how long before we're all organic?

Kiwi Pete · Feb 17, 2019

egbert said:
I'm not much further forward now.
Active peat certainly 'grows' -circa 1mm per year locally.
Hence there are places nearby with 7mts of (post ice age) peat.
(apparently, the ground was scalped by almost glacial conditions, then as the climate warmed, treed up, then became waterlogged, then started growing peat...humans seem to have been implicated in the transition from trees to peat...maybe, allegedly)

I have looked, and can't see anywhere that is doing similar with more conventional topsoil.(happy to be shown....)
Ditto with long term forested ground.

To use soil to capture carbon sounds great -and building organic material must must be so much better than never ending tillage doing the opposite.
But once you get past a certain point, there doesn't seem to be much further gain.
I'd want to know how long before you get to this point?

Longer term, there can't be much benefit, beyond holding what you've already grabbed.

It doesn't resolve the carbon release from burning fossil carbon. It hardly tinkers with it.
hmm.
Happily it's way above my pay grade.

We have an area that was ploughed and then fenced in 2001 and now the bottom wire and bottom wire of the netting is approx 4.5 inches underground, and the markers I put in when I did my original soil testing are about 20mm deep in 2 years.
Luckily I can still find them with GPS.

Not sure how much more "benefit" will come from keeping on raising SOM but I'm willing to find out: it's risen by about 2% but the pH has also gone from 5.6 to 6.1, and water infiltration has increased by a factor of 5 from 21mm/hr to 130-150mm hr.

It must be literally tons of extra carbon, given that nearly 1000 tons of grass have been removed from the land in that time, plus lambs and beef etc also removed, over 100 acres.

In effect we all get paid for carbon sequestration by what we do as growers, the main payback is in what you save IMO because we have drains that seldom run, nurtients in the soil solution don't leach- they're all bound to carbon instead of each other.

For this type of soil, about 10%OM seems to be its tipping point where the changes occur from being 'farm soil' to natural soil - but that depends on Nitrogen.
We probably fix about 230kg/ha/year between the soil bacteria and the rhizobia on the legumes; that's calculated using software I do not understand, based on pasture growth and meat production information.

As @Agrispeed says it looked better when we were producing less, and also more in-line with what most others are doing.

We now have the resilience/flexibility to have more, better quality feed available when other farm systems are short: which does great things to profitability per acre and stress levels.

It's been a fantastic learning curve, for ten years ago I didn't believe it was possible to do most of what of what I described, it's been down to:

Eliminating ALL farm chemicals

Miles of electric fencing, at times all our stock are jammed together on very small areas and moved upto 5x a day, usually one or two moves; this uses up most of my hour per day, photography the balance

Having super-low costs which means being able to trade with greater advantage - we can offload in a dry spell and still make money, just less of it.. we make roughly 1£/ha profit per mm of rainfall

Having the big feed wedge means we can run heavily stocked for periods and then offload, playing the markets backwards makes a serious amount of money with clean hands

Huge infiltration rates opens the door for upto 7 sheep/ac over winter on conserved pasture, which doesn't lose quality due to being constantly "pruned from below" by the soil life

No resistance issues

Fewer health issues / deaths

We're currently looking towards putting a full technograzing system in 2/3 of the farm, 0.1ha paddocks and full water; to reduce make cattle/cover management faster and easier in future, I'd really like to get my time input down to 80hours/year including about 40 hours tending to housed cattle and my beehives.
But we really need to spend some money! Water pipes and wire it is, and then I can see what's left to buy trees.... which are my way of making the land unsuitable for machinery, in future

That leaves time for the important stuff - like getting on here, calling my brokers, reading bedtime stories, and public engagements.

glasshouse · Feb 17, 2019

Most of england used to be rented annually, up till ww2. That is where the extractive nature of uk farmers originates from .
You had to extract the maximum in your 12 month lease to meet the high rents, or you wouldnt get another year.
Scotland had leases of commonly 5 and 7 or up to 19yrs, slightly better but still no room for error.
Ww2 and the following acts further encouraged extractive ag, and anyone who refused in ww2 would have been evicted by govt food ministry

Kiwi Pete · Feb 17, 2019

glasshouse said:
Most of england used to be rented annually, up till ww2. That is where the extractive nature of uk farmers originates from .
You had to extract the maximum in your 12 month lease to meet the high rents, or you wouldnt get another year.
Scotland had leases of commonly 5 and 7 or up to 19yrs, slightly better but still no room for error.
Ww2 and the following acts further encouraged extractive ag, and anyone who refused in ww2 would have been evicted by govt food ministry

It certainly appears, in almost every way, to be opposite to down here.

If you farm like that, you basically end up evicting yourself within a generation, or are forced to enter the dizzy loop of expansion with money you may or may not have... it's worrying in many ways: firstly it's built on the premise that the land you own will continually increase in value, and secondly that the arse doesn't drop out of the commodity (or financial) markets - either of (both of which) are a matter of time, although nobody wants to see it happen.

It was quite visible in our dairy industry when cows suddenly dropped in value a couple of years back, the sharemilker's equity dropped below the threshold for their loans and it forced a scrabble - pretty minor by comparison to borrowing against overvalued land?

Again as you rightly point out, it wasn't purely subsidies that did that, you have ag policies, tax policies etc that haven't ever helped the man on the land as much as the laird

I'd love to see a decent ag revolution in Great Britain, in my lifetime, let the barstewards eat cake

egbert · Feb 17, 2019

Kiwi Pete said:
'1£/ha profit per mm of rainfall'............. what, annually?

I'm all up for that. My main block would be yielding £1.4- £1.8 million.
Tell you what, i don't think I'm man enough, so if you organise the contract labour and manage it, I'll give you 50% of this beanfeast.
We'll buy another farm a year next year, and 2 the following etc etc.
World domination should occur in time for my retirement.

'bottom wire of the netting is approx 4.5 inches underground, and the markers I put in when I did my original soil testing are about 20mm deep in 2 years'.
Are you sure the wire fence isn't being engulfed by alluvial/ runoff?
Are you sure someone hasn't run over the markers and pushed them down?

A sustained 1/4"/20mm per year growth in soil depth due to organic matter, made of carbon grabbed from atmosphere?
Sounds brilliant, and makes anyone arsing about on peatland/growing trees look a bit sick.
That's 200 cubic meters per hectare annually isn't it?
I'm not sure what the dry weight would be, but I'm guessing it's the kind of stuff which wouldn't have a very high dry weight. so 50 tonnes? 100 tonnes?
(and I'm never to sure how you weigh a tonne of atmospheric carbon dioxide....wouldn't spill out of the bowl on the kitchen scales?)
That certainly wallops the p*ss out of any other carbon capture projects I'm following.

Presumably, after a century of this management, your soil will be 2 meters thicker?
Or do you reach a plateau, like natural systems all seem to?
How long does that take? what is the max holding capacity?

Don't get me wrong Pete, I am all for this,
I actively lobby for my grass based/farm animal industry, and sit at tables with a lot of clever sciencey types....
.....but I need to see it in simple words and demonstrable results.

Kiwi Pete · Feb 17, 2019

It's a bit dark here for taking pictures, but I'll find my markers for you this week

Absolutely zero runoff here, as we have next to zero bare ground, and my markers are plastic lids which would simply spring back up if run over.
Not that I really drive around much...

It's just cover management, really, I "waste" an awful lot of grass each grazing and it slowly builds up and decomposes itself into humus - simple biomimicry, as this is how soils here were made (save for ruminants, as NZ megafauna were large flightless birds, hence no dungbeetles etc) by decomposition of plant material.

So we aim to push plenty down and only eat what we need, which is usually about 50-70% of what the stock are offered.

It's really difficult to end up with less, when your soils are making more soil - the main reason for the markers is because this normally happens more in areas that stock camp - I want this to happen everywhere on the ranch equally, hence the shift from whole paddock grazing to cell grazing - by bunching them up they trample so much more, and by moving them fast they don't have that same ability to overgraze as when they are in an area for days at a time.

This method has a huge impact on animal health, as they aren't picking around their own

for two days and getting parasites.

I'd imagine its the very reason the old boys carried rocks to make walls and small paddocks

Henarar · Feb 17, 2019

If the soil doesn't build up over time then why do time team always have to dig down ?
loads of the floors they dig up are way under what is ground level today

egbert · Feb 17, 2019

Henarar said:
If the soil doesn't build up over time then why do time team always have to dig down ?
loads of the floors they dig up are way under what is ground level today

ah-ha...good point.

Of course it's not that simple.
A lot of digs are on sites which have built up detritus...living waste, building materials et al.

We've got -back to Petes observations- loads of drystone walls with thousands of years of history ...really really, I'm pretty sure some of the inbye 200 meters from where I'm sat has got boundaries dating back to the Bronze Age, built on/over continually.
Little fields on some outlying parts, intensively managed in past times.
And here's thing.... there's nowhere on any of it where the soil is built up any thing like it should if we follow the logic.
the only depth of spoil over maybe 300mm is alluvial runoff, built up against walls etc.
the amount of ploughing has gone down in 70 years - we were forced to plough in WW2 but then signed off unploughable.

I don't buy all of these figures, and want the real deal to answer our critics.

Henarar · Feb 17, 2019

OK so how come topsoil is always on top ?

Hindsight · Feb 17, 2019

Henarar said:
OK so how come topsoil is always on top ?

Quite. And why is night soil only ever found in the dark, at night. All these questions.

Y Fan Wen · Feb 17, 2019

Scribus said:
Completely unrelated to farming but an interesting story of a product being 'spiked' is the fate of the Napier Sabre engine which powered the Hawker Typhoon in the latter stages of the war. I have come across a couple of tantalizing hints that Rolls Royce did it's best to promote the Merlin over the Sabre and screwed Napier in doing so, but trying to find any more on this tale leads to dead ends. Even the Wikipedia entry on the Typhoon barely mentions the engine that powered the aircraft and does so only to suggest that there problems with it's development. It also describes it as a 2,000hp engine when it actually produced 2,200hp. In its final configuration the Merlin produced only 1,240hp.

There is a story there but nobody seems willing to tell it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napier_Sabre
Any amount of detail there. 5,500hp, wow!

Henarar · Feb 17, 2019

Hindsight said:
Quite. And why is night soil only ever found in the dark, at night. All these questions.

put the topsoil under a few inches of subsoil and give it a few years and see where it is

egbert · Feb 17, 2019

Henarar said:
OK so how come topsoil is always on top ?

is it?
I've got several places I could show you strata where what was once on top has clearly been engulfed by runoff from further up.
We've got some places where the cattle have rubbed out on the rough, exposing where peat has been covered over with sandy stuff, which has clearly been eroded from further up the slope. (but not ploughed...ever)
Another spot nearby has what would appear to be alluvial peat layers, where peat has washed down and settled, rather than grown in situ.

Right in the yard there are trees growing like the clappers on 4' of alluvial -run off come down the drift lane, and fetched up against a wall. I'll bet the previous topsoil is mostly still under that lovely sandy stuff, less whatever the invertebrates have cycled up.

As a generality, i'm guessing the depth at which little wigglers are operating affects what can, or cannot be incorporated, and held, within soil.
Below their activities you might get stuff to sit undisturbed, but within it???
And I recall termites in Oz will go down many many feet looking for moisture.

there's surely more going on under my tootsies than I ken.

Scribus · Feb 17, 2019

Y Fan Wen said:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napier_Sabre
Any amount of detail there. 5,500hp, wow!

Ah, but there are plenty of loose strings as well. The story would appear to be of two conflicting technologies, poppet valve and sleeve valve, RR had obviously backed the former and Napier the latter. RR naturally wanted its version of the aero engine to be used by the armed forces and would no doubt look unkindly upon the competition, war is a big money making opportunity after all. It was the same in Germany, two aircraft companies chasing the prize of jet power and Heinkel actually got a plane in the air before Whittle did, but we now associate German wartime jet aircraft with Messerschmitt.

egbert · Feb 17, 2019

Henarar said:
put the topsoil under a few inches of subsoil and give it a few years and see where it is

we'll soon be onto why the paths round the church yard are often sunk into the ground.
now what is the poem referring to being 'under the mouldering sod'

glasshouse · Feb 17, 2019

Fences on ungrazd land soon disappear.
In victorian times they ploughed peaty top layers and burnt them.
This grew good crops for a while but the soil was goosed

glasshouse · Feb 17, 2019

Henarar said:
OK so how come topsoil is always on top ?

I have seen topsoil 3ft under clay, obviously pre ice age or pre tsunami.
Found a peat bog 3ft under clay as well.
When the soil was bare after the glaciers disappeared, the erosion must have been incredible

farmerm · Feb 17, 2019

ollie989898 said:
I don't see what there is to complain about.

If the powers that be ban all fertiliser and chemicals, the supply of product will be curtailed, you will produce less but also spend less and you will in all likelihood make as much money anyway. Are we that wedded to the idea that we need to be handing thousands to the makers of fertilisers and agrochemicals?

But Ollie, the supply will not be curtailed, more imports, grown cheaper, in less regulated regions, will fill the void. We will just spend 30% less on inputs for 50% less yield.

glasshouse · Feb 17, 2019

farmerm said:
But Ollie, the supply will not be curtailed, more imports, grown cheaper, in less regulated regions, will fill the void. We will just spend 30% less on inputs for 50% less yield.

Inputs will be 80% less

farmerm · Feb 17, 2019

glasshouse said:
Inputs will be 80% less

Your seed, cultivation’s, drilling, combining, insurance, hedgecutting, accountancy, banking, drainage etc etc are only 20% of your production costs?

If your fert and sprays account for 80% of your total costs are they giving you >80% additional yield over a no input system?

glasshouse · Feb 17, 2019

farmerm said:
Your seed, cultivation’s, drilling, combining, insurance, hedgecutting, accountancy, banking, drainage etc etc are only 20% of your production costs? If your fert and sprays account for 80% of your total costs are they giving you >80% additional yield over a no input system?

Inputs you said, not fixed costs.
50% yield at 100% premium is fine, with eventhe same costs.

how long before we're all organic?

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0 %

Up to 25%

25-50%

50-75%

75-100%

100% I’ve had enough of farming!

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