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Hi All,
I'm wondering if members of the list have
experience using no-till in a small farm, market garden setting, particularly in
mild climates like the pacific northwest US. What problems, successes have
people had? What types of tillage and tillage tools do people use and
prefer?
Thanks,
Daniel
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, October 05, 2002 6:22
AM
Subject: FW: [globalnews] Farmers Fight
Global Warming with No-Till Farming
Farmers Fight Global Warming with No-Till
Farming
By Kari Lydersen, AlterNet
September 30, 2002
On one
field, there is only rich, lumpy black earth, free of weeds or debris, below
the rows of cornstalks waving gently in the breeze. On another field, you can
hardly even see the dirt below a thick layer of woody residue -- dried-up bits
of corn cobs, pieces of stalk up to eight inches long, even the crumbly
remains of the soybean plants that typically alternate with corn crops on
Midwestern fields.
A city dweller might think the difference is the
matter of a lazy or preoccupied farmer. But in reality, the messier-looking
field is an example of a practice that could play a significant role in
reducing global warming.
The first field is tilled with a standard
plow, a massive machine towed by a tractor that grabs the earth and turns it
over completely, removing the residue of past crops. The second field is a
"no-till" plot, meaning it was not plowed but rather the new crop was planted
amidst the waste of the old. There are also "partial till" plots, in which a
special plow that turns over the soil to a lesser degree than the standard one
is used.
When a field is plowed, the turning over and stirring of the
soil spurs the release of carbon dioxide, which has been identified as a
greenhouse gas contributing to global warming and climate change. Though
industry and automobiles are responsible for the majority of carbon dioxide
emissions in the U.S., the decomposition of organic matter on farmlands is a
significant source of the gas. When a field is not tilled, the decomposition
and resultant release of carbon dioxide is vastly slowed.
To Till or
Not to Till
No-till farming has grown in popularity over the past
decade, as farmers who once would have called the practice "crazy" realize the
benefits in lower labor and equipment costs and increased productivity. Labor
and time are saved when the farmer doesn't plow the field, and the organic
matter sitting on the soil works effectively to decrease water run-off and
erosion and boost the soil's nutrient retention. In 2000, about 52 million
acres in the U.S. were no-till, according to the group Conservation for
Agriculture's Future, for a total of about 17 percent of the country's
farmland. The practice had increased dramatically between 1990 and 1995, then
leveled off over the past half decade.
It wasn't until recently,
however, that farmers and scientists began talking about the role of carbon
sequestration (meaning 'no-till' or reduction of plowing) in connection with
diminishing the greenhouse effect.
A groundbreaking $15 million project
called CASMGS (Consortium for Agricultural Soils Mitigation of Greenhouse
Gases) being carried out by 10 universities with funding from the U.S.
Department of Agriculture is in the process of documenting the environmental
benefits of carbon sequestration in agriculture and developing outreach
programs to convince farmers to adopt the practice. CASMGS scientists note
that while carbon sequestration doesn't actually remove carbon dioxide from
the air, it can significantly slow the expected increase in emissions. If
no-till farming were widely adopted in the U.S., they say the projected
increase in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions could be cut by as much as 20
percent.
"Plants trap carbon during photosynthesis, and that carbon
goes into the soil [in the form of plant residue] during harvesting," said Ron
Turco, director of the Environmental Sciences Engineering Institute and head
of the CASMGS group at Purdue University in Indiana. "We want to keep that
carbon in the soil rather than releasing it into the atmosphere as carbon
dioxide."
Turco noted that the original carbon content of the soil
across the country has been reduced by about 50 percent since John Deere
invented the steel plow in the mid-1800s. With widespread no-till, he thinks
close to original levels could be restored in as little as 40 years, with 75
to 200 million metric tons of carbon sequestered per year.
"In prairie
conditions, everything is in equilibrium," he said. "Then you come in with a
destructive force like a plow and it causes aeration, things get disturbed.
What we want to do is bring the soil back to its original
quality."
There are economic and environmental drawbacks to no-till,
including the fact that more pesticide is usually needed to fight the
organisms that find homes in the residue. Farmers who have been using
conventional plowing will also have some start-up costs to switch over to no-
or partial-till equipment.
"What we don't want to do is forget all the
other management concerns that have an environmental impact," said Sylvie
Brouder, the Purdue scientist in charge of outreach to farmers for that
region. "We need to provide guidance to farmers and look at what in the big
picture is your environmental and economic benefit."
Even with the
benefits, it is hard to convince farmers to change traditions and ways of
doing things that have been around for generations.
"If you tilled your
whole life and your father tilled before you, it's a change," said Turco.
"You're used to seeing a field that looks a certain way."
Cash for
Carbon
As an added bonus on top of the soil quality, labor saving and
environmental benefits of no-till farming, there may soon be an added economic
incentive. If the federal government passes caps on carbon dioxide emissions,
as many are hoping, a market in "carbon credits" could likely develop in which
those who practice carbon dioxide reduction could "sell" their credits to
industries or manufacturers who fail to meet the cap. Similar markets already
exist in sulfur dioxide. Many economists say that if a carbon dioxide cap were
enacted, then a carbon credit market wouldn't be far behind. Then, farmers
could potentially make a decent profit in credits along with their
agricultural revenues.
"For farmers, their bottom line is economics,"
said Charles Rice, head of the CASMGS project out of Kansas State University.
"If they can see an economic incentive, and improve the soil at the same time,
all the better. It's taking a risk, and if there's a low profit margin than
you are less willing to take that risk. That's where the carbon credit market
comes in. It could help overcome that risk and fear of change."
There
are several ways a carbon credit market could function. Farmers could be given
subsidies or incentives from the government for adopting the practice, a
measure that could be taken even if emissions caps aren't instituted. Some of
the conservation funds allotted in the Farm Bill could be used for carbon
sequestration incentives, a move some farmers have suggested.
A more
profitable version would be the exchange of the credits on a private market,
with the credits even potentially being traded on the stock market. The
Chicago-based Environmental Financial Products is currently carrying out a
project with funding from the Joyce Foundation and the Kellogg Graduate School
of Management at Northwestern University to develop a structure that would
allow the credits to be traded on the Chicago Board of Trade.
"Probably
in years to come there will be a private market for carbon credits, as we
learn better ways to measure and monitor it," said Bill Ryan, a farmer and
former head of the Soil Conservation Service under the first President Bush.
"In the short term we could have a public incentive through the Farm
Bill."
Estimates of how much the credits would be worth are all over
the map, depending on what type of model is developed. They range from a few
dollars per untilled acre under a government subsidy program or private
trading program based on voluntary emissions reductions, to $40 or more per
acre if a private market based on mandatory emissions caps
develops.
"If it's based on a very significant reduction required of
industry, and industry can buy credits to meet that, it would be very
valuable," said Catherine Kling, an Iowa State University economics professor
working with the CASMGS project. "If it's based solely on voluntary reductions
from companies, on 'green marketing,' then it might be a couple dollars per
acre. It depends on what institutional and legal requirements are facing
firms."
For carbon credit incentives to work, there would be tricky
issues to address such as how to monitor whether farmers were practicing
no-till and what to do if farmers sold their no-till credits but then decided
they were unable or unwilling to continue the practice.
Globalizing
Carbon Credits
The Kyoto Protocols, which President George W. Bush
still refuses to sign, would impose mandatory caps on greenhouse gas
emissions. Emissions trading programs were among the options discussed during
the Kyoto talks.
Already, Canada, Norway, Australia and other countries
have been experimenting with carbon credit trading. Turco noted that some
Canadian companies have already paid Iowa farmers for carbon credits. He hopes
that huge agricultural countries like China and India will also push the
practice.
Some analysts picture that in keeping with the Kyoto
Protocols a huge global emissions trading market covering all greenhouse gases
will eventually develop. In this vision, manufacturers and farmers all over
the world would receive payment for feeding into "an atmospheric sink" of
unreleased carbon dioxide, while carbon dioxide emitters would have to pay
"rent" for the right to emit the gas. In that case, a small farmer in Kansas
could essentially sell his carbon sequestration credits to a pool where they
might be picked up by a multinational company in Japan. A paper by the
American Council on Capital Formation (ACCF)'s Center on Policy Research notes
that were such a thing to develop, U.S. companies could look to buy cheaper
emissions credits from abroad. That would raise all sorts of issues concerning
who regulates the market and where the profit from emissions trading
goes.
"The biggest obstacle to implementing such a system, should we
decide to, is a crassly familiar one: who gets the rent generated by limiting
the right to emit CO2," says the ACCF report.
Some environmentalists
might find the whole concept of a carbon credit market dubious -- in effect,
farmers using a practice that they might well have adopted anyway are helping
polluting companies avoid their obligation to cut down on emissions. The
concept becomes especially abstract when you consider a global market in which
a U.S. corporation could continue its polluting because it is buying credits
from a no-till farmer (or other emissions reducer) in China or
Russia.
When it comes down to it, switching to renewable fuel sources
and developing technologies for industry, automobiles and the like that have
less emissions are more critical measures than no-till farming in slowing
global warming.
"None of this will replace industry doing its part,"
said Purdue agronomy professor Eileen Kladivko. "But what we're doing is
buying some time."
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Be the change you want to see in the
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--Gandhi
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