29-10-2022, 06:13 PM
(This post was last modified: 29-10-2022, 06:58 PM by king1.
Edit Reason: Quoting
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(29-10-2022, 04:02 PM)harm_less Wrote:(26-10-2022, 01:30 PM)C_T_Russell Wrote: Edit:That article pretty much describes what is referred to as 'organics by neglect'. Organics done knowledgeably doesn't just severely reduce or cease fertiliser inputs and expect all to be fine on their property. To do so will appear fine and dandy for the first few years until pasture/plant growth depletes (i.e. mines) available nutrients and this can be further exacerbated by use of growth promoting substances such as seaweed based 'feeds' as they help the plants to extract those last remnants of fertility, but once the production level bottoms out replenishing those nutrients is a slow and often expensive lesson in how soil nutrition actually works. It would seem these farmers have now learnt that lesson.
I also had this article come my way, looks like regenerative farming is set for failure.
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/green-dream-p...s-into-red
(29-10-2022, 02:40 PM)BAM Wrote: You are incorrect about the "small percentagë"A small percentage of CO2 and CH4 (methane) will be absorbed by soil and vegetation activity but the vast majority of it rises into the upper atmosphere where it is reeking havoc with weather systems and global temperatures. It can possibly eventually be completely absorbed by plant and soil life but in the meantime we are suffering the downstream effects of upsetting the balance in systems including the carbon cycle.
The carbon cycle is perfectly able to cope with however much methane and CO2 is discharged
It is a closed loop
If Ruminant numbers are not increasing, ( in NZ they are decreasing) there is no contribution to global warming.
Worth noting also that the global warming equations with farming are gross and make no allowance for increases in soil carbon or product sent off farm.
Rumnant numbers in total are in decline in New Zealand but that is largely the result of a decline in sheep populations which have in part been replaced by dairy herds. Not only then are the individual animals emitting higher levels but intensive dairying employs dense stocking rates as they rotate across their grazing areas with effluent (and exhalations) being discharged at higher rates than the soils in those pastures can buffer as it enters their biological cycles. The result is that groundwater is degraded by nitrates and other nitrogen content is lost to the atmosphere as ammonia.
To further complicate matters intensive dairying often now includes application of soluble nitrogen fertilisers which reduce soil carbon (humus) levels which reduces the biological buffering capacity of the soils in these systems. The manufacture of those nitrogen fertilisers is also fossil fuel dependent so carbon that was sequestered by plant growth many million of years ago which is released during the manufacturing process including methane escape.
The carbon cycle by its very nature does recycle carbon, CO2 levels had been more or less static for years prior to burning fossil fuels.
Weather systems are not reeking havoc, in fact if you look at in a world scale adverse events are not getting worse.
Both sheep and cattle numbers are in decline, cattle numbers are not increasing.
Soil humus levels are not reduced by nitrogen application.
Nitrogen fertiliser manufacture is not fossil fuel dependent.
Worth noting that Nitrogen application to pastures means more plant growth which removes CO2 and also results in more carbon being removed via farm products.