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  • From: Rain Tenaqiya <raincascadia@yahoo.com>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [permaculture] trees and carbon farming
  • Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2010 12:05:28 -0700 (PDT)

One thing possibly left out in the calculations by Rattan Lal (and I'm not
positive that I even understand his assumptions) is the carbon sequestration
by trees.  His efforts seem to be focused on conventional agricultural lands. 
I don't know if they include reforestation or conversion of annual crops to
perennials.  If anybody has a source of information on this, I would be glad
to hear of it.
 
Thanks,
 
Rain



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From: Darren Doherty <darren@permaculture.biz>
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Subject: Re: [permaculture] Carbon farming as solution to climate change?
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G'day, We are working with a couple of companies....one is a San
Francisco-based BioChar/Solar Power VC (that I met with last year) and one
of their partners here in Australia who have developed a char mineral
complex that low temperature chars stuff like chicken manure (yes from
industrial chicken factories), municipal woody waste and clays to make a
pretty amazing product that according to much of the analysis done so far in
field testing does a great job of increasing CEC, water holding and
biological activity very quickly in all soil types including the sands of
the grain belt in Western Australia. So yes I think that this material has
great potential but then so does harvesting sunlight, air and water in a
great process called photosynthesis and using it to restore carbon (via root
exudates and the soil food web) into even very sandy soils and using this as
the extensive soil amendment therapy before we hit the input button, whether
its soil inversion subsoiler plows that bring clays to the surface in duplex
soils (ie with sand over clay) or biochar or anything else brought in from
outside of the site. The local developers assure me that the full life cycle
analysis of this product on this is on the money, though I have yet to see
the this in print as such.

At a product level its very good, though again my Permaculture emergy and
Keyline 'Sun:Air:Water' strings as the only ideal inputs are always pulled
when working with any external input. Get over it but get over it mindful of
the greater potential especially where this example of GreenTech is also
able to generate electricity and hot water and water itself (capture of the
water coming from the char process) and is using materials that are
available locally abundant and are otherwise polluting (ie chicken wastes),
excess to quarrying and mass prunings of municipalities. Certainly any kind
of GreenTech is easy to take pot shots at from a Permaculture perspective,
though in my opinion at the R&D level this only serves to negate potentials
to innovate and develop ready alternatives to the status quo of urban food
production, distribution and resource depletion. Of course we would love to
see that urban sprawl over farming land stops and that everyone produces as
much as they can for themselves, but there is always going to be a place in
the division of services for concentrated food production of different
scales in urban areas.

I have recently designed a R&D farm for this company where we integrated the
char facility with 2400m2 of hothouses. Separated by only 20 metres these
two facilities work together quite well and are a great example of the
design process we in PC know as 'Random Assembly' and inspired a lot by the
works of Dr. George Chan and Will Allen. So taking that excess hot water we
then use it to heat water tanks for tropical aquaculture production, from
which we then use the water from the fish tanks to go to irrigate a
aquaponic vegetable system inspired by Will Allen's 'Growing Power' system
of soil hydroponics (as opposed to the typical soil-less systems), where the
water from the fish tanks is fertigated via either drip or spray irrigation
over veges grown in pots filled with compost and this char mineral complex
and then this water goes back to the fish tanks or is used to irrigate field
crops that are a feedstock for the fish systems after having gone through a
system of adjacent wetlands prior to being used for irrigation of the field
crops. The production figures and cash flow from this system is pretty
amazing and we already have checked in with a local food distribution
aggregator who would take whatever we have and distribute it within an hour
of the system.

Again on the broader question of Carbon Farming the use of the Permaculture
Ethics and Principles come into clear play as do, in my opinion, the
Holistic Management 'Testing Decisions'. When we apply these parameters to
some of Allan Yeomans (and others) ideas on a nuclear:organically farmed
biofuels paradise with no need to reduce our 'standard of living' such that
its more or less the same with no limits to growth etc. (as William
McDonough states is only a limited by design and its expression in design
abundance etc.) then they are probably looking pretty shaky, particularly
when it comes to Nuclear energy (assuming Allan is correct in saying it
actually relatively safe and that we could use subduction zones to dispose
of the relatively small volume of high level waste) as it has to be massive,
and centralised in control. Clearly that model of anything is not getting us
anywhere and has to be a focal point of change.

Localised biofuel production has demonstrated potential as does localised
pyrolysis energy production with its outputs of electricity, syngas (wood
gas), industrially refined products, hot water and char using the feedstock
of local waste streams and perpetual coppice and return of char to the local
agricultural systems. Vandana Shiva's 'Soil not Oil' speaks well to the
potential of the explosion of the non-localised, greenwashed model of these
systems and how important it is to be as localised as possible to which I
would ally my view.

Enough for now: gotta work to pay for the car to get to work to pay for
house and the land and blah blah blah...

All the best,

Darren



On 23 April 2010 00:59, Cory <cory8570@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Anybody working with Terra preta to sequester carbon/build soils? We're
> experimenting with it in florida's semitropical sandy soils
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Apr 21, 2010, at 9:08 AM, Holger Hieronimi <holger@tierramor.org>
> wrote:
>
> Hola-
>
> Like every strategy in permaculture, the power lies in relationships and a
> systemic perspective -
>
> There always exists the danger of over-promotion one "solution" (f. ex. :
> Carbon sequestering in soils by raising organic matter), if we don´t put it
> in context with all the other proposals that permaculture offers- ethical
> and design principles of PC provide an essential framework here, as Darren
> points out-
>
> I recently purchased "Priority One" by Alan Yeomans (often cited as one of
> the basic books en relation to carbon farming) and am quite surprised &
> intrigued by the authors insistence in nuclear energy and biofuels. He gets
> even so far, that he denounces a conspiracy of Oil Companies and
> Environmental Activists TOGETHER, against Nuclear Energy.
>
> O.K, this guy is a nuclear physicist and probably defends his playground,
> but it seems that the "big message" ("sequestering all excess CO2 in the
> atmosphere with agriculture in 10 years") gets diluted and loses
> considerable credibility and even relevance, if this means that we have to
> build hundreds of nuclear power plants and cultivate biodiesel ...
>
> Addressing climate change without considering resource constrains, is a
> well explored strategy used by governments, corporations and other
> technocrats. Its part of the problem.
>
> Regards
>
> holger
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> El 13:59, Darren Doherty escribió:
> Thanks Toby,
>
> No insult was felt from Rain's post: I am indeed glad that he voiced the
> opinion that he did such that I could respond and that you could too
> Toby....
>
> Look from my perspective its a clear issue that we all have to take on in
> every activity: the Permaculture Ethics provide this blueprint and for me I
> take them very seriously...the Holistic Management Decision Making
> framework
> only aids this process in determining for me (and many others) the way to
> ensuring that they decisions we make around things like air travel, burning
> brush, felling this tree or that, using cement, flail mowing, sowing or
> grazing etc etc. effect positively the Primary Client (Gaia), its
> inhabitants and their financial situations.
>
> Of course I have been charged with being Carbon Negative (my preference of
> semantry!) many times and I have done the math many times to prove that I
> and my family emit far, far less carbon than we sequester: especially in
> soil carbon but also in vegetation stores (of millions of trees actually -
> about 2.5million or so at last count)....what concerns me is how much
> Carbon
> send out of the mouths without returning it to the lithosphere (Carbon
> positivity!) and that is the ultimate challenge to all of us in every
> activity: that's being a conscious being in this day and age....
>
> So moving on from the adversarial to the action-based process I commend to
> all to get moving on working in whatever way you can from the policy level
> through to the land on getting ourselves and Gaia back into some kind of
> order: its the least we can all do to reply to our wholesale insult to
> her....
>
> All the best,
>
> Darren
>
>
>
>
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>
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>



--
Hooroo,
Darren J. Doherty

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  • [permaculture] trees and carbon farming, Rain Tenaqiya, 04/22/2010

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