Dan Hemesath's Blog

A Few Suggestions to improve Chapter 6 “How We Grow things

I am restricting my comments on Bill Gates’s book ”How to Avoid a Climate Disaster” to a small portion of chapter 6 where he makes three points that concern me. 

1. The almost magical power of chemical fertilizers.
2. The Green Revolution was a wondrous success that saved one billion lives.
3. The Haber- Bosch process of producing nitrogen by taking it out of the atmosphere and using it for agricultural purposes was one of the great technological achievements of mankind.

I believe that emphasizing these three principles is detrimental to the planet and partly responsible for the “climate disaster” that he is urging us to avoid. I also am convinced that current practices of ranch management add to the current ecological deterioration I have added a section “Cows” Problem or Solution” on this issue to the three points of above. 

I sustain this conviction because my area of interest and expertise is in agriculture. I was born on a farm in Northeast Iowa not far from Norman Borlaug’s birthplace. After leaving the farm at age 21, I spent many years doing other things, but never lost my love of the land and have felt the need to study agricultural subjects all of my life. Since retiring seven years ago, I spend most of my time and energy reading books on agriculture, especially the biological vs chemical approach, and auditing classes in the ag department at Fresno State U. Reading Gates’s book, “How to avoid a Climate Disaster” has been a delight. I never cease to be amazed by his analytic and deductive powers. I have read his other works and take him very seriously in at least 98 percent of his conclusions. It’s that remaining two percent which I am addressing at this moment.

The big question regarding agriculture: Is Bill Gates going to be part of the solution or part of the problem?

The troubling statement that fertilizer is magical may be more of a problem than a solution. No doubt the big fertilizer companies and Monsanto/Bayer see Gates as a great instrument to further their goals. I am sure that this is not his goal.

To align himself with big fertilizer and big pharma, in my opinion, could be a disaster. A professor at Fresno State University told me that in his contact with the Gates operation, he saw many people from Monsanto. This is a major danger. The big fertilizer companies and big Pharma will do all they can to get to get Third World countries to go the same route as agriculture in the United States.

In great part, industrial agriculture in the United States is a disaster for the environment and the economy. More damage has been done to the land in the few generations of European settlers’ farming it than in practically any other period in the history of the world. An untold amount of rich topsoil has been lost to erosion

When the white settlers arrived, the western prairie land was perhaps the richest soil in the world. It had an average of 8 percent organic matter or carbon. Since the first settlers started their tilling, a huge proportion of the soil, over half of the topsoil, has been washed into the Gulf of Mexico, soil that previously had 8 plus percent organic matter. The organic matter of the remaining soil today is in the neighborhood of 3% and less.

Many farmers who were making a good living on relatively small acreage just a couple of generations ago are now going broke. The farmers who remain are working harder and operating with much tighter margins on much larger farms.

The monocultures of soybeans and corn, because of the lack of diversity, are subject to greater damage by weeds and invasive pests, in spite of record amounts being spent on chemical herbicides and pesticides. An example of the disastrous effects of industrial /chemically based agriculture was demonstrated by the China Study, the largest, most comprehensive study on nutrition ever undertaken. The massive joint U.S./China study compared the health of people on a western diet to that of people on a diet with no processed foods or chemicals used in production. Basically, it compared the health of rural Chinese and American consumers. Startlingly, the rural Chinese have  very little cancer, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, asthma, Parkinson, or allergies.

Of course, they have other health problems, but most of them could be solved by a combination of the best of the East and the West. Achieving that best of both worlds should be our goal.

COWS AS PROBLEM OR SOLUTION

Gates’s discussion on how cow burps, cow farts, and cow manure are a contributing factor to global warming is quite good. Many of his points are very important and should, of course be considered, but, the most important point was missed. 

That most important point has to do with the way cattle are raised and fed: whether they receive their nourishment though pasture grazing or on the feedlot. This is the area of expertise that Alan Savory, Joel Salitan, and Gabe Brown bring to our attention.  Cattle, when properly grazed in a well-planned, high impact quick rotation system, represent one of the most powerful tools we have to positively impact global warming. On the other hand, cattle raised in feed lots are one of the most negative factors in the mix. Management Intensive Grazing (MIG)* is rightfully gaining notice, but is still only being used by a very small percentage of the total number of farmers and ranchers which means that there is a tremendous potential for improvement in this area. 

*“Holistic Management”, by Alan Savory and Jody Butterfield

(MIG) vs CAFOS

These are two very different methods of raising cattle: The one is intensive, planned rotational grazing, also called MIG or Management intensive grazing. The other one is the use of enclosed feeding operations also called CAFOs or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations.  MIG is a great tool for sequestering carbon in the soil. CAFOs are just the opposite. 

Of course, cattle belch whether they are on pasture or in a feedlot. The big difference is that when the cattle are on a feedlot, there is nothing to offset the methane that they send into the atmosphere. The belches of cattle in a pasture are more than offset by the carbon sequestered in the soil by their grazing in an Alan Savory style grazing program. In the MIG grazing system, far more carbon is sequestered into the soil than the carbon that goes into the air through cattle farts and burps and manure. Also, the greatly increased growth and productivity of the grass itself makes MIG a win-win game: a win for the environment, a win for the health of the cattle, for our health, and a win for the bottom line for many more farmers and ranchers.

Feed lot cattle produce a lot of manure that is not easily disposed of or incorporated into the soil, along with many other negative effects on the environment and our health, such as the overuse of antibiotics and lower nutritional value of the meat.

On the other hand, cattle that are raised in a properly planned grazing program, sequester carbon in the soil, drop their manure precisely where it does the most good, stimulating and multiplying plant productivity and makes a positive contribution in the battle against global warming. 

CHEMICAL FERTILIZERS

What is the problem with chemical fertilizers? This is best explained by an authority in the field, Dr. Elaine Ingham* who points out that soil tests are a wildly inaccurate measure of what is needed to produce a crop. Soil tests will often indicate the soil being tested contains virtually none of the elements that the plants need. Yet that soil still produces a bumper crop because the life in the soil is able to produce and make the needed nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium calcium magnesium iron, zine boron etc needed by the plants. With help of good compost, the organisms in the soil, the bacteria, the fungi, protozoa, nematodes and all the rest, produce enzymes that take needed nutrients from the sand, silt, and clay that make up all soil and make them available to plants as needed..

*Elaine Ingham.Youtube: “The Roots of Your Profits” and “Building Soil Health for Healthy Plants” 

Fertilizer companies sell billions of dollars’ worth of fertilizer that is not needed by the plants. Not only is the fertilizer not needed, very often it suppresses soil life that produces and provides needed nutritional elements for the plants

BORLAUG AND HABER BOSCH?

Was their work two great strides forward? Norman Borlaug is presented as one of the great heroes of history by the industrial ag industry. The story is that the genetic dwarf wheat that he developed saved over a billion lives, because it multiplied wheat productivity around the world.

But the whole story is much more complex, Vandana Shiva, Indian scholar, philosopher, ecofeminist in her book, “The Violence of the Green Revolution”, points out that while there was an increase in productivity, Indian agriculture was poised to match similar increases in productivity without the negatives of the dwarf wheat leap forward. She documents how the move to a monoculture has made the “miracle” crops much more vulnerable to the destruction by pests. Also, increases in gluten intolerance and other health problems came hand in hand with the dwarf wheat.

Agricultural scientists like Swaminathan join the social activists like Vandana Shiva, and are of the opinion that the Gren Revolution caused greater long term sociological and financial problems for the people of Punjab and Haryana. from Wikipedia , Vanadana Shiva, Green Revolution in India

Gates’s point of view seems to be the same as that of many others who work in the field of agriculture, scientists, and professors including farmers. It is the point of view of a huge part of industrial agriculture.

I feel that the situation is not unlike the situation of a few centuries ago when the great majority of doctors and medical experts believed that disease was caused by bad air. For a long time, the few learned people who believed in the germ theory were just not accepted. Just like the germ theory scientists of yesterday, those questioning conventional agriculture are seen as a wacko minority who say that the solution for our agricultural problems does not lie in the use of fertilizer but in the study of and cooperation with the micro-organisms in the soil, a position generally not accepted by conventional agriculture. 

But the truth is that working symbiotically with the microorganisms in the soil trumps the use of chemicals, not only for productivity but for building the health of the soil and of humans, putting carbon back into the soil, and turning global warming around.

A powerful argument against synthetic fertilizers is found in the very same book of Gates p. 154, he writes:

”Here’s the rub: Micro organisms that make nitrogen spend a lot of energy in the process. So much energy, in fact, that they’ve evolved to do it only when they absolutely need to— when there’s no nitrogen in the soil around them. If they detect enough nitrogen, they stop producing it so they can use the energy for something else. So when we add synthetic fertilizer, the natural organism. producing it so they can use the energy for something else. So when we add synthetic fertilizer, the natural organisms in the soil sense the nitrogen and stop producing it on their own.”

“How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, By Bill Gates, p 154

In other words, in a healthy ecosystem, the nitrogen needed is produced naturally. But synthetic fertilizers take away the ability of the soil to produce N fertilizer, effectively addicting the farmer to use N fertilizer more and more.

An example:

I observed this myself as boy, about 70 years ago, growing up on a farm in Iowa. We farmers were told by the “experts” from the extension service and farm magazines, that it was a good practice to use starter fertilizer and a side dressing for our corn. Dad started using fertilizer while our neighbor across the fence was more skeptical. Our corn came up quicker and greener. Dad chuckled about that. But after several years of doing this, the neighbor’s corn without fertilizer came up just as quickly and just as green. Dad was no longer chuckling and he wondered out loud whether we had been making a mistake. 

PROPOSED SOLUTION: PRACTICAL EDUCATION

That is the problem; but there is a solution. My suggestion, my goal: what we should do or could do with your assistance, you who have the resources to do a large part of it. We should set up an education/marketing program for farmers /gardeners and potential farmer/gardeners around the world to enable them to be truly knowledgeable and capable of operating farms/gardens on a biological rather than a chemical basis.

This would include education in agriculture and marketing, training millions of potential fans of Curtis Stone, Joel Salatin, Gabe Brown, Alan Savory. and other people* who are farming profitably, and in harmony with nature. Or more accurately the students or potential farmers should be trained as interns by these experts, that is the training would be done by actually doing rather than by way of class room learning. 

Just how to do this will require a great deal of planning and participation by experts in agriculture and marketing.

“The Urban Farmer”. Growing Food for Profit on Leased and Borrowed Land, Curtis Stone 2016 

“You Can Farm:” The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Start and Succeed in a Farming Enterprise.  Joel Salatin

“Holistic Mangement:” by  Allan with Jody Butterfield

Even if the task were not done as perfectly and completely as would be ideal, even a small step in this direction would be tremendously worthwhile and profitable for the participants and for the planet.

In his book on Climate Change, Gates writes that” unfortunately, there simply isn’t a practical zero carbon alternative for fertilizer right now”. Respectfully, I would amend this statement by substituting the word “simple” for “practical” before the phrase “zero carbon based alternative for fertilizer right now”.  This new/better paradigm is that which should be taught worldwide. Some characteristics of the new/better paradigm”.

THE CURRENT WESTERN INDUSTRIAL AG PARADIGM VS THE BETTER PARADIGM

The better paradigm would include use of the best technology, which is appropriate technology, not the biggest or smallest, but the most appropriate. —technology that our fathers, and grandfathers would have given their right arm to have had—- such as lightweight moveable solar powered electric fencing, garden seeders that allow a worker to plant veggies quickly and accurately, weed flamers that quickly and easily knock down the tiny weeds that normally get the jump on the plants you want. Inexpensive, tough, flexible watering pipes, and many other technical advances that are now now available. Appropriate technology would not exclude bigger machinery when the situation calls for big.

The newer/better paradigm:

• Minimizes use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides relying instead on compost, and pest predators, like lady bugs, lace wing wasps, crop diversity, mutually beneficial intercropping, etc.

• Minimizes slicing and dicing soil, which destroy soil life, instead preserves and nurtures the fungi, bacteria, protozoa and other life in the soil to work with plant life to regenerate the soil.

• Relies on the wisdom and the creativity of the farmer

• Is partially new and partially old, uses best of both.

• Uses the principles of conservation agriculture such as no till, plant cover, plant diversity, and crop rotations

• Incorporates principles of  MIG. Management Intensive grazing.

• Mimics and cooperates with rather than dominates nature.

• Nurtures and uses the creative life in the soil rather than treating soil as an inert medium to which nutrients are added. to meet the needs of plants.

• Animals treated with respect and seen as one of the great forces of nature with which the farmer cooperates. 

• The number of farmers would increase again, rather than decrease in order that the infinite number of situations and problems that arise on farms can be handled with infinite creativity.

• Less emphasis would be placed on animal size, short term productivity and appearance, and more on adaptability, long term fertility, quality of produce and long-term profitability for the farmer

• Relies on the wisdom and education of the farmer who would make key decisions rather than treat the farmer as a machinery operator, —as just another cog in industry’s big machine.

WITH KNOW-HOW AND HARD WORK THERE ARE PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS

Example #1 Joel Salatin

An example is provided by Joel Salatin and his farm in Swoope, Virginia. 

When the Salatins moved to their farm about 60 years ago, it was totally run down, with many bare spots and gullies up to 14 feet deep. They regenerated the land without any chemical fertilizers or pesticides. Today the farm is very productive and profitable. The average productivity of that part of the Shenandoah Valley where the farm is located is 2500 pounds of forage per acre. By comparison the productivity of the Salatin’s farm is 8000 pounds of forage per acre. In cow days per acre the average in that part of Virginia is 80 cow days per acre. The number of cow days per acre on the Salatin’s farm is 400. As to how it is done, I suggest checking out any of Joel’s books, such as “Salad Bar Beef”.

Over the years, many steps were involved in reclaiming the farm including the use of a lot of organic matter, placing wood branches and brush across the gullies, and use of farm ponds. 

Joel explains one of the most important pieces of how the soil of their farm was regenerated: During his first summer back on the farm, after starting to attend college, Joel spent his time and energy digging the postholes and putting in the fencing to enable a frequent-move grazing system. Up until then, the cattle had been rotated, only every week or two. With the new, frequent move grazing system, the cattle were moved very day. According to Joel, this change, more than any other , was the key to the increased productivity of the farm. This is just one example of the power of  MIG. Management Intensive Grazing in action.

Example #2. T & D Wllley*

Another example from here in California: T & D Willey’s organic vegetable growing operation of seventy-five acres, which uses no chemical fertilizers. Yet it is a going concern, grossing three million per year-end employing 40 to 100 workers, depending on the time of the year. They have been producing a 35-40 different varieties of vegetables  for decades.  Tom and Denise use a lot of compost, normally about 15 tons. per acre, but no chemical fertilizers or inorganic pesticides. After turning his farm over to new owners about three years ago, the new owners follow in the same tradition.

http://farmsreach.com

3

Dear President Trump,

As a 78 year old retired farmer/priest/photographer, I have some serious thoughts about what would be good for all of us including the Trump administration.

While I don’t agree with you on some issues, you are the president of the most powerful nation on earth. I think that you want to make a positive difference and that you want to be loved and respected, especially by wise and thoughtful people.

If you hope to go down in history as a good president, you will need to step away from the rhetoric that got you elected, and start to work with the thoughtful, people in the electorate from both sides of the isle—in other words, get back to the truth and get away from much of the nonsense that got you elected. I know that you know this.

You will need to prove your words that “no one loves women, blacks, and latinos more than you do”.

One example: An approach to deal with the immigration problem, that will show your understanding and concern would be focusing on causes, rather than symptoms of the problem.

Let’s look at working on the cause of the flood of immigrants entering the US rather than putting a band aid or a wall on symptoms.

What is the cause? Why are so many people leaving Mexico? One of the main causes, is our farm bill. By enticing our farmers to produce way too much corn, we have this huge surplus which we export to Mexico at such a low price that the Mexican farmers can’t survive. Many have committed suicide and many others in desperation come to the US.

Also, by using trade with Mexico as leverage, pressure the oligarchs in charge to treat their poor and underprivileged more fairly and they won’t be forced to leave their country to survive.

Both here and in Mexico, another result of too much cheap corn is the massive production and marketing of corn sweeteners which are cheaper than sugar. The problem is that corn sweeteners , found in practically every processed food, are one of the main causes of the obesity epidemic. No wonder both the US and Mexico lead the world in obesity.

Also, the emphasis on chemically based monoculture agriculture has thrown millions of farmers out of work and made our food supply less nutritious, one of the main causes of health problems and the high cost of health care.

I suggest that the farm bill be changed to make it profitable for farmers to move away away from too much corn and soybeans, to the production of other, healthier products, and a crop system that relies more on biology rather than chemicals.—a farm bill that levels the playing field for small farmers, benefits consumers, and makes the population healthier.

To follow through in these areas would show your depth of understanding and could make you a much loved and less hated president.

By the way, one of the very good things that you did even before the oath of office was to stop the Republicans from doing away with the ethics committee.

I also agree with you on your plans to rebuild our infrastructure.

sincerely,

Dan Hemesath

Vivian Kaloxilos, of the Valhalla Movement Network, asks Dr. Elaine Ingham to give an example of the use of compost/compost tea to control erosion. (Youtube interview Dec. 5, 2014)
Dr. Ingham gives the following, rather extreme example:
In the state of Washington, a client who was a vice-president of Microsoft, had a house on a steep slope overlooking Lake Washington. It was built into the hill on a 70 percent slope.
The trees on the property had been cut down and were replaced with unattractive shrubs.
To clear off the shrubs on the slope above the house the owner used Round-up and diesel fuel during the summer. Then in the fall, when the rains started, things went really bad. With the plants dead, the whole hill, the slope above he house, started sliding down toward the house. It promised to be a total disaster if something wasn’t done.
The first landscape specialist that the owner went to, wanted to cover the whole property with a slab of concrete at a price of several million dollars.
The second landscape specialist suggested putting in a series of six retainer walls, like terraces, each about fifteen feet high, also at a price tag of several million.
Since neither of these solutions would achieve the natural look he sought, a third specialist was consulted, a man using the biological approach that Dr. Ingham espouses He gave his plan which was to get the biology into the soil and immediately. How much? $300. He was hired.
The next day he came back with a small conveyer belt, and some really high quality compost.
He started at the bottom the slope with compost six inches thick, covering the whole hill with six inches of compost. Then he started over again with another six inches, and another until he had about two feet of compost covering the slope.
Then, using climbing gear, to make a minimum disturbance, he planted a lot of 8 inch to one foot tall shrubs and trees.
The plant roots, working with the compost introduced microbes, grew quickly and went deep into the soil. For example, the Butterfly bush grew from one foot in April to five feet in July and roots underground, went even deeper.
The slope became stable with the plants incorporated into the slope. Later an outlook tower has been placed near the top, and today the soil is so stable, that no one would suspect that once it was a crisis situation.
The place looks beautiful.

With this system, Dr. Ingham, using good compost, along with the right kind of seeds has been been successfully retaining slopes along roads all over the world—slopes that would just keep on eroding when other controls such as hydro-seeding were attempted. The same success was achieved with dam faces in the Ferguson Texas area—dams that were in danger of being lost through deep gullies caused by erosion.
Also, the slopes on roadsides are treated, using a type of snow-blower on a truck, blowing good compost, mixed with seeds and compost tea. This has worked in many places including Adelaide, Australia, where other systems had been total failures. All of the above material was taken from Vivian Kaloxilos” interview of Dr. Ingham on Youtube.

About Elaine Ingham:  A biological approach to agriculture

Dr. Elaine Ingham has had over 40 years of experience in Soil Biology and  microbiology.

Among her special skills is making this extremely complex subject understandable.

A few years years ago, hardly anyone paid any attention to the micro life in the soil.  But within the last few years we have come to realize that the micro-organisms in the soil are not only essential, but the basis for all life. They are the secret to a healthy soil and to productive harvests.

They serve in the soil in much the same way as the bacteria and micro-organisms in our own body account for 70 percent of our immune system and play various essential roles in our health and well-being.

A normal human body has over ten times the number of bacteria in his body as he or she has cells.

A teaspoon full of soil has billions of bacteria of so many different species the over 90 percent of the have not yet been catalogued. 

And species of soil fungi run into the millions, most of which have not been catalogued.

Dr. Ingham teaches how, working with biology, we can build soil heath regardless of whether the soil or sand, silt, or clay.

Aerobic  bacteria along with fungi and other soil micro-organisms do many jobs including building soil structure, extracting needed minerals nutrients out of sand, silt, and clay, releasing enzymes and making the nutrients plant available, or available for intermediaries like protozoa, and good nematodes who in turn convert the nutrients into plant usable food.

What are Dr. Ingham’s methods for building soil?

Some of the methods that she recommends are the use of compost, compost tea, and compost tea extract.

She also recommends no-till and perennial cover crops.  She provides a list of possible cover crops with the caveat that different crops do better under different conditions, such as soil type, slope, rainfall, and many other circumstances.  She has had more success with cover crops that have deeper root systems and less organic mass above the ground.

As for compost and compost tea, she describes in detail how compost should and should not be made, what components should be used and in what proportion, how to keep compost aerobic which is good and to avoid compost going anaerobic which its bad. The ingredients for compost an thus compost tea are available in every household, farm, and garden.

In trying to summarize some of Dr. Ingham’s main ideas, I realize that that my attempt is very weak  and incomplete.   For better understanding, go to youtube, type  “Elaine Ingham,” and spend some time listening to the master. 

Also check out her website: soilfoodweb.com

My next blog will give one example of one of Dr. Ingham’s many success stories.

Blog #2 Oct. 2016

There is an exciting potential for climate change by putting carbon into the soil.

“The soil of our planet contains about three times the amount of carbon that’s stored in vegetation and twice the amount stored in  the atmosphere. Since two thirds of the earth’s landmass is grassland, additional CO2 storage in the soil via better management practices, even on a small scale, could have a huge impact.  Grasslands are also home to two billion people who depend on livestock…Both these animals and their human stewards could be mobilized for carbon action.”  ( Kris Olson, “The Soil Will Save Us”  2014)

Today the great majority of people think that lands are changed to desert by too many livestock overgrazing and trampling before vegetation can recover.  This belief, according to Savory, is just as mistaken as the belief a few hundred years ago, that the sun rotated around the earth.

As a young man in Africa, Savory learned the hard way, how livestock, with planned, intensive grazing, can be the tool to create vibrant, productive soil, rather than to destroy it.

Back in the 60’s he was the man in charge of a huge, recently established, National Park on the Botswana border and degradation and desertification in the park soon became huge problems.  He determined that the cause was too many elephants.  Park officials concurred and his plan to reduce the elephant population was implemented.  40,000 elephants were killed.   But the problem just became worse. He realized that he had made huge mistake and dedicated his life to finding the solution—to learning how nature creates and to learn why man’s intervention so often destroys.

Savory was uniquely qualified for this mission or task, because of his background in biology, his willingness to question the standard wisdom, and most of all because of his motivation, having made such a huge blunder with the elephants.

In looking at the situation he saw that everywhere where lands, especially brittle, moisture deprived lands, were deteriorating and becoming deserts, both when conventionally farmed and when put aside as protected parks.

Why?

He came to the conclusion that nature’s way of preserving and building soil was by way of the movement of large herds, of larger animals, prey animals that moved in tight herds for their own protection.  For example, the huge herds of Wildebeests that annually migrate around the Serengeti park, for millennia, creating some of the world’s lushest savannas.

He studied the Frenchman, Andre Voisin, who studied and wrote about the advantages of planned rotation of pasture lands. Savory also learned from a South African rancher,/botanist, John Acocks, who developed a grazing system, mimicking nature,  that helped heal the land. Acocks concluded that the actual number of grazing animals was not that important.   He made the statement that Africa was “overgrazed and understocked.” 

Based on this information and a an examination of a farm that was following Acock’s guidance, Savory saw that livestock could simulate the effects of wild herds on the soil.  Working with his rancher friends, it took many failed attempts, but eventually, recognizing the vital role of timing, success began to be achieved.       

Blog #3

Savory started his Holistic Management  over 40 years ago.  Now it is being used by farmers, ranchers, policymakers who are developing a greater understanding of the strategies for managing domestic livestock in a cost-effective and nature-based manner.

Today, there are successful Holistic Management practitioners spread across the globe, from

Canada to Patagonia and from Zimbabwe to Australia to Montana.   More than 10,000 people have been trained in Holistic Management and its associated  grazing planning procedures and over 40 million acres are managed holistically worldwide.

Of course there is a long way to go before we reach the billion or so acres that could benefit from planned, intensive grazing worldwide.  But this kind of grazing is definitely on the upswing worldwide.

To find success stories of farmers and ranchers who not only salvaged their operation, but turned around their bottom line check out the following sites: https://holisticmanagement.org/holistic-management/success-stories/ and http://savory.global/institute.

This is not to say that everyone who attempts this method is automatically successful.   It is more than a simple method.  Success depends on several factors, such as having all decision makers on board, setting a common goal, adapting the plan to the situation, climate, and other variables, and investing the time and effort required. 

Holistic Planning as outlined in Savory’s basic textbook: “Holistic Management” by Allan Savory with  Jody Butterfield, is a beautiful, logical guide. I read this book very slowly from cover to cover.   As I read, I kept looking for weaknesses in Savory’s thinking, but couldn’t find any.   To the contrary, I kept thinking: “This is great.” or “This is really important”,  or “This point should not be overlooked if the process is going to work”.”

I’m may be a pie-in-the-sky dreamer, but as a 78 year old student auditing classes in the Fresno County Ag Dept.,  and as a gadfly, wannabe catalyst, I would like to see plans made, grants proposals written etc., to have students and professors set up and do research on a Savory style planned, intensive grazing project at the experimental farm north of Fresno where the beginnings of such a partnership between the Forest Service and Fresno State already exist.

blog-2-2016pdf

 

For my blog update 12-08–16

After a long pause in my blogging due to  a number of reasons including some health issues, I hope to post some thoughts that I think are worthwhile.

Since I plan to make these thoughts available to anyone who may be interested, including friends, students, and professors in the Fresno State school of agriculture, I will try to avoid saying anything that I can’t back up.  Of course I expect that there will be differences of opinions, and clarifications that should be made, and I invite your comments.

The first general area that I cover has to do with my interest in agriculture, and is related to global warming and the future of the planet. This will be a number of posts. I’ll try to keep them short to make it more digestible.  I plan to write about two general areas:

1. Allan Savory’s ideas about saving the planet through Intensive planned grazing.

1. Elaine Ingham’s ideas about working with soil micro-organisms as a next step in the evolution of agriculture.

1. Allan Savory has become one of my few heroes.    

           For a summary of his basic ideas, go to Ted Talks and type in “Allan Savory”.  Savory has many presentations on Youtube, but the 22 minute summary on Ted Talks is a good starting point.

           He points out how the processes of desertification  and soil erosion are proceeding more rapidly than ever before.  Desertification and erosion, caused by humans’ agricultural practices, are the reasons why many civilizations have disappeared over the course of history.

          The most powerful way to turn around desertification and global warming is found in grazing animals in a way which mimics nature, according to Savory.

          Savory points out how the great agricultural areas of the world were built up, in large part, over the thousands and even millions of years by activities of grazing animals—prey animals, such as buffalo and elk in North America, and wildebeests and zebra in Africa to cite two examples.

In the great western plains the buffalo formed immense herds,  staying closely grouped for protection from predators such as wolves. Over thousands of generations their migrations along with the migration of other animals such as wooly mammoths, elk, etc. over the immense plains have led to the formation of some of the richest soils the world has seen.

The same process takes place, to some extent, in Africa to this day with the annual migration of wildebeests, zebra and other prey animals making their annual migration around the immense Serengeti Park, trampling the grass and fertilizing with dung and urine, leaving the savanna time to recover and flourish as one of the world’s most productive savannas or grazing lands.

Grazing practices of humans, at least until recently, have not been successful in duplicating nature’s symbiotic relationship between grazing plants and grazing animals.

But, or the past 40 years, Allan Savory has been perfecting his intensive, planned grazing principles using grazing animals as the tool to turn around desertification, erosion, and CO2 loss to the atmosphere.   At this point ranchers and farmers from all six continents are applying his principles on many millions of acres, increasing the productivity of their lands, sequestering much more carbon, while improving their profits. It’s a win-win that just needs to be much more widely used.

In my next post I’ll try to explain, or at least give a summary introduction of how this planned, intensive grazing, mimicking nature, is done.

        

Biochar!!!!  A year ago I hadn’t even heard the word. Now for over a half year, I spend every spare hour learning more about it.

Every day we are putting approximately 19 million more tons of CO2e into the atmosphere than is taken out.  CO2, as we know, is the main green house gas causing global warming.  The strong possibility of runaway global warming scares the crap out of me. About 99 percent of the scientists say that, at the rate we are going,we have very few years left, unless we make radical changes.

A big cause of CO2 is the coal that we burn to make electricity.  There is talk about capturing the CO2 that is produced when coal is burnt, but to date no good method has been found.  Even the questionable methods proposed, like catching the CO2 and pumping it into old oil wells, would be prohibitively expensive.  No practical method of sequestering carbon or CO2 has been found.

Until maybe now.  Along comes biochar.  Biochar could be a big part of the solution along with other efforts such as wind, solar, and geothermal which don’t bury carbon, but reduce the output of carbon needed for energy.

Quoting and paraphrasing from Gores’s book:  Biochar is a form of fine grained porous charcoal that is highly resilient to decomposition in most soil environments. It occurs naturally, but can be manufactured cheaply in large quantities by burning wood, switchgrass, manure, or other forms of biomass in an oxygen free or low oxygen environment that transforms the biomass into what is more than 80% pure carbon.

The process by which bio char is made can also be designed to produce gas or liquid fuel that can be used to make electricity and can serve as an energy source for the making of more biochar.

Burying biochar in the soil protects important soil microbes and helps the soil retain nutrients and water. It also reduces the accumulation of greenhouse gas pollution by reducing the release that would occur from the rotting of biomass on the surface by sequestering the CO2 contained in the biochar and by assisting the process by which plants growing in the soil pull CO2 out of the air with photosynthesis.

It also increases the organic health of the soil. David Shirer, a biochar entrepreneur, who has studied the science extensively, says “if you put biochar in the soil, it literally has a residence time on the order of centuries to millennia.”

It is a carbon lattice. It creates a habitat for fungi and bacteria, a habitat that creates a great deal of conductivity for CEC [cation exchange capacity]–for the chemists among us.

In recent decades, soil scientists discovered that the Amazonian Indians were using biochar 1000 years ago to create fertile black soil’s that are still far more productive than the soils around them, even though the biochar was buried a millennia ago.  Extensive research has been done on  these soils.

These “terra preta” soils provide a unique way of assessing the longevity of benefits conferred on soils by using biochar.

Moreover it appears that these rich soils retain the ability to regenerate themselves.

James Lovelock who has consistently been the most pessimistic expert on the future course of the climate crisis said in 2009, “there is one way we could save ourselves and that is through the massive burial of charcoal. It would mean farmers turning all their agricultural waste which contain carbon that the plants have spent the summer sequestering, into non-biodegradable charcoal and burying it in the soil. Then you can start shifting really hefty quantities of carbon out of the system and pull CO2 down quite fast. This is the one thing we can do that will make a difference, but I bet they won’t do it.”

In an open letter in 2008, Tim Flannery wrote: “biochar may represent the single most important initiative for humanity’s environmental future. The biochar approach provides a uniquely powerful solution, for it allows us to address food security, the fuel crisis, and the climate problem, and all in an immensely practical matter. biochar is both extremely ancient concept and a very new one to our thinking. He described the biochar strategy as the “most important engine of atmospheric cleansing that we possess”.

If you’ve stuck with up until here, thanks.  I won’t push my luck any further with this blog.

If anyone is interested, in the future, I’ll blog about what I’ve been doing to push for more studies leading to more action. To me it’s exciting–contacting people in California’s agricultural schools, writing possible legislation, and exploring possibilities of grants  for this purpose.

The  more I read, the more unanswered questions come up.  More studies and research are needed–the sooner the better.  That’s what I’m pushing for–trying to contribute my grain of sand.

If you’d like to learn more, the best place to start, I think, is the International Biochar Inititative website.

If I find any interest at all, I’ll use future blogs to keep you updated on my progress.