March 11, 2010
The Beef
California State University Chico, where there has long been focused attention on grass fed beef, has published a new paper comparing grass fed and grain fed beef. It has been getting some legacy media attention. Beef from grass-fed animals has lower levels of unhealthy fats and higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids, which are better for cardiovascular health. Grass-fed beef also has lower levels of dietary cholesterol and offers more vitamins A and E as well as antioxidants. The study found that meat from animals raised entirely on grass also had about twice the levels of conjugated linoleic acid, or CLA, isomers, which may have cancer fighting properties and lower the risk of diabetes and other health problems. No news here, but we wouldn't expect news since the report is a survey of existing literature. While the analysis is favorable to grass-fed beef, it’s not clear whether the nutritional differences in the two types of meat have any meaningful...
February 10, 2010
Fertility II
One must think about soil microorganisms as well as plants and soil chemistry to properly understand soil fertility and anticipate results. Soil chemistry affects the variety and abundance of soil microorganisms, which in turn affect soil chemistry. PH is an issue here too. Soil bacteria like the same sort of PH range as the plants and respond noticeably to changes. Soil fungi can be less affected by PH, doing well in acidic conditions, but the type of fungi changes with conditions. Important soil microorganisms such as rhizobia and mycorrhizae that live cooperatively with plants prefer normal PH ranges but also prefer a certain amount of nutrient scarcity. Actually, it isn't that they prefer scarcity so much as that it is only in such conditions that their skills are in demand by plants. A clover that can get all of the nitrogen that it requires with its own naked roots from nearby soil has no incentive to trade its precious...
February 10, 2010
Fertility
I've been thinking about soil fertility as I do every spring. Yes, it's still wet and cold but mildly so compared to most of the nation. I have to mow the lawn all winter long since it never gets so bad that it won't grow a little. The problem that I've been working is that I have mildly acidic soil and nearly everything makes it worse. Doing nothing at all makes it worse since plants exude hydrogen ions to stay in charge balance as they take up nutrients. The faster the plants grow the more this is so. Anything I do to increase fertility and help plants grow better makes it worse since they grow faster. As acidity changes so does nutrient availability. Some nutrients become more available and others become less available depending on their charges. Some are freed from their association with minerals while others get locked up. To assess soil you have to think ahead and...
January 06, 2010
Metagenomics
A way to gain insights about microorganisms. Metagenomics is a field of molecular microbiology where the presence of a microbe is determined by identifying its DNA in a sample rather than trying to grow the organism in culture . . . Studying individual microbial genus or species in the rumen only provides part of the story, Osterstock said. In fact, the rumen is a complex microbial system comprised of bacteria, protozoa and fungi where the impact of a specific microbial species is dependent upon the activity of other microbes in the system. Metagenomics is an ideal approach to studying these microbial communities because less than 10 percent of rumen microbes can be grown in culture using routine anaerobic methods, Osterstock said. The team's current work has focused on bacterial populations in the rumen using sequencing methods and bioinformatics to classify which bacterial genera are present under different dietary conditions. The bloat team recently completed the first genomics-based characterization of...
December 16, 2009
Dried Lettuce
I monitor Google alerts for grass fed since I'm in the biz. Most of what is written is naive nonsense by journalists, eco-wackos and consumers. I'm more interested in the volume than the content since it's a sort of indicator about the buzz level, but sometimes something interesting is written. I asked Wegman's about their choice of suppliers. Here is their response, supposedly from one of their buyers: "There is really no such thing as grass fed meat in America. This is because there is no source for fresh grass in the winter. U.S. grass fed claims are false in that dried hay or dried grass is fed or worse they are left to forage through the snow for what little brush they can find. Bison are not put on feedlots they are given a ration that consists of 60% grain (corn, oats, milo, barley and wheat are all used depending on what is available to the particular ranch)...
November 30, 2009
Wrong Song
Medical meat. In a lab at the biomedical-engineering faculty at the University of Technology in Eindhoven, Post is holding an early example of what he hopes will be the food of the future: in vitro meat. Post, the university's professor of angiogenesis (growth of new blood vessels), is a specialist in tissue engineering. He is also part of a small team of Dutch scientists racing to develop the ability to grow muscle independent of a living animal so that it can be produced in commercial quantities and sold as meat. . . "We're developing a very simplified version of what we know as meat," he explains. "The cells are grown in this dish within a growing medium and this unit is where they receive the electrical stimulation. These electrodes ensure there is an electrical current - about 1Hz - passing through the cells. To make these skeletal cells develop into muscle, they need to be constantly exercised, just like...
November 22, 2009
Grass MEGO
This has been on my mind. Cattle and sheep are actually poor converters of grass protein into milk and meat. When grazing ordinary grass, livestock use only about 20% of protein from the herbage for production – most of the rest is wasted in faeces and urine. This is not only financially costly, but also detrimental to the environment. A major reason for these losses is the imbalance between readily available energy and protein within the grass. Proteins are rapidly broken down when feed enters the rumen. However, when the diet lacks readily available energy, the rumen microbes can use less of the nitrogen released from the feed, so much of it is absorbed as ammonia and eventually excreted. Water soluble carbohydrates in grass are the sugars found inside the plant cells, rather than in the cell walls themselves. They become a source of readily available energy soon after forage enters the rumen, allowing rumen microbes to process more...
November 21, 2009
Sink or Swim
The new data about the capacity of terrestrial carbon sinks to absorb our emissions that was discussed in Data Driven isn't the last word on the subject. It's an ongoing investigation. Two new studies have looked at the issue, and they come to what appear to be very different conclusions. Any process that removes carbon from the atmosphere can act as a carbon sink. These include basic processes like having the gas dissolve into the ocean, to more complex ones, like the sequestration that appears to take place in mature forests. The cumulative impact, however, is huge; carbon sinks are estimated to remove about 60 percent of the CO2 that human activity puts in the atmosphere annually. (The remaining 40 percent is termed the airborne fraction.) . . . The uncertainty about when and to what degree the sinks would start to lose capacity has made them an active area of study. So it's no surprise that two papers...
November 20, 2009
Junk Signals
Remember "junk DNA", the bits that we didn't understand and so considered it to be noise in the genome? We learn ever more about the functions such seemingly useless DNA segments perform even though they may not directly code for proteins and such. It's not junk anymore. That's not the only instance of such discovery. The researchers have developed a technique that uses interference patterns created when GPS signals that reflect off of the ground -- called "multipath" signals -- are combined with signals that arrive at the antenna directly from the satellite. . . Since such multipath signals arrive at GPS receivers "late," they have generally been viewed as noise by scientists and engineers and have largely been ignored . . . In one recent demonstration, the team was able to correlate changes in the multipath signals to snow depth by using data collected at a field site in Marshall, Colo. just south of Boulder, which was hit...
November 20, 2009
Plant Puppets
We have been blindly manipulating genomes for eons, but our vision is improving. scientists show how a family of genes (1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate synthase, or ACS genes) are responsible for production of ethylene. This gas affects many aspects of plant development, and this information lays the foundation for future genetic manipulation that could make plants disease resistant, able to survive and thrive in difficult terrain, increase yields, and other useful agronomical outcomes. . . To understand the function and regulatory roles of each ACS gene in ethylene production during plant development, scientists from Theologis' laboratory analyzed the essential and nonessential roles of each of the family of Arabidopsis ACS genes. They found that while loss of any single ACS gene had no visible effect on the plant, it did affect the activity of other genes in the family. They grew different plants that had different combinations of these genes "turned on" and "turned off" and found that the members of this...
November 18, 2009
Modern Ag
Those who have a more rational grasp of agronomics recognize the need for continued and accelerated development to increase production enough to meet future needs while reducing adverse impacts. Like most of his colleagues, Mr. Van Tunen came from Wageningen University, where he was director of the Plant Research Institute in the 1980s. He and others describe it as a dark period in the school’s history. Enrollment was falling. Dutch government investment in agricultural research was being cut, and by the mid-1990s, the university itself, the Netherlands’ agricultural flagship, was in danger of disappearing. . . “We merged 22 different research institutes in agriculture, food, nutrition and health with thirty agricultural experiment stations while strengthening professional ties to the private sector,” he said. One result is that nearly all the university’s 1,400 food and farm science doctoral students now get to work in a private-sector research lab before finishing their degrees. Another is that much of the basic science...
November 01, 2009
Uplift
Need a little pick me up? A fellow that I've been talking with for a couple of years, Danny Day of Eprida corporation, might have a story that works for you. He was recently profiled in The Atlantic Monthly as a Brave Thinker. He's braver than that in some ways in that he almost stroked out last year but still carries on. My interest in his stuff was due to the unique type of biochar production process his company developed which combined regular pyrolysis of biomass with some fancy extra steps to take in feral CO2 and water that in the end produced biochar doped with ammonium and a lot of free hydrogen gas that could be used for a variety of purposes. The valuable coproducts of biochar production made it more economically viable, which means that it was more likely to catch on without a lot of political shenanigans and rent seeking. In a recent email he has...
November 01, 2009
Sausage Making
There's an old saying to the effect that your enjoyment of eating sausage is seldom enhanced by knowing how it is made. If this makes sense to you then move along, there's nothing for you here. . ....
October 31, 2009
Fetal Programming
Several earlier posts discussed epigenetics and the consequences for the offspring of mothers: it's not just that what you eat you are, it is also that what your mother and grandmother ate affect what you are. This is sometimes called fetal programming. There has been some interesting long term research going on for cattle that seeks to clarify the economic implications of this idea. The issue being investigated is the utility of protein supplements for range cows. They typically struggle through the winter on poor feed: dormant grasses that have shut down for the winter. There's enough energy in such "standing hay" to keep the cows gestating, but they are deficient in protein. It apparently made no difference if such dry cows were given protein supplements. They didn't have better body condition, they didn't give more milk once they calved, and they didn't breed back sooner. It seemed to be a waste of money to supplement them. By the...
September 15, 2009
Growth Tech
One of my cattleman buddies - a fellow with a foot in both worlds in that he raises grass fed beef, backgrounds replacement dairy heifers on pasture, but also has a small conventional feedlot and sells calves into the feedlot system - sent me this article: Conventional beef production is eco-friendly and eco-nomical U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved conventional beef-production technologies are more important than ever to the livelihood of the U.S. beef industry. They help you produce more beef, more efficiently, making beef more affordable for consumers with less impact on the environment. . . Conventional beef-production technologies — growth-promoting implants, ionophores and beta-agonists — play a critical role in U.S. beef production. They significantly increase the volume of beef produced while conserving natural resources and reducing production costs across all segments of the industry. . . A recently completed economic analysis1 of the impact of these technologies on U.S. beef production using 2007 cattle prices and...
September 03, 2009
Mo' Better Testing
A couple of weeks ago I complained about the lack of comparatively rigorous biochar field trials. Soon after that a message came in on the biochar list about the trials being conducted by BlueLeaf Inc., which seemed to be doing comprehensive tests that measured many soil and vegetation parameters on a regular basis. They were doing the trials on a real farm, under real conditions, with proper controls. See the test plan. See press release about 2009 mid-season update. A mid-season report advised on certain key parameters for the season to date, primarily as they relate to biomass. A complete report covering all parameters and statistics will be issued at the end of the 2009 growing season. Biochar was applied to the trial plot at the beginning of the growing season in 2008. A relatively low application rate of 3,500 lbs/acre (3,924 kgs/hectare) was used. No additional biochar has been applied since then. All test parameters are measured in...
August 27, 2009
Brush Fire
One bit of conventional farmer wisdom is that you can't build soil organic matter on farmed land, that it is like adding brush to a brush fire. More organic matter will just decompose more vigorously, sending the vast majority of the carbon back to the air as CO2 and CH4. It may be true, you can't win, you can't retain and build up soil organic matter on farmed land, but you can have a warmer fire, which helps some, and there is an ash residual in the form of humus, which does last longer and build up. But I think that the conventional farmer wisdom assumes that the land will be tilled and left fallow between crops. Non tilled land that is sown with cover crops, intercrops and micro crops can make progress on increasing soil organic matter percentages. You can build soil organic matter in pastures and prairies since they aren't plowed and don't have fallow periods. Something...
August 26, 2009
Untimely Nitrate
Another thing about biochar that nettles me is the ongoing fuzziness about claims of nutrient retention by charcoal. The broad brush claim is that biochar reduces nitrogen leaching from soils, and so more is retained for use by plants. One claim I read was that nitrogen was held by biochar until released by enzymes secreted from plant roots. It now seems that these claims were naive at best, that all charcoal does is attract cations (positively charged molecules such as ammonium), which is the same thing that soil organic matter and most clay particles do already. Soils deficient in such materials might benefit from charcoal, but no more than they would from unchared organic matter, and is as much a soil PH imbalance problem as anything else. The problem for soil nutrient loss is anion repulsion. Cations such as ammonium, potassium, phosphorous and calcium are attracted to soil particles, and so are not mobile in soil. Anions such as...
August 18, 2009
Carbon Foolishness
Or, Carbon Madness part II. The recent kerfuffle about the nutritional content of organic foods being no better than main stream foods is an opportunity to focus on real agriculture rather than pye eyed nonsense. Food is better when good seed is grown in fertile soil. Period. Not all plant cultivars are equally capable of producing nutrient rich foods, and to reach their nutrient potentials they need good homes. Some people may find spiritual comfort in bowing to the four corners and chanting as they plant when the moon is proper, or the priests bless their acts or whatever, and they are welcome to comfort themselves. But when they seek to elevate their superstitions to the realm of public policy or make false marketing claims then they should be busted by government and civil society. There is a nexus of such food fetishists and carbon wankers - sometimes, some people are both and they are racking their fevered brains...
August 16, 2009
Better Seed
Usually this implies genetic improvement through selective breeding, hybridization or gene tweaking but another sometimes overlooked enhancement is inoculation with beneficial microorganisms by the seed vendor, assuring that each seed will have an opportunity to quickly associate with these microorganisms and get full benefit, including some protection from harmful microorganisms that can otherwise associate with plant roots. Perhaps the most common inoculant is rhizobia, a nitrogen fixing bacteria that nodulates on the roots of legumes and lives in symbiosis, bartering nitrates for carbohydrates. Legume growth is reduced by the amount of carbohydrates paid to the bacteria, but increased by the extra nitrate when that is the limiting nutrient, which is often the case. The net effect is most often positive for the legumes. There are many strains of rhizobia and it is important to use the proper strain for each legume to get full benefit. Other inoculants are on offer, such as the bewildering variety of mycorrhizal fungi (endo,...
July 27, 2009
N Cycle
I've had some discussion on the grazing lists recently about pasture fertilization. A comment I made got some back channel inquiry asking for more explanation. The comment was to the effect that feeding out hay on pasture was the best way to fertilize. To explain why this is so a good place to begin is with this short overview of the N cycle on pasture from Dairy New Zealand. About 15% of the N eaten by a cow is converted into milk and meat with the rest being excreted, particularly in urine . . . For beef cattle like I raise even more of the N is excreted since they milk less, or not at all in the case of steers being raised for meat. In terms of the N budget for the pasture it's much the same as if I'd spread the N value of the forage as little white granules, but the cattle also get the nutritional...
July 06, 2009
On The Come
The future was mortgaged . . . some time ago. Payment is due. The California morass has Democrats in Washington trembling. The reason is simple. If Obama’s health-care plan passes, then we may well end up paying for it with federal slips of paper worth less than California’s. Obama has bet everything on passing health care this year. The publicity surrounding the California debt fiasco almost assures his resounding defeat. It takes years and years to make a mess as terrible as the California debacle, but the recipe is simple. All that you need is two political parties that are always willing to offer easy government solutions for every need of the voters, but never willing to make the tough decisions necessary to finance the government largess that results. Voters will occasionally change their allegiance from one party to the other, but the bacchanal will continue regardless of the names on the office doors. California has engaged in an...
June 30, 2009
Charily Optimistic
For some years now I've been keen about using charcoal as a soil amendment. The fact that it is a durable form of carbon in soil was a plus since it would accumulate over time rather than dissipating like the vast majority of organic carbon. The more you dosed a field the better it got. Obviously there's some upper limit, but many tons per acre could usefully be added. A tertiary benefit is that this in effect sequesters carbon drawn from the atmosphere by plants. The carbon in organic materials that would otherwise have been burned as wastes - quickly in fire or slowly by bacteria - would be captured for centuries or perhaps millennia. Unfortunately, climate nutters glommed onto the idea and touted it as the solution to the worrisome increase of atmospheric CO2 concentrations. They zealously inflated the idea, proposing massive projects funded by rents from various tax schemes. The resultant backlash by more careful thinkers and...
June 20, 2009
Mythquotation
About the role of gossip, mainly from media (including us), in myth making. When Slashdot runs the slightly misleading headline, “Real Nanotechnology Getting Closer, Says Drexler” (with a link to the technology roadmap — lots of downloads!), the Tech Talk blog at IEEE Spectrum quite naturally reports this as “Eric Drexler has just been quoted as saying ‘Real nanotechnology is getting closer’”… and thus inadvertently reinforces the myth that so-called “real nanotechnology” has little connection with what researchers know is the real real nanotechnology, in the lab today — or at least, that Eric Drexler thinks so, and is rude about it, too. Supposedly. It’s a quote, right? Well, no… But it’s a fine example of how myths take root and obscure reality. On another side of the intellectual world, all but buried in ideology and crufted up with misinformation, is the gooey world of biology. Study highlights massive imbalances in global fertilizer use Synthetic fertilizers have dramatically increased...
June 15, 2009
Hitch a Meal
Here's another report of the new bioRefinery project in Iowa that will produce ammonia. Natural gas is used to make ammonia, the basic component for nitrogen fertilizer. Prices for natural gas rose dramatically in the U.S. over the past 10 years, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Because natural gas is cheaper in other countries, the U.S. has increasingly turned to foreign supplies for ammonia since 1990. "We don't relish being in Ukraine's shoes," Oswald said, referring to Russia's embargo on natural gas supplies to its neighbor during the winter. The cost of natural gas now accounts for up to 90 percent of the cost of making nitrogen fertilizer, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. It's worth noting that it is the hydrogen in methane (CH4, natural gas) that is of value for making fertilizers. Natural gas has no nitrogen in it, that comes from the air around us which is mostly non-reactive nitrogen gas, N2. SynGest...
June 11, 2009
Threefer
I've been eagerly anticipating this sort of development. A pair of public information meetings are scheduled to discuss the proposed SynGest Inc. BioRefinery project near Menlo to convert corn cobs into BioAmmonia (anhydrous ammonia). . . SynGest intends to build its first commercial scale facility in Menlo to convert non-food biomass, initially corn cobs, into BioAmmonia. Its BioAmmonia will be identical to the ammonia that is now produced with natural gas. By using a natural resource that is currently considered a waste product, SynGest says it will be able to make and offer ammonia at prices, under even long term contracts, that are below the prices charged for the current fossil fuel-based product. At the same time, SynGest's process generates much of the energy it needs to operate and also creates biochar and ash, two valuable soil amendments that sequester carbon for hundreds of years. Overall, the SynGest facility will be carbon-negative. I like the closed loop notion of...
May 11, 2009
Grass Geekery
Continuing the thought thread begun in Bio-Bubble, about competition between various groups seeking to exploit biomass for their pet objectives. Each advocacy group thinks only of their agenda. So, though they may have a basically useful objective the policies that they prescribe can have a net negative effect. Recently, a char advocate proclaimed that one way to get the biomass that she wanted was to take over the Willamette Valley in Oregon and grow hemp rather than grass seed, and then use the hemp (low THC) as biochar feedstock. This was justified in her mind due to post harvest burning of straw in fields, and a sneering disrespect for people who grow grass in any case. The Willamette Valley is the world's major producer of cool season grass seeds. No one decided to make it so, it developed over the last half century since it is a very good place to grow grass seeds, and not a good place...
April 23, 2009
Smart Breeding
Perhaps an example of the methods sketched in the earlier post Piled Higher will help. As a practical matter, having the genome is also going to make cattle breeding faster and cheaper. Traits carried by bulls are important in determining how much milk a cow produces. Because bulls don't make milk, however, a bull's "performance profile" has to be sketched by observing the milk production of his daughters -- a process that takes about six years and costs $25,000 to $50,000. Now, male calves can be tested at birth for milk-enhancing traits using gene-chip technology. Saving time and avoiding missteps are more important than the costs....
April 12, 2009
Charred N Cycle
There's a semi-interesting conversation afoot on one of the biochar lists, a good thing since it had degenerated into fairly uninformed political posturing recently and I was about to depart to avoid a wasteful time sink. It began with a seemingly innocent but actually heavily loaded question: How can biochar be used to reduce nitrate leaching in crop production? What are the methods and mechanisms? The short answer is that no one really knows much. But, there are all sorts of tantalizing possibilities that are difficult to neatly encapsulate since the N cycle in soil is so complex. N exists in many forms and is in constant flux as soil organisms convert it from one form to another, and back. To talk about nitrate you must talk about N in all of its forms and all of the participants and parameters that affect the complex multi-path cycle. Against my better judgment I replied: In general, increasing the c/n ratio...
April 11, 2009
Eco Nutters
Remember the good old days when biochar was something that few had heard of and was never mentioned by either the carbon market opportunists or the green weenies? Only a segment of soil scientists and growers talked of it and worked to discover its properties and best uses. Then the political types got wind of it and started hyping it as a climate change mitigation strategy (meaning a rent bonanza), followed by the malthusians and emo activists who saw profits in opposing biochar. The ants and roaches of society discovered the happy picnic and have all but overrun the place. Consider one of the roach queens. “Biochar” is basically the next new trick of global investors to make money on the global market of carbon trading. As the biochar website www.biochar.org clearly states “A prerequisite for the above mentioned management practices is access to the global carbon trade.” The global carbon market which has a potential to grow to...
April 06, 2009
Amateur Science
A few years ago there was a flurry of talk about "open source science" enabled by information and communication technologies. The idea was that with so many people potentially in communication with one another that discoveries would be made by them outside traditional research institutions. I'm not sure if this is still be discussed much, perhaps it's just taken as given now. This may be a relevant example. The International Biochar Initiative (IBI) proposes to establish a network of IBI assisted demonstration field trials utilizing biochar as an agronomic soil amendment. The purpose of the network will be to promote, support, and coordinate field trials and the sharing of their results in a manner that builds the research record and allows comparisons of the data in projects across diverse geographic areas, climate, soil, crops, and management practices. It is anticipated that the IBI demonstration project network will help speed the research and demonstration horizon for biochar utilization and commercialization...
March 31, 2009
Sex & Seed
Tyler read a book: Deconstructing Darwinian Selfishness. The book rejects the "Red Queen" hypothesis for why there is sex (e.g., outracing parasites by frequently rolling the genetic dice) and presents a "portfolio diversification" view: The explanation for why asexual species keep popping up and quickly dying compared with sexual species would seem to be completely explained by thinking of asexual species as genetic versions of get-rich-schemes and of sexual populations as genetic versions of long-term mutual funds, without any need to invoke cost-of-meiosis considerations. In other words, sex brings a genetic diversity which protects against rapidly changing environmental conditions and thus favors parental genes. I haven't read it, and haven't seen an informed review, but the first thing that comes to mind is epigenetics: the ability to variably express a genome and rapidly respond to rapid changes such as changing environmental conditions. This is useful, perhaps necessary, since natural environmental variability such as periodic drought and temperature swings are...
March 28, 2009
Char Testing
A previous post noted work in progress by the National Society of Consulting Soil Scientists to develop standards for biochar testing similar to those for compost testing. You can have your bathtub char tested now. The value of the advertized tests is for determining "quality of char for agriculture and carbon credits". Tests inlcude: Parent material - Water, Matter, Carbon, Nitrogen, Ash Sample Chared - Water, Volatile (HO,C, N), Fixed (HO, C,N) Ash (Acid Soluble, non-soluble) Optimum Char - Fixed (HO, C, N), Ash (Acid Soluble, non-soluble) The tests for water and volatile components may be particularly useful due to concerns about charcoal spontaneous combustion during shipment and storage. Under some conditions exposure to air and water can cause exothermic reactions with some char components, and set off a chain reaction where the heat is not dissipated, which increases the reaction rate, and can lead to open flame. The same lab does compost testing and soil testing. Testing is...
March 25, 2009
Vantage Point
What you see depends on where you are and where you look. The enzyme which fixes carbon into phosophglycerate, rubisco, is very ancient and rather easily confused — left to itself it will sometimes grab oxygen molecules rather than carbon dioxide molecules, and instead of making phosphoglycerate makes phosphoglycolate. This is no good to man nor beast nor, most tellingly, plant: recycling the phosphoglycolate made accidentally in this process of photorespiration into a form of carbon that can be used for further photosynthesis takes energy, and thus making less phosphoglycolate in the first place is a good thing. The malate-initiated photosynthesis that Hartt was instrumental in discovering is an evolutionary response to that problem: malate is part of a clever biochemical/physiological supercharger that concentrates a great deal more carbon dioxide into the cells where rubisco is doing its thing, thus making it less likely to commit that costly error with the oxygen.This supercharging system is known as C4 photosynthesis,...
March 21, 2009
Char Geekery
Speaking of Philip, he has been working on biochar for some time, and doing it from a soil scientist's perspective rather than a climate politician or a green weenie, and has the support of NSCSS. Clearly there is much interest within NSCSS to dig deeper: we are developing guidance for NSCSS members on BioChar: Standards, Methods, and Opportunities. Site navigation is idiosyncratic but you might be able to find your way to this page - Biochar: Effects and Benefits - which is one of the better exegeses of biochar, and has links to the more important research papers in the field. You might also find this page, Biochar: Lab Characterization Options, which is a work in progress. It promises to adapt standards currently used for compost chemistry analysis to biochar. All compost is not equal, and all biochar isn't equal. It depends, and can be tested. This is what I need to make informed decisions about soil amendment. One...
March 12, 2009
Torrefaction
There are several char related pursuits in progress. There's been popular buzz lately about pyrolysis efforts that produce materials for soil amendment and carbon sequestration, but in many ways other char technologies seem more advanced though they see biomass and residual char solely as an energy hack. Biomass gasifiers seek to produce gasses that can be burned as fuel in various systems that produce heat and electricity. Torrefaction systems seek to produce char which can later be burned as a coal substitute. One effort, utilizing a technology developed at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, that I found to be especially interesting is the development of a mobile torrefaction system. It travels to a source of materials - such as a forest where there is slash available - and converts the material to char. The weight and volume are reduced, which cuts the costs of transport to a facility that uses the char as a coal substitute. Those savings...
December 06, 2008
Deep Black
The discussion following the previous post brings up a complicated issue - accelerated decomposition of organic matter in fertile soil. For example, a study found that forest floor leaf litter decomposed more rapidly when biochar was present. The ecologists discovered this by leaving hundreds of bags containing either pure charcoal, or the natural leaf litter of the forest floor, or a mix of charcoal and leaf litter at three sites in Sweden for a decade. They report that when they retrieved the bags in 2006, the contents of the bags with the mixture—the most like natural conditions after a forest fire—had shrunk by nearly 25 percent and lost a significant portion of their carbon within the first two years of the 10 year period. The pure coal, however, remained nearly unchanged. "The amount of soil [carbon] lost as a result of adding charcoal to soil will likely partially counteract the amount of [carbon] sequestered by the charcoal itself," Wardle...
December 05, 2008
Char Grinch
There has been a flurry of biochar mentions in the past few days due to a small mention in TIME. Philip Small at NSCSS notes a fuller profile of a producer mentioned in the TIME article. Josh [Frye] set out to procure his own gasifier. He worked with Southern Illinois-based Coaltec Energy to identify a technology that best met his needs, and settled on the fixed bed gasifier produced by Westside Energies of Canada. Coaltec is the US sales representative for Westside Energies, and the companies helped him apply for grants to purchase and install the approximately $1,000,000 unit. Things fell into place as grants and low-interest loans came through from several West Virginia state agencies such as the West Virginia Department of Agriculture who gave $15,000. After the grant writing was completed, the price of metal suddenly spiked, increasing the cost of the gasifier. Westside and Coaltec kicked in a contribution to keep the project within budget. A...
November 27, 2008
Techne
Technology isn't just gadgets - even if they are bio-gadgets or chemo-gadgets - it's also the wisdom and skill to accomplish useful objectives. In an agronomic system the system itself is a technology. Any system is a technology. Those who disparage technology mislead by omission and misunderstanding. Agriculture is a technology, whatever the details of practice. Opposition to technology is opposition to skill, wisdom, and in the end intellect. It's not so cute when you take a close look. Perhaps this is an expression of some ancient prejudices. Techne . . . as distinguished from episteme, is etymologically derived from the Greek word . . . which is often translated as craftsmanship, craft, or art. It is the rational method involved in producing an object or accomplishing a goal or objective. The means of this method is through art. Techne resembles episteme in the implication of knowledge of principles, although techne differs in that its intent is making or...
November 27, 2008
Technophobia
A good example of motivated reasoning is found in those who don't understand or embrace technological advancement. Often this is part of a set of norms and preferences rooted in romantic ideas about peasant agriculture. Charles the Dim of England is the poster boy for such thinking, but there are many others so infected. Consider this opinion post. Bangladesh experienced widespread diffusion of green revolution technology in rice, its main crop. As a result, rice production has more than doubled since the early 1970s. The spread of green revolution technology is usually expected to boost wages for farm workers. But we found regional differences in rural wages that run counter to the traditional argument. What does "usually expected" mean in this context? Does anyone with a rudimentary grasp of socio-economic reality expect that there could ever be uniform development across regions? I think what we have here are sceptics about agricultural technology arguing against their own misunderstandings rather than...
November 23, 2008
Heterosis
Explained, in part. It has long been known that hybrid plants such as hybrid corn are more vigorous than their parents. They are larger and have more biomass and bigger seeds. The same is true for plants that are polyploid, meaning that they have two or more sets of chromosomes. Over 70 percent of all flowering plants, including many important agricultural crops such as wheat, cotton, canola, sugarcane and banana, are naturally polyploid. Until now, the molecular mechanisms for hybrid and polyploid vigor have largely been unknown. . . The key, Chen and his colleagues studying Arabidopsis plants found, is the increased expression of genes involved in photosynthesis and starch metabolism in hybrids and polyploids. These genes were expressed at high levels during the day, several-fold increases over their parents. The hybrids and polyploids exhibited increased photosynthesis, higher amounts of chlorophyll and greater starch accumulation than their parents, all of which led to their growing larger. Also, growth vigor...
November 09, 2008
Seedy Plants
Almost all staple food crops - grains - are annuals. Every year they germinate from seed and briefly but gloriously grow till they set seed and die. The evolutionary strategy of such plants is to put all of their energy into seed and then launch their genome into the future rather than trying to tough it out as individuals. It is the energy dense seed that we eat, so such annuals are more useful to humans than perennials that squander - from our perspective - energy on leaves, stalks, roots and energy stores hidden below ground and unavailable to us as food. But it's expensive and destructive to gather seed, save it, and then plant it again the next year. It takes energy to do it and wrecks soil structure. It allows weeds to invade fields during fallow times, exposes soil to wind and water erosion, and emits GHGs into the atmosphere. Annual plants avoid all this effort by...
October 28, 2008
That's Better
I've complained many times about silly experiments that slam some change into an environment - say, warmer temperatures - and conclude from the observed effects that x,y or z will happen in future in our warming world. Some are more careful. Bradford, whose results appear in the early online edition of the journal Ecology Letters, said the finding helps resolve a long-standing debate about how unseen soil microbes respond to and influence global climate change. Other scientists have noted that the respiration of soil microbes returns to normal after a number of years under heated conditions, but offered competing explanations. Some argued that the microbes consumed so much of the available food under heated conditions that future levels of decomposition were reduced because of food scarcity. Others argued that soil microbes adapted to the changed environment and reduced their respiration accordingly. Bradford and his team, which included researchers from the University of New Hampshire, the Marine Biological Laboratory at...
September 07, 2008
Enzymatic Knobs
"Most people are familiar with the word biodiversity, but 'chemodiversity,'—the extraordinary tapestry of natural chemicals found in plants—is just as important for life, the appearance of new species and the survival of many different ecosystems on the earth" . . . Trying to make the best of their real estate, plants rely on an impressive arsenal of volatile and nonvolatile molecules, which diffuse easily through the membranes of the cells that produce them to communicate and interact with the outside world. Often highly aromatic and exceedingly specific for a particular ecological niche, these chemicals attract pollinators, summon natural predators of pests, defend against competitors or, through their antimicrobial properties, protect against natural plant pathogens such as fungi and bacteria. . . For centuries, mankind has exploited this vast reservoir of natural chemicals for the discovery of new pharmaceuticals to treat disease. "Understanding the chemistry and evolutionary principles that underlie this extraordinary biological diversity will show us how to alter...
Categories
Ag Systems (177)
Ag-tech (44)
CrumbTrails (20)
Energy (105)
Enviro-Politics (341)
Food (2)
Forestry (16)
Health (83)
History (12)
Materials (3)
Media (24)
Meta (28)
Money (5)
Natural Systems (203)
Psychoceramica (38)
TechnoSocial (57)
Tools (39)
War (7)
Water (4)
cognition (56)
culture (86)
environmentalism (16)
nanotech (7)
people (1)
politics (123)
science (23)
Ag-tech (44)
CrumbTrails (20)
Energy (105)
Enviro-Politics (341)
Food (2)
Forestry (16)
Health (83)
History (12)
Materials (3)
Media (24)
Meta (28)
Money (5)
Natural Systems (203)
Psychoceramica (38)
TechnoSocial (57)
Tools (39)
War (7)
Water (4)
cognition (56)
culture (86)
environmentalism (16)
nanotech (7)
people (1)
politics (123)
science (23)
