What myths need busting?

Be assured there is no serious threat in the "Carbon Mythbusters" except to the "Mythbusters" themselves. The title "Mythbusters" is the most aggressive part of the campaign which consists of a travelling seminar series, at which PhD candidates deliver a presentation said to have been "developed by leading soil scientists to help farmers manage their response to the soil carbon debate."
The Myth "Makers" (presumably anyone who speaks about the benefits of soil carbon) are accused of spreading untruths about soil carbon, a serious charge and unsporting, given we have no right of reply. Our information is "either confusing or at worst, incorrect," said Mr David Waters, of the NSW DPI. "We want to give farmers a clear view of where we are heading with soil carbon and what it may mean for their farming enterprises." In WA, the Grower Group Alliance (GGA) claims we spread "misinformation"
What exactly are these 'myths'?
The Grower Group (a GRDC affiliate) nominated "four common myths surrounding soil carbon... They included the effect of increasing soil organic matter on water holding capacity, how to measure soil organic matter, different types of soil organic matter and what they mean and the effect of cultivation and no-till on soil organic matter." The penny drops when we read the next line: "There is a large amount of information being presented to farmers about the potential benefits of soil carbon and how it can ‘solve' many of their production issues. Soil carbon is also being touted as a solution to ameliorate the impacts of climate change in the future. There is a need to provide good quality information to farmers to quantify how much soil carbon is required to make a difference, in what form and if our soils can sequester an appropriate amount."
Mr Clive Kirkby, "a PhD candidate and soil carbon expert from Charles Sturt University, the E.H. Graham Centre and CSIRO Plant Industry, Canberra, with almost 40 years experience working on soil health" delvered the WA series of seminars.
There wasn't much 'exploding' as Clive delivered a perfectly balanced presentation. Judging only by his slides, he started strongly with the following fact that sets him apart from other scientists: "Remember that economics will (and probably should) drive these issues –not discussed here".
He did manufacture a 'myth' of his own during his presentation. Such as: "Sequestration generally refers to getting C into
the passive pool” (the slow-to-turn over pool). The big myth he exploded was that No Till doesn't sequester much carbon. (The myth being that there is anyone left who believes that it does. This is old news to us. The "Mythologists" in this case are the US and Canadian markets which pay farmers to change to No Till. In Australia, we believe No Till alone is a means to reduce emissions and retain moisture and protect microbial habitat. Our Carbon Cockies have made great gains with No Till when combined with other techniques. What the scientists should say is not that No Till doesn't sequester much carbon, but that it doesn't sequester much when they try to do it. That is because sequestering carbon is a skill that farmers generally have and most scientists generally don't.)
ALthough he didn't make the same mistake again, Clive made a great deal of noise about the ratio of nutrients that make up humus - it has fixed amounts of N, P and S. In an article last year in the GRDC magazine, he and found others claimed that - what with fertiliser prices so high, farmers could not afford to buy enough to sequester carbon in the form of humus. (Where does the extra N, etc. come from?)
Judging only by the slides used, David Waters gave a straight-arrow presentation that 'proved' that soil C sequestration is a faint hope in under 100 years. He also found some major disability or failure with every soil treatment and soil management technique, except one: biochar. Not one. He declares that it sequesters carbon when it is unclear that it does. Equally, the slides list transport costs as an economic disadvantage for compost but not for biochar. It failed to also mention biochars' economic model which appears to be heavily reliant on a high price for carbon or govenment subsidy. The bias towards biochar was noticeable, reading the slides. Which leads one to ponder: could the "MythBusters" tour be a part of the worldwide campaign of propaganda promoting biochar, which has led so many scientists to step into a promotional role. (Lehmann is blatant.) For instance, the Biochar Research Network, is a group of scientists who include as one of their research objectives the 'promotion' of Biochar as a product. GRDC is funding research into biochar's weak spot: broadacre. Biochar - are there a few myths attached to it that might need busting? (See www.monbiot.com)

Congratulations to the MythBusters. The more farmers know about carbon the more likely they are to become Carbon farmers when we can offer them a reward for it.

Attention: Carbon Fractions are not a trading issue

Science and Commerce are different fields with different needs. A scientist might find it hard to understand that a buyer is not interested in which particular carbon molecule is immoblised. They are interested in the raw number of molecules. We all know that Carbon cycles. We have caused that cycle to get out of whack and so we need to park as much of it as we can in a “holding bay”.”

Some of it will escape – we all know that. But it will be replaced and then added to. If the farm is tuned to sequestration, it will be cycling continuously. And within this cycling dynamic, the “Carbon Holding Value” – the actual carbon score – should be rising. The buyer of offsets is buying the difference between two points in time.

As the NSW DPI’s David Waters says in his most excellent “Carbon Myth Busters: Soil Carbon Seminar”, a Carbon Farmer should “aim to continually manage the flow of soil organic matter, not just hoard it.”

PS. Reciting the fractions and pointing out that the labile, volatile fractions are the largest is not making a point about trading. It simply reveals that you believe in the old Particular Molecule Theory of Soil Carbon Dynamics as opposed to the Molecule Value Theory.

US Study confirms fast Carbon gains with perennials + Mycorrhiza

The irrepressible Tim Wiley sends this news item with his greetings from WA:

"A very interesting paper from the USA on a pot experiment showing that a perennial grass (C3) plus mycorrhiza increased soil carbon from 0.9% to 1.6% in 12 months!!!!! The perennial grass had no affect on soil carbon without the mycorrhiza. There is not enough information to calculate accurately the sequestration rate on a per hectare basis (i.e. the paper gave pot volume not pot depth, no bulk density figures), but my crude sums suggest a rate of about 40 t C/ha/year or about 150 t CO2e/ha/year!!! Of course a pot trial with benonite is a very artificial situations (and my assumptions are crude), but this paper suggest we are
on the right track."

http://www.acresusa.com/toolbox/reprints/Jan09_Amaranthus_etal.pdf

America says a big YES to Agriculture "IN" Kyoto

The American contribution to the Agriculture workshop in Bonn on 4 April, staged by the UNFCCC was short but sweet to the ears: "Noting that agriculture and forestry could offset 10-25% of his country’s current emissions, the US stressed the importance of including agriculture in the climate regime," ran one report. Consider it done.

Agriculture finally recognised by UNFCCC

With Minister Wong shutting the door on Agriculture, new developments at the UNFCCC (the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which runs the Kyoto process) could see Australia swimming against the tide.
A technical document prepared for the Bonn meeting in April presents these facts (which are now recognised by the UNFCCC):
1. The global technical mitigation potential* of agriculture, excluding fossil fuel offsets from biomass, by 2030 is estimated to be 5.5–6 Gt CO2 eq per year. About 89 per cent of this potential can be achieved by soil carbon (C) sequestration through cropland management, grazing land management, restoration of organic soils and degraded lands, bioenergy and water management. Mitigation of CH4 can provide an additional 9 per cent through improvements in rice management, and in livestock and manure management. The remaining 2 per cent can be achieved from mitigation of N2O emissions from
soils mainly through crop management.
2. The economic potential** in 2030 is estimated to be: 1.5–1.6 Gt CO2 eq per year (C price: USD 20t CO2 eq); 2.5–2.7 Gt CO2 eq per year (C price USD 50 per t CO2 eq); and 4–4.3 Gt CO2 eq per year (C price: USD 100 t CO2 eq). About 30 per cent of this potential can be achieved in developed countries and 70 per cent in developing countries.

* Technical potential is the amount by which it is possible to reduce GHG emissions or improve energy efficiency by
implementing a technology or practice that has been demonstrated already. No explicit reference to costs is made but adopting ‘practical constraints’ may take into account implicit economic considerations (IPCC AR4).
** Economic potential is in most studies used as the amount of GHG mitigation that is cost-effective for a given carbon price, based on social cost pricing and discount rates, including energy savings, but without most externalities. Theoretically, it is defined as the potential for cost-effective GHG mitigation when non-market social costs and benefits are included with market costs and benefits in assessing the options for particular levels of carbon prices (as affected by mitigation policies) and when using social discount rates instead of private ones. This includes externalities (i.e. non-market costs and benefits such as environmental co-benefits) (IPCC AR4).

SOURCE: "Challenges and opportunities for mitigation in the agricultural sector". Technical paper, UNITED NATIONS, FCCC/TP/2008/8 21 November 2008

Where was Australia?

Agriculture made it onto the Agenda of the latest round of Climate Negotiations in Bonn, but Australia was not among the growing coalition of countries showing support. The Climate Change Convention held the first workshop on agriculture ever on 4 April, focused on the opportunities and challenges for mitigation in the agricultural sector. Several countries including the U.S., Mexico, Uruguay, the Philippines, New Zealand, the EU, Canada, Japan, Bangladesh, Samoa, Senegal and Chile all expressed a wish that the role and contribution of agriculture be formalized in the negotiations. All participants felt that the potential for agriculture to mitigate climate change has been overlooked in the negotiations. Many called for increased research into methodologies and field testing to measure its potential.
The International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP) said that this workshop helped identify the countries that are willing to put agriculture in the spotlight of negotiations. Australia is apparently not one of those.
VIce President Raul Montemayor said “the current carbon counting construct looks at only half of the story. It looks at GHG emissions from agriculture without acknowledging its sequestration capacity.” He added that “the biggest mitigation potential of agriculture should be expected in terms of improvements in efficiency rather than absolute reductions in GHG emissions.”
He also called for a vigorous but efficient verification technology to ensure compliance of approved practices. “Establishing incentives and rewards for farmers to utilize approved GHG mitigation practices through established carbon credit systems is key to encouraging more sustainable farming practices.”
The USA's position is critical to success. William Hohenstein, Director of the Climate Change Office at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) said: “I have spent a lot of time talking to farmers about climate change. Agriculture is on the receiving end of climate change; we are likely to be one of the sectors most impacted by climate change.”
From now until IFAP’s Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark on May 27, IFAP’s expert group on climate change will focus its efforts on working out the nuts and bolts of the issues related to agriculture, which is the most significant task ahead.

Link to the webcast and presentations: http://unfccc.meta-fusion.com/kongresse/090329_AWG_Bonn/templ/ply_page.phpid_kongresssession=1635&player_mode=isdn_real

FAO pushes soil C at Bonn before Copenhagen

The push is on to get Agriculture a fair deal under Kyoto, to replace the "dud" deal our Government is anxious to impose on us through the CPRS, an unjust and destructive deal that all the Australian commentators and experts have endorsed by their silence. (See separate post.)

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a Washington-based think-tank, have called for greater emphasis on agriculture at the talks in Bonn, Germany. The talks are preliminary to negotiating a deal on cutting greenhouse gas emissions at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December.

"Agricultural land is able to store and sequester carbon. Farmers that live off the land, particularly in poor countries, should therefore be involved in carbon sequestration to mitigate the impact of climate change," said Alexander Mueller, FAO Assistant Director-General told delegates in Bonn.

In recent years it has been recognised that Agriculture has been treated poorly by the Euro-centric, renewables-focussed Kyoto Protocols which include absurd provisions such as the requirement that countries wanting to count their soil carbon sequestration must also account for non-anthropogenic sources of CO2 emissions such as bushfire and drought. This contradicts the purpose of the Protocols. No voices were raised against this blatant blockage, until Australia put in a mildly-worded request to the IPCC last year.

But the United Nations' Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has launched an assault on the barriers to Agriculture's involvement, concerned for the world's Food Security under Climate Change and the capacity of small peasant farmers to adapt.

Climate change will affect food production in developing countries. The FAO has projected a drop in cereal production for 2009 partly on account of adverse weather.

Agriculture has been off the agenda because governments have neglected it, says Rene Gommes, coordinator of the climate change and bio-energy division at FAO. Governments shied away from situations "where you need rubber boots and a shovel. We [FAO] are not a party [to the talks], but the governments are, and they do not raise it." As well, it is much easier to monitor 1,500 US coal-fired power plants than several million smallholder farmers. Agriculture is also seen as difficult sector for climate change mitigation because of its sheer size, a FAO briefing paper commented. The attention of governments would be drawn more readily if it were easy to source funds for agriculture-based mitigation projects. But any mitigation project needs to meet stringent monitoring, evaluation, reporting, verification, and certification requirements under the protocol. But how do you monitor and evaluate a subsistence farmer's small patch of land?

But the operations of the IPCC also work against Agriculture: "Current global funding arrangements, like the CDM, are inadequate and not providing sufficient incentives for farmers to get involved in climate change mitigation and adaptation," said Alexander Mueller, FAO Assistant Director-General. "For example, soil carbon sequestration [retaining carbon in soil], through which nearly 90 percent of agriculture's climate change mitigation potential could be realized, is outside the scope of the [CDM]," he added.

More grass species, more carbon captured

Do you want the good news or the good news?

OK, researchers have discovered two things of vital importance to soil C sequestration:

1. rising temperatures from Global Warming will increase biodiversity in grasslands; and

2. increasing diversity in grasslands means more carbon is sequestered in the soil.

FINDING 1: le Roux and McGeoch (2008) have discovered "the expansion of species distributions along their cooler boundaries in response to rising temperatures," which "appears to be a consistent biological consequence of recent climate warming," and which we have further indicated leads to increases in local biodiversity throughout the world.*

FINDING 2: Another group of scientists in Jena, Germany, concluded "carbon storage significantly increased with sown species richness in all depth segments and even carbon losses were significantly smaller with higher species richness." Consequently, they concluded that "plant species richness ... accelerate[d] the build-up of new carbon pools within four years," and that "higher plant diversity mitigated soil carbon losses in deeper horizons."**

They had sowed 20m by 20m plots of soil with seeds of either 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 or 60 species of either 1, 2, 3 or 4 plant functional groups (grasses, small herbs, tall herbs, and legumes). During the first two years of the study, soil carbon storage was limited to the top five cm of soil, while below ten cm depth, carbon was actually lost. After four years, however, carbon stocks had increased significantly within the top twenty cm of the soil.

The journal's editor comments: "this phenomenon represents a previously unrecognized negative feedback phenomenon, since studies such as that of le Roux and McGeoch have demonstrated that global warming typically leads to higher local and regional biodiversity wherever the process has been studied throughout the world."

*Le Roux, P.C. and McGeoch, M.A. 2008. Rapid range expansion and community reorganization in response to warming. Global Change Biology 14: 2950-2962.
**Steinbeiss, S., Bessler, H., Engels, C., Temperton, V.M., Buchmann, N., Roscher, C., Kreutziger, Y., Baade, J., Habekost, M. and Gleixner, G. 2008. Plant diversity positively affects short-term soil carbon storage in experimental grasslands. Global Change Biology 14: 2937-2949

Did you attend a Soil Carbon Mythbusters Seminar recently?

If so, do you have notes, slides, handouts or recordings of what was said?

We were unable to attend and would like to know which myths need busting.

Please contact michael@carboncoalition.com.au



PS. Remember, when it comes to snake oil, the Carbon Coalition only uses Top Quality Snakes!

(Image courtesy DPI)

Is the answer in an ecology textbook?

We could be on the verge of a breakthrough in soil C measurement - which is the only real blockage we need to clear before trading proper can start. We start with a question: Why did Mother Nature make soil carbon so slippery? In other words, why does soil carbon exhibit such spatial and temporal variance? In the case of soil carbon, the answer to the question is “because it does”, the Aristotelian response. It is the nature of soil carbon to be like soil carbon. This is not so silly. What is the nature of soil carbon? It is an ecological phenomenon. It exists in context. It is not a linear substance. It is communal, growing through the combining of many elements and forces. So why, if we took 100 core samples in a paddock, would we have 100 different carbon scores, some of them wildly different? We look for the answer in ecological science. A basic text book - Basic Ecology, Eugene P. Odum, Director, Institute of Ecology, Georgia State University, 1983* - leads us to the following: Carbon's behaviour in a paddock could be an emergent property of a larger functional whole than the individual soil sample.
Here's what Odum says about it:
• “AS components/subsets are combined to produce larger functional wholes, new properties emerge that were not present at the level below… An emergent property at an ecological level cannot be predicted from the study of the components of that level.”
• “Often attributes become less complex and less variable as move from small to large…”
• “Because homestatic mechanisms (checks and balances, forces and counterforces) operate throughout, the amplitude of oscillations tends to be reduced, as smaller units function within larger units. Statistically variance of the whole is less than the sum of the variance of the parts. For example, the rate of photosynthesis of a forest community is less variable than that of individual leaves or trees within the community, because when one part slows down, another may speed up to compensate.”
These concepts provide a way forward for the soil carbon measurement issue: Soil core samples are capable of exhibiting dramatic variance. However this does not mean the whole soil 'individual' is oscillating as violently as the individual samples.
In fact, the variance could be explained as the soil’s way of achieving equilibrium for the moment, like the trees mentioned by Odum. That equilibrium is the true carbon score. A single value that represents the entire soil unit.

How this can be calculated is currently beyond me.

IS THIS JUST A WACKY IDEA? No. Steiner and Lovelock believe it.

The Russians first saw soil as something more than a medium for holding plants up and delivering chemicals to the roots. The scientific basis of soil science as a natural science was established by the Russian V.V. Dokuchaev. “Previously, soil had been considered a product of physicochemical transformations of rocks, a dead substrate from which plants derive nutritious mineral elements. Dokuchaev saw soil as “a natural body with complex processes taking place within it”.
Alexei I. MOROZOV took a further step in a paper called “Soil as a polis of fungi” – making the statement that soil biota is the engine room of the living entity that is soil: Soil biota is “essentially organised, and supreme fungi operate it.” In addition to their role in decomposing litter, the fungi provide “a transport of substances, production of bio-active metabolites, the creation of biophile supply and solid frame of soil”.
Soil is not a simple reactor, but a "home" with multifunctional, hierarchical biota, which is managed by fungi. The hyphae form “nets” (networks). Morozov says new thinking must be applied to creating new models of soil dynamics, with soil as an “integral unit,” which is "stitched" with material bonds. Soil has the features of single whole organism.
Finally Professor Lal believes that soil 'is a living entity'.

We have more exciting news on this new field of opportunity for soil science coming soon!

*Borrowed from David Marsh and long overdue. Thanks David.

Congratulations Matt Cawood & Christine Jones

Congratulations Matt Cawood & Christine Jones

Not everyone 'gets' soil carbon. A lot of people say they do, but they probably think it means biochar. After all, that is easy to understand. Soil carbon is a complex story. Editors and Ministers don't have much time for explanations. If you can't get it over in three sentences, they think, I won't be able to. So Matt Cawood's two page spread in the Rural Press newspapers this week - featuring the word "Conundrum" in the headline - is a triumph of persistence and good journalism.
The scary thing about this fungi/humus connection is that it seems to have come as a surprise to most of the professional defenders of the traditional ways.
Congratulations to Christine for articulating the Carbon Pathway so powerfully and leading the way to a new conceptual understanding of the dynamics of soil/plant relationships. She will be 'justified' on May 22 when she holds a Managing the Carbon Cycle Conference at which the first cheques for her Australian Soil Carbon Accreditation Scheme are handed over to the farmers involved. Holding it in Canberra makes such a statement to the official science establishment who threw the entire weight of their institutional disapproval against her and failed to stop this amazing woman - who, if my mate Peter Andrews deserves an "Australian Story", I'm sure he'll agree she deserves two.
We will give details about the May 22 Conference when they come to hand.

Now Al Gore Gets It!

Al Gore recently testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urging Congress to act before the next round of global negotiations on climate change in December in Copenhagen, Denmark. In his list of fixes for global warming, former Vice President Gore included this: "The addition of sinks including those from soils, principally from farmlands and grazing lands with appropriate methodologies and accounting. Farmers and ranchers in the U.S. and around the world need to know that they can be part of the solution." Rattan Lal, who heads Ohio State University's Carbon Management and Sequestration Center, worries that agriculture could be left out of a US cap-and-trade bill. He liked Gore's comments, according to Successful Farming magazine: "I hope that somebody was listening," he said.

A native of India, Lal has spent his life working to improve soil fertility, in the U.S. and in developing nations suffering from soil degradation.

He has a global understanding of agriculture's potential to literally clean the planet's atmosphere of a big fraction of man-made carbon pollution.

It would be tragic -- perhaps fatal -- for the human race if Congress and international negotiators of the next global warming treaty ignore scientists like Lal.

They also should hear from farmers like Gale Lush in Nebraska and Kevin Struss in Kansas. Both are no-tillers who have sold carbon credits. They are true environmentalists, who know the ecology of their chunk of the planet.

If policy-makers don't pay attention to these experts on soil, efforts to combat global warming are likely to fail. There are some really bad ideas out there. A column in the New York Times last winter praised scientists at the Universities of Washington and California who want to capture carbon in crop waste, bale it up, and dump it in the ocean. That's an exceptionally stupid way to mine the fertility of soils.

Instead, Al Gore's common sense needs to be heard. Katy Ziegler Thomas, a lobbyist for National Farmers Union, is doing her part, sending his comments to members of Congress. "That is fantastic for us," she says. "We're working it hard."

You can help, too, by sending your own thoughts on capturing carbon to a senator or representative.

A cap-and-trade law that includes agriculture in the right way might result in payments that are bigger than your direct payments from the commodity program. You could brag to your liberal city cousins about carbon payments. And you could say you're a step ahead of Al Gore.

A BIG 'THANK YOU' AND PLEASE KEEP THOSE PETITIONERS ROLLING IN

Thank you to everyone who 'signed' or had someone else to 'sign' the Collaborative Science In Agriculture petition. The Minister's "minder" has acknowledged receipt of our petition. We need to keep up the pressure on the decision-makers about "Collaborative Science In Agriculture". We managed to collect 220 individual names and addresses in the short time we had...plus representation for more than 6000 clients and members of organisations who agreed to sign.

If you can pass the petition request on to others, you would be doing the Soil Carbon cause (and the cause of our ultimate survival as a community) a great service.

What do we want people to do?

1. Read the brief submission to the Minister For Agriculture Tony Burke below.
2. Email michael@carboncoalition.com.au
3. In the email, tell me they agree to having their agreement with the statement communicated to the Minister. This is instead of a 'signature'.
4. Could they also include their name, the name of their property, profession or organisation, and its location.

Thank You

Collaborative Science in Agriculture
A Brief Submission on Maximising Return on Investment in Soil Carbon Research

Statement of the Opportunity: The Minister for Agriculture has announced a $20 million investment in research into Soil Carbon, for which we are very grateful. The Soil Carbon Movement has long petitioned for this outcome, and we are anxious that Soil Carbon be given the opportunity to perform to its potential. That justice is seen to be done is the key to the Farm Community’s acceptance of the outcomes, given that the economic viability of many farm enterprises will be determined by these outcomes.

Context: The controversy over the sequestration potential of Australian soils is based on a methodological flaw in the National Carbon Accounting Scheme which saw gaps in the data skew the results and lead to the conclusion that Australian soils were more likely to be a source of emissions than a sink. The gaps in the data – the absence of new land management techniques that sequester carbon in soil – have been acknowledged by a former Australian Greenhouse Office executive. Unfortunately, the consensus opinion was formed before the ‘key gaps in the data’ were filled. Those gaps are still waiting to be filled – even after the projects that you announced this week are complete. The common belief led policymakers to see Agriculture as ‘problem’ rather than ‘opportunity’. Funding for trials was denied. Meanwhile farmers were recording rates of soil carbon increases 10 to 100-times faster than official science (by focussing on soil biology). Official science has also started to record higher rates of sequestration than the models, based on incomplete data, will allow.

Core Issue: A farmer could see the gaps in the NCAS research at a glance because he knows what to look for. Scientists are experts in Science, not in emerging land management practices. In a period of rapid change, they might construct methodologies that potentially do not reflect practical reality. This in turn could compromise the research. Where the outcome of this research underpins public policy that will affect the financial well-being of an entire industry, it becomes a critical issue.

Core Proposition: We recommend that a collaborative approach to science in Agriculture be pursued.

The professional farmer or grazier can help identify the landscape issues that should inform the construction of the study. The farmer in turn will learn more about scientific method. The Carbon Coalition has been developing these types of relationships for three years, engaging scientists and practitioners in five knowledge-sharing events, two of which have been National Carbon Farming Conferences. The scientists involved have included Prof. Richard Eckard, Prof. Peter Grace, Prof. Alex McBratney, Dr Jeff Baldock, Dr Brian Murphy, Dr Annette Cowie, Dr Greg Chapman, and Dr Yin Chan, who has long championed the capacity of Australian soils to sequester.


Collaborative Science in Agriculture is not novel. It was a finding of the 2020 Summit’s Rural Stream: "New participatory approaches to research, including on-ground research extension, are needed … The most effective way of generating on-ground change is by having producers actively involved in participatory approaches to research since ‘farmers are often first order innovators’." A Senate Committee made the same plea: “The committee urges those researching and investigating climate change adaptation and mitigation opportunities and risks to fully engage with those in the agricultural community.”


We believe your announcement this week of nine key projects, the strategic nature of these studies, and their timing makes it imperative that you engage farmers in the process.


Recommendations:

1. That the Minister requests the CSIRO, which has overarching responsibility for the nine projects, to engage members of the Carbon Farming community in discussions about the methodology chosen for the studies.
2. That the scientists listed above be consulted as to the sincere collaborative intention of the Carbon Farmers. And that the credibility of the studies in question would be guaranteed by such transparency.

Request: That a meeting be arranged as soon as possible between the relevant people at the Ministry, the CSIRO and a delegation of Carbon Farmers.

Thank you.

Michael Kiely
Convenor
(and attached signatories)

Crawling towards the Soil Carbon Solution - a new paradigm

"We are actually going to have to decrease the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere." With these words, Dr James Hansen knocked at the door of the new paradigm - the new candidate for the title 'DOMINANT PARADIGM'. Hansen is the most senior climate scientist to come anywhere near the idea that it is the existing or historic atmospheric CO2-e (or the 'airborne fraction') that is causing the climate catastrophes - and that EXTRACTION is the first job.
Hansen has been Director since 1981 of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He first alerted the world to Climate Change in 1988 and defied President George W. Bush's attempt to re-write science to suit politics. So he is a pioneer, but he is still only on the threshold of the idea that PHOTOSYNTHESIS is the only process that can extract (that we know of).
His solution is a change in the way we consumer energy. So he hasn't made the necessary distinction between historic and future emissions. Changing to alternative energy sources can only influence FUTURE emissions. Not those of the PAST.

PICTURED: SOIL BIOLOGY, THE NEW PARADIGM FOR SOIL CARBON STUDIES? (A LIVELY NEMATODE CAPTURED DURING FILMING FOR ABCTV'S LANDLINE ON 'UAMBY')

For those interested in following the upcoming BATTLE OF THE PARADIGMS, get a copy of Thomas Kuhn's book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. It is short and easy to read. It describes how Scientists live in a Self-Regulating Community governed by a set of Rules that enforce a way of seeing reality. This "Reality" is called the Dominant Paradigm. Students are taught the Dominant Paradigm, PhD projects must fall within it, and Scientists can only publish their work if a panel of their peers pass the work as being sufficiently obedient to it. When this Paradigm meets a crisis because it confronts a problem that it cannot solve, a new candidate is sought and it is often found in a set of practices already well-established, but not recognised by the Community (Carbon Farming). At first supporters of the New Paradigm are derided and their motives questioned (so Kuhn says). There are very few resources for testing the New Paradigm, the money being spent for the most part re-proving the Old Paradigm. But one by one, important figures switch loyalties to the new Paradigm as it passes the tests. The community moves across to a new Paradigm not by persuasion but by the passing on of the Old Guard and their replacement by youth. Every field of Science goes through the inevitable cycling of paradigms, and the community fights a "political" battle between the defenders of the old and the promoters of the new. Unfortunately these processes can take years... and we don't have years to start the extraction process. How can we speed up the process?

Europe says "YES" to Soil Carbon!

The Soil Carbon Movement's message has penetrated the walls of the European Commission. Environment Commissioner Releasing a new report, Stavros Dimas said: “Properly managed soils can absorb enormous quantities of carbon from the atmosphere, buying us valuable time to reduce emissions and move towards sustainability."

The Commission says soils can play a crucial role in mitigating climate change. Europe's soils are an enormous carbon reservoir, containing around 75 billion tonnes, and poor management can have serious consequences: a failure to protect Europe's remaining peat bogs, for example, would release the same amount of carbon as an additional 40 million cars on Europe's roads. The report describes itself as 'a synthesis of the best available information on the links between soil and climate change.' It says sequestering carbon in soils is "cost competitive and immediately available, requires no new or unproven technologies, and has a mitigation potential comparable to that of any other sector of the economy."

The Commission - a new entry into the soil carbon arena - is subject to the same misunderstanding most people exhibit in the early stages of their education. "Most soils in Europe are accumulating carbon: soils under grassland and forest act as sinks, sequestering up to 100 million tonnes of carbon per year, although soils under arable land act as net emitters, releasing between 10 and 40 million tonnes of carbon per year. Carbon is lost from soils when grasslands, managed forest lands or native ecosystems are converted to croplands, a process that is slowly reversed when cropland is converted back."

This mistaken view compounds the anxiety of the Commission's reporters: "Some of the report's conclusions make for uncomfortable reading. As the world population continues to grow, ever greater areas of grasslands and forests are converted to croplands, and soils that are currently carbon sinks will turn into net emitters. The most effective strategy to prevent global soil carbon loss would be to halt these land conversions – but this may conflict with growing global demand for food."

The Europeans have discovered Carbon Farming: "The report underlines how agricultural practices can be improved to minimise carbon losses, at the level of the crop and the crop residues, and by ensuring that soils are protected against water and rain with a permanent vegetation cover, less intrusive ploughing techniques and less machinery. Such practices could sequester between 50 and 100 million tonnes of carbon annually in European soils.

A lack of EU-wide data on soil carbon and soil carbon trends is all-too-familiar to Australians - and points to the data issue as generic. The whole world has neglected soils.

The Commission presented a legislative proposal to protect European soils in 2006, with support from the European Parliament, but opposition from five Member States means that the proposal is currently blocked in Council. (The bastards are everywhere.)

Report "Review of existing information on the interrelations between soil and climate change":

Soil and Climate Change conference (June 2008): http://ec.europa.eu/environment/soil/conf_en.htm

Soil web pages on Europa: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/soil/index_en.htm

THE CARBON COALITION NEEDS YOUR HELP - URGENTLY

Please read the text below and decide if you can agree to be a "Signatory" of the petition to Minister Burke, seeking to avoid the mistakes of the past with the $20m to be sent on soil carbon research. If you agree, simply email the address on this link michael@carboncoalition.com.au, supplying the following information: your assent, property/organisation name, and your location. If you are an office bearer in a relevant organisation.

Collaborative Science in Agriculture
A Brief Submission on Maximising Return on Investment in Soil Carbon Research

Statement of the Opportunity: The Minister for Agriculture has announced a $20 million investment in research into Soil Carbon, for which we are very grateful. The Soil Carbon Movement has long petitioned for this outcome, and we are anxious that Soil Carbon be given the opportunity to perform to its potential. That justice is seen to be done is the key to the Farm Community’s acceptance of the outcomes, given that the economic viability of many farm enterprises will be determined by these outcomes.

Context: The controversy over the sequestration potential of Australian soils is based on a methodological flaw in the National Carbon Accounting Scheme which saw gaps in the data skew the results and lead to the conclusion that Australian soils were more likely to be a source of emissions than a sink. The gaps in the data – the absence of new land management techniques that sequester carbon in soil – have been acknowledged by a former Australian Greenhouse Office executive. Unfortunately, the consensus opinion was formed before the ‘key gaps in the data’ were filled. Those gaps are still waiting to be filled – even after the projects that you announced this week are complete. The common belief led policymakers to see Agriculture as ‘problem’ rather than ‘opportunity’. Funding for trials was denied. Meanwhile farmers were recording rates of soil carbon increases 10 to 100-times faster than official science (by focussing on soil biology). Official science has also started to record higher rates of sequestration than the models, based on incomplete data, will allow.

Core Issue: A farmer could see the gaps in the NCAS research at a glance because he knows what to look for. Scientists are not fully briefed on emerging land management practices, they might construct methodologies that potentially do not reflect practical reality. This in turn could compromise the research. Where the outcome of this research underpins public policy that will affect the financial well-being of an entire industry, it becomes a critical issue.

Core Proposition: We recommend that a collaborative approach to science in Agriculture be pursued.

The professional farmer or grazier can help identify the landscape issues that should inform the construction of the study. The farmer in turn will learn more about scientific method. The Carbon Coalition has been developing these types of relationships for three years, engaging scientists and practitioners in five knowledge-sharing events, two of which have been National Carbon Farming Conferences. The scientists involved have included Prof. Richard Eckard, Prof. Peter Grace, Prof. Alex McBratney, Dr Jeff Baldock, Dr Brian Murphy, Dr Annette Cowie, Dr Greg Chapman, and Dr Yin Chan, who has long championed the capacity of Australian soils to sequester.


Collaborative Science in Agriculture is not novel. It was a finding of the 2020 Summit’s Rural Stream: "New participatory approaches to research, including on-ground research extension, are needed … The most effective way of generating on-ground change is by having producers actively involved in participatory approaches to research since ‘farmers are often first order innovators’."

We believe your announcement this week of nine key projects, the strategic nature of these studies, and their timing makes it imperative that we engage farmers in the process.

Recommendations:

1. That the Minister requests the CSIRO which has overarching responsibility for the nine projects to engage members of the Carbon Farming community in discussions about the methodology chosen for the studies.
2. That the scientists listed above be consulted as to the sincere collaborative intention of the Carbon Farmers. And that the credibility of the studies in question would be guaranteed by such transparency.

Request: That a meeting be arranged as soon as possible between the relevant people at the Ministry, the CSIRO and a delegation of Carbon Farmers.

Thank you.

Michael Kiely
Convenor
(And attached signatories).

"Optical Illusion"

Many conventional scientists fall into an ‘optical illusion’ when considering the claims of Carbon Farmers about sequestration rates. They start with a belief in a small amount of carbon per hectare. But the calculation must step up the value twice: First from Carbon to Carbon Dioxide Equivalent, a multiplication exercise:

C x 3.67 = CO2-e.

The second calculation is also a multiplication, from one hectare to the total area:

CO2-e/ha/yr x Total ha = Total CO2-e/yr.

When 0.15C/ha can become 27,500tCO-e, no wonder scientists cry foul. But if they want to take part in a conversation which is not strictly scientific, they must observe the language in which the conversation is being conducted. In the arid zone, 50,000ha is not unusual.

If we extrapolate the lowest score of 0.15tonnes Carbon/h/yr over half the area used for Agriculture (225m ha) we shall see if soil, which already has Critical Mass, can also have Massive Capability:

0.15tC/ha x 3.67 = 0.5505tCO2-e

225m ha x 0.5505tCO2-e = 123.8mtCO2-e.

The represents about a quarter of Australian emissions per year.

Beware the Optical Illusion when calculating Soil Carbon.

A VICTORY FOR THE FARMERS AND GRAZIERS OF AUSTRALIA

MINISTER Tony Burke is a remarkable man.
He deserves our Thanks... for understanding what we understand. That there is something vast and universal just beneath the surface of the Earth. It has powers we barely can begin to comprehend. And that it is worth investigating.
He deserves our Thanks... for listening. The soil carbon world view requires a paradigm shift, not an easy thing to do on command. But you have opened your ears and eyes.
He deserves our Thanks...for acting boldly... It can't have been easy to launch what we believe is the largest soil carbon research program in the world today. There are many people against it.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s commitment last year that the Government would investigate the benefits of soil carbon storage was a major victory for Australian Agriculture.
The investment of $20million in soil carbon says many things, most importantly, that soil carbon sequestration is not some lunatic fantasy. It is real. it will happen.
SO thank you Mr Burke and Thank You Mr Rudd...
(And thank you Mr Hunt and thank you Mr Turnbull (who took a merciless hammering over his support for soil carbon from Kerry O'Brien last week on the 7.30 Report. SHame on you, Kerry.)

A Good Conspiracy, At Last...

There is the FAO agitating for it. Now the US Deoartment of Agriculture has started.... and the World Bank.... and the largest lobby group membershio on the planet. The International Federation of Agricultural Producers has 600,000,000 farmers (including me) as members.

It is putting together a powerful lobby group - including the USA and the World Bank - pushing for the inclusion of agriculture as a stand-alone component of the expected post-Kyoto agreement on climate change at the upcoming UN multilateral negotiations to be held in December 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark. It will set the framework for how the world deals with climate change.

The delegation, led by the IFAP President, met with Sally Collins, Director of Ecosystem Services and Markets for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Ms. Collins is responsible for establishing guidelines for measuring environmental services benefits and verifying reports from landowners, such as farmers, which will serve as the basis for a carbon credit and marketing scheme on the national level in the United States, and will also likely serve as a global model for development.

Until now, agriculture has not had a place at the table in the negotiations on climate change. IFAP expressed support for the idea of putting in place an international and harmonized measurement system for carbon and an international trading system for carbon that would reward farmers, with the support of the USDA .
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IFAP expressed support for the idea of putting in place an international and harmonized measurement system for carbon and an international trading system for carbon that would reward farmers, with the support of the USDA .

IFAP also met with Katherine Sierra, Vice President of the World Bank in charge of agriculture and environmental issues, to mainly discuss climate change and other related environmental issues. Ms. Sierra wholeheartedly supported IFAP in including agriculture in the climate change agenda. She said their agriculture group will help position dialogue with an opening to include land and agriculture. Katherine Sierra highlighted that the World Bank efforts on climate change will focus on identifying best practices and building them into their regular development programs in a changing environment, rather than having special programs for climate change. She also indicated that the World Bank will have 50 million dollars over five years available to figure out how to get agriculture mitigation into the Copenhagen outcome. Ms. Sierra is reasonably confident of success, and she said IFAP would be an important partner in this regard. We need to look at the science and the mechanisms, including how the 370 billion in annual subsidies in Western countries that already exist are tied to or can be moved towards an environmental focus, but are not tied to climate change.

IFAP will further collaborate with the USDA and the World Bank in the run up to the upcoming UN Climate Conferences in order to make sure agriculture is put on the agenda.

The IFAP delegation included IFAP President Ajay Vashee, the President of the North Dakota Farmers’ Union, Robert Carlson, IFAP Senior Policy Officer Nora Ourabah, and IFAP Communication Coordinator Neil Sorensen. For more information, or to provide input on IFAP’s climate change related activities, please contact Nora Ourabah, Senior Policy Officer, at nora.ourabah@ifap.org

to provide input on IFAP’s climate change related activities, please contact Nora Ourabah, Senior Policy Officer, at nora.ourabah@ifap.org

Do we look a gift horse in the mouth? HELL YES!

I don't know about you but I am a little uneasy about $20million being given to people who have argued against the soil carbon solution for three years. Will they find that they were wrong before or will they find that they were right?

We need to formulate an industry-wide communique. ASAP

Watch this space.

"$32 million program to research soil carbon storage" BUT WHO'S FRAMING THE QUESTIONS?

"Scientists believe soil can store more carbon than forests. Finding a way to boost carbon storage in Australia’s vast pastures and farming land could significantly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions," said Tony Burke's press release today when he announced that scientists would be given $20 million for soil C research.
Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Tony Burke said it would be the most comprehensive research effort into soil carbon and emissions ever seen in Australia. For the first time, the work will create national standards for sampling and analysing soil carbon and nitrous oxide emissions. The projects will cover all states and territories.The initiatives, under the Climate Change Research Program, include funding from the Federal Government, industry and research bodies.It follows Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s commitment last year that the Government would investigate the benefits of soil carbon storage.
Nine soil carbon research projects will sample a range of agricultural systems, including cereal crops, sheep and beef grazing, sugarcane and vegetable farming, irrigated and non-irrigated dairy, and sites which have changed from one farming system to another. Mr Burke said: “While forests play a very important role in carbon storage, they are not the only answer and we will continue investigating other options such as soil. We have so much land covered by pastures and other farming systems that we could significantly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by boosting soil carbon storage.”
Key priorities for the soil carbon research will include:
* Measuring carbon levels in a range of agricultural systems;
* Understanding the impacts of management practices on soil carbon; and
* Understanding the role Australian soils could play in sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
The Climate Change Research Program forms part of Australia’s Farming Future, an initiative designed to help our primary industries adapt and respond to climate change.



Soil Carbon Research Program

Soil carbon research program overarching project – CSIRO
This project will undertake the technical oversight and management of the Soil Carbon Research Program. It will develop standardised data collection protocols and undertake carbon content analysis.

South eastern SA cereals, sheep and beef systems and Australia wide perennial sheep pastures – CSIRO
This project will identify sites and undertake sampling within south-eastern South Australia’s cereal, sheep and beef systems. Perennial pasture sites will also be identified and sampling will be undertaken throughout the country — particularly in WA and NSW.

South-west Western Australia: Cereal, sheep and beef systems – University of Western Australia & WA Department of Agriculture & Food
This project will engage with a number of grower groups and collect samples from a number of their sites. It will also undertake sampling at sites where management practices have been in place for a minimum of five years.

Victorian dairy, sheep, cereal and beef systems – Victorian Department of Primary Industries and the Co-operative Research Centre for Future Farming
This project will undertake re-sampling of a number of ongoing crop and pasture sites around Hamilton, Rutherglen and Ararat. It will build upon work which has previously occurred under the EverGraze program as well as DPI long-term experimental sites at Horsham, Rutherglen and Walpeup. Engagement with ongoing farmer trials will be undertaken with Southern Farming Systems, the Birchip Cropping Group and the South West Climate Change Forum.

Northern rangelands beef systems – Queensland Departments of Natural Resources & Water and of Primary Industries
This project will undertake sampling at Kidman Springs (NT) to assess the effects of cell grazing. The sites have documented fire and management histories. It will also resample a Toorak grazing trial in north-western Queensland. This sampling will include a range of soil types and rainfalls.

Queensland cereals and sugar - Queensland Departments of Natural Resources & Water and of Primary Industries
This project will undertake sampling of grain cropping systems at the long-term Hermitage Fallow Management Trial near Warwick in Queensland and sugar cropping systems at Tully and Mackay. No-till grain trials will be sampled near Biloela and Goodger and archived soil will be analysed from a number of historic trials (Biloela, Warra, Nindigully, Mt Murchison and Goodger).
Additional sugarcane sites in the Northern Rivers, Mackay and Ingham regions will be sampled – including tilled and permanent beds and across a number of soil types and rainfall levels.

New South Wales cereals, cotton, sheep and beef systems - University of New England, NSW Departments of Primary Industries and of Environment and Climate Change
This project will undertake sampling at 20 long-term trials with 25 corresponding satellite sites on private land to define amounts and variance of carbon contained in pools of soils from the major land-use/soil type combinations in NSW.

New South Wales cereals and beef - Murray Catchment Management Authority
This project will undertake sampling and analysis of paired sites which have been under no-till/conventional till and set stocking/controlled grazing practices.

Tasmanian vegetables and dairy systems - Tasmanian Institute for Agricultural Research, University of Tasmania and Botanical Resources Australia P/L
This project will undertake sampling at a number of broadacre cropping and vegetable sites across the state – including low input pasture/irrigated cropping and short-term perennial/long term pasture. Sampling will also be undertaken on existing sites which have undertaken a change from pasture to cropping and on paired sites which compare irrigated and non-irrigated dairy and beef systems.



Nitrous Oxide Research Program

Nitrous oxide research program coordination – Grains Research and Development Corporation
This project will take a leadership role in the administration and coordination of the Nitrous Oxide Research Program. This will include the management of program governance and reporting.

Integrated data and synthesis framework for reducing nitrous oxide emissions from Australian agricultural soils – Queensland University of Technology
This project will undertake the management and technical oversight of the Nitrous Oxide Research Program. It will develop standardised data collection protocols, develop a web-based remote data capture program and manage project datasets for national databases.

Reducing nitrous oxide emissions from sugarcane lands – Sugar Research and Development Corporation and Grains Research and Development Corporation
This project will measure nitrous oxide emissions from sugarcane and grain legume– sugarcane rotations near Mackay, with and without the use of inhibitors. The standardised data will then be incorporated into the broad program dataset.

Decreasing nitrous oxide emissions in high rainfall legume/wheat cropping systems – Victorian Department of Primary Industries and Grains Research and Development Corporation
This project will measure nitrous oxide emissions from direct drilled and conventionally sown legume/wheat rotations – with and without the use of inhibitors – at a site near Hamilton. The standardised data will then be incorporated into the broad program dataset.

Fertiliser management strategies for decreasing on-farm greenhouse gas emissions – University of Western Australia, Department of Agriculture and Food WA, and Grains Research and Development Corporation
This project will measure nitrous oxide emissions from direct drilled wheat at Wongan Hills, south west Western Australia that has been grown under a range of treatments. The standardised data will then be incorporated into the broad program dataset.

The potential of inhibitors for the mitigation of nitrous oxide emissions from animal production systems, in south-eastern Australia – Victorian Department of Primary Industries and Dairy Australia
This project will measure nitrous oxide emissions following the application of urine and inhibitors at the DemoDairy site near Terang, Victoria, as well as numerous additional satellite sites. The standardised data will then be incorporated into the broad program dataset.

Enhanced efficiency fertilisers as mitigation tools for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from intensive agricultural systems in Australia – University of Melbourne and Incitec Pivot fertilisers Pty and Grains Research and Development Corporation
This project will entail a laboratory based assessment of nitrous oxide emissions from a range of soils which have been treated with nitrification inhibitors. The standardised data will then be incorporated into the broad program dataset.

Irrigated cotton and grain cropping systems – Queensland University of Technology and Cotton Catchment Communities CRC and Grains Research and Development Corporation.
This project will measure nitrous oxide emissions from irrigated cotton and grain cropping systems between the Darling Downs in Queensland and the Macquarie Valley in New South Wales. The standardised data will then be incorporated into the broad program dataset.

Winter rain-fed cereals – New South Wales Department of Primary Industries, University of Melbourne, University of New England and Grains Research and Development Corporation.
This project will measure nitrous oxide emissions from winter rain-fed cereals under various treatments, including: different row placements of crops; and inclusion of legumes in the rotation. The standardised data will then be incorporated into the broad program dataset.

Opt In to Possibility Thinking

Congratulations to Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition on the 'opt-in' concept for Agriculture in the Emissions Trading Scheme. Congratulations on the whole biosequestration push.It is the first piece of clear thinking to arise in this debate. Strangely enough a similar idea came up in a workshop group at a Cattle Council brainstorm last week, which I shared with Prof. Peter Grace from QUT, the rangelands expert. We focussed our thinking on reducing risks inherent in a trading system for growers and came up with an '"Environmental Tax Credits" system - a trainer-wheels trading scheme underwritten for the first 5 years by the Government to keep the risk down for growers and buyers. Farmers opt in by signing a contract to manage their land in a certain way for 5 years. In return they receive a certain number of Australian Country Bonds, the number determined by 1. how many different functions they opt in for (eg, maximum ground cover, pasture cover, applying recognised inoculants, etc.Ie. actions known to sequester carbon) and 2. their performance each year. And the primary function of accumulating bonds is to meet their obligations for methane and N2O. These Bonds also entitle them to trade a commensurate number of 'estimated' credits on the voluntary offset market. In 5 years they can learn how to respond to a market mechanism and the system can be ramped up, changed, or replaced with another motivational mechanism.
There are many solutions yet to be discovered. The difference between today and yesterday is that bodies ike the Opposition and the NFF are suggesting that Kyoto is not etched in stone, and that we can become possibility thinkers again instead of being repressed by reference to the RULES.
Shadow Environment Minister Greg Hunt said accounting for the emissions "is a problem, but one that can be addressed". Soil carbon was not counted towards international greenhouse commitment, he said but "the international situation has to be changed in the current negotiations and we should be fighting to make sure that it is".
Nationals Farmers Federation chief executive Ben Fargher said he hoped the Government would support the idea of farmers "opting in" to the scheme to receive incentives to reduce their emissions. "We shouldn't let the problem that it isn't allowed under the international rules stop us," he said. Hurrah. The NFF thinks the previously unthinkable.
The 'opt in' option could make farmers $3bn annually. The Opposition says we can sequester 150m tonnes CO2-e annually.
The Politicians are motivated by Politics. There are points to score in this debate: but we will take allies wherever we can get them. Every day we get closer to the solution. We gain legitimacy. Our opponents learn that we are not the dangerous rogues they supposed...

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Dear Kerry: "Credible, respected" scientists once believed the SUN revolved around the EARTH

Many questions are raised by the 7.30 Report's Kerry O’Brien’s statement last night: “Credible respected scientists in the field believe that carbon sequestration in the soil is a small part - and I'll quote directly, "... a small part of Australia's greenhouse solution"? In other words, this is also a field that's very much open to debate; this is not precise science."

Q.Professor Rattan Lal believes the world's soils can sequester 3 gigatonnes of GHG/year for 50 years - the Globe emits 8 gt/yr more than it should - so soils can secure close to 40% of the world's rogue emissions. Is this a small part? Are the scientists you are quoting as credible and respected as Professor Lal?

Q. If they believe soil carbon is such an imprecise science, how can 'credible, respected scientists' in the field be so sure of themselves?

Q. On what data do these 'credible, respected scientists' base their claim? The out-of-date data from studies of conventional, carbon depleting land management practices, such as ploughing, burning stubble, overgrazing, ‘set stocking’? They have not studied the new carbon sequestering techniques called ‘Carbon Farming‘. A senior official in Penny Wong's department has admitted that there are "key gaps in the data.". Even the authors of the reports warned of the gaps in the data. The Carbon Farming practices that have not been studied include grazing management, pasture cropping, perennial cover cropping, probiotic inoculation, compost teas, etc. Most important they do not study combinations of these actiivities. Farmers using these practices have proved that they can sequester carbon 10 to 100 times faster than the conventional models.

KERRY O'BRIEN: "...the Government last year allocated $46 million to support research to reduce greenhouse pollution in agriculture including research into carbon in soils"

Q. The Government might have handed the scientific establishment $46m to study soil carbon – but do funding authorities refuse to fund the type of research needed to dispel the myths blocking the Soil Carbon Solution? Why?

Q. Why did Dr Christine Jones have to raise the funds for her soil carbon research privately? (See last week’s LandLine at http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2008/s2490568.htm)

Q. Why did 5 senior NSW DPI soil scientists release a paper last week calling on funding authorities to invest in the right type of research: "It is important to resolve outstanding research questions as a matter of urgency, to remove this barrier to inclusion of soil carbon in emissions trading." ? See the paper here: http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/research/areas/resources-research/soils-recycled-organics/scientific-outputs/2008/soil_organic

Q. Why did Senator Christine Milne accuse the nation’s biggest funder of soil research – the Grains Research Development Corporation of running a campaign against the capacity of Australian soil to sequester carbon. See transcript page 86 here: http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate/commttee/committee_transcript.asp?MODE=YEAR&ID=94&YEAR=2008

Q. Why has every bid for research funding submitted by the Carbon Coalition- even in partnership with conventional scientists – been unsuccessful (since 2006)?

Q. Why is the body established by the Government to coordinate all research in climate change agriculture unable to tell us who is working on what research projects - ie. if any useful work is being done with the $46m? The National Climate Change Research Strategy for Primary Industries, operated by Land & Water Australia, says it has no information.

Q. How can Minister Burke and the Prime Minister know they are getting the research they expected would be done?

The five DPI scientists declared "considerable SOC sequestration potential exists in NSW agricultural land."

The world’s most eminent soil carbon scientist Prof. Rattan Lal says“Carbon sequestration in soil and vegetation is a bridge to the future. It buys us time while alternatives to fossil fuels take effect.”




Banckground on Lal:

Professor Rattan Lal received a prestigious World Congress of Soil Science award, an honor bestowed upon recipients once every four years in conjunction with the World Congress of Soil Science conference.
Rattan Lal, director of Ohio State's Carbon Management and Sequestration Center and a professor with the School of Environment and Natural Resources, is the recipient of the 2006 Liebig Applied Soil Science Award. Named in memory of German scientist Justus von Liebig -- known as the “father of the fertilizer industry” -- the award recognizes outstanding contributions in applied soil science research, resulting in new discoveries, techniques, inventions or materials.
Lal has spent 18 years of his service with Ohio State's Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (OARDC) studying carbon sequestration -- the technique of storing carbon in the soil -- and its influence on soils throughout the world. Other areas of research include soil processes and atmospheric greenhouse effects, sustainable management of soil and water resources, restoration and rehabilitation of degraded soils, agro-forestry, tropical agriculture and agricultural development in the Third World.

Leading scientists call for "Urgent" Soil C research for trade

"It is important to resolve outstanding research questions as a matter of urgency, to remove this barrier to inclusion of soil carbon in emissions trading." So says five leading soil scientists from the NSW DPI. "In order to support a role for soil organic carbon in emissions trading, there is an urgent need to resolve several key research issues, namely developing low cost
methods of accounting for soil carbon; quantifying net carbon sequestration under different management practices for different soil types, climates and agricultural systems by supporting existing long term cropping rotation trial sites and the
establishment of new ones where appropriate; quantifying interactions of SOC sequestration with soil emissions of other GHG, namely N2O and CH4 and developing soil carbon models that can account for locally relevant agricultural management
practices." Dr Yin Chan and Dr Annette Cowie are co-authors of a paper* which declares "considerable SOC sequestration
potential exists in NSW agricultural land."
[PICTURED: DR YIN CHAN WITH ANL'S ROB NICCOL (R) AND MICHAEL KIELY AT A RECENT MULCHING SEMINAR AT MUDGEE NSW. DR CHAN IS IN THE TOP 10 SOIL SCIENTISTS FOR CITATIONS OF HIS WORK.]
They say the highest potential exists in pasture land in the higher rainfall regions (>450 mm), both as permanent pastures or as ley pasture in the cropping zone. "Considerable increases can be achieved by pasture improvement and improved management practices. Significant SOC potential also exists in the low rainfall rangelands which comprises nearly 50% of NSW. Much of the rangelands are in degraded state and considerable total SOC sequestration can be achieved for a small rate of sequestration per hectare. Promotion of conservation tillage practices (particularly no-tillage) is important to halt further carbon losses from cropping soils (emission avoidance). Currently, there is only a 35% adoption rate of conservation tillage techniques in NSW."
[PICTURED: DR ANNETTE COWIE SPEAKING AT THE LATEST CARBON FARMING EXPO & CONFERENCE.]
In addition, SOC can also be sequestered by adopting new land conversion and soil amelioration options such as bioenergy crops from perennial vegetation, recycling organics including biochars, and by ameliorating sodic and acid soils.
"Many of the management practices that are effective in increasing SOC in agricultural
soils also improve productivity and profitability, conserve the resource base and
protect the environment," say Chan et al.
We can expect that they will lift their current estimation a gross sequestration potential of 18 Mt CO2e/yr (equivalent to 11% of the total GHG emission) once they start testing Carbon Farming.

*Scoping Paper: Soil Organic Carbon Sequestration Potential for Agriculture in NSW
K Y Chan, A Cowie, G Kelly, Bhupinderpal Singh, P Slavich

A Complete Education On Carbon Farming - on DVD - stocks available NOW

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Tim, Ken, and Tony Shine Light On Cattle Carbon Concerns

Tim Wiley did not take a backward step when his research methodology came under attack from several scientists at the Cattle Council's Forum on Australian Beef Industry Policies relating to Climate Change. There were questions about including root matter in the carbon calculation, which Tim referred the audience to IPCC Guidelines (which few appeared to have read). Tim was beamed into the meeting in North Sydney from WA where he says his findings have created 'controversy' among colleagues. Ken Bellamy also proved to be one of the few who have read the revised CPRS white paper to discover the"Removal Unit". Tony Lovell brought a sense of sanity to proceedings by several injections of basic logic into the highly charged emotional atmosphere. The event was significant because it shows that the beef industry is willing to face the issue.


STIL AMUSING AND CONFUSING PEOPLE, Ken Bellamy speaking to Lucinda Corrigan, MLA Board Director,, while Bob Wilson of Evergreen Farming peers at the camera, Prof. Peter Grace is partly obscured, and Cattle Council Chairman Greg Brown enjoys the between-session light relief.

The Christine Jones story

ABC TV's Landline program featuring Christine Jones can be found here. The program gave Christine the platform to explain her theories and also to reveal the 'conspiracy' of inaction among research funding bodies who refused to support research trials to put her theories to the test. The Carbon Farming movement is under an unofficial ban, pushing it into a Catch 22 situation: The scientific establishment criticizes us for having no data. The scientific funding establishment reject every attempt to provide the data. This is why Christine has had to take the unprecedented step of seeking private funds.

Both Minister Burke and Prime Minister Rudd have said recently '"we need more research into soil carbon". WeI don't think they know what "more research" means. It has become clear to those of us working daily in the field that science is not going to provide the answer to the question of measurement for trading because it can't. At least, not by finding finer and finer degrees of accuracy in measuring fractions of carbon. The more accurate the individual reading, the more the issue of flux becomes more problematic. We don't need any more research that reveals hard it is to measure soil carbon, or research that focusses on the fractions of carbon in soil. They are irrelevant in a trading context. Total carbon is all that is required. Flux is irrelevant. What the market needs to know is the delta in total C between two points in time. They are purchasing the delta. Dr Brian Murphy made this statement at our last meeting and is preparing a paper on the subject.

Minister Burke and PM Rudd both believe that the research being done is the type that will make trade possible. (The farming community is also under this impression.) I believe they are all wrong. But I would love to be proved wrong.

The type of research we do need is that which measures the performance of real world "Carbon Farming" techniques in different climate zones so we can populate a suitable model with data. The current models are sadly out of date, a point Peter Fisher made recently. The reality of carbon sequestration remains invisible to science. At our Carbon Farming Conference in Orange last year Coonamble cropper Anne Williams reported a 1% difference in Carbon between land cropped with compost tea and land left uncropped. That’s 1% increase in a year. Spring Ridge cropper Cam McKellar reported a 0.5% lift in 9 months. And Gulgong cropper Col Seis reported a rise in soil C 1.8 – 4% in 10 years. (Col's case in being evaluated by Dr YN Chan.) We have Carbon Farmers with better results than these. But who is studying combinations of advanced grazing management and pasture cropping and compost teas or probiotic inoculants? Who is aware of them?

We also need innovation in the processes that make trade possible. The Measurement Issue is not something science can resolve. Tony Lovell has clearly demonstrated that we should be guided by the answer to the question "For what purpose?" when asking how accurate our measurement need to be. When the answer is "to give a buyer confidence", the degree of exactitude needed is different to that which is required for the purpose of scientific enquiry. Degrees of uncertainty are necessary for the 'risk/reward' device to operate as an essential mechanism forming a market. (We have a DVD of the presentations available.)

I remember Michael Robinson from Land & Water saying at Mick Keogh's event last March: "The Science is lagging the politics." Twelve months later is it still lagging? By how much?

We would like to know the following:

Q.1. How many research projects currently being pursued address the practical issues of carbon trading?

Q.2. How many projects focus on the rate of sequestration that can be achieved by land management techniques such as the following, as solus applications, and various combinations of these applications, across a range of climate zones? (Grazing Mnagement, Pasture Cropping, No-Kill Cropping, biological fFarming, Composting, compost teas,

Q.3. Have any proposals of the type mentioned have been submitted in the recent rounds which were rejected?


A MOMENTOUS OCCASION: Christine Jones at the meeting of the Carbon Coalition's Advisory Council on 5th May 2006, where Singapore-based businesswoman Rhonda Willson offered to fund her research - the beginning of the journey that will see the first cheques paid to farmers in the Australian Soil Carbon Accreditation Scheme exactly 3 years later, in May 2009. The Carbon Farming Movement owes both women a debt of gratitude.

IPCC puts soils on agenda

The Chairman of the IPCC, Dr Pachauri responded to the letter (below) from an international Grasslands Carbon Working Group with the news that the issue of soil sequestration will be tabled at the next meeting of the IPCC Bureau. The letter, signed by 18 scientists, soils experts, NGOs and farmers' organisations from North and South America, as well as China and Australia, argues the case for soil's inclusion in the international effort to cope with the onrush the symptoms of climate change, providing food security and landscape buffering, and driven by appropriate market mechanisms. It was the culmination of 4 days' discussions at Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The FAO was a signatory to both this letter and a Communique (attached) released by a similar group, the Conservation Agriculture Carbon Consultation & Working Group, after a 4 day meeting in LaFayette, Indiana, USA. (Countries included those above plus South Africa, India, and Morocco.) The FAO was co-sponsor for this event.

Both communications are setting the scene for a concerted effort at Copenhagen later this year.

(Hats off to the authors, led by Andrew Fynn and Andreas Wilkes. The letter is exquitely written.)
Grassland Carbon Working Group
Soil Organic Carbon is the Future Beneath Our Feet 26 January 2009
To: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
c/o Dr. R. K. Pachauri, Chairman

Civilizations rise and fall with the quality of their soils. Soil organic carbon is essential to soil health. We are given one more chance to learn the lesson of history. This time the stakes are higher – soil degradation is endemic to every continent and we have created a new, atmospheric, carbon crisis.
The presence of soil organic carbon can be the difference between life and death. Soils store twice as much carbon as global vegetation and the atmosphere combined. Loss of historic soil organic carbon due to degradative land use has been dramatic, resulting in poor soil fertility, environmental pollution, food insecurity and poverty. Soil organic carbon can and must be restored.
Excess carbon in the atmosphere is a pollutant; carbon in the soil is a valuable ecosystem commodity. Healthy plants are the agents of transformation, converting the former to the latter. We consider grasslands in order to illustrate the potential of soil carbon sequestration in all agricultural soils. Grasslands cover one third of the planet’s 149 million km2 of land surface. A small change in soil carbon across this vast sink will have an enormous effect on atmospheric carbon. A 1 percent absolute increase in organic matter of grassland soils would sequester 102 Pg of carbon, removing 375 Pg of CO2 from the atmosphere(i).
Assuming 20% adoption of improved grassland management systems and that it would take 20 years to achieve the above increase, grasslands can sequester 1 Pg of carbon or 3.75 Pg of CO2 per year in the form of soil organic carbon. This would be the equivalent CO2 sequestration from 1000 medium•sized coal•fired power plants! The changes in grassland management required to achieve this change are already known (optimized stocking rates, improved fertility management, management intensive grazing, etc.), are relatively inexpensive to implement, and are ready to be deployed across the globe.
The same 1 percent increase in soil organic carbon would increase soil water holding capacity by 144,000 liters per hectare, an increase in soil water storage that would dwarf the capacity of the world’s dams. As the driver of critical ecosystem functions, soil organic carbon is the gateway to other ecosystem services markets, which have the potential to drive human management activities towards global sustainability. The recently created USDA Office of Ecosystem Services and Markets is a signal – the time for action is now.
Poor soils result in poor people, many of whom live in places where climate change is already having the most extreme effects. Crucially though, the most degraded soils have the greatest potential for remediation. Soil carbon sequestration will have the greatest effect in places where humanity is most desperate. Poverty, climate change, and food security are inseparable issues. Mechanisms are in place to feed the hungry, restore ecosystems, and build economic resilience; we are morally obliged to use them. It is time to mitigate misery and improve the health of our planet.
A lesson requires a teacher. This lesson requires strong leadership from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The Fourth Assessment Report and other IPCC documents recognized that sustainable management of grasslands could increase sink activity, but conclude there are barriers to implementation. It is time to find solutions. One person’s barrier is another person’s design constraint. Many barriers can be viewed as factors in a decision•making process. For example, public•private partnerships can develop and initiate solutions to perceived hurdles. Defensible soil carbon sequestration values are likely to be discovered during and after project activities.
We do not have the luxury of observation nor the time to fathom the global consequences.
An urgent and pragmatic assessment of the role of soil carbon sequestration is overdue. Grasslands and all forms of agricultural soil carbon sequestration must be recognized as an important source of mitigation at the next meeting of the international conference of parties in Copenhagen, and this important mitigation strategy accordingly linked to financing mechanisms. We call on the IPCC to hold immediate talks to develop strategies for the implementation of soil carbon sequestration at full potential. On the basis of these talks, we encourage the formation of a new working group to meet prior to the meeting in Copenhagen in December and its action plan be reported at that time. We extend our assistance to the IPCC in this important matter.
Convergent crises provide unprecedented opportunities. The multi•functional nature of soil organic carbon provides answers to problems, which paradoxically in isolation may appear insurmountable.
Like the crisis, the opportunity is unprecedented.
The solution is in our hands.

1 Calculation: 4.9 billion ha x 10,000 m2/ha x 0.3 m soil (depth) x 1.2 Mg soil/m3 soil (bulk density) x 5.8kg carbon/Mg soil (soil organic carbon in 1% greater soil organic matter). This calculation assumes equal change among all grassland ecosystems, which is unlikely to occur, but used for simplicity and generality.

Working Group Members
Andreas Wilkes – World Agroforestry
Centre, Beijing, China
Constance Neely – Heifer International,
Little Rock AR, USA
Tiffany McCormick Potter – Equator
Environmental, New York NY, USA
Greg McCarty –Agricultural Research
Service, Beltsville MD, USA
Leslie Lipper – United Nations Food and
Agriculture Organization, Rome, Italy
Rattan Lal – The Ohio State University,
Columbus OH, USA
Michael Kiely – Carbon Farmers of
Australia, New South Wales, Australia
Cesar Izaurralde – Joint Global Change
Research Institute, College Park MD,
USA
Peter Holter – Holistic Management
International, Albuquerque NM, USA
Jim Hoey – Heifer International, Little Rock
AR, USA
Andrew Fynn, C-Restored, Marin County
CA, USA
Alan Franzluebbers, Agricultural Research
Service, Watkinsville GA, USA
Dale Enerson, National Farmers Union,
Jamestown ND, USA
Michael Ebinger – Los Alamos National
Laboratory, Los Alamos NM, USA
Peter Donovan – Soil Carbon Coalition,
Enterprise OR, USA
Richard Conant – Colorado State
University, Fort Collins CO, USA
Frank Aragona – Agricultural Innovations,
Albuquerque NM, USA
Maria Cristina Amezquita – International
Centre for Tropical Agriculture, Cali,
Columbia

The gathering was an initiative of Holistic Management International. Allan Savory and Jodie Butterfield attended. It was a privilege to be there.

Soil carbon and ADDITIONALITY: We're not in, so we're in!

"You could explore possibilities with soil carbon. It is not covered by Kyoto here and is therefore additional." Jaws dropped all around the two tables that the Soil Carbon contingent occupied at a recent "information session" staged by the Department of Climate Change to explain its position on a voluntary standard it is putting together. Convinced as we were by the tenor of the White paper and the paper on Voluntary Standards that the Government did not want a voluntary market, this revelation - out of the mouth of a very senior government official in a public forum - came as a shock. Additionality is the biggest of the 3 BIG CHALLENGES FOR SOIL CARBON: Additionality, Permanence and Measurement. W would not be so ungratefull as to suggest that it may have been the Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull's "Road to Damascus" conversion to soil carbon the week before that sparked this revival in our fortunes.

Roth C: Wake up and smell the fungus

IT'S WHAT GOES ON IN THE BUCKET THAT MAKES THE DIFFERENCE
A series of articles in the latest Australia Farm Journal call into question the usefulness of the Roth C model (in its current configuration) for predicting the soil C performance of soil. it ignores the contribution of microbial communities. The articles take a long look at "The hidden costs of soil carbon" - a short paper by 5 CSIRO scientists which 'proved' that landholders could not afford to grow humus because of the cost of Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Sulphur inputs. The paper was based on a premise that is widely believed in soil science community: that the carbon sequestration potential of a soil is limited to the amount of organic matter added, ie. stubble retained, manure spread "The current configuration of a soil carbon model called Roth C suggests there would need to be 20 to 30 tonnes/ha/yr of biomass input to achieve the higher carbon sequestration rates we have measured under some perennial grasses in the Northern Ag Region of WA.," says Tim Wiley from the Department of Agriculture & Food, WA. But, while putting on an additional 16 tonnes of soil carbon/ha under perennials (vs annuals), the measurements of above ground biomass have been only 10 tonnes/ha/yr. Had the hypothesis of the CSIRO paper been right, there should have been a shortage of plant available Phosphorous under the perennials, with the extra tonnes of carbon sequestered binding more than 300kg/ha. But plant available P increased by 43kg/ha. This increase in P was also experienced by Scott Macalman at Warren.

If Tim and Scott and Christine Jones's results are right, then the CSIRO Paper is misleading. Yet it was sent to 37,000 growers by the GRDC as part of its sustained campaign against the idea that farmers could ever be paid for growing soil carbon. The paper reveals that the analysis did not take into account the emerging knowledge of soil microbiology. (Some would say it's been around for years. But it has been ignored in favour of chemistry and physics.) It assumed that there could be no other source of nutrients than a bag from a fertilizer company. The formula for humus means you need 60kg of N, 12kg of P and 9kg of S for every tonne of humus you make. One of the paper's authors used this additional nutrient requirement to call into doubt Col Seis's 2% increase in soil carbon over 10 years. We blogged the initial response in September when the item appeared in "GroundCover", which usually has an anti-soil C sequestration article in each issue. But we also reported the huge natural source of nitrogen: the sky, in a blog in June last year. Attached below is the evidence we supplied at the time:

HUMUS TOO COSTLY TO GROW: CSIRO & GRDC (September 2008)

Free-living nitrogen-fixing bacteria and symbiotic fungi can release and make available to plants vast amounts of the N, P, and S locked up in the soil after years of over-application of fertilisers. A CSIRO Fact Sheet says: "We know the current amount of nitrogen fertilizer applied per year is about 100 Megatons of nitrogen. However, we do not have an accurate knowledge of the amount of nitrogen addition through nitrogen fixation, although estimates are between 50 and 200 Megatons of nitrogen per year."(1) A NSW Department of Primary Industries fact sheet says, "Rhizobium bacteria ... can fix 100kg of nitrogen per hectare per year." (2)

In 1998, a CSIRO team claimed that Australian agricultural soils may be holding up to $10 billion worth of phosphorus, as a result of fertiliser applications. "The rural industry spends $600 million each year on phosphate-based fertilisers, yet often only about 10 to 20 per cent of the phosphorus is directly used by plants in the year it is applied," said CSIRO Plant Industry researchers Dr Alan Richardson and Dr Peter Hocking (3). "The remaining phosphorus becomes locked-up in the soil," he said.

If the right bacteria and fungi are present, more nutrient means more growth, which means more microbial activity and more biomass to enrich the soil. "When phosphorus is scarce in soil, plants that have developed mycorrhizas on their root systems have greater access to and take up more phosphorous than others," according to the University of Western Australia's Soil Science Department.(4)

The belief that only by introducing organic matter from outside the system can organic carbon grow seems to dominate thinking in high places. But wasn't it superseded long ago? “Numerous studies have shown that the introduction of strains of [bacteria] into the rhizospheres of cultivated plants led to significant increases in grain yield as well as total dry matter... The stimulations observed are most likely due to the production of growth hormones by these bacteria." (5)

(1) http://www.csiro.au/resources/GlobalNitrogenFixation.html
(2) http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/41639/Microbes_and_minerals.pdf
(3) http://www.csiro.au/files/mediaRelease/mr1998/Raiding10BillionPhosphorusBank.htm
(4) http://www.soilhealth.segs.uwa.edu.au/components/fungi
(5) Davet, Pierrre, Microbial Ecology of the Soil and Plant Growth, 2004

FREE NITROGEN FERTILIZER (June 2008)

Soil organic matter (SOM) can supply much of your Nitrogen needs. “In cropping systems, as much as 50%-80% of the N can be supplied from SOM and nearly 100% of the N in native ecosystems,” writes Professor Charlie Rice in his book Soil Carbon Management. This percentage represents11-300kg N ha-1 for a crop*. At $1500/tonne for nitrogen fertiliser, this transates intoa value of $16.50-$450/ha/yr.

How can this be? Well Nitrogen, like Carbon, is mobile. It cycles. Most N in soils comes from the air and is absorbed by micro-organisms associated with legume plants. N is fixed by legumes and stored in the soil in organic forms, to be broken down by other microbes – via two processes: mineralisation and nitrification, via which it is transformed into ammonium and nitrate.**

Former NSW Department of Agriculture agronomist Adam Wilson told The Land that the best way to build up a N bank is to add carbon to soils. Management that builds C also builds organic N because both oproceses rely upon interactions between rootmass and microbes. He recommends adding organic carbon via composts, green manures or planned grazing, avoiding highly alkaline fertilizers which burn up C and humus, minimum tillage, and a legume or pasture rotation.***

*Smith, J.L., Papendick, R.I., Bezdicek, D.F., and Lynch, J.M., Soil organic matter dynamics and crop residue management, in Soil Microbial Ecology, Metting, F.B., Jr., Editor, Marcel dekker, Inc., New York, 1993, pp65-94.
** Charman, P.E.V., Soil Nutrient Decline in Charman, P.E.V. & Murphy, B.W., Soils: Their Properties and Management, Oxford U Press, 2000
*** The Land, 5 June 2008, p.8.