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Regenerative Agriculture

Before my journey into the unknown, one of my loves was for farming, in the form of Permaculture.

I was born and raised on Oahu, in the Ahupua'a of Waimanalo, but just about every single summer I've gone to Kaua'i to help my grandparents with their bed and breakfast which is also a small farm. It was originally a passion of my grandmother to cultivate tropical flowers, to create arrangements, selling them, and also using them for wedding photoshoots.

You could say to an extent that farming is in my blood and bones. Every time I go back, I feel like I'm in the wild.

At a certain point, after studying nutrition, I decided to study a topic known as Permaculture which is an anagram? of Permanent Culture. All in all, what the philosophy is, was to observe the ancestral teachings of cultures around the world, consolidate their information, and synthesize it all together to form something that overlapped: with every overlapping representing a core philosophy about how humans work best with the land.

The book in a lot of ways changed my life, because it confirmed a lot of the intuitive feelings that I had about farming. I knew it was hard, but I also knew that the way that we currently farm using large machines, fertilizers, and pesticides were just not exactly aligned with these core teachings.

This sort of shift in farming philosophy has happened as a result of a LOT of different factors. Overall, the goal of large scale farming is to produce the most amount of food possible from the land given on a consistent basis to feed the ever growing population.

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As a result, some of the shifts revolve focus on use, rather than sustainable land-stewardship:

  1. Maximizing use of land (Plant/Animal per unit area)
  • Removing "non-productive" plants
  • Large scale machines
  1. Consistency of product (Production/Quality)
  • Fertilizers
  • Pesticides/herbicides

The downsides of the use of fertilizers and pesticides/herbicides:

  1. Damage to soil
  • Leading to barren land over time
  • Increasing top soil loss
  • Decreasing soils retention of water
  • Decreasing soils retention of nitrogen
  1. Increase use of fossil fuels
  • Fossil fuels are used to extract, purify, and transport these tools of cultivation.
  1. Damage to environment to extract the fertilizers
  • The production itself of these chemicals can sometimes lead to toxic byproducts
  1. Overall harm to local environment
  • The use of these chemicals typically have to consistently be used because they do not stay in the soil (that has been damaged, and will not as easily retain the chemicals.) This can lead to chemicals getting into the ground water and/or going out to sea, causing algae blooms for example.
  1. Harm to consumers (which is usually only addressed decades later, after accumlation of chemicals has occured.) -DDT, and Glyphosate could be listed.

The downsides of removing non-productive plants:

  1. Loss of crumb structure which retains moisture and nutrients in the upper layers for use by most plants grown (carbon sequestration)

The downsides of using large scale farming equipment:

  1. Compression of soil leads to the temporary disruption of crumb structure which leads to anaerobic soil conditions. -Soil aeration practices help to fix this factor using things like subsoilers, and surface level bed-makers to create more opportunities for water to naturally re-create these pockets for air to exist in the soil.

-non-productive plants also serve this purpose, as we see with "weeds" which grow in barren soil. From these weeds, comes more and more "productive plants", but cannot exist without this process ensuing on damaged land.

Overall, because of these things, I propose the use of carbon negative farming which has been established as a practice involving animals to graze barren land, re-introducing plant material into the ground, and allowing for land to grow back to its original potential.

Secondly, I propose the use of permaculture to create food systems that emulate ancient practices, while holding on to our current modern innovations such as large scale machines, allowing for large scale cultivation in a more coherent way with nature, and as a result, humanity.

Carbon Negative Ranching

https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_fight_desertification_and_reverse_climate_change

Philosophy:

  1. Cell Grazing

    By creating "paddocks", we mimic natures natural ebb and flow of the fight between herbivores, and predators. Herbivores in nature graze, eating in an area, and then are shifted to another to run away from predators, allowing for the land that was grazed, to regenerate.

    The theory is that grass that has stopped growing, can be influenced to grow taller, by cutting off the top half or so, avoiding trimming the grass to the ground, and as such, will continue to grow taller if this style of cycle is repeated, and can be applied to many other plants.

  2. Smaller Ungulate Breeds

    Similar to the impact that large machines can have on the land, the use of larger animals also increases soil compaction, and leads to a reduction in soil aeration which slows the recovery, and growth rate of plants on the land. By picking animals that are smaller, we prevent this.

    In theory, this also allow for hoove's to create holes in the ground which pool water. One representation would be similar to a soil aerator machine, which punches holes into the ground. This allows for pooling of water to occur, which plants surrounding the hold, can then take advantage of at the expense of the hole's slower growth. This has not been confirmed.

    This emulates something known as edge theory in the permaculture world, which specifies that life grows on edges. These "edges" are really anything that is transitionary in nature, and "moderate" either in terms of water balance, sun balance, wind balance, etc. The more "edge" there is, the more opportunity for growth. for example: layers of cardboard hold more water than a single layer. A plant may be more likely to grow next to a wall than planted on its own in an open field. life begets life also in this way, and we can observe this in many other farming practices.

https://publications.lib.chalmers.se/records/fulltext/244566/local_244566.pdf "The two research portfolios published by the Savory Institute (Savory Institute, 2013c, 2104a) contain in total 40 unique publications of both scientific and non-scientific character. The methodology for data collection is field measurements or interviews/survey; approximately half of the studies use the former and half of studies the latter. It should be noted that in terms of the effects of soil and vegetation, field measurements are more reliable than interviews. It should also be noted that longer measurement series from larger areas or more test sites generally increase the quality of the data, since spatio-temporal variations are evened out. Based on this, it is clear from Table 3.1 that the scientific evidence included in the Savory research portfolio is rather limited; only six of the eleven studies have collected data through field measurements. The largest number of farms included is fourteen and the longest time period is three years. "

Research:

  1. Earl and Jones (1996) "Earl and Jones (1996) studied the vegetation on three farms in Australia and reported that the basal diameters, relative frequency and contribution to dry weight of the most desirable and palatable species at each site remained constant or increased under holistic grazing (called cell grazing in this paper), while declining significantly under continuous grazing. The inverse was true for the least palatable components of the pasture, which declined significantly under holistic grazing but did not change much under continuous grazing. Percentage ground cover was significantly higher after two years of holistic grazing than under continuous grazing."

  2. Ferguson et al. (2013) "Ferguson et al. (2013) studied holistic and conventional cattle ranching in the seasonally dry tropics of Chiapas, Mexico.

When comparing seven holistically managed farms with 18 conventional farms, they found higher soil respiration, deeper topsoil, increased earthworm presence, more tightly closed herbaceous canopies (all p<0.05), and marginally higher forage availability (p=0.053) in holistically managed farms. However, they did not find any significant differences in soil compaction, soil chemistry and pasture tree cover between farms. Further, they found that holistically managed farms had statistically significantly denser vegetation on the pastures (measured both as ground-level gaps and herbaceous canopy gaps) compared to farms with conventional grazing. Forage availability was on average 46% higher on holistic pastures than on conventional pastures, but due to large variations over time, this difference was not statistically significant. With regard to the composition of plant species on pastures no statistically significant difference between holistic and conventional farms was found."

3.Manley et al. (1995) "Manley et al. (1995) studied rangeland soil carbon and nitrogen content between five different grazing systems, including holistic grazing and no grazing, on one farm in Wyoming, USA. The different grazing systems had been implemented eleven years before measurements began. The study found that grazing had positive effects compared with no grazing, but no significant differences between the grazing systems were found. Grazed land had statistically significantly higher levels of carbon and nitrogen in the upper 30 cm compared to land not grazed, but the difference was relatively small and concentrated to the top 8 cm of the soil."

4."With regard to soil biota, Teague et al. (2011) found that land grazed holistically had higher ratio of soil fungi and bacteria than the other systems, which was considered to contribute to better water holding capacity and nutrient availability."

"Furthermore, they found that grazed lands had lower penetration resistance, higher soil moisture (% water) and lower sediment loss (g per m2 ) compared to land with heavy continuous grazing (all results are statistically significant). However, they did not find any differences between holistic and light continuous grazing for these parameters."

One confounding factor that should be discussed, is that continuous grazing when done with less animals leads to similar results as rotational grazing. This is because the land is still allowed to rest. In this way, some who are talking about these studies end up mis-representing the claims which are context specific to this. The goals are to not only improve sustainability, biodiversity, and soil health, but within the lense of replacing modern farming practices and following the modern farming philosophy of:

  1. Maximize use of land
  2. Ensure consistency of product

"According to Holechek et al. (2000), these review studies came to very similar conclusions, namely that (selected conclusions): 1) there are no large differences between continuous and short-rotation grazing with regard to range conditions and livestock production, 2) grazing intensity is the most important factor determining long-term effects on vegetation, livestock and financial returns."

First I will grab information on co2/ch4 trends, and cattle co2/ch4 production, then correlate.

  1. https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/gl_data.html
  2. https://gml.noaa.gov/webdata/ccgg/trends/ch4/ch4_mm_gl.txt Then I will look at carbon sequestration.
import pandas as pd
global_co2_levels = pd.read_csv('co2_trend_gl.csv')

df1 = pd.DataFrame(global_co2_levels)

df1['date'] = pd.to_datetime(df1[['year','month','day']])
df1
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import seaborn as sns

sns.scatterplot(data = global_co2_levels, x = 'date', y= 'smoothed', label= 'actual')
sns.lineplot(data = global_co2_levels, x = 'date', y= 'trend', label = "trendline")
plt.legend()
plt.title('Mean NOAA Co2')
plt.xlabel('Year')
plt.ylabel('ppm')
plt.show()
import pandas as pd
global_ch4_levels = pd.read_csv('Ch4.csv')

df2 = pd.DataFrame(ch4_data)
df2['date'] = pd.to_datetime(df2[['year','month']].assign(Day=1))

df2

#data points are few enough to just use the local graphing tool

"Terrestrial ecosystems have historically lost large amounts of carbon Soils hold large amounts of carbon. Temperate grasslands and tropical savannas occupy 3.5 billion ha and store more than 600 billion tonnes of C, of which nearly 87% in the soil"

#CH4 world avg from cattle
#https://www.statista.com/statistics/1261318/cattle-methane-emissions-worldwide/

CH4 from pasture raised cattle vs feedlot(conventional)

reference: http://newzealmeats.com/blog/grain-fed-vs-grass-fed-beef-greenhouse-gas-emissions/

Greenhouse gas emissions from raising cattle can come from two sources: the cattle releasing methane through digestion and the production and transportation of feed for the cattle.

Grass-fed cattle produce 20% more methane in their lifetime than grain-fed cattle because they emit more methane when digesting grass and take longer to reach market weight. However, grass-fed cattle may have lower net emissions due to carbon sequestration through the new growth of pasture and the trapping of carbon dioxide in healthy soil.

Grain-fed cattle contribute more to greenhouse gas emissions due to the high output of fossil-fuel energy in producing grain (corn) for their feed.

Based on industry estimates, the average grain-fed animal consumes 15-24lbs of feed per day, with at least 70% of that being corn, releasing 2.4-7.2lbs of carbon from feed production alone per day.

One animal eating corn feed for three months releases around 201.6lbs of carbon, equivalent to planting nine trees that live for at least ten years.

In 2011, 33.5 million head of cattle were harvested in the US and if 32,495,000 of those were fed corn, 292,455,000 trees would need to be planted to offset the feedlot corn from one year's worth of grain-fed beef.

Grass-fed beef may represent 3% or less of all U.S. beef sales.

The impact of CH4 vs Co2

ref: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/overview-greenhouse-gases#methane

"Pound for pound, the comparative impact of CH4 is 25 times greater than CO2 over a 100-year period.1"

How can we quantify the amount of carbon sequestered by cattle into the ground?

We would have to take the total feed conversion rate, and then determine from the excess, what is carbon, and re-incorporated into the soil.

From that, we would then have to correlate the difference between what is consumed, and what is released back into the air as methane/co2 from the cow to see if it is positive or negative.