008
Full Circle
Most proposals for GHG management fail to consider all of the factors. This one does a better job. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from New Zealand dairy farms are significant, representing nearly 35% of New Zealand’s total agricultural emissions. . . Dairy farms have a high demand for electricity, with a 300-cow farm consuming nearly 40 000 kWh per year. However, because only ~10% of the manure produced by the cows can be collected (e.g. primarily at milking times), a maximum of only ~16 000 kWh of electricity per year can be produced from the effluent alone. . . A solution for smaller farms is to co-digest the effluent with unutilised pasture sourced on the farm, thereby increasing biogas production and making the system economically viable. A possible source of unutilised grass is the residual pasture left by the cows immediately after grazing. This residual can be substantial in the spring–early summer, when cow numbers (demand) can be less than...
January 18, 2008
Cool Country
We hear a lot of farmer bashing by some segments of the politicized paleo-environmentalist community. One of their standard attacks is about irrigation, claiming that farmers use too much water leaving less for instream flows and downstream cities. We also see bizarre interpretatons of research findings. Some way is found to claim that nearly any finding supports climate change religion. Consider this press release from Livermore which trumpets: "Human activities contribute to California's global warming". Recent research by scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the University of California, Merced and the National Center for Atmospheric Research shows that California temperatures have jumped statewide by more than 2.1 degrees Fahrenheit between 1915 and 2000. This warming is likely related to human activities. . . But all California climate trends during the 20th century aren’t so clear. For example, less warming is observed in summer. This warming, which mainly occurs at night but not during daytime, is not well explained...
January 16, 2008
Empty Rhetoric
Bad arguments by advoates desperate to justify their positions don't help. They are bad arguments even when the positions held are truly defensible. Lobbyists who argue against the practice of greening one's food options once the decision has already been made are stuck with the hard line: that there is no difference whatsoever. That's plainly false, just as it is false that there is no difference whatsoever between food brands or between food that comes from Guatamala or Iowa. Now that the decision has been made, the burden of proof is on the lobbyists to demonstrate that there is absolutely, categorically no relevant difference between the several options. By my reckoning, that'll be mighty hard, since differences like the living conditions of chickens plainly matter, even if not morally, at least to some people. Maybe that's why someone would revert to inane strategies like suggesting that cafeteria operators are "hooked by propaganda." Foodfights like this can only be made...
January 16, 2008
No Change
I read an item or two from The Edge's World Question Center 2008 now and then, usually because someone else posted about some response. I then read a few others on the page. Some are useful, others, not so much. Today following Hanson's pointer to Sabbagh, I read on to Colin Tudge. I have changed my mind about the omniscience and omnipotence of science. I now realize that science is strictly limited, and that it is extremely dangerous not to appreciate this. . . In the matter of GMOs we are seeing the crude simplifications still in their uncorrected form. By genetic engineering it is possible (sometimes) to increase crop yield. Other things being equal, high yields are better than low yields. Ergo (the argument goes) GMOs must be good and anyone who says differently must be a fool (unable to understand the science) or wicked (some kind of elitist, trying to hold the peasants back). But anyone who...
January 09, 2008
Even Less Smoke
The earlier post Up In Smoke discussed better nitrogen compounds and smarter application methods to increase yields while reducing nitrogen use. And then there's better genes. Arcadia says its GM rice requires less nitrogen fertiliser . . . Arcadia is working to apply the reduced-nitrogen technology to GM wheat, rape seed oil, sugarbeet, maize, sugarcane, cotton and turf for golf courses and landscape gardening . . . The Arcadia technology inserts a gene that improves the nitrogen uptake, which means less fertiliser is needed to produce a given yield of crop. All of these materials, methods and cultivars could be used together for significant savings and increased yields. Another relevant post is Everything Changed. It discussed the use of soil amendments and improved cultivars to open The Cerrado, the closed lands, in Brazil. The acidity and high aluminum content of these soils had prevented their cultivation. Little would grow. Those same soils are found in Africa, which was once...
December 18, 2007
Up In Smoke
Much of the nitrogen fertilizer used in the developing world never makes it into a plant. A lot of it evaporates or leaches away from the root zone, and so increases the cost while decreasing production. The losses to air and water are environmental problems since some are GHGs and some cause eutrophication of water. Better nitrogen compounds and smarter application methods can make a big difference. UDP [urea deep placement] is the insertion of large urea briquettes into the rice root zone after transplanting. UDP cuts nitrogen losses significantly. Farmers who use UDP can increase yields by 25% while using less than 50% as much urea as before. . . broadcasting is a highly inefficient application method because most of the nitrogen is lost to the air and water. Only one bag of urea in three is used by the plants. . . UDP technology was introduced in Bangladesh in the late 1990s; by 2006 more than half...
December 16, 2007
Tabloid Journalists
I suppose it has always been so but it is becoming increasingly apparent that there is no difference between tabloids and supposedly serious newspapers, especially as politics has become so shrill. One agricluture related offender I've called out before is Michael Pollan, an opportunist who has been riding high on food scare stories. For years now, critics have been speaking of modern industrial agriculture as “unsustainable” . . . Would the aquifers run dry? The pesticides stop working? The soil lose its fertility? . . . Two stories in the news this year, stories that on their faces would seem to have nothing to do with each other let alone with agriculture, may point to an imminent breakdown in the way we’re growing food today. The first story is about MRSA, the very scary antibiotic-resistant strain of Staphylococcus bacteria that is now killing more Americans each year than AIDS . . . The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that...
November 23, 2007
Stated Plainly
What do biochar advocates really think? Mathews keeps a bag of biochar on his desk, because he sees it as key to the future of the earth. He applauds the initiatives by Sen. Salazar and New South Wales and contends that the time is right for individual countries to promote pyrolysis and biochar. Kyoto's cap-and-trade approach "can never get CO2 levels down fast enough or far enough. The biochar approach can solve global warming by biosequestration of carbon direct from the atmosphere using the power of photosynthesis," he says. There's a compelling logic in this. The idea of avoiding a fall off a cliff by going more slowly is just silly. You have to stop, turn around and head a different direction. Still, who cares what the carbon wankers think? Isn't biochar valuable even in a world that has no climate issues? Brown and many other biochar advocates believe that the economic key to unlocking the potential of biochar...
November 12, 2007
More Snakes
Randall launches an anti-biofuel rant that sounds some of the points made here in Snake Oil as well as a few others. . . . the push for biomass energy from Brazil and other equatorial countries is leading to huge CO2 emissions as forests get ripped down and burned. A lot of this is happening to feed a growing population of humans. Also, Asian industrialization is increasing the amount of spending money people have for food and so Chinese, Indians, and others are spending more on types of foods (e.g. meats) that require more land usage to produce. This increases food imports by these countries and forest destruction by food exporters. Making a bad trend even worse, some Westerners who pose as environmentalists are promoting biomass energy usage. Well, because of the CO2 released by rainforest clearing equatorial region biomass production expansion causes a net boost in CO2 emissions. So people who worry about global warming and therefore advocate...
October 01, 2007
Everything Changed
We hear a lot of bleating about Brazilian rain forest loss, but that's not the interesting ag story. From only 200,000 hectares of arable land in 1955, the Cerrado had well over 40 million hectares in cultivation by the year 2005. The phenomenal achievement of transforming the infertile Cerrado region into highly productive land over a span of fifty years, the world’s single largest increase in farmland since the settlement of the U.S. Midwest, has been hailed as a far-reaching milestone in agricultural science. The Cerrado is an arid brush savanna stretching over 120 million hectares across central Brazil from the western plains to the northeastern coast. With soils characterized by high acidity and aluminum levels that are toxic to most crops, Brazilian farmers had long referred to the area as campos cerrados – “closed land,” with little promise for sustaining production. . . The Cerrado region now provides 54 percent of all soybeans harvested in Brazil, 28 percent...
September 26, 2007
Pump It Up
A variant of the make or buy debate. Consider make. Large vertical pipes could, they [James Lovelock and Chris Rapley] say, be used to mix nutrient-rich waters from hundreds of metres down with the more barren waters at the surface. This could cause algal blooms at the surface, which would consume carbon dioxide (CO2) through photosynthesis. When the algae die, some of this carbon could sink into deep waters. The algae may also produce chemicals [dimethyl sulphide aerosols] that spur cloud formation, further cooling the planet. . . The idea may seem far-fetched. But a wave-driven 'ocean upwelling system' to absorb CO2, very similar to what Lovelock and Rapley are proposing, is currently being developed by a company called Atmocean, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Phil Kithil, chief executive officer of Atmocean, estimates that a pump-driven up-welling system, if deployed across 80% of the world's oceans, could help bring down to the ocean floor an additional 2 billion...
September 24, 2007
Easily Said
So, to continue, how do we "seek balance in our agronomic interventions, and so get more vegetation for our efforts with less N2O,"? How do we persuade Nitrosomonas spp. bacteria - which convert ammoniacal and urea nitrogen fertilizer to nitrite, so that Nitrobacter can convert it to nitrates, which must be done before the denitrification bacteria can convert nitrates to N2O - to back off? Nitrification inhibitors, such as nitrapyrin, dicyandiamide, and ammonium thiosulfate, slow the conversion of ammonium to nitrate by affecting the soil bacteria. This blocks denitrification for 2-6 weeks depending on which inhibitor is used as well as soil temperatures. What's more . . . Nitrogen applied as anhydrous ammonia is all ammonium once it dissolves in the soil water. Anhydrous is toxic to the ammonium-converting bacteria in the injection zone and it takes about 2 weeks for them to repopulate the application zone soil and begin converting ammonium to nitrate. This doesn't help when nitrogen...
September 23, 2007
Nitrogen Tarnish
Bottom line: Just because lots of governments decide some path is a good idea doesn't mean they all aren't being stupid. That's Randall's conclusion about the world wide rush to biofuel production though there are arguments that doing so produces more GHGs than equivalent fossil fuels would produce. The nub of the argument in this case is denitrification - the microbial breakdown of nitrates applied to crop lands. In doing so these soil bacteria emit nitrous oxides and other gases, and the N2O is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a clear, colorless gas, with a slightly sweet odor. Due to its long atmospheric lifetime (approximately 120 years) and heat trapping effects —about 310 times more powerful than carbon dioxide on a per molecule basis — N2O is an important greenhouse gas. Nitrous oxide has both natural and human-related sources, and is removed from the atmosphere mainly by photolysis (i.e., breakdown by sunlight) in...
September 11, 2007
Excited Soil
I just love it when Philip talks dirty. An equivalent measure of redox potential is pE. Just as pH is the negative log of the hydrion activity, pE is the negative log of electron activity (source). Soil pE and soil pH are equally important to predicting charge state of metals and nutrients. However, because measuring pH is relatively easier by far, and because knowing pH tells us volumes about expected pE, soil pE is a less discussed subject. It is important to bioremediation, industrial chemistry, and wetland science. Not a household term. These two are more than a mirror pair, although mirroring is their most notable characteristic. When pH changes, pE must also change in response. The reverse is true also. In soil, that response departs from simple mirroring. So much so that it can seem to be two separate dances. Soil pH and pE have different causes of change and different effective buffering agents. The term 'buffering' is...
July 29, 2007
Flawed Heroes
"I have lived to see state after state extirpate its wolves. I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed, first to anemic desuetude, and then to death." -- Aldo Leopold Randall comments on a press release regarding a new paper from the OSU College of Forestry which notes further confirmation of the benefit of top predators in healthy ecologies. The wolves are back, and for the first time in more than 50 years, young aspen trees are growing again in the northern range of Yellowstone National Park. The findings of a new study, just published in Biological Conservation, show that a process called “the ecology of fear” is at work, a balance has been restored to an important natural ecosystem, and aspen trees are surviving elk browsing for the first time in decades. . . “We’ve seen some recovery of willows and cottonwood, but this is the first time we can document significant aspen growth, a tree species...
July 23, 2007
Tough Tucker
It may be that there is some confusion about ruminant digestive systems that contributes to the mistaken ideas discussed in More Cranks. Pundits loosely talk about forage as if it was all the same, just vegetable matter that could be consumed by people as well as ruminants, and so it seems inefficient to feed it to animals. This is profoundly mistaken. People can't digest grass. They can't digest the vast majority of plant material. To people it's just fiber, something that passes through them intact. No animals except ruminants can digest this material. The complex carbohydrates that make up the stiffer bits of plants, the stuff that allows them to stand tall rather than being just a gooey mass on the ground, can only be digested by bacteria. Ruminants have complex multi-stage digestive systems that harbor these bacteria, and gives them a mechanical assist by finely grinding the material. That's what cud chewing is about. The material is chewed,...
June 05, 2007
NodD Off
In recent years it has been observed that there have been some declines in crop yield per unit of nitrogen fertilizer added, and a decline in symbiotic nitrogen fixation by rhizobia in legume crops. A novel explanation has been proposed. The most common explanation for the observations is an overuse of agrichemicals applied to legume crops. That practice sets up "a vicious cycle," Fox said, because it reduces a legume crop's natural need for nitrogen fixation but leaves a shortage of natural nitrogen in the soil for the next year's crop to utilize. Thus, she said, there is the need for yet more fertilizer. Other reasons, Fox said, have been poor soil quality due to overuse, which strips nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous from the soil, and to tillage, which interrupts root structures and disturbs the nitrogen-fixing bacteria when soil is turned. "Our research provides another explanation for declining crop yields," Fox said. "We showed that by applying...
June 05, 2007
Bio-energy
Johannes Lehmann has a paper pending in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment that covers some of the issues I've been fretting about with biochar. Nutrients are retained and remain plant available in soil mainly by adsorption mechanisms to minerals and organic matter. While we are usually unable to change the mineralogy of a given soil, we can change the amount of soil organic matter. Typically, the ability of soils to retain cations in an exchangeable and thus plant-available form (called cation exchange capacity – CEC) increases in proportion to the amounts of soil organic matter and this also holds for bio-char. Bio-char, however, has an even greater ability than other soil organic matter to adsorb cations per unit carbon (Sombroek et al. 1993) due to greater surface area, greater negative surface charge and greater charge density (Liang et al. 2006). In contrast to other organic matter in soil, bio-char also appears to be able to strongly...
June 01, 2007
Try Again
IMO we would do well to do more agrichar trials in more places, sooner rather than later. Australia seems to be on point here. The huge potential of agricultural soils to reduce greenhouse gases and increase production at the same time has been reinforced by new research findings at NSW Department of Primary Industries' (DPI) Wollongbar Agricultural Institute. Trials of agrichar - a product hailed as a saviour of Australia's carbon-depleted soils and the environment - have doubled and, in one case, tripled crop growth when applied at the rate of 10 tonnes per hectare. 10 tonnes per hectare, about 4 tons per acre, is a lot of material to handle, so this is a non-trivial expense even if the material is free. It may be best done over a couple of years, especially if used as a top dressing rather than being incorporated through plowing or disking. NSW DPI senior research scientist Dr Lukas Van Zwieten said soils...
May 24, 2007
Food Writing
Christopher Shea writes about changes in perspective in recent food writing. [via A&L Daily] Time was, a war of words between a food writer and an organic-foods retailer would have attracted the interest of maybe seven people in your local food co-op–a bit of chatter over the brown-rice bin and everyone would move on. Those of us in a Safeway with our Perdue roasters and our broccoli avec a hint of pesticide would not have known that an argument took place. But the recent exchanges between Michael Pollan, author of the 2006 bestseller The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, and John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, are, if not squarely in the mainstream, awfully close to it. Shea meanders through the various claims of newly relevant food writers contrasting their strengths and weaknesses. On the one hand, on the other hand, but there's no gripping hand. He concludes: Organic food presently accounts for only 2.5...
May 06, 2007
Soil Reefs
Philip Small rounds up some early reports from Attendees at the just finished International Agrichar Initiative 2007 Conference in Terrigal, new South Wales, Australia. Philip comments: From the reports, it is clear that the number of players, and their diversity, is growing exponentially. One reason for this diversity is that the process of making terra preta nova appears to be as adaptable to a wide range of soils and climates as it is scalable. You can have regional collection and distribution approaches coexisting with processes adapted to individual enterprises. One of the reports Philip points to, Birth of a new wedge: agrichar (terra preta) by Kelpie Wilson, makes some interesting observations. According to many researchers at the conference, agrichar has the potential to store billions of tons of carbon safely away in soils. The attendees were clearly excited by this potential, and, unlike other meetings concerned with climate change, an electric buzz of optimism was in the air. Joe...
April 15, 2007
Sweet Soil
I try to be rational, semi-scientific, pragmatic and provisional about agricultural practices. It's a field rife with voodoo enthusiasms - like health care perhaps - that is subject to fads and fashions. We are so ignorant that it's easy to be superstitious. Since no one has definitive answers, wild claims about miracle products and practices crop up like weeds and are difficult to root out. Despite my skeptical and pragmatic stance there are two soil amendments that I struggle to stay rational about. One is the recent enthusiasm for bio-char and the other is the ancient enthusiasm for lime. I usually tell those I work with that the first thing they should do is sweeten their soil with lime. If they can't afford the time and expense to do much, at least do that. Unless they have calcareous soils that are already too sweet, this is the single most effective thing they can do and is the foundation for...
February 28, 2007
Feed Me
Enthusiasts are often frustrated when attempting to intervene in natural systems. Things don't turn out as planned, and the effects of intervention are seldom quick to manifest. I see that a lot when working as an advisor or consultant to others. The interventions that I propose take time and have variable results depending on initial conditions as well as the specific interventions. Over time it is usually necessary to adjust management in response to the effects of previous management. It can look like I'm making it up as I go, and to some extent this is true, but it is more useful to see it as adapative management. One of the old sayings among growers is that the best fertilizer is the grower's footprints. Fields and swards that are closely observed by principals do better. It can be time consuming but it is time well spent since amendment is adjusted to reflect observations. One day we may be able...
January 23, 2007
Soiled Stories
Philip Small reviews a brace of articles from E/The Environmental Magazine The Scoop On Dirt: Why We Should all Worship the Ground We Walk On, part I and part II, by Tamsyn Jones. It is beautifully written, but settles into a tired view of soil. As a soil scientist, it irks me that this essay flubs the opportunity to celebrate the unfolding understanding of this dark and patient resource. . . Ultimately it works into a description of Third World soil erosion, chemical burn-out and exhausted productivity. We are told that without aid from the powers that be, the soil, and those it supports, will suffer. I accept that on face value, without hesitation. Third World nations are requesting training in soil management and nutrients to replenish their exhausted soil. We should help them in this. . . There is much to like about this piece. Soil seldom gets such professional treatment. However, because it is so well-written –...
January 21, 2007
Food Fight
There's been some talk about the competition for grain between ethanol producers, livestock operations and people this week. A number of blogs picked up on the comments of Mexican president Felipe Calderon about the rising cost of corn, a staple of the Mexican diet, especially for poor people. Dave Halliday has been on the story, quoting a CBS News article. President Felipe Calderon signed an accord with businesses on Thursday to curb soaring tortilla prices and protect Mexico's poor from speculative sellers and a surge in the cost of corn driven by the U.S. ethanol industry. . . Tortilla prices rose by 14 percent in 2006, more than three times the inflation rate, and they have continued to surge in the first weeks of 2007. The rise is partly due to U.S. ethanol plants gobbling corn supplies and pushing prices as high as $3.40 a bushel, the highest in more than a decade. There may be other issues as...
January 13, 2007
Cheese Food
An earlier post, Ag Outlaws, linked a Joel Salatin rant Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal, in which he enumerated the ways that the regulatory system thwarted his efforts to produce and market superior foods. Everything I want to do is illegal. As if a highly bureaucratic regulatory system was not already in place, 9/11 fueled renewed acceleration to eliminate freedom from the countryside. Every time a letter arrives in the mail from a federal or state agriculture department my heart jumps like I just got sent to the principal’s office. And it doesn’t stop with agriculture bureaucrats. It includes all sorts of government agencies, from zoning, to taxing, to food inspectors. These agencies are the ultimate extension of a disconnected, Greco-Roman, Western, egocentric, compartmentalized, reductionist, fragmented, linear thought process. . . Every T-bone steak has to be wrapped in a half-million dollar facility so that it can be sold to your neighbor. The fact that I can...
December 16, 2006
Ag Outlaws
See this semi-angry yet humorous ag rant, Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal. Everything I want to do is illegal. As if a highly bureaucratic regulatory system was not already in place, 9/11 fueled renewed acceleration to eliminate freedom from the countryside. Every time a letter arrives in the mail from a federal or state agriculture department my heart jumps like I just got sent to the principal’s office. And it doesn’t stop with agriculture bureaucrats. It includes all sorts of government agencies, from zoning, to taxing, to food inspectors. These agencies are the ultimate extension of a disconnected, Greco-Roman, Western, egocentric, compartmentalized, reductionist, fragmented, linear thought process. . . Every T-bone steak has to be wrapped in a half-million dollar facility so that it can be sold to your neighbor. The fact that I can do it on my own farm more cleanly, more responsibly, more humanely, more efficiently, and in a more environmentally friendly manner doesn’t...
October 24, 2006
Glomalin Critics
This is another post about strings used to get here. I repeated the search to see what would result but didn't find any actual "glomalin critics". I did find this older overview that had some information that was new to me. In 1996, Dr. Sarah Wright and colleagues at the USDA's Agricultural Research Service isolated a glycoprotein called glomalin that literally "gums up" the soil rhizosphere (the interface between soil and plant roots) with carbon fixed from the atmosphere. The compound is produced by common soil fungi called mycorrhizae that frequent the roots of many crops. When Wright removed glomalin from soil samples, the result was a lifeless mineral powder. The soil had lost its tilth - the substance that conveys texture and health. She had inadvertently discovered the fundamental factor of soil welfare, elusive for over 10,000 years. Humic acid, previously thought to be the main contributor to soil carbon, could muster only a tiny percentage of glomalin's...
September 21, 2006
Come a Cropper*
Though I am sometimes mistaken for an environmentalist many of my posts castigate them for their stunningly obtuse behaviors and beliefs which actually harm the environment. I've tried to make that distinction, calling them paleo-environmentalists and folks like me real environmentalists, but it's stretching the word and concept too far out of shape. So, no, I'm not an environmentalist as the word is generally used since my focus is on the actual environment rather than a grab bag of loopy, pseudo-religious baloney, what Lovelock calls "urban-based superstition about nature". Besides, environmentalists are primarily political activists aligned with various confederacies of dunces, and many of their positions are instrumental, designed to advance some other agenda that is sometimes, even usually, inimical to the environment. One of the craziest positions these loons have taken is opposition to grazing. I'm a grazier, I have interest, but it's not the reason I criticize environmentalists so strongly on this issue. I wasn't always a...
August 11, 2006
Black is Back
Actually, for us earthy types it never left, but more glitzy urban pseudo-environmentalists disappeared up their own bungs looking for a paler shade of green. They found brown of course. Fortunately, others followed a more fruitful course. In 1879, the explorer Herbert Smith regaled the readers of Scribner's Monthly with tales of the Amazon, covering everything from the tastiness of tapirs to the extraordinary fecundity of the sugar plantations. . . The secret, he went on, was "the rich terra preta, 'black land', the best on the Amazons. It is a fine, dark loam, a foot, and often two feet thick." Last month, the heirs to Smith's enthusiasm met in a hotel room in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, during the World Congress of Soil Science. Their agenda was to take terra preta from the annals of history and the backwaters of the Amazon into the twenty-first century world of carbon sequestration and biofuels. They want to follow what the green revolution...
August 01, 2006
Net Gains
John sent a link to this interview of Tad Patzek - of Pimentel and Patzek fame - one of the prominent critics of biofuels. He and Pimentel have claimed that it takes more fossil fuel energy to make ethanol than it yields when used as fuel. The hurrier you go the behinder you get with biofuels. There has been a flurry of papers claiming that ethanol does have a net gain in energy, though slight. The dispute boils down to how the calculations are done. Well, we are stuck on this little argument and it basically boils down to throwing numbers across fences that is how I call it. The listeners have to realize that in fact there is a little simplistic model of reality, which is called this net energy balance, which is not a balance at all, by the way. It is a manipulation of certain inputs and outputs to the corn ethanol cycle from which there...
April 25, 2006
Community Relations
I've been focusing on plant secretions and such that affect sward composition. It's part of a comprehensive effort to make my swards happy places for the species I value as forage. After working on moisture, PH, tilth, organic matter and nutrients I shifted to bacteria and fungi. For the most part if the other things are good then the bacteria and fungi will thrive but there are exceptions. One well known one is tannins such as are found in oak leaves. They harm many forage species in part by being toxic to nitrifying bacteria such as nitrobacter. There's not a lot you can do on a large scale. You can't realistically rake acres of semi-forested pasture, and the trees have other value. You just live with that problem. Another known issue is juglone. "Juglone is found naturally in the leaves, roots and bark of plants in the Juglandaceae family, particularly the black walnut." It too retards nitrifying bacteria, though...
April 14, 2006
Rock Fertilizer
Or, Fossil Fertilizer part II. There's a story sometimes told of strange fossil bones brought back by Thomas Jefferson - as well as others - from Big Bone Lick in Kentucky. At the time there was no knowledge of dinosaurs - the word was coined decades later in 1842 - and it was not generally believed that creatures could go extinct. Jefferson, an amateur naturalist like many of his era, had dug fossils of large creatures in his home area and so entertained the notion that they might still roam the west. The bones brought back from Big Bone Lick in Kentucky were Mastodon. But, Jefferson's personal inventory was lost when one of Jefferson's slaves pounded the fossil bones to dust to use as bone meal soil amendment, just as was done with all bones produced on the farm. At that time it had newly been learned that phosphorus promotes growth in plants and animals, and that pulverized bones...
April 08, 2006
Fossil Fertilizer
Or, Petroleum Fertilizer Part II. One expression of the we're-all-gonna-die peak oil agenda is the claim that the world is dependent, or addicted, to fertilizer made from fossil hydrocarbons, and that when they run out we will starve to death. It might be useful to investigate the history of such fertilizer - especially nitrates - since these nitrogen compounds get the majority of sneers. There's nothing new about the world quest for nitrates which began in earnest in 1241 when the Mongols brought Chinese black powder - gunpowder - with them during their frolic through Poland and Hungary. They used it for bamboo pipe bombs which were good for blowing down city gates to admit attackers. It didn't take Europeans long to twig to the potential, and coupled with their skills in metallurgy, especially large cast pieces, resulted in their inventive contribution - the bombard or cannon. The Europeans had gotten very good at making fine cast pieces in...
April 07, 2006
Petroleum Fertilizer
I've noted before that this is a nonsense phrase used by activists of various shades to hype an anti-fossil fuel agenda, an anti-fertilizer agenda, and/or a we're-all-gonna-die peak oil agenda. Natural gas, methane, is a common feedstock for nitrogen fertilizer production since it has four nice hydrogen atoms, which is what is of use for fertilizer, and it is used as an energy source for heat and pressure production to enable the catalyzed reactions to take place. But that's just one way to make ammonia, the simplest type of nitrogen fertilizer. At the turn of the century ammonia was a waste byproduct of coke production from coal that was sold as an industrial chemical and later as fertilizer. This is still so. But coal is still a fossil fuel albeit a much more abundant one. This debunks the peak oil whingers but not the anti-fossil whingers. The earlier post Fire Down Below noted Iceland's use of geothermal energy and...
March 31, 2006
Dead Dirt
There's been a flurry of news articles about African agriculture lately - everything from the horrors of Chinese designed irrigation systems and dams to increasingly impoverished soil. Although drought may be the best known barrier to successful crops in Africa, the poor soils are a huge part of the equation. Farmland in Africa has been robbed of chemicals such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, which are vital for plant growth. And these have not been replaced with organic and chemical fertilizers, as they are in most other countries, because of the expense. The nutrient-starved soils have become one of the major factors preventing the 200 million malnourished people in the continent from growing enough food to eat and sell. "Poor soil fertility is the fundamental cause for low agricultural production in hunger-endemic areas," notes Alfred Hartemink of World Soil Information (ISRIC) in Wageningen, The Netherlands. . . In their analysis, the researchers totted up the nutrients that feed the...
March 28, 2006
Eat Your Piggies
A lot of sites have pointed to the research reports of recent work to create pigs that are high in omega-3 fatty acids which seem to be good for human mental and physical health, especially for those getting a bit long in the tooth. There's also the constant susurus of semi-informed quasi-environmentalist opprobrium about pork in general and factory farmed pork in particular. When you add in the religious and food fetishist squick about meat in general and pork in particular it's a paradox of sorts that genetically engineered pigs might come to be health food. For those who are not infected with any of the above named fetishes, those who relish pork and eat it with discernment, there are other issues. The problem with modern pig production for them isn't so much the common worries about the environment or fantasies of sustainability, it's that the meat of standard factory pig lacks aesthetic qualities they cherish. In an article...
March 21, 2006
Dirty Business
As predatory opportunists try to whip up another crisis - this time it's water and of course the UN is the focal point of hysteria - agriculture is as usual fertile ground for the opportunists to plow. Agriculture relies on water as well as land and nutrients. In a sense water - along with air - is the major nutrient for agriculture. This has been so since the dawn of agriculture. It is no accident that it developed in river delta areas and at the base of high mountains which had ever flowing rivers from snow melt even in the hottest and driest parts of the year. Water management has been a driver for the development of civilization as groups banded together to do massive water projects, inventing novel engineering hacks and new intellectual tools in the process, to bring water over long distances to crop fields. One of the more interesting historical themes is the advance and decline...
March 06, 2006
Thumb Tricks
Organic nutters are deceitful in general but never so much as when they are trying to "prove" that fertilizer is bad. Organic farming has long been touted as an environmentally friendly alternative to conventional agriculture. A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) provides strong evidence to support that claim. Writing in the March 6 online edition of PNAS, Stanford University graduate student Sasha B. Kramer and her colleagues found that fertilizing apple trees with synthetic chemicals produced more adverse environmental effects than feeding them with organic manure or alfalfa. . . During the yearlong experiment, organically grown trees were fed either composted chicken manure or alfalfa meal, while conventionally raised plants were given calcium nitrate, a synthetic fertilizer widely used by commercial apple growers. Trees raised using the integrated system were given a blend of equal parts chicken manure and calcium nitrate. Each tree was fertilized twice, in October and May, and given...
March 05, 2006
More About Muck
For general farms that keep livestock as well as plant field and/or row crops manure isn't a problem, it's an asset that can be recycled to the fields to great benefit. It's more common to specialize, to either keep livestock or plant crops but not both, and confinement feeding has largely replaced free range finishing. Manure has become more of a problem than an asset. One way to deal with it is to install systems that process the manure to yield methane fuel. But is this a smart thing to do? Some say not. TALK of reducing our dependence on foreign oil through alternative energy sources like biomass is everywhere these days — even on our president's lips. As a livestock farmer and environmental lawyer, I've paid particular attention to discussion about using manure as "green power." The idea sounds appealing, but power from manure turns out to be a poor source of energy. Unlike solar or wind, it...
March 04, 2006
Darwinian Debts
I've been banging on about the benefits of omega-3 fatty acids for human health for a long time in internet years - more than a decade. Research papers on the subject were sparse in those early days but they have become common now. A new one notes that omega-3 is a psychoactive substance that helps us be mellow. In a study of 106 healthy volunteers, researchers found that participants who had lower blood levels of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids were more likely to report mild or moderate symptoms of depression, a more negative outlook and be more impulsive. Conversely, those with higher blood levels of omega-3s were found to be more agreeable. "A number of previous studies have linked low levels of omega-3 to clinically significant conditions such as major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, substance abuse and attention deficit disorder," said Sarah Conklin, Ph.D., a postdoctoral scholar with the Cardiovascular Behavioral Medicine Program in the department of psychiatry...
February 25, 2006
NAIS
That's the USDA proposed National Animal Identification System. Use a chicken, go to jail. ndeed, the only general systems of permanent registration of personal property in the United States are systems administered by the individual states for two items that are highly dangerous if misused: motor vehicles and guns. It is difficult to imagine any acceptable basis for the Department to subject the owner of a chicken to more intrusive surveillance than the owner of a gun. For example, whereas the owner of a long gun generally can take the gun and go hunting beyond the confines of his or her own property without notifying the government, the Department proposes that the chicken owner, under pain of unspecified "enforcement," must report within 24 hours any instance of a chicken leaving or returning to the registered property. (Standards, pp. 13, 18-19, 21; Plan, p. 17.) Even more important than the trammeling of basic property rights under the program is the...
February 23, 2006
Secret Ingredients
One of the reasons that environmental activists seem to be mean spirited twits spreading disinformation for personal gain is that this is true. They are social predators, entrepreneurs of sorts, who make their way in life exploiting the troubles of others. Their creative energies are squandered in trying to identify some segment of society that has related problems, and then trying to organize them into a rent seeking grievance group. The oblique benefits the social predator gets are jobs in organzations such as NGOs, government offices, political organizations and publications. Consider this twisted article. As bad as the annual flood of cheap corn is for our health -- nutritionally worthless high-fructose corn syrup, cheap feed for confined animals pumped full of antibiotics and hormones -- it may be even worse for the environment. Bolstered by government subsidies that have averaged about $4 billion annually since 1995, U.S. production accounts for nearly 40 percent of the world's corn output. Grain,...
February 18, 2006
Bio-Char
Charcoal in other words, but not necessarily made from wood, any organic material will do. A Cornell researcher is begging for funding by touting his work with "so-called bio-char -- similar to charcoal" as a double dip ag practice that improves yield and sequesters carbon in soil as a durable compound that can last for ages. "The knowledge that we can gain from studying the Amazonian dark earths, found throughout the Amazon River region, not only teaches us how to restore degraded soils, triple crop yields and support a wide array of crops in regions with agriculturally poor soils, but also can lead to technologies to sequester carbon in soil and prevent critical changes in world climate," said Johannes Lehmann, assistant professor of biogeochemistry in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences at Cornell University, speaking today (Feb. 18) at the 2006 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Lehmann, who studies bio-char and is the...
February 07, 2006
Grassland
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...
February 05, 2006
Horse Puckey
Manure isn't a useful source of nitrogen for crops. There is a small amount of nitrogen in it, but little of that small amount is in a mineralized, plant available, form. Worse, it is already spoken for by the bacteria that have the job of decomposing the manure - composting it in effect - to recycle it back to soil. Putting manure on your fields reduces available nitrogen and retards plant growth. There is a small net benefit after time has passed and all the workers have done their jobs to release and reform the organic nitrogen, but it is a mistake to equate manure with fertilizer. For example, a typical load of dairy manure - which would have some urine in it and that's where most animal nitrogen is excreted as urea - might give you 10 pounds of nitrogen per ton. A ton of urea fertilizer - same stuff - such as you can buy would give...
February 04, 2006
Early Exit
Marty Bender, retread naturalist who trained initially in physics and chemistry, has died of cancer way before his time. [via Nature Noted] Bender, who taught himself calculus in junior high school, was naturally made for science. But as a self-described city boy from Dayton, Ohio, he was not a born or bred naturalist. He graduated, cum laude, with a degree in physics and chemistry before developing the interest in biology that would take him to The Land Institute. "I look back," Bender said at the institute's Prairie Festival in 2004, when a nature trail was named for him, "and find it hard to believe that during the first 25 years of my life, the only things I could actually name were robins, blue jays, cardinals, pigeons and nighthawks." I've valued his work in quantifying agricultural energy flows. From the obit: Bender's answers were both blunt and exacting, what institute board Chairman Conn Nugent called a "tough theology": "Will biofuels...
February 03, 2006
Still Twirling
The earlier post Twirling Ethanol claimed that: When you decode the buzz words - bio-fuel, bio-mass, oil-free, foreign oil, etc. - you end up with proposals to revert to an earlier time in history when plants and dung were all the fuel we had. Food was scarce enough that gloomy predictions of impending doom were made while beasts of burden consumed large quantities of crops. For a few decades food production increased greatly while at the same time beasts of burden were replaced by fossil fueled engines. It desn't seem to make sense to have our engines replace beasts as competitors for food even if our technologies are very much more advanced than they were in the past since there are also lots more of us. So how much stuff did those draft animals eat? [via Knowledge Problem] At the turn of the last century, America's transportation system was fueled by biomass: 30 million horses and mules, give or...
January 27, 2006
More Fun . . .
with kaleidoscopes. These guys have kaleidoscopes implanted in their heads to eliminate any accidental contact with reality in an unguarded moment. They are always selling. It's a competitive business and you have to believe your grift to be any good at selling it to others. Consider this bit of fantasy. the reason that industrial agriculture remains dominant is that it's so much more productive, right? Wrong. According to a new study in the Feb. 15 edition of Environmental Science & Technology, a journal of the American Chemical Society, sustainable agriculture techniques like those mentioned above, introduced to developing world farms over the last decade, improved farm yields by an average of 79% in four years. And not just in a limited set of locations: the study covered 286 different projects in 57 developing countries. That's over 12 million farms, or 37 million hectares -- about 3% of the cultivated area in poor nations. 79% of what? Compared to what?...
January 26, 2006
Twirling Ethanol
One of the common varieties of cognitive kaleidoscope on the market today is the bio-fuel version. It's a fairly complicated device with lots of odd shaped bits that can be selected and rotated to make all sorts of pretty patterns - almost any pattern you want. There are a couple of favorite patterns though and a heated dispute between advocates of one or another. The ethanol pattern has been both praised and criticized. A new argument that finds it beautiful comes from a group that has reconsidered previous arguments, fixed their defects, modernized them and concluded that the critics were just twirling improperly. They assessed the studies' assumptions and then reanalyzed each after correcting errors, inconsistencies and outdated information regarding the amount of energy used to grow corn and make ethanol, and the energy output in the form of fuel and corn byproducts. Once these changes were made in the six studies, each yielded the same conclusion about energy:...
January 23, 2006
Insecure Arguments
Alex Tabarrok likes this Nick Szabo post "about the interaction between historical agricultural productivity and security." ...two large islands which have been largely or entirely protected from invasion for hundreds of years, Japan and Britain, also had among the highest agricultural productivities per acre during that period as well as the greatest cultivation of even marginal arable lands.... Contrariwise, this theory predicts agricultural productivity will be lowest in unprotected continental regions. Indeed, interior continental regions easily reached by horse tended to be given over to much less productive nomadic grazing. Security constraints were probably what prevented any sort of crop from being grown. I don't think so. There were several prior constraints, not least the fact that they aren't very good places to do farming. Besides, the premise is false. Britain was repeatedly invaded and conquered. That's one of the main aspects of British history. The Norman invasion, the Vikings, the Dutch, the French and a long tradition of...
January 03, 2006
Semi-Crunchy
Breakfast of Champions - or so it seems if you accept this Economist history of wheat, Ears of plenty - The story of man's staple food. IN 10,000 years, the earth's population has doubled ten times, from less than 10m to more than six billion now and ten billion soon. Most of the calories that made that increase possible have come from three plants: maize, rice and wheat. The oldest, most widespread and until recently biggest of the three crops is wheat (see chart). To a first approximation wheat is the staple food of mankind, and its history is that of humanity. It continues with a pocket history of humanity and wheat that is both interesting and informative though many who have detailed knowledge of some aspect of that sweeping history will find much to quibble about. A theme that weaves through the story is successive technological improvements in agronomics that averted disaster - everything from the horse collar...
December 18, 2005
Ag Subsidies
The recent WTO agreement to end export subsidies by 2013 needs some unpacking. What's an export subsidy? Who benefits from their elimination? An export subsidy is a payment to a producer when their goods are exported to another nation, just as you would expect from the name. In agriculture they arise due to government efforts to prop up domestic prices or enhance security. When the government sets a price floor they have an obligation to purchase excess production at the floor price. That can be wasteful and expensive since things can spoil and facilities to store them are expensive. A cheaper solution is to dump the excess on the world market at below cost prices. Thus, export subsidies. The US spends about $1 billion on such subsidies and the EU spends 4 times as much. Ending them is a mixed benefit. World prices will rise and make life harder for poor countries that import more than they export, but...
December 13, 2005
Hedgehog Herd
The direct benefits of modern agricultural technologies to humanity and the environment in the 20th century have been elucidated in numerous scholarly articles on agriculture by Indur Goklany. For instance: If agricultural-technology development had been frozen in 1961, we estimate, using data from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (see FAOSTAT 2003: apps.fao.org), that cropland would have had to increase from its present 11% to some 25% of the planetary surface to produce the same amount of food now.(Nature, vol 423, p.115) In this way Kendra Okonski defends a Tim Worstall critique of a Zac Goldsmith article in the Times UK. Worstall asserts: THE COST of the food on your table has been falling since Neolithic times. Thanks to the onward march of technology — inventions such as fertiliser, the horse collar or exciting methods of turnip weeding — yields have been increased over the past 10,000 years, so reducing, for example, the price of each extra turnip produced. This...
December 05, 2005
More ID Theft
I regularly take pseudo-environmentalists to task here for advocacy that is destructive to the environment as well as society in general. Their motives for doing so are varied but in general are a confusion of political and cultural desires with sensible environmentalism, a certain mean spirited priggishness, a neurotic tic associated with their authoritarian personalities and the impulsive cringing, whingeing and aggressiveness that's part of that whole package. But their ignorance is more important than their motives since there is a slim possibility that ignorance can be cured. When events conspire to refute them unambiguously their biases can be overcome and in spite of everything they can actually learn. A post from the old Crumb Trail blog, Brain Death, noted the environmentally destructive advocacy of an article in Grist Magazine. Grist is one of the most destructive sites with the stupidest advocacy. One of the most damaging gaffes of environmentalism, right up there with the stupidity of the punitive...
June 21, 2005
Fine Grain Analysis
Don Lloyd points to this old Richard Manning article in Harper's without much comment: "there must be controversy in there somewhere." There's some, but it is yet another statement of themes Manning has voiced for a long time, most thoroughly in his book Against The Grain. (see Cereal Killer for discussion, and see The Wheel for more Manning related discussion.) Manning asserts that the growing of field crops - mainly maize, wheat and rice - are a colossal blunder that has been extremely harmful for life on this planet. It wrecks the earth, sickens humans and drives other species to extinction. There's merit in his arguments. Grain is evil. But it is also the engine of civilization. While counting the sins of agriculture in general and grain in particular one must enumerate the blessings as well as the sins to get a full understanding. Ag and grain are mixed blessings, pornography with redeeming social value. There was something fine...
May 27, 2005
Bio-Fuelish
Several posts (see Lose-Lose for a recent one) have excoriated bio-fuels since they are produced from crops, adding more pressure to an already troubled world agricultural system that must double its production in the next few decades to feed a couple of billion more people and raise the nutrition of a billion food insecure people already here. The continuing degradation of environments from industrial agriculture and the biodiversity losses from expansion make it pretty clear that "dirt burning", as bio-fuel use is sometimes called, is self-punking. This cure for the various symptoms of fossil fuel use is as bad or worse than the disease. Philip points to a possible exception. At heart, biofuels are a form of solar energy, as plants use photosynthesis to convert solar energy into chemical energy stored in the form of oils, carbohydrates, proteins, etc.. The more efficient a particular plant is at converting that solar energy into chemical energy, the better it is from...
May 26, 2005
Tree Fluffers
Trees are powerful symbols - heap big magic. Sages from Buddha to Newton have found enlightenment nestled at the base of trees. You could jazz on this tune forever and not exhaust it. Unfortunately, some who come under the spell lose the ability to appreciate other biomes, and so become less human. Enlightenment isn't the only gift of trees. This Beeb article by Sue Branford - a perennial environmental scold devoid of useful knowledge or insight - is an example of a debilitating case of tree fever. Each year we learn more about the importance of the Amazon rain forest. We know that, by destroying it, we are accelerating global warming and disrupting the world's climate. Yet we, in the developed world, go on eating more and more meat. And this in turn encourages Brazil, which is burdened with a heavy foreign debt, to export more beef and more soybeans. It certainly is a problem that the forests of...
April 23, 2005
Habitat Management
While we're on the subject of natural systems management it may be interesting to review earlier posts on the subject. The decline of the bay checkerspot butterfly due to loss of native forbs when its habitat was invaded by Eurasian cool season grasses (see Butterfly Effect), and the more general concerns for "poverty plants" that grow in nutrient poor soils, something that is less common due to the use of fertilizers and emissions from the use of fossil fuels (see Fat and Happy), are aspects of a general issue: you get what you manage for whether you realize what that is or not. Good range managers pay attention and use the natural inclinations of swards to achieve their purposes. By varying the timing and species mix of sward predators they determine the composition of the sward. A couple of years ago the post Going Dutch noted some work by Dutch researcher Liesbeth Bakker. The researchers studied a number of...
April 10, 2005
Ologies and Urgies
Don Boudreaux's recent post Living in Harmony with Nature takes issue with the idea that technological civilization is disharmonious with nature. To live harmoniously with nature is to understand and accept natural forces. The greater this understanding and acceptance, the greater the harmony. Because we know so much more today than we did before about physics, chemistry, meteorology, biology, physiology, metallurgy, and on and on with our ologies and urgies, we live so much more harmoniously with nature. Pre-Columbian peoples lived simply, to be sure, but let’s stop mistaking ignorance and poverty with harmony. It’s an utter myth – we might say an urban myth – that primitive peoples lived with nature harmoniously. Nature devastated them. Nature battered them into early graves. Their ignorance of nature prevented them from achieving much material wealth. This is mistaken. At the time European conquerors arrived pre-Columbians were in many ways more informed about nature and lived longer, healthier lives than the Europeans....
December 01, 2004
Off Road Hunger
Norm posts a long excerpt from am article in the Melbourne Age advocating increased aid to fight hunger. Famines create headlines, but chronic malnutrition is a wider problem. About 800 million people in the world regularly do not have enough to eat... John Howard's comment that non-government aid agencies should stop complaining about Australia's foreign aid level because trade globalisation is the answer to development - echoing Alan Oxley's argument on this page (on November 19) that aid does not work - seems unthinkingly cruel... ...aid does work, has worked, is well-documented, by the World Bank, the UN and many other international bodies. The international aid group Oxfam was originated by a group at Oxford (including Australian-born Gilbert Murray) in response to the terrible Greek famine of 1941. But what of the famines, in the lifetimes of most of us, in India, China, Bangladesh, and other parts of Asia and south America, that regularly killed millions upon millions? These...
August 02, 2004
Agricultural Problems
This post, Baguettes-to-go, by Nicole-Anne Boyer is a quick, light mudge about fast food and the cultural price paid for convenience but it also makes casual reference to an earlier post, Getting Into The Dirt, at her personal blog Fuzzy Signals. Flipping through the Financial Times this weekend, I found a little article most people would just scan over: "Threat to fertile soil blamed on farming practices" by Clive Cookson (Feb 14/04.) As the article leads off, " the loss of good quality soil because of poor agricultural practices is a serious problem around the world but it receives little attention compared with other big environmental threats..." I knew this distressing situation already, but what caught my trolling eye was something else: the fact that the brilliant evolutionary anthropologist, Jared Diamond , the author of Guns, Germs and Steel, was ringing the alarm bells and even making this his next topic of study. As he observes, "the over- exploitation...
May 19, 2004
Fat Chance
Helen Pearson has an NSU article about recent calls for a ban on trans-fatty acids such as those found in vegetable oils and margarines used extensively in processed and packaged foods. Such fats are preferred by industry because they are versatile and last longer. But nutrition experts say trans-fats are disastrous for your health. Whereas saturated fats raise both 'bad' low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL) and 'good' high density lipoproteins (HDL), trans-fats boost LDL without affecting HDL, increasing the risk of heart disease. Nutritional guidelines have long advocated cutting back on the saturated fatty acids found in meat and dairy products, and boosting unsaturated fats abundant in nuts, seeds and vegetable oils. But trans-fats have taken longer to attract attention because their effects on health were less clear. If you have been paying any attention at all to nutrition you're aware of the failures of the conventional dietary advice symbolized by the FDA food pyramid and associated recommendations. Obesity,...
May 13, 2004
Tudge Mudge
Colin Tudge is often in the vicinity of agricultural wisdom but always succeeds in escaping contact. This article is a classic example. ...we have a mantra embraced by the World Bank, the IMF, the World Trade Organisation, and the US and British governments: "Agriculture is a business like any other." This dogma is leading the world in totally the wrong directions - and within it, GM crops have become key players... For agriculture qua business must seek to maximise profit. So it must maximise turnover and output. Scientists and politicians claim this must be good - for there still are famines, and the world population is set to increase by 50% to around 9 billion by 2050. But the recent famines have rarely resulted from inability to produce food. Almost always you find civil war in the background, corruption, or - as in the Ireland of the 1840s or recently in Argentina - starvation in the midst of plenteous...
March 11, 2004
Grass Economics
The previous post dealt with the agricultural and ecological ignorance of the claim that the environment would be well served by eating grain rather than grain fed beef, even though grain is not needed for beef. That same Grist article makes a second idiotic claim. Cattle and other ruminant animals, whose numbers would have to rise by 25 percent to supply our [Atkins] dieters, get a large share of their food from pasture and rangeland. If most of the additional animals were raised on current range and pasture that are already fully stocked, the result would be overgrazing and degradation. If new pastures were to be created for, say, half of the additional animals, a billion more acres would have to be found. Most of this would probably be obtained by deforestation, which could mean that 10 percent of the Earth's remaining forests would have to go. In the US Cattle are grazed on marginal land, often semi-arid land,...
March 11, 2004
Ley Lady Ley
One of the most persistent bits of ignorance peddled by pseudo-environmentalists devoid of either agricultural or ecological knowledge is that eating beef is harmful to the environment. This Grist article is a case in point. If all of those people went on an Atkins-style diet, their requirement for animal protein would rise to about 100 grams. A billion dieters each eating an extra 44 grams could not easily be satisfied by giving them a bigger share of current animal protein production. As it is, humans worldwide average only 28 grams per day. Instead, by our calculations, the meat, dairy, poultry, and seafood industries would have to increase output by 25 percent. The dieters would no longer get much of their protein from plant sources (grains being too heavily "polluted" with carbohydrates), so less cropland would be required for that. Still, the net result of their big switch to animal protein would require almost 250 million more acres for corn,...
Posted by back40 at 09:42 AM
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