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  • From: Marty Kraft <martyk@allspecies.org>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] NO-TILL FARMING OFFERS A QUICK FIX TO HELP WARD OFF HOST OF GLOBAL PROBLEMS
  • Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:55:55 -0600

Paul

I sent this article to a friend and am including his response in this email. Are we talking about commercial no-till vs an organic no-till methods here? My friend raises organic wheat and is conscientious in his work. 

Marty,

You had better check your facts on this. The way no-till makes the grade is by cheating on the soil tests. The main reason that KSU is behind this is to sell new farm equipment and make a name for mr. Charles Rice. There is more research showing that organic farming will sequester more carbon than ANY other form of farming. And another point, the no-till idea does NOT take into account the CO2 that gets released during the manufacturing of nitrate fertilizer. Of course, organic does not use manufactured fertilizer.

On Dec 10, 2007, at 6:16 PM, TradingPostPaul wrote:


NO-TILL FARMING OFFERS A QUICK FIX TO HELP WARD OFF HOST OF GLOBAL PROBLEMS

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Increase no-till farming practices across the planet or
face serious climate, soil quality and food production problems in the next
20 to 50 years. That warning from scientists appeared in the journal
Science this week.
Rattan Lal

No-till farming helps soil retain carbon. Healthy topsoil contains
carbon-enriched humus – decaying organic matter that provides nutrients
to plants. Soils low in humus can't maintain the carbon-dependent nutrients
essential to healthy crop production, resulting in the need to use more
fertilizers.

A lack of carbon in soil may promote erosion, as topsoil and fertilizers
are often washed or blown away from farm fields and into waterways, said
Rattan Lal, the paper's lead author and the director of the carbon
management and sequestration center at Ohio State University.

In no-till agriculture, farmers plant seeds without using a plow to turn
the soil. Soil loses most of it carbon content during plowing, which
releases carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere. Increased levels of CO2 in
the atmosphere have been associated with global climate change.

"If every farmer who grows crops in the United States would use no-till and
adopt management practices such as crop rotation and planting cover crops,
we could sequester about 300 million tons of soil carbon each year."

Traditional plowing, or tilling, turns over the top layer of soil. Farmers
use it for, among other reasons, to get rid of weeds, make it easier to use
fertilizers and pesticides and to plant crops. Tilling also enriches the
soil as it hastens the decomposition of crop residue, weeds and other
organic matter.

Still, the benefits of switching to no-till farming practices outweigh
those of traditional planting.

Since the mechanization of agriculture began a few hundred years ago,
scientists estimate that some 78 billion metric tons – more than 171
trillion pounds – of carbon once trapped in the soil have been lost to
the atmosphere in the form of CO2.

Lal and his colleagues estimate that no-till farming is practiced on only 5
percent of all the world's cultivated cropland. Farmers in the United
States use no-till methods on 37 percent of the nation's cropland, which
results in saving an estimated 60 million metric tons of soil CO2 annually.

"If every farmer who grows crops in the United States would use no-till and
adopt management practices such as crop rotation and planting cover crops,
we could sequester about 300 million tons of soil carbon each year," said
Lal, who is also a professor of soil science at Ohio State.

"Each year, 6 billion tons of carbon is released into the planet's
atmosphere as fossil fuels are burned, and plants can absorb 20 times that
amount in that period of time," he said. "The problem is that as organisms
decompose and plants breathe, CO2 returns to the atmosphere. None of it
accumulates in the soil."

Lal admits that full-scale no-till farming practices are a short-term fix,
but it's one that will give researchers enough time to find alternatives to
fossil fuels.

"There needs to be a global effort to adopt no-till farming practices soon.
Governments need to mandate these practices or to provide financial
incentives to farmers to adopt them," said Lal, adding no-till methods may
reduce a farmer's annual crop yield by 5 to 10 percent, at least for the
first few years.

It's also tough to ask farmers who lack the necessary financial resources
to switch to no-till methods, especially in African and Asian countries
where no-till levels are the lowest, Lal said.

"No-till isn't readily practiced in most of these areas due to the lack of
available financial resources and government support," he said. "Farmers
often lack the seeding equipment necessary to drill through crop residue.
And many farmers use leftover residue from the previous year's crops for
fuel or animal fodder. So the cultivated soil gets compacted or eroded by
water and wind."

Topsoil is also a lucrative commodity – an acre of it can bring in $1,300
for a farmer in India, where the first few feet of soil are often removed
for brick making.

"No-till farming isn't a substitute for finding alternatives to fossil
fuels," Lal said.

"No-till is definitely a short-term fix, but it may buy us up to 50 years
to find alternatives to fossil fuels. If we don't heed this warning, our
planet may change drastically. There's no other choice."

Lal co-authored the paper with Michael Griffin, Jay Apt, Lester Lave and M.
Granger Morgan, all with Carnegie Mellon University.


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