No-till farming sequesters carbon from atmosphere

Discussion in 'Planting, growing, nurturing Plants' started by sweetpea, Aug 6, 2007.

  1. sweetpea

    sweetpea Junior Member

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    No-till farming captures carbon:

    https://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2005/050413.htm

    "conducted a 10-year tillage experiment comparing no-till farming with cultivation by plowing. Soil microbial biomass and carbon stocks stored in the soil were measured at the end of the 10-year period. Also, emissions of methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide from the soil were monitored for an entire year. These three are the most important "greenhouse gases" exchanged between agricultural systems and the atmosphere.

    Microbes are responsible for processes in the soil that produce these gases. A complete understanding of greenhouse gas emissions is important to development of methods to capture soil carbon, according to De-Polli.

    His work shows that no-till farming can play a positive role in mitigating greenhouse gases by capturing carbon that's stored in the soil in plant tissues which remain in the field after the crop is harvested."

    =====

    And just to spice things up a bit, here's my prediction: compost and leaf/organic matter mulch combo is just as effective as charcoal :)
     
  2. IntensiveGardener

    IntensiveGardener Junior Member

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    Interesting article. There's no doubt that ploughing, particularly how it is done these days causes carbon emmissions from the soil. This is a very important issue. Global populations are rising while the area of good land for food growing is shrinking rapidly due to soil degradation caused by bad farming. Industrial and chemical agriculture has already destroyed huge tracks of farmland in the developed world and is now being implemented in china,india and parts of the third world in a big way.
    I wonder if anyone has bothered to put an estimate of the proportion of Emmissions caused by bad agriculture. I know someone did it for the gas emmissions of cows :)

    Other organic farming systems capture carbon too. If done properly the biointensive method of deep and regular digging and compost returns carbon to the soil much faster. The no dig method simply tries to minimize the carbon exchange between air and soil as much as possible by using heavy mulching. This is ok provided mulching materials are not the result of poor farming elsewhere. Even some large scale organic farming degrades the soil and causes emmisions.

    The biointensive method aims to greatly increase the exchange. The soil is double dug, adding an inch of compost. After this the soil does release lots of co2 but its mostly caught by the canopy of the plants. Soils are covered all the time by growing plants because the seedlings are planted much bigger and slightly closer together.
    The living mulch effect creates a mini-climate in the bed and the growing conditions are perfect with loose, fluffy, well composted soil 2' deep. Crops which harvest lots of carbon like grains, broadbeans,peas etc... are grown in about half the available space to harvest carbon and all refuse is composted. Compost is applied to the beds when it is well decomposed so that as much of it as possible is stable humified carbon (humus). Because it is stable it is less likely to dissapear as co2 than

    organic matter from a green manure crop or a mulch. Composting also frees up space because u never have to wait for a green manure crop or sheet compost to decompose.
    In temporate zones it takes nature about 200 years to build one inch of stable humus under a forest or field, depending on conditions of course.
    The biointensive system does this twice per year so takes carbon into the soil up to 400 times faster!
    This means that much more carbon can be captured per area which is great when your short of land.

    Its not enough to just make agriculture carbon neutral. We have to use agriculture to harvest massive amounts of carbon and make up for some of the emmissions we cause. Its not just the emissions which are the problem. There were once huge temporate forrests acting as carbon sinks and the earths lungs in north america and from germany to siberia. Our planet has a serious breathing problem and we are blowing smoke in its face.

    IG
     
  3. NJNative

    NJNative Junior Member

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    Sorry to dig up such an old thread, but this debate is one that I have with myself on a daily basis. Biointensive sounds so good, especially considering the research that's been done on it, but in terms of permaculture, it's quite a huge contradiction.

    So what's the current science on it? Is biointensive capable of sequestering carbon like it says it is, or is no-till really the only way to achieve a net reduction in atmospheric carbon? What are people's opinions on the two in general?
     
  4. Ludi

    Ludi Junior Member

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    Personally I think Biointensive is too much work, but I don't see anything in the method to contradict permaculture, as part of a larger permanent system. That is, I don't think one has to choose between Biointensive and permaculture, as they are compatible. Biointensive is suitable for small intensive vegetable growing, not for broadscale perennial systems. Also, Biointensive does not require one to continue double digging after the soil has been improved, unless at some point it becomes compacted somehow.
     
  5. NJNative

    NJNative Junior Member

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    Gotcha. I thought that permaculture was mostly in favor of mimicking natural systems and ecosystems, which are essentially no till. The biggest disturbance I would imagine there to be in nature is fires and when trees uproot. I guess where biointensive fits in is that it's mimicking the exact soil texture that plants need to thrive.

    I guess I need to read up more on biointensive, as I was under the impression that double digging was a really frequent and integral part of the system. I could see it as a once in a very long while thing working out quite nicely, practice no-till for a designated period or like you said, until the soil becomes compacted.
     
  6. Ludi

    Ludi Junior Member

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  7. matto

    matto Junior Member

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    I would be surprised if after 10 years the no-till broadacre would have put back 1% Carbon into the soil. They are notorious for using large amounts of herbicides to knock down grases and herbage. Unlike current pasture cropping which has put back over 5% Carbon on Colin Seis' place in 10 years.

    Small- scale bio-intensive sounds great in that it is supplying its own mulch and compost. After remedying poor soils initially, I would think the carbon increases would be exceptional. Good for small acreages and places with an available workforce.
     
  8. Terra

    Terra Moderator

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    The broadacre concept of minimum till and stubble retention sounds great and you would think it would return large amounts of carbon , similiar to mulching in our gardens , however i see this on my own place and others i work on we have 500mm rainfall and you can still see stubble residue from three years ago still there on top , eventually most of it gets burnt as snail numbers build up and burning is the most effective way of controlling snails . Most likely is the toxic mix of artificial fertilizers , herbicides and of course the worst one , insecticides , kills the vast majority of the worm population and or usefull bacterias that do the work .
     
  9. NJNative

    NJNative Junior Member

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    Matto, two questions on what you said. First, I thought there was an organic method of no-till, using mowers or the rodale crimper-roller. Is this method not well proven yet? Second, what is pasture cropping?

    Ludi, I've heard of the U-bar technique before. I wonder if you could buy or make a U-bar attachment for a tractor, making the beds the proper width to run over with a tractor, and thus making the time it takes to prepare the beds far less. Also, I'm curious how exactly different double digging is from say deep tillage with a tractor. What is it that makes it so much supposedly better than what they call traditional organic agriculture, which disks, and tills with heavy machinery. From assessing the system overall, it seems to me like the greatest gain in food production comes from the way you lay out your planting beds, planting in a dense formation, rather than having wasted space in between rows.
     
  10. Pakanohida

    Pakanohida Junior Member

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    10 years to re-discover what we already understood, I wonder if Bill Mollison laughs when he reads stuff like this?
     
  11. NJNative

    NJNative Junior Member

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    I wish there was a real scholarly comparison of no-till vs biointensive in terms of carbon sequestration. No-till has the study to back it up, and makes sense in general, but biointensive seems to only have claims. Unless of course someone knows of a study that was done that shows it's carbon sequestration properties. I know biointensive claims to create soil 60 times faster than nature, but I wonder what this translates to in pounds of carbon sequestered. I also wonder if the turning of the soil counteracts the level of sequestration at all. I guess that's one more thing to add to the research list...
     
  12. Pakanohida

    Pakanohida Junior Member

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    Confused...


    Bio-intensive appears to be no till, but the 1st thing I read was about a double dug raised bed. Well, that oxidizes the soil and kills off millions of things in the soil, thus making it more fertile for the 1st year or two thus calling it no-till makes no sense to me.

    I would rather make a deadwood swale, and let nature take its course with minimal help from me.
     
  13. gardenlen

    gardenlen Group for banned users

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    just as a side note they have finished the cane harvest so now the farmers are all out their ploughing their field towing dust storm of erosion along in windy conditions, wonder if they realise how inept it looks.

    what happened to those farmer in the US not sure where? california or florida areas maybe? who grew tomatos and capsicums by pushing flat a cover crop and planting through it, one farmer claimed he replaced some 18"s of lost soil. had other benefits as well, as one might imagine.

    len
     
  14. Ludi

    Ludi Junior Member

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  15. NJNative

    NJNative Junior Member

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    Pak, biointensive is definitely not no-till. It's very deep till and then maybe a slight mixing every now and then. That's an integral part of the system. The thing with biointensive is that they grow all of the compost on site, so the idea is that you can keep that bumped up fertility going for longer than just a year, since you're returning the nutrients you took out with every new bed preparation. Also, they advocate companion planting, in which they include cover crops like legumes, which also help increase fertility, and daikon radishes, which help break up and aerate the soil as well. So it's definitely not no-till, but it's not exactly the traditional outside input agriculture that most people are used to.

    I understand that hugelkulture is more like a natural ecosystem, but biointensive really gets into the biology of the plants and the soil, and what they need to thrive (air, organic matter, nutrients), and prepares the beds in a way that maximizes these necessary components. You could really argue that traditional agriculture does the same thing, but the difference is that biointensive does it in a closed loop, self-contained systems way, from only biological resources, and spaces things in a way that maximize the amount of food produced per square foot.

    What I am also curious of, is what system grows more food, biointensive or no-till. Would it be comparable if you did no-till with biointensive spacing? What about if you just use a yeoman's plow or broad fork? I know that mulching can really help with plant growth and reduced watering, so what about biointensive with mulching? What about hugelkulture beds prepared with double digging the subsoil and then treated as no-till from then on? I am an aspiring new farmer, so I plan on doing this research in the next few years, once I have some land of my own to do the tests on. I'll contact ecology action as well to see if they've done the research already. Thanks for the links Ludi!
     
  16. Ludi

    Ludi Junior Member

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    My garden is sort of like that, all the soil dug out to remove rocks, then rocks replaced with wood down to 18 inches to 2 feet and soil replaced, additional organic material added to the surface. So far is doing better than any garden I've had.
     
  17. Pakanohida

    Pakanohida Junior Member

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    Still seems like soil organism death.

    So I am right. ^) (I think) They double-dig, thus destroying what is currently in the soil for fertility, and then they keep adding on top of it which is essentially what natures does but each time you are mixing, or disturbing the soil you are killing micro-organisms and micro-fungi / hyphae which connect every plant with every other plant be it in a forest, field, or farm. That is a disruption in the cycle. Simply adding on top of it and calling it no-till.. semantics at best I guess.

    I am making deadwood swales will eventually be huglekulture, but in a style more akin with E. Hazelip / Fukuoka.
     
  18. gardenlen

    gardenlen Group for banned users

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    all that digging no good for my back or health, we did hugelkultur (natural process) raised beds no digging at all ever.

    len
     
  19. Pakanohida

    Pakanohida Junior Member

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    We finally completely and utterly agree on something. Feels nice. :D
     
  20. NJNative

    NJNative Junior Member

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    That picture is beautiful gardenlen!! Would you happen to have any links to some more detailed pictures of the process? If not, could you explain more? Was it just the standard hugelkulture, piles of logs followed by piles of compost/manure/dirt? How did you do it exactly, and do make your own compost to renew the soil? Do you mulch at all?
     

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