I’m going through my resources, and as I sort, I thought I’d share. This group of links is about carbon sequestration solutions.
A friend of mine likes me to stay in the loop, so he sends me a lot of fresh info. He recently sent me this article about cattle and climate change. I’ve been very interested in what is often called holistic farming to regenerate soil and sequester carbon. Ruminants can play a vital role in this. This has some solid science behind it.
CATTLE ARE PART OF THE CLIMATE SOLUTION
They put it into permanent pasture and managed it using regenerative multi-paddock grazing with dairy cattle. Within three or four years they recorded substantial improvements. After five years they had enormous increases in soil carbon—up to eight tons of carbon per hectare per year. In areas where you can grow crops throughout the year, like in the southern half of the States, if you make sure there’s vegetative cover of the soil, a living root in the ground year-round and you practice regenerative grazing using multiple paddocks with adequate recovery, you will get extraordinarily rapid results. In our more arid areas in Texas, we find we need about 10 years to get substantive soil functional improvement. When we went up to Canada, we worked with people who had started 20 or 30 years ago, and they had moved ahead remarkably. Over those long time periods, the soil had been measured every second or third year, and in the best cases, within four or five years, there was a noticeable increase in soil carbon and surface water infiltration. In those northern areas, after 14 years now, there is still no decrease in the upward trajectory of the soil carbon.
…They put it into permanent pasture and managed it using regenerative multi-paddock grazing with dairy cattle. Within three or four years they recorded substantial improvements. After five years they had enormous increases in soil carbon—up to eight tons of carbon per hectare per year. In areas where you can grow crops throughout the year, like in the southern half of the States, if you make sure there’s vegetative cover of the soil, a living root in the ground year-round and you practice regenerative grazing using multiple paddocks with adequate recovery, you will get extraordinarily rapid results. In our more arid areas in Texas, we find we need about 10 years to get substantive soil functional improvement. When we went up to Canada, we worked with people who had started 20 or 30 years ago, and they had moved ahead remarkably. Over those long time periods, the soil had been measured every second or third year, and in the best cases, within four or five years, there was a noticeable increase in soil carbon and surface water infiltration. In those northern areas, after 14 years now, there is still no decrease in the upward trajectory of the soil carbon.
============
That’s a pertinent question. The people who practice regenerative grazing get rid of all the bad things and graze for a short period of time, allowing adequate plant recovery, which improves rooting depth, the fungal to bacterial ratio, soil texture and infiltration. As soil carbon increases in these systems, the fertility of the soil, the cation exchange capacity, increases because organic matter hangs on to so many more nutrients. Regenerative AMP grazing quickly improves soil biology and plant diversity, and the more productive, healthier plants naturally come back.
There is much more at the link with links to all the scientific data and discussion of the facts and myths of cows and methane.
==============
Prairie grass restoration is another solution I’ve been tracking. Probably because I spent a few years living in a prairie state.
Scientists say the world needs to cut greenhouse gas emissions nearly in half by mid-century to avert catastrophic effects from global warming. Carbon dioxide is the most prevalent greenhouse gas; the amount in the atmosphere has been rising as humans burn fossil fuels. Not only must the world stop releasing more carbon, some CO2 already in the air also must be removed, experts say.
That’s where the prairie comes in.
As part of photosynthesis, plants pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in their stems, leaves and roots. Unlike trees, grasslands store most of their carbon underground, in their roots and the soil.
And that makes them more reliable “carbon sinks” than forests, according to a 2018 University of California at Davis study. Because carbon is stored in the soil, it is not released back into the atmosphere when grasslands burn, as it is when trees go up in flames.
And finally, this has been my obsession since I learned of it years ago: Bringing back the Woolly Mammoth to save the permafrost:
Next week I’ll put together some links to resources that I think are focused on climate solutions. I think we are all well past, what is the climate crisis and what’s caused it, amirite?
x-posted LivingLightlyTV.com
frosty
Many of my environmental scientist friends are all in for biochar, which would contribute to both carbon sequestration and soil amendments, but can’t seem to get any traction. Probably because there’s no way a big company can manufacture and sell it for any significant profit.
Haven’t read the post, will go back and check it out now.
Link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar
ETA: yes, agreed, we’re well past what caused it and getting increasingly desperate for solutions.
TaMara (HFG)
@frosty: Thanks for sharing that!
frosty
@TaMara (HFG): The multi-pasture grazing is a good solution I hadn’t run across before.
Really, going back to The Omnivore’s Dilemma, the answers have been right in front of us. Better stewardship, better yields, lower costs.
TaMara (HFG)
@frosty: Next week I’ll be posting links to some great documentaries, and one I just discovered is on this entire concept.
prostratedragon
Here’s a doc on a related subject –one might say a precondition– U.S. public lands:
Induces both outrage and hope.
bucachon
ziggy
Thanks TaMara, for the links, I am also fascinated by the idea of regenerative agriculture. Particularly as I think, based on my research in nutrition, that red meat is actually quite good for humans and much more nutritious than white meat (and this from a former vegetarian!). No need to feel bad about enjoying a nice pastured steak!
I assume you’ve read the book Woolly by Ben Mezrich? I’m not convinced about their permafrost theory, a bit too convoluted. It just sounds really cool to make a woolly mammoth.
dm
This gets away from agrarian mitigation solutions, but Ezra Klein has had a couple of interviews with engineer Saul Griffiths this past year about the technical path to zero carbon. Griffiths makes a good case for it being both technically and politically possible (i.e., he gives ways for coal miners and other fossil-fuel employees to have jobs in a green economy, and even ways for potential opponents like the Kochs to make money at being green — neutralizing the opposition).
They’re worth a listen.
Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
Thanks for these links. The pasturing one is a subject I was looking for info on for a friend who grew up on a dairy farm. I had a link and then lost it.
TaMara (HFG)
@ziggy: I have not read the book, looking it up now.
As far as the Wooly Mammoth – they are testing the theory with buffalo, wild horses and deer right now and I think it’s going well.
MB
Great post. Environmental stories are somewhat lacking on Balloon Juice.
TaMara (HFG)
@dm: And my plan is to cover that going forward. I’m doing all this research on current articles and documentaries, so I thought I might as well share here.
Also, I’m trying to focus on what we need to do for our future while ignoring the orange disease.
TaMara (HFG)
@MB: I’m hoping we have some climate change experts lurking and they’ll chime in and also offer to do guest posts.
Starfish
I read the book Resilient Agriculture: Cultivating Food Systems for a Changing Climate a few years ago. The author traveled around the country to visit all sorts of farmers to see if they were noticing climate change in their area and if they were using techniques to prepare for climate change. The politics of the farmers varied wildly. In some cases, the food safety rules came into conflict with the environmental practices of the farms. It was an interesting book.
I don’t know anything deep about the topic.
I know that a lot of local folks like to talk a lot about biodynamic farming, and I don’t know if there is anything real to it or if it just fits in with their beliefs that Rudolph Steiner was some magical hero of solving all the problems in education and farming.
Josie
This reminds me of a book I read a few years ago – The Grazing Revolution by Savoy. It gave the history of his efforts both in Africa and the U.S. to find a solution to what he termed either over grazed or over rested land. Very interesting.
Doug R
Breaking: Brad Parscale is in the psych ward after barricading himself in his house and threatening self-harm.
Steeplejack
@Tamara:
Condolences on dropping this interesting and useful post into what turned out to be a wild news night. Bookmarked for later reading.
Another Scott
Thanks for this. It’s a very interesting and timely topic.
I’m not a climatologist or a geologist, but it’s been my understanding that sequestering carbon via plants, etc., is not a long-term solution because critters in the ground eventually break down the plant material, releasing the carbon back into the atmosphere. (The “carbon cycle”.) One way out of that is to grow trees and use the wood for things that decay slowly compared to the normal tree lifecycle (furniture, housing, etc.). Another complementary approach is to extract CO2 from the air (or the oceans) and lock it up in rock or liquid injected into rocks that will escape on geologic time scales.
Of course, it depends on the various rates of growth and decay (I recall that some say the “little ice age” was caused/contributed to by Central American jungles taking back over after the death of millions caused by the European invasions) to know the net benefit of any approach.
In 2011 the USGS did a report on carbon sources and sinks in the Great Plains and estimates over the coming decades – https://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/1787/p1787.pdf (40 page .pdf)
The biggest problem is that the carbon we are throwing into the atmosphere is being put there in tens of decades while it was locked up in rock over millions of years. Natural systems cannot cope with changes on that reduced time scale without major disruptions.
Improving soil and agricultural practices is good and necessary. I’m glad that people are obtaining good results. We need to do that, and more.
Cheers,
Scott.
TaMara (HFG)
@Steeplejack: There is just not going to be a quiet time for quite a while..but this is a crisis we cannot ignore and I decided it was time to focus on doing what we can in our own lives to address it. And hopefully, be able to demand our new and improved government make it a priority starting in January.
Also, I’m finding so many positive solutions out there, I wanted to share because between the wildfires and tropical storms this summer, it is easy to lose hope and think it’s an unsolvable problem.
Steeplejack
@TaMara (HFG):
Thank you for your good work!
TaMara (HFG)
The articles address pretty specifically how ruminants are part of the solution to that issue.
Geminid
@TaMara (HFG): I am no climate expert, but I learned a lot from an interview of U.Mass. economist Robert Pollin, titled “We Need a Better Green New Deal,” in the March 2019 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. They are the folks with the doomsday clock on the cover, and they have good coverage of climate issues. The Pollin article is worth a read.
Josie
@Josie:
I misspelled the author’s name. It is Allan Savory.
TaMara (HFG)
@Josie:
@Geminid:
Keep those resources coming! Thanks!
Aleta
OK, time for a kitten?
StringOnAStick
Alan Savory is the guy from Africa who has been pushing hard for regenerative agriculture, and his successes can’t be denied. Too much high carbon production processes are locked into the feedlot and corn/soy paradigm, so changing this is a huge fight we need to win to have any hope of dealing with our rate of carbon and the damage already happening.
Funny that I just saw a link to some YouTube guy claiming grass fed beef is just as bad for the planet as regular beef production, probably getting pushed because of these reports. A local organic grocery chain distributed a book called Cows Save the Planet that summarises Savory’s work and the various scientific studies available at the time of publication; fun title, well sourced and well written. There’s the Savory Institute too for finding results of studies on the topic
TaMara (HFG)
If we stop propping up fossil fuel companies and funnel that money to alternatives, the technology is there waiting to be developed.
Middlelee
Wild Idea Buffalo on Cheyenne River Ranch in South Dakota is using buffalo to restore the prairie. A website worth checking out. I buy a lot of humanely harvest meat from them. Dan O’Brien owns with his wife Jill and he’s written books about their adventures.
Omnes Omnibus
@TaMara (HFG): Hydrogen and passenger flight…. Makes me nervous for some reason.
Middlelee
@Omnes Omnibus: Yeah. I wonder why. ;-)
frosty
@TaMara (HFG): I’m not a climate change expert but I’ve had a career in watershed management and stormwater planning (as a PE) if that ever comes into play.
TaMara (HFG)
@frosty: Noted. And it probably will.
Amir Khalid
@Middlelee:
If it’s any comfort, the hydrogen in these planes is not in a giant bladder whose outside is covered in flammable paint.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: My first thought, also!
Ken
@frosty: The indigenous Amazonians apparently discovered the utility of biochar over two thousand years ago. And, partly addressing Another Scott’s concern (18), the stuff’s still in the soil and working.
The Dark Avenger
One solution I haven’t seen discussed is expanding the peat bogs. They’re a great carbon sink, and, properly managed, can provide earth-friendly products for the garden.
Aleta
@TaMara (HFG): apologies. I thought I read ‘open thread’ at the top, but I must have misread another thread as this one.
TaMara (HFG)
@Aleta: No, you did. Our posts default to that and I forgot to choose our categories.
Besides, cats, dogs and other critters make ALL posts better. ?
ETA: And also beautiful music.
Reboot
Polyface Farm is up the road a few counties away from us in Swoope, VA. “We practice mob-stocking herbivorous solar conversion carbon sequestration fertilization with the cattle.”
As for personally at home, converting lawn to gardens, composting, planting for pollinators, leaving a brush pile for shelter. We had a hummingbird show up for the zinnias (in FL they liked banana blossoms).
Ken
I think that’s MBA jargon for “Sun shines, grass grows, cows poop.”
Sandia Blanca
Here’s a recent article about the people who are working with Willie Nelson and his wife Annie to restore their ranch with regenerative agriculture; they are using pigs:
https://www.statesman.com/foodanddining/20200806/bringing-willie-nelsonrsquos-luck-ranch-back-to-life-is-job-for-terrapurezza
TaMara (HFG)
@Reboot: I bookmarked it. Lots to read there.
Reboot
Geminid
@TaMara (HFG): British climate scientist Myles Allen wrote another article for the March 2019 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists about the Green New Deal. Allen helped write the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, released in October 2018. Both Miles Allen and Robert Pollin have very knowledgable and practical approaches to the question of combating climate change.
Reboot
@Ken: It fits! (Strunk and White would approve.) Just missing the part about carbon sequestration.
dm
@TaMara (HFG): Great! I figured you would if you knew about it, so I wanted to be sure you knew about it.
Uncle Cosmo
This article on methane-munching bacteria just showed up on my homepage:
Jay
Other little pasture tidbits,
Part shade, ( under a well spaced tree), grown grasses have up to 80% more protein than grasses grown in full sun.
A mix of wild flowers, herbs and other native plants added into the pasture, rather than just grass mixes adds a bunch of added benifits.
– food for pollinators,
– medicine for the ruminants
– reduction of intestinal gassing,
– greater soil biodiversity,
– greater carbon storage from the deep taproot perennials.
HarlequinGnoll
https://youtu.be/bbMmQFwdACk
joel hanes
Damn, got distracted by Trump’s taxes and missed this important thread.
One: many of our soil problems are caused by our dependence on shallow-rooted annual grain crops. These require tillage at least once annually, which requires energy, currently fossil fuel. The farmer goes in hock for the seed, and for the herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers required to get a high enough yield to cover their sunk costs. Much of the profit goes to huge agribusinesses and finance. Shallow roots make the crops vulnerable to drought.
But we could convert to a grain crop regime based on deep-rooted perennials. Plant once; harvest for many years before replanting. Lower inputs of energy and chemicals. Deep roots hold, improve, and build soil, and resist drought.
This is where I shill for The Land Institute, which has already spent 30 years developing new grain crops from perennial plants. It’s a small organization : agribusiness giants are not about to fund research that will reduce their share of the pie. They’re wonderful people (Wendell Berry used to speak at their yearly conference, if that means anything to you.)
Take a minute and take a look. Maybe drop a dollar on them if you have one to spare.
https://landinstitute.org/
Two: cattle in regenerative agriculture are better than overconfined, overgrazing cattle, but cattle are terribly destructive of water quality unless the farmer or rancher makes the investment to fence them completely out of watercourses and lakeshores, and provides them with watering stations away from vulnerable shore and bankside biomes. Otherwise, the cattle browse the shoreline bare, trample the remains into easily eroded mud that makes the water turbid, and the cowshit adds nitrogen so that surface algae block sunlight and tend to make the deeper waters anoxic. Really terrible. Experience has shown that education and conscience are insufficient motivation for farmers and ranchers to handle this responsibly — they mostly just don’t. Regulation and financial incentive are needed.
joel hanes
@The Dark Avenger:
Before 1800, Iowa was over 1/3 peat-producing wetland by surface area. Only a tiny fraction of that remains.
And even a hundred years after tiling and tillage, a restored wetland “comes back” much more quickly than almost any other kind of restoration work. Many of the plants can be broadcast-sown as soon as there’s water, or even before. Duckweed and other plants will arrive on the feet and feathers of migratory waterfowl, along with a bunch of beneficial microbiota.
It can take three decades of sporadic but focused work to really restore a prairie; restoring a forest can take even longer — but you can have a nice healthy functioning wetland in five years, and with a lot less effort, and it probably sequesters more carbon more quickly.
Geminid
@joel hanes: E. Warren’s climate change plan called for a10-fold increase in funding for an existing Soil and Water Conservation program that encourages stream fencing through technical assistance and subsidies. Her whole set of policy proposals was excellent, and would be a good template for climate change legislation in the next Congress. There will be a need for economic stimulus, and clean power, smart grid, and conservation measures can be potent generators of economic growth. U. Mass. economist Robert Pollin’s studies find that in a transition from fossil fuel based energy to clean power, three jobs are created for one lost.
Mark Field
I didn’t see anyone mention it, but the recent book Sacred Cow talks about regenerative practices in detail. There’s a movie version coming out this week on (I think) Netflix. Fascinating stuff.
TaMara (HFG)
Thanks everyone for all the great links and resources. We’ll reconvene next week.
AnonPhenom
Another Scott
Regeneration is a good idea, for lots of reasons. DW has an article that ties poor practices elsewhere that are supported by huge financial interests to oat milk, plastics, cattle, and fossil fuels – Climate finance hits hurdle in greening meat and dairy
https://p.dw.com/p/3jM5u
It’s important to be informed. Thanks for this series.
Cheers,
Scott.