permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [SANET-MG] Growing canola for conversion to biodiesel - how is 
it done?
Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 10:55:28 -0400
From: STEVE GILMAN <stevegilman@VERIZON.NET>
To: SANET-MG@LISTS.IFAS.UFL.EDU

        If we're going to squander soil resources and further line
agribusiness' pockets to pay for the synthetic inputs to grow energy
crops a la corn ethanol there's another major consideration --the
impact on climate change.

        Even though Organic is essentially a solar agriculture as opposed to
a petrochemical one, for biodiesel -- canola (a brassica) doesn't
produce Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, that live on plant roots and
appear to be the only producers of glomalin, which forms the sticky
glue binding soil aggreates and the miles of tubular walls of the
hyphae pipelines that bring water and nutrients to the crop plants.
Glomalin accounts for 27 percent of the carbon in soil and is a major
component of soil organic matter.  For the complete story see:
www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/sep02/soil0902.htm

        In this regard the touted magic bullet aspects of Terra Preta (whose
complexities still remain a secret of the ages) completely misses the
biological basis of building soil organic matter to sequester carbon.
Processing, transporting and spreading peanut hull charcoal from
waste materials in GA, for example, may not fulfill the T.P.
requirements at all. Meanwhile, it's an open door for getting rid of
(selling) all kinds of charcoal-ed nasty waste in the name of
preventing climate change, while justifying significant processing,
energy and transportation emissions as "carbon neutral."

        One of these days sustainable and organic soil-building farmers are
going to qualify for carbon credits. There's also going to be a lot
of agro-technologies staking claims based on incomplete and dubious
justifications. For example, conventional no- till looks good on
paper until you factor in the nitrous oxide emissions from the
chemical nitrogen fertilizers, not to mention contributions to
pollution and the dead zones. N2O is some 300 times more virulent a
greenhouse gas than CO2.  In terms of finally transforming our
agriculture to a sustainable basis -- when the Carbon Credit checks
start flowing to organic farmers there will be a further (non-
subsidy) incentive to shift to organic agriculture, particularly if
conventional farmers and petrochemical input corporations have to be
buying credits themselves to offset their greenhouse emissions...


Steve Gilman

Ruckytucks Farm