carbon

Thinking through some of what I saw on my walk yesterday leads directly to the difference between annual and perennial plants. If the legumes I saw in their greenery on March 12^th are photosynthesizing, and they must be, and if the grasses surrounding them were green perhaps a month longer last fall, say until November 15^th after the first hard frost which pushed the legumes into dormancy on about October 15^th, then there are things we can say. One is that annual plants live between whenever they can be planted in spring, generally about May 15^th here until the first hard frost, when they really do die. The goal of an annual plant is not to live on itself but to produce seeds which will start growth in the future.

It is also important to point out that the perennial planting I saw was in both cases diverse. More than one species was present. In the case of the pasture it may have been fifteen or twenty. Even the hay field was seeded with two legumes and three grasses.

Perennial swards photosynthesize for three months longer than do the annuals. This is important. It is not just the perennial, but the diversity of perennials that outperforms the annuals. And they do, harvesting sunlight for eight months per year instead of five, a sixty percent improvement.

What is happening here might be called the carbon pathway. It is how the cycle of life works. Sugars and carbohydrates are manufactured from CO2 and the sun and sent via the plant into the roots and thence partially to the soil life, which in turn helps the plant to access minerals in the soil and grow. Researchers often call this product “liquid carbon” and its movement is critical to plant growth. When plants “sequester” carbon they are helping clean our excess carbon out of the atmosphere and installing it in the soil, where a certain amount of it originated due to agriculture’s traditional over reliance upon the plow.

March

The day could not have been more typically March as I angled across the pasture, climbed the fence and headed for the hay field where the water was standing.  A strong cold wind blew, clouds mostly covered the sky with just a few peeks of sun.  And once again I was cheered by the scene under my feet.  In both the pastures and the hay field, green was showing.  Those clover and, in the hay field, alfalfa plants were a bright intense green nestled as they were in beds of just greening grass with water puddles and leftover snow drifts scattered about.
Unless we go to look, we don't see this.  From the edge the fields still look winter dead.  They are not.  And I wonder if they really are in winter, at least when it comes to perennial plants.
There are differences.  You are apt to get mud on your feet in the hay, where you will not most areas in the pasture.  This is because the roots in the pasture are very much more developed; consequently you are walking on plant material left over from last year.  There is little in the way of bare ground.  This is usually not true in the hay seeding, where the roots, though perennial, have typically not had as many seasons to develop.
What always startles me about this is that the first parts of the pasture sward to go dormant in the fall, after the first hard frost, are also the first plants to show a vibrant green in the spring.  Legumes evidently operate in a somewhat different season than the grasses that are just now losing their dusty green aspect and clothing themselves in spring green. 

free market

John Ikerd, professor emeritus in agriculture economics at Missouri has this to say:
"People brag about the free market.  But we have central planning here.  It's just not by government.  It's by corporations."

climate

It is doubtful that conventional agriculture can or will move fast enough in response to climate deterioration.  Certainly this can be said of other elements of the economy also, and for similar reasons.  Farmers have a great deal invested in the continuation of business as usual.  Expensive lines of machines suited to one kind of farming only will weigh heavily on farmer response.
This being the case, we should perhaps question the wisdom of the continuous buttressing of farming as usual, from government sponsored crop and income insurance to the targeting of government payments and University research into livestock concentration and annual crops.  It is the younger farmers, few that they are, those kept out by these economic and social cushions for established farmers, that are apt to see their way to the kind of change necessary.  A farmer with forty years experience and a machine investment in the millions will go over the cliff before considering any kind of perennial production, taking much and many with him. 

water cycle

Carbon movement and the water cycle move in tandem one with the other.  The extra humidity we have been experiencing is a direct result of an impaired water cycle.  There is too much water (humidity) in the air and it acts as a greenhouse gas, making our climate situation worse.  But the humidity is high at least in part because our soil holds much less water than it should.  This is because of our shrinking level of organic matter.  Since soil OM is about fifty eight percent carbon on average, we can say that if our carbon movement was more favorable-that is, away from the air and toward the soil-our water cycle would be improved because more of it would be held in the soil; estimates are that every one percent increase in soil organic matter means that 20000 more gallons per each acre can be held in the soil.

It is within our ability to improve the level of soil organic matter.  We must reduce tillage, keep the soil covered (armor on the land),keep roots in the soil year around-preferably perennial roots, and do what we can to get livestock back on the land, particularly the ruminants-cattle and sheep.  This allows plants to sequester carbon and thus increase the level of organic matter.  Climate change is serious, but we are not helpless.

Christine Jones

The best national health policy is good agricultural policy. This is as true for us in the US as it is for Australia, where Jones is located.  Her work is much about the impacts of modern agriculture and climate upon the nutrient density of our foods.  Go to "Amazing Carbon.com" for a look at her research and writing.