I might have been a farmer, had I figured out how to make a living at it.
Instead, I have been homesteading for the last 30 years. I have been
gardening since I was a kid and grew market vegetables in high school
(which is when I learned that there isn't much money in vegetables). I do
grow almost all the food my wife and I consume, excepting grain, milk, and
a little meat, on a little over an acre, the residual parcel of what was
once a 90 acre farm, located at the center of the hamlet of West Danby.
Joel
At 01:28 PM 8/7/09 -0400, you wrote:
I agree Joel, but without as much experience. What do you farm?
On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 10:44 AM, Joel and Sarah Gagnon <
[email protected]> wrote:
> I have been gardening organically for almost a half century at this point.
> It has been a continuous challenge to raise and maintain soil organic
> matter. While it is true that you can raise humus levels over time, it is
> also true that the fraction of added organic material that ends up as humus
> is very small, and even that is subject to accelerated oxidation under
> tillage. The increment of carbon added to the soil with biochar is hugely
> greater, and its stability is also vastly greater. I don't think charcoal
> can completely substitute for humus, but the functions for which it is an
> adequate substitute are impressive and greatly beneficial in enhancing the
> value of the land for agriculture and aquifer recharge. Even without carbon
> capture to recommend it, biochar would be very worth pursuing. If it can be
> subsidized for its carbon-capturing effect, it could revolutionize
> agriculture.
>
> Joel
>
>
> At 03:38 PM 8/6/09 -0400, you wrote:
>
>> Ryan,
>>
>> On Thu, 6 Aug 2009 07:46:18 -0400 Ryan Hottle <[email protected]>
>> writes:
>>
>> I seriously recommend looking into it before simply
>> > giving the
>> > "knee-jerk" anti biofuel reaction.
>>
>> I have read a lot of the online papers and conference products, including
>> Lehmann's, and discussed the question with him in his office. He was much
>> more cautious than any of the online stuff when he realized that I, like
>> anyone who has studied soil carbon pool dynamics, knew that there are
>> effective farm soil organic matter building practices that produce the
>> same results as the effects attributed to biochar. And at the same time
>> produce food! Which the use of land to produce biomass for biochar does
>> not do.
>>
>> biochar
>> > is
>> > special in that it is a highly recalcitrant C that is not easily
>> > mineralized.
>>
>> The eventual effect of the aforementioned practices over time is to build
>> a soil pool of carbon that is just as recalcitrant (meaning stable) as
>> biochar. A fact that Lehman acknowledged. What do you think makes highly
>> productive muckland black?
>>
>> > biochar to
>> > sequester C for centennial to millennial time scales can be
>> > sustainably
>> > harvested from all sorts of sustainably managed and harvested crops.
>> > Short
>> > rotation willow coppice, saw dust, saw ends, nut shells, storm
>> > debris, urban
>> > lawn debris, low-input high diversity energy crops
>>
>> Using willow or other energy crops does not answer the question, What is
>> the trade-off? What crop is being sacrificed to grow biofuel on that
>> acreage? How important is the alternative crop compared to the biofuel or
>> biochar? In the post-hydrocarbon age, biomass again will become a main
>> way energy enters our world. Its uses need to be considered carefully.
>> The other sources you cite - like saw dust - are byproducts that 1) are
>> simply too small to scale up, or 2) will become valuable for other more
>> purposes. Like biofuel from french fry oil, they don't amount to a hill
>> of beans. A Vermont farmer had to collect all the used cooking oil from
>> as far as he could economically transport it, just to power one small
>> farm. Hawthorne Valley farm, another producer of biodiesel for farm use
>> from cooking oil, found that China had cornered the market on cooking
>> oil from all the local fast food outlets. China! Because of steadily the
>> rising price of sawdust, our farm will soon be unable to purchase the
>> sawdust we use, first as horse bedding, then to beef up the C/N ratio of
>> our farm-scale composting. As the oil age wanes, these are bellwethers of
>> change in the way all sorts of biomass is valued in the marketplace.
>>
>> In time, unholistic approaches to all questions like how we use of
>> biomass will be revealed as frivolous. Every problem needs to be studied
>> in its proper context. Light talk of energy production using the "wastes"
>> that currently litter our extravagant agro-, residential and industrial
>> landscapes will soon be brought to heel by nature's law:
>> waste=food=waste=food... ...and as food becomes more expensive, what
>> will waste be used for, biochar or food? Biochar or winter heat?
>>
>> >And it [biochar production] means local manufacturing and local jobs...
>>
>> Oh please, this is the superficial level of thinking I would expect from
>> my local congress critter...
>>
>> Karl
>>
>> _______________________________________________
> For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area,
> please visit: http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
>
> RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for:
> [email protected]
> http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins
> Questions about the list? ask
> [email protected]
> free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
>
--
Ryan Darrell Hottle
LEED-AP
Environmental Science, PhD Student
Carbon Management and Sequestration Center
The Ohio State University
Rm. 454 Kottman Hall
2021 Coffey Road
Columbus, OH 43210
C: (740) 258 8450
NOTE: This e-mail and any attachments may contain confidential and
privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient,
please notify the sender immediately by return e-mail, delete this
e-mail and destroy any copies. Any dissemination or use of this
information by a person other than the intended recipient is
unauthorized and may be illegal.
_______________________________________________
For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area,
please visit: http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for:
[email protected]
http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins
Questions about the list? ask [email protected]
free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
_______________________________________________
For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please
visit: http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/
RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for:
[email protected]
http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins
Questions about the list? ask [email protected]
free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
