Organic Agriculture could sequester more than 100% of current annual CO2 emissions

[bananas]

"Simply put, recent data from farming systems and pasture trials around the globe show that we could sequester more than 100% of current annual CO2 emissions with a switch to widely available and inexpensive organic management practices."

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/21/a-real-and-ready-solution-for-climate-change/

A Real and Ready Solution for Climate Change
by Joyce Nelson
July 21, 2015

<snip>

The U.S. Rodale Institute’s peer-reviewed study, Regenerative Organic Agriculture and Climate Change, is so hopeful and filled with common sense about the future that it’s a must-read for anyone needing some inspiration in these difficult times.

With regard to rising greenhouse gas emissions, their study states: “We suggest an obvious and immediately available solution – put the carbon back to work in the terrestrial carbon ‘sinks’ that are literally right beneath our feet. Excess carbon in the atmosphere is surely toxic to life, but we are, after all, carbon-based life forms, and returning stable carbon to the soil can support ecological abundance.” [1]

Through using organic farming practices that maximize soil’s carbon-fixing capacities, not only can climate change be reversed, but soil itself can be restored. The study states: “Simply put, recent data from farming systems and pasture trials around the globe show that we could sequester more than 100% of current annual CO2 emissions with a switch to widely available and inexpensive organic management practices.”

<snip>

The study even succinctly addresses the impending “need to feed nine billion people” – the standard talking-point always used by the GMO lobby to try to discredit organic agriculture’s crop yields. The Rodale Institute’s study of actual yields from real-world farming sites around the planet shows that organic farming “can outcompete conventional yields for almost all food crops studied including corn, wheat, rice, soybean and sunflower.”

The study also states: “Hunger and food access are not yield issues. They are economic and social issues which, in large part, are the result of inappropriate agricultural and development policies that have created, and continue to reinforce, rural hunger. We currently overproduce calories. In fact, we already produce enough calories to feed nine billion people. Hunger and food access are inequality issues that can be ameliorated, in part, by robust support for small-scale regenerative agriculture.”

<snip>

[Novara]

1. K&R

[mopinko]

2. hugelkultur.

a cure for much of what ails this planet.

[kristopher]

4. I did a small test of hugelkultur this year

It's incredible.

A couple of years ago I'd cut down and tried to burn an 8" diameter pine tree, but it started raining and only burnt about 20% of the wood. It's in the middle of a small field so I just left the pile there and when I heard of HK I dug a trench around the pile and covered the wood with the dirt.
Bought a tray of 6 tomato seedlings, broke one accidentally and planted the other 5 in different locations around the property with one, of course, on the mound.
When the HK plant was 28 inches tall and almost that bushy, the others were all between 12"-14". By the time the small plants had one tomato started, the HK plant had 11 with several almost fully developed but green.

Last thing - we watered the nonHK plants every 2-3 days. We didn't water the HK plant at all.

I didn't take photos, but I wish i had because it has been one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.

[mopinko]

5. i have 2 huge piles on my farm.

they have performed amazingly. to work best you need to start w a trench, so that you are tapping into ground water a bit.
last year i grew 200 lbs of heirloom tomatoes, fruits as big as babies heads, and also no watering.
it was a perfect year for that weatherwise. good rainfall and not very hot, but...

i have 2 patches of raspberries, one on the pile, one in the soil that was there. the one on the pile is 5 times the size. have had about 4 gallons of berries from the ones on the pile, and the other is just starting to set fruit.

if farmers were doing this on the margins of fields fertilizer runoff would stop, and they would be adding new soil instead of loosing it.
and bringing in some cash for taking landscape waste.
and the wood would be sequestered instead of composted.

[sue4e3]

3. So why in the hell aren't we doing that???

that was a rhetorical

[RiverLover]

6. Too bad BigAg has bought our representative$.

Just like BigOil.

Our planet is screwed because companies control governments with their payoffs.