Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

Peak Soil: Why Cellulosic Ethanol and other Biofuels are Not Sustainable
and are a Threat to America's National Security
http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&;
id=107&Itemid=2#cont
by Alice Friedemann

"The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself." - President Franklin
D. Roosevelt

 -  Part 1.  The Dirt on Dirt.
 -  Part 2.  The Poop on Ethanol: Energy Returned on Energy Invested
(EROEI)
 -  Part 3.  Biofuel is a Grim Reaper.
 -  Part 4.  Biodiesel: Can we eat enough French Fries?
 -  Part 5.  If we can't drink and drive, then burn baby burn – Energy
Crop Combustion.
 -  Part 6.  The problems with Cellulosic Ethanol could drive you to drink.
 -  Part 7.  Where do we go from here?
 -  Appendix
 -  Department of Energy's Biofuel Roadmap Barriers
 -  References

Editor's note:  There are many serious problems with biofuels, especially
on a massive scale, and it appears from this report that they cannot be
surmounted.  So let the truth of Alice Friedemann's meticulous and
incisive diligence wash over you and rid you of any confusion or false
hopes.  The absurdity and destructiveness of large-scale biofuels are a
chance for people to eventually even reject the internal combustion engine
and energy waste in general.  One can also hazard from this report that
bioplastics, as well, cannot make it in a big way.

The author looks ahead to post-petroleum living with considered
conclusions:  "Biofuels have yet to be proven viable, and mechanization
may not be a great strategy in a world of declining energy."  And,
"...only a small amount of biomass (is) unspoken for" by today's essential
economic and ecological activities.  To top it off, she points out, "Crop
production is reduced when residues are removed from the soil.  Why would
farmers want to sell their residues?"  Here's an Oh-god-she-nailed-it
zinger: "As prices of fertilizer inexorably rise due to natural gas
depletion, it will be cheaper to return residues to the soil than to buy
fertilizer."  Looking further along than most of us, Alice has among her
conclusions:  "It's time to start increasing horse and oxen numbers, which
will leave even less biomass for biorefineries."  - JL

Part 1.  The Dirt on Dirt.

Ethanol is an agribusiness get-rich-quick scheme that will bankrupt our
topsoil.

Nineteenth century western farmers converted their corn into whiskey to
make a profit (Rorabaugh 1979).  Archer Daniels Midland, a large grain
processor, came up with the same scheme in the 20th century.  But ethanol
was a product in search of a market, so ADM spent three decades
relentlessly lobbying for ethanol to be used in gasoline.  Today ADM makes
record profits from ethanol sales and government subsidies (Barrionuevo
2006).

The Department of Energy hopes to have biomass supply 5% of the nation's
power, 20% of transportation fuels, and 25% of chemicals by 2030.  These
combined goals are 30% of the current petroleum consumption (DOE Biomass
Plan, DOE Feedstock Roadmap).

Fuels made from biomass are a lot like the nuclear powered airplanes the
Air Force tried to build from 1946 to 1961, for billions of dollars.  They
never got off the ground.  The idea was interesting -- atomic jets could
fly for months without refueling.  But the lead shielding to protect the
crew and several months of food and water was too heavy for the plane to
take off.  The weight problem, the ease of shooting this behemoth down,
and the consequences of a crash landing were so obvious, it's amazing the
project was ever funded, let alone kept going for 15 years.

Biomass fuels have equally obvious and predictable reasons for failure.
Odum says that time explains why renewable energy provides such low energy
yields compared to non-renewable fossil fuels.  The more work left to
nature, the higher the energy yield, but the longer the time required.
Although coal and oil took millions of years to form into dense,
concentrated solar power, all we had to do was extract and transport them
(Odum 1996)

With every step required to transform a fuel into energy, there is less
and less energy yield.  For example, to make ethanol from corn grain,
which is how all U.S. ethanol is made now, corn is first grown to develop
hybrid seeds, which next season are planted, harvested, delivered, stored,
and preprocessed to remove dirt.  Dry-mill ethanol is milled, liquefied,
heated, saccharified, fermented, evaporated, centrifuged, distilled,
scrubbed, dried, stored, and transported to customers (McAloon 2000).

Fertile soil will be destroyed if crops and other "wastes" are removed to
make cellulosic ethanol.

"We stand, in most places on earth, only six inches from desolation, for
that is the thickness of the topsoil layer upon which the entire life of
the planet depends" (Sampson 1981).

Loss of topsoil has been a major factor in the fall of civilizations
(Sundquist 2005 Chapter 3, Lowdermilk 1953, Perlin 1991, Ponting 1993).
You end up with a country like Iraq, formerly Mesopotamia, where 75% of
the farm land became a salty desert.

Fuels from biomass are not sustainable, are ecologically destructive, have
a net energy loss, and there isn't enough biomass in America to make
significant amounts of energy because essential inputs like water, land,
fossil fuels, and phosphate ores are limited.

Soil Science 101 – There Is No "Waste" Biomass

Long before there was "Peak Oil," there was "Peak Soil."  Iowa has some of
the best topsoil in the world.  In the past century, half of it has been
lost, from an average of 18 to 10 inches deep (Pate 2004, Klee 1991).

Productivity drops off sharply when topsoil reaches 6 inches or less, the
average crop root zone depth (Sundquist 2005).

Crop productivity continually declines as topsoil is lost and residues are
removed. (Al-Kaisi May 2001, Ball 2005, Blanco-Canqui 2006, BOA 1986,
Calviño 2003, Franzleubbers 2006, Grandy 2006, Johnson 2004, Johnson
2005,
Miranowski 1984, Power 1998, Sadras 2001, Troeh 2005, Wilhelm 2004).

On over half of America's best crop land, the erosion rate is 27 times the
natural rate, 11,000 pounds per acre (NCRS 2006).  The natural, geological
erosion rate is about 400 pounds of soil per acre per year (Troeh 2005).
Some is due to farmers not being paid enough to conserve their land, but
most is due to investors who farm for profit.  Erosion control cuts into
profits.

Erosion is happening ten to twenty times faster than the rate topsoil can
be formed by natural processes (Pimentel 2006).  That might make the
average person concerned.  But not the USDA -- they've defined erosion as
the average soil loss that could occur without causing a decline in long
term productivity.

Troeh (2005) believes that the tolerable soil loss (T) value is set too
high, because it's based only on the upper layers -- how long it takes
subsoil to be converted into topsoil.  T ought to be based on deeper
layers -- the time for subsoil to develop from parent material or parent
material from rock.  If he's right, erosion is even worse than NCRS
figures.

Erosion removes the most fertile parts of the soil (USDA-ARS).  When you
feed the soil with fertilizer, you're not feeding plants; you're feeding
the biota in the soil.  Underground creatures and fungi break down fallen
leaves and twigs into microscopic bits that plants can eat, and create
tunnels air and water can infiltrate.  In nature there are no elves
feeding (fertilizing) the wild lands.  When plants die, they’re recycled
into basic elements and become a part of new plants.  It's a closed cycle.
 There is no bio-waste.

Soil creatures and fungi act as an immune system for plants against
diseases, weeds, and insects -- when this living community is harmed by
agricultural chemicals and fertilizers, even more chemicals are needed in
an increasing vicious cycle (Wolfe 2001).

There's so much life in the soil, there can be 10 "biomass horses"
underground for every horse grazing on an acre of pasture (Wardle 2004).
If you dove into the soil and swam around, you'd be surrounded by miles of
thin strands of mycorrhizal fungi that help plant roots absorb more
nutrients and water, plus millions of creatures, most of them unknown.
There'd be thousands of species in just a handful of earth -- springtails,
bacteria, and worms digging airy subways.  As you swam along, plant roots
would tower above you like trees as you wove through underground
skyscrapers.

Plants and creatures underground need to drink, eat, and breathe just as
we do.  An ideal soil is half rock, and a quarter each water and air.
When tractors plant and harvest, they crush the life out of the soil, as
underground apartments collapse 9/11 style.  The tracks left by tractors
in the soil are the erosion route for half of the soil that washes or
blows away (Wilhelm 2004).

Corn Biofuel (i.e. butanol, ethanol, biodiesel) is especially harmful
because:

 - Row crops such as corn and soy cause 50 times more soil erosion than
sod crops [e.g., hay] (Sullivan 2004) or more (Al-Kaisi 2000), because
the soil between the rows can wash or blow away.  If corn is planted with
last year's corn stalks left on the ground (no-till), erosion is less of
a problem, but only about 20% of corn is grown no-till.  Soy is usually
grown no-till, but insignificant residues to harvest for fuel.
 -  Corn uses more water, insecticide, and fertilizer than most crops
(Pimentel 2003).  Due to high corn prices, continuous corn (corn crop
after corn crop) is increasing, rather than rotation of nitrogen fixing
(fertilizer) and erosion control sod crops with corn.
 - The government has studied the effect of growing continuous corn, and
found it increases eutrophication by 189%, global warming by 71%, and
acidification by 6% (Powers 2005).
 - Farmers want to plant corn on highly-erodible, water protecting, or
wildlife sustaining Conservation Reserve Program land.  Farmers are paid
not to grow crops on this land.  But with high corn prices, farmers are
now asking the Agricultural Department to release them from these
contracts so they can plant corn on these low-producing, environmentally
sensitive lands (Tomson 2007).
 - Crop residues are essential for soil nutrition, water retention, and
soil carbon.  Making cellulosic ethanol from corn residues -- the parts
of the plant we don't eat (stalk, roots, and leaves) -- removes water,
carbon, and nutrients (Nelson, 2002, McAloon 2000, Sheehan, 2003).

These practices lead to lower crop production and ultimately deserts.
Growing plants for fuel will accelerate the already unacceptable levels of
topsoil erosion, soil carbon and nutrient depletion, soil compaction,
water retention, water depletion, water pollution, air pollution,
eutrophication, destruction of fisheries, siltation of dams and waterways,
salination, loss of biodiversity, and damage to human health (Tegtmeier
2004).

Why are soil scientists absent from the biofuels debate?

I asked 35 soil scientists why topsoil wasn't part of the biofuels debate.
 These are just a few of the responses from the ten who replied to my
off-the-record poll (no one wanted me to quote them, mostly due to fear of
losing their jobs):  [ - To read the rest of this article, go to:
http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id
=107&Itemid=2#cont
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