David, I'm surprised you didn't respond to


I didn't see it.

"Peter Bane did some calculations. He estimates that there are a
hundred million agricultural acres in the US similar enough to the
Salatins' to count: "about 2/3 of the area east of the Dakotas,
roughly from Omaha andTopeka east to the Atlantic and south to the
Gulf of Mexico."5 Right now, that land is mostly planted to corn and
soy. But returned to permanent cover, **it would sequester 2.2
billion tons of carbon every year**. Bane writes:


This statement bothers me because it allows one to think that the quoted
rate of sequestration can go on indefinitely.. Every land use will reach a
different equilibrium in the amount of carbon that it can store. Forest
stores more per acre than pasture which stores more than row crops according
to my local agronomist. So it makes sense to say X amount is sequestered
per year at a point in time while the biomass is growing. So if you convert
an acre of row crop to forest it sequesters a given amount per year which
slows to zero as it reaches its maximum storage when the forest matures.
After that there is no net sequestration.

I would need to know just what this bloke is talking about before commenting
further.

**That's equal to present gross US atmospheric releases**, not
counting the net reduction from the carbon sinks of existing
forests and soils ... Without expanding farm acreage or remov-
ing any existing forests, and even before undertaking changes
in consumer lifestyle, reduction in traffic, and increases in
industrial and transport fuel efficiencies, which arc absolutely
imperative, the US could become a net carbon sink by chang-
ing cultivating practices and marketing on a million farms. In
fact, we could create 5 million new jobs in farming if the land
were used as efficiently as the Salatins use theirs.4

The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability by Lierre Keith
http://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Myt...ability/dp/160
4860804/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1281718588&sr=1-1

p. 250



I cannot read this site, I get a whole lot of blank rectangles, garbled text
and IE complaining a script is taking too many resources.

So who is Peter Bane? What are his qualifications? Where can we see his
calculations and more importantly his assumptions?


With the Salatin paradigm, the US could sequester its CO2 emissions,
grow healthy meat on permanent pasture, and create 5 million new jobs.
It's good not just for your inner environment but your outter
environment as well.

This may or may not be so. The whole issue of carbon sequestration has been
greatly politicised and scrambled. I need to see all the details to have a
view of whether this is reasonable. Of course carbon sequestration is but
one aspect of any proposed change to land use and agricultural methods.

David