In article ,
"David Hare-Scott" wrote:
songbird wrote:
David Hare-Scott wrote:
songbird wrote:
FarmI wrote:
Billy wrote:
Well, in this case, it would be prairie grass (reflecting
Salatin's pasture),
What sort of species are you talking about when you say 'prairie
grass'? The reason why I ask is that the You-tube clips of
Salatin's place doesn't look like anything I'd call a 'prairie'. He
looks like he's got a farm on quite rich land in a well
protected area. 'Prairies' to me suggest very open and exposed
locations and the grasses there would, TMWOT, be much tougher and
less nutritious than in good pasture land. I might be talking
through my hat 'cos I haven't got a clue about US farms, but
that's what I'd expect here in Oz if we were looking at farms of
differing capacities.
right, anyone talking about grassland production in
the eastern seaboard of the USA being equivalent
to what happens on the prairies is full of it. the time
scale difference isn't minor and probably heavily
depends upon the average annual rainfall.
the soil of the prairies was probably produced over
the period of time after the last ice-age. it isn't that
thick. if it could accumulate at a rate of an inch a
year it would be much deeper...
ok, so let's return to the eastern seaboard and
wonder why the topsoil in unmolested places isn't
deeper? if it can be so productive why isn't it?
because it is woodland and not grassland and
unmanaged woodlands cycle carbon but do not
sequester once it's reached maturity. very little
is sequestered and that would be because of fires
that char and thus turn the carbon into a form not
easily consumed...
if trees and forests were so good for carbon
gathering and keeping the soils of the Amazon would
be deep and fertile, but they are not unless you
find the places that were altered by the natives in
prehistorical times.
Tropical rainforest is often on leached soil where most of the
nutrients are actually in the trees.
right, why is that though? you'd
figure that if it was truely good for
the ecosystem to have deep soil
that it would have figured that out
by now (millions of years of selective
pressure).
Different ecosystems work in different ways. In the case of tropical
forests the very high rainfall leaches the soil and the biota has adapted to
that reality.
Saying that this environment
doesn't accumulated soil and therefore no forest will do so does not
necessarily follow. Particularly where temperate forests were cleared
for crop land you can certainly increase the amount of carbon stored
by converting them to pasture or back to forest.
again true, but only to a point and i think there
is a need now to go beyond what can be
accompished this way.
Yes
But your point
about reaching a maximum and then not storing any more is correct.
Evan so I don't think carbon sequestration is anything more than a
side show when it comes to managing climate change.
i'd change my statement to "not storing much more" because
i do think that periodic fires do store some more. just not
that much at a time.
so this says that reforestation is barking up the
wrong tree when it comes to CO2 sequestration
and rebuilding topsoil. (but i won't argue that
it's bad for species preservation and diversity
because that's needed too in many places -- so
there has to be the tradeoff there).
You are right that it is not a panacea but wrong in saying we cannot
build soil or sequester carbon by altering land use.
yeah, i mispoke somewhat there, but what i meant
was that the need for carbon storage is now more than
what is going to be achieved using either of those two
methods. building soil would help out all around, i won't
argue against that.
my wondering about topsoil is that if it is so good
for overall life then you'd think that by this time (after
millions of years) it would be selected for and there
would be much more of it than there is instead of
what we do find. so my curiousity is engaged on
the topic of the disappearing topsoil.
Two reasons. One: that there are environments where building and
maintaining topsoil is too hard (eg tropical rainforest) so the adaptive
pathway has gone in other directions. Two: humans have been making topsoil
disappear since we started agriculture. We now live in an age where so much
is transmitted culturally instead of genetically you could call it the
post-Darwinian era. This is gross simplification of course because natural
selection still takes place as it always has but now many factors interfere
with it.
ascends soapbox
Typically our cultures cannot deal with issues like topsoil because they
take generations to see change. When motivation is dominated by the desire
to eat today, to make a profit next month and to be elected again in 3 years
time how can you spare any thought for problems that have taken thousands of
years to develop and will take hundreds to fix?
The way things are heading nothing will be done on a large scale until over
population, over consumption, resource limits and climate change form the
perfect storm. People will then cry out to leaders saying "why didn't you
do anything about it?" The majority of leaders will say "elect me again and
I will fix it next year", the few honest ones will say "because you didn't
want me to" and they will be the first trampled by the hungry mob.
descends soapbox
David
Wot? A soapbox without anybody standing on it? ascends soapbox, rant on
Since too many politicians are involved in making money, rather than
politicking, it will have to be left to us sheep to change direction, if
we can.
Organic produce increases its rate of sales. year after year, not just
in the U.S. but around the world. Since 1990, the market for organic
products has grown at a rapid pace, to reach $46 billion in 2007. This
demand has driven a similar increase in organically managed farmland.
Approximately 32.2 million hectares worldwide are now farmed
organically, representing approximately 0.8 percent of total world
farmland.
Then there are organic gardeners. Organic Gardening Magazine's rate base
will increase more than 5% to 275,00 from 260,000, the third increase
for the magazine in four years and an overall jump of 28% from 2007.
Organic Gardening's relaunch is in response to a changing mindset among
Americans who are choosing to lead healthier, more environmentally
conscious lifestyles.
Nutritious food, free of unnatural chemicals, has a strong appeal, and
we as organic gardeners are its lobbyists. The world needs to return to
a sustainable model, and it is up to us, at least for the time being, to
engage in conversations about organic gardening, write letters to the
Editor of our local papers, and even write to our Congress people to
uphold organic standards, and to make subsidies, at least in part,
dependent on stewardship of the land.
Natural ecosystems and organic farmers are the only creators of topsoil
today.
rant off, descends soapbox
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/2/maude
http://english.aljazeera.net/video/m...515308172.html