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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Rachel's News #906: Peak Soil Part 1

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  • From: Martin Naylor <martinwnaylor@yahoo.com.au>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Rachel's News #906: Peak Soil Part 1
  • Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 15:31:39 +1000 (EST)

I am AS i am
 
So what are you but a farmer
 
Be Happy in that
 
There is nothing to loose

TradingPostPaul <tradingpost@riseup.net> wrote:
Rachel's Democracy & Health News #906
Thursday, May 10, 2007
http://www.precaution.org/lib/07/prn_dhn070510.htm
From: Culture Change ......................................[This story
printer-friendly]
April 10, 2007

PEAK SOIL

[Rachel's introduction: This long, detailed essay builds a strong case that
biofuels, like ethanol from cellulose, are unsustainable and a threat to
America: "We need to transition from petroleum power to muscle power
gracefully if we want to preserve democracy."]

by Alice Friedemann**

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

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 (ADM), 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's 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,
Calvino 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 organic matter], 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 -- Especially Harmful

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 [leaves] 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): "I have no idea why soil scientists aren't questioning
corn and cellulosic ethanol plans. Quite frankly I'm not sure that our
society has had any sort of reasonable debate about this with all the facts
laid out. When you see that even if all of the corn was converted to
ethanol and that would not provide more than 20% of our current liquid fuel
use, it certainly makes me wonder, even before considering the conversion
efficiency, soil loss, water contamination, food price problems, etc."

"Biomass production is not sustainable. Only business men and women in the
refinery business believe it is."

"Should we be using our best crop land to grow gasohol and contribute
further to global warming? What will our children grow their food on?"

"As agricultural scientists, we are programmed to make farmers profitable,
and therefore profits are at the top of the list, and not soil, family, or
environmental sustainability".

"Government policy since WWII has been to encourage overproduction to keep
food prices down (people with full bellies don't revolt or object too
much). It's hard to make a living farming commodities when the selling
price is always at or below the break even point. Farmers have had to get
bigger and bigger to make ends meet since the margins keep getting thinner
and thinner. We have sacrificed our family farms in the name of cheap food.
When farmers stand to make few bucks (as with biofuels) agricultural
scientists tend to look the other way".

"You are quite correct in your concern that soil science should be factored
into decisions about biofuel production. Unfortunately, we soil scientists
have missed the boat on the importance of soil management to the
sustainability of biomass production, and the long- term impact for soil
productivity.

This is not a new debate. Here's what scientists had to say decades ago:
Removing "crop residues...would rob organic matter that is vital to the
maintenance of soil fertility and tilth, leading to disastrous soil erosion
levels. Not considered is the importance of plant residues as a primary
source of energy for soil microbial activity. The most prudent course,
clearly, is to continue to recycle most crop residues back into the soil,
where they are vital in keeping organic matter levels high enough to make
the soil more open to air and water, more resistant to soil erosion, and
more productive" (Sampson 1981).

"...Massive alcohol production from our farms is an immoral use of our
soils since it rapidly promotes their wasting away. We must save these
soils for an oil-less future" (Jackson 1980).

Natural Gas in Agriculture

When you take out more nutrients and organic matter from the soil than you
put back in, you are "mining" the topsoil. The organic matter is especially
important, since that's what prevents erosion, improves soil structure,
health, water retention, and gives the next crop its nutrition. Modern
agriculture only addresses the nutritional component by adding fossil-fuel
based fertilizers, and because the soil is unhealthy from a lack of organic
matter, copes with insects and disease with oil-based pesticides.

"Fertilizer energy" is 28% of the energy used in agriculture (Heller,
2000). Fertilizer uses natural gas both as a feedstock and the source of
energy to create the high temperatures and pressures necessary to coax
inert nitrogen out of the air (nitrogen is often the limiting factor in
crop production). This is known as the Haber-Bosch process, and it's a big
part of the green revolution that made it possible for the world's
population to grow from half a billion to 6.5 billion today (Smil 2000,
Fisher 2001).

Our national security is at risk as we become dependent on unstable foreign
states to provide us with increasingly expensive fertilizer. Between 1995
and 2005 we increased our fertilizer imports by more than 148% for
Anhydrous Ammonia, 93% for Urea (solid), and 349 % of other nitrogen
fertilizers (USDA ERS). Removing crop residues will require large amounts
of imported fertilizer from potential cartels, potentially so expensive
farmers won't sell crops and residues for biofuels.

Improve national security and topsoil by returning residues to the land as
fertilizer. We are vulnerable to high-priced fertilizer imports or "food
for oil", which would greatly increase the cost of food for Americans.

Agriculture competes with homes and industry for fast depleting North
American natural gas. Natural gas price increases have already caused over
280,000 job losses (Gerard 2006). Natural gas is also used for heating and
cooking in over half our homes, generates 15% of electricity, and is a
feedstock for thousands of products.

Return crop residues to the soil to provide organic fertilizer, don't
increase the need for natural gas fertilizers by removing crop residues to
make cellulosic biofuels.

Part 2. The Poop on Ethanol

Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI)

To understand the concept of EROEI, imagine a magician doing a variation on
the rabbit-out-of-a-hat trick. He strides onstage with a rabbit, puts it
into a top hat, and then spends the next five minutes pulling 100 more
rabbits out. That is a pretty good return on investment!

Oil was like that in the beginning: one barrel of oil energy was required
to get 100 more out, an Energy Returned on Energy Invested of 100:1.

When the biofuel magician tries to do the same trick decades later, he puts
the rabbit into the hat, and pulls out only one pooping rabbit. The
excrement is known as byproduct or coproduct in the ethanol industry.

Studies that show a positive energy gain for ethanol would have a negative
return if the byproduct were left out (Farrell 2006). Here's where
byproduct comes from: if you made ethanol from corn in your back yard,
you'd dump a bushel of corn, two gallons of water, and yeast into your
contraption. Out would come 18 pounds of ethanol, 18 pounds of CO2, and 18
pounds of byproduct -- the leftover corn solids.

Patzek and Pimentel believe you shouldn't include the energy contained in
the byproduct, because you need to return it to the soil to improve
nutrition and soil structure (Patzek June 2006). Giampetro believes the
byproduct should be treated as a "serious waste disposal problem and... an
energy cost", because if we supplied 10% of our energy from biomass, we'd
generate 37 times more livestock feed than is used (Giampetro 1997).

It's even worse than he realized -- Giampetro didn't know most of this
"livestock feed" can't be fed to livestock because it's too energy and
monetarily expensive to deliver -- especially heavy wet distillers
byproduct, which is short-lived, succumbing to mold and fungi after 4 to 10
days. Also, byproduct is a subset of what animals eat. Cattle are fed
byproduct in 20% of their diet at most. Iowa's a big hog state, but
commercial swine operations feed pigs a maximum of 5 to 10% byproduct
(Trenkle 2006; Shurson 2003).

Worst of all, the EROEI of ethanol is 1.2:1 or 1.2 units of energy out for
every unit of energy in, a gain of ".2". The "1" in "1.2" represents the
liquid ethanol. What is the ".2" then? It's the rabbit feces -- the
byproduct. So you have no ethanol for your car, because the liquid "1"
needs to be used to make more ethanol. That leaves you with just the ".2"
--- a bucket of byproduct to feed your horse -- you do have a horse, don't
you? If horses are like cattle, then you can only use your byproduct for
one-fifth of his diet, so you'll need four supplemental buckets of hay from
your back yard to feed him. No doubt the byproduct could be used to make
other things, but that would take energy.

Byproduct could be burned, but it takes a significant amount of energy to
dry it out, and requires additional handling and equipment. More money can
be made selling it wet to the cattle industry, which is hurting from the
high price of corn. Byproduct should be put back into the ground to improve
soil nutrition and structure for future generations, not sold for
short-term profit and fed to cattle who aren't biologically adapted to
eating corn.

The boundaries of what is included in EROEI calculations are kept as narrow
as possible to reach positive results.

Researchers who find a positive EROEI for ethanol have not accounted for
all of the energy inputs. For example, Shapouri admits the "energy used in
the production of... farm machinery and equipment..., and cement, steel,
and stainless steel used in the construction of ethanol plants, are not
included". (Shapouri 2002). Or they assign overstated values of ethanol
yield from corn (Patzek Dec 2006). Many, many, other inputs are left out.

Patzek and Pimentel have compelling evidence showing that about 30 percent
more fossil energy is required to produce a gallon of ethanol than you get
from it. Their papers are published in peer-reviewed journals where their
data and methods are public, unlike many of the positive net energy
results.

Infrastructure. Current EROEI figures don't take into account the delivery
infrastructure that needs to be built. There are 850 million combustion
engines in the world today. Just to replace half the 245 million cars and
light trucks in the United States with E85 vehicles will take 12-15 years,
It would take over $544 million dollars of delivery ethanol infrastructure
(Reynolds 2002 case B1) and $5 to $34 billion to revamp 170,000 gas
stations nationwide (Heinson 2007).

The EROEI of oil when we built most of the infrastructure in this country
was about 100:1, and it's about 25:1 worldwide now. Even if you believe
ethanol has a positive EROEI, you'd probably need at least an EROEI of at
least 5 to maintain modern civilization (Hall 2003). A civilization based
on ethanol's ".2" rabbit poop would only work for coprophagous
(dung-eating) rabbits.

Of the four articles that showed a positive net energy for ethanol in
Farrells 2006 Science article, three were not peer-reviewed. The only
positive peer-reviewed article (Dias De Oliveira, 2005) states "The use of
ethanol as a substitute for gasoline proved to be neither a sustainable nor
an environmentally friendly option" and the "environmental impacts outweigh
its benefits". Dias De Oliveria concluded there'd be a tremendous loss of
biodiversity, and if all vehicles ran on E85 and their numbers grew by 4%
per year, by 2048, the entire country, except for cities, would be covered
with corn.

Part 3. Biofuel is a Grim Reaper.

The energy to remediate environmental damage is left out of EROEI
calculations.

Global Warming

Soils contain twice the amount of carbon found in the atmosphere, and three
times more carbon than is stored in all the Earth's vegetation (Jones

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