Get Energy Smart! NOW!

A few days ago, guest poster Jill Richardson brought us exciting news with the question “Can Organics Save Us from Global Warming?” Jill excitedly brought news of a new study from the Rodale Institute entitled REgenerative ORganic Farming: A Solution to Global Warming. After now having taken the time to read this report, it seems Jill’s excitement might not be so worth seconding, and actually to perhaps seek to dampen it a little bit.

The report lays out what seems to be a sensible explanation a path toward a far more climate friendly, a much more profitable, and somewhat more productive agriculture system. There long-term research provides quite real and substantive information about productivity implications in the fields; the financial benefits for going ‘organic’; the potential large scale benefits; and core challenges to achieving greater results.

Perhaps the greatest challenge arena: knowledge and education:

Rodale Institute’s experience in training thousands of farms from around the world has proven that the shift to regenerative farming practices is both doable and practical. It’s the decision to change that’s hard.

These words could fit for almost every arena of the challenge for moving toward an Energy Smart future, as the obstacles are almost always not the real, ‘number-crunching’ implications but creating the pressure and momentum for change to more efficient energy technologies and practices.

Government farm policy must be transformed in a way that incentivizes farms and drives behavioral change toward wide-scale adoption of regenerative farming practices. Success requires a sustained, multi-faceted national public education campaign, training for farmers in regenerative agricultural methods and legislative action.

Again, all too familiar a set of challenges.

Now, to be clear, this does not look to provide “a solution” (not a Silver Bullet) but Rodale’s work seems to provide a clear statement as to something that could be “part of the solution path” (e.g., a Silver BB) toward Global Warming and other challenges before us.

The problem, however, is that there is competing work and competing analysis. Being reminded of this, as quoted by Joe Romm, “Tillage and soil carbon sequestration–What do we really know?” (pdf)

In essentially all cases where conservation tillage was found to sequester C[arbon], soils were only sampled to a depth of 30 cm or less, even though crop roots often extend much deeper. In the few studies where sampling extended deeper than 30 cm, conservation tillage has shown no consistent accrual of SOC [soil organic carbon], instead showing a difference in the distribution of SOC, with higher concentrations near the surface in conservation tillage and higher concentrations in deeper layers under conventional tillage.… Long-term, continuous gas exchange measurements have also been unable to detect C gain due to reduced tillage. Though there are other good reasons to use conservation tillage, evidence that it promotes C sequestration is not compelling.

Okay, so it is clear that organic / conservation tillage makes sense for many reasons, there is uncertainty (however) as to whether carbon sequestration benefits are part of this.

The Rodale report is worth the read. It makes a claim that “practical organic agriculture, if practiced on the planet’s 3.5 billion tillable acres, could sequester nearly 40 percent of current CO2 emissions.”

Some interesting data/points from the report:

Economic benefits

Sequestration data