Will we be ploughing for re seeding in the future?

Humble Village Farmer

Member
BASE UK Member
Location
Essex
I admit, if something falls over in the wood now I tend to leave it to rot if I don't need it to heat the house. Suddenly somebody like myself who would once be called a lazy barsteward is now at the cutting edge of carbon sequestration.🤣 And it's not a mess, its carbon sequestration in progress. I might get a sign made up to stick on it.
I find myself in the same situation. It's a completely different way of thinking to the clear it up and burn it mentality we grew up with.
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
What worries me is that carbon credits will be bought up by people and corporations so they can carry on their profligate activities, polluting the world into an uncertain future as they go.

I'll be quite happy with some modest government incentives to reduce my carbon footprint , including some disincentives like a carbon tax, if it helps.
I'd be happier with a whacking great tax on aviation fuel TBH. Choke off the problem at source, rather than excuse its continuation because somebody has planted a couple of trees.
Why not stop burning fossil fuels AND sequester carbon? That would be better than nett zero. We would be making real progress. Probably bring on an ice age or something.
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
I find myself in the same situation. It's a completely different way of thinking to the clear it up and burn it mentality we grew up with.
And what of the people who hire a wood chipper with a big diesel engine to make it look tidy? Not much gain there is there? Burning diesel to sequester carbon?
But all that trash laid about is a fire risk and home for Mr Rat though. That's why the oldies burnt it up good and tidy. Different mentality.
If you take it to extremes, maybe flytippers are saving the planet rather than good citizens who send rubbish to the incinerator where they use a bit of irreplaceable fossil fuel gas to turn it all into carbon dioxide. Maybe if we didn't buy so much trash in the first place.......and on it goes. Jesting, but we will do what we can.
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
Do you have to do soil samples to prove increased organic matter or is it implied if you undertake certain farming practices?

some schemes use soil sampling and others are “desktop” ie based on farming practice / system

som testing is not consistent or good enough to really mean a lot yet imo where as there is good data around the relative sequestration potential of various farming systems
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
I'd be happier with a whacking great tax on aviation fuel TBH. Choke off the problem at source, rather than excuse its continuation because somebody has planted a couple of trees.
Why not stop burning fossil fuels AND sequester carbon? That would be better than nett zero. We would be making real progress. Probably bring on an ice age or something.

if you get beyond the headlines aviation is t as bad as you would think iirc

easy to blame others but we are all consumers and as bad as anyone else really as individuals, the fact we communicate right now on Chinese build devices powered by servers and network for example
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
if you get beyond the headlines aviation is t as bad as you would think iirc

easy to blame others but we are all consumers and as bad as anyone else really as individuals, the fact we communicate right now on Chinese build devices powered by servers and network for example
The fuel burnt by the aviation industry is pretty awesome on anybody’s scale, I’d say. And a lot of it isn’t exactly essential use. There is so much that could be done to avoid such profligate usage. Better holiday resorts in the UK for one thing. No need to spoil people’s fun by reducing fuel usage, just more imaginative solutions needed than loading up with 150 tonnes of kerosene every trip.
 

oil barron

Member
Location
Aberdeenshire
You do a bank robbery and for £20k I’ll do your prison sentence. Irreplaceable fossil fuel burning won’t be made right by sequestration. It might help the rich appease their conscience but in some ways this is wrong as will just mean they carry on burning fossil fuel with impunity.
All very well in theory, but in reality the consumption of fossil fuels is not going down. The transition is going to take 20 years and building out the infrastructure for it is going to consume a significant amount of fossil fuel. So if you believe in climate change and the immediacy of the threat, then sequestration has to be part of the solution and consumers are going to have to pay for it. The sequestrstion needs to be incremental, real, measurable and permanent though.
 

oil barron

Member
Location
Aberdeenshire
Are we allowed to put links up? If so I think this explains it fairly well.


So there is great potential, if you are starting from a low base, which will level off after some decades. Good. We can do it, if it fits our system.
Do we really need to be paid to do? Well that's a different argument.
My sandy low OM field is therefore probably a bigger asset than my 200 year old wood which has reached saturated OM level.

That link was really good. Folks should read it if they are interested in the subject.
 

beltbreaker

Member
Location
Ross-shire
@hoff135 Can hire you a direct drill if you want to experiment, was up your way Saturday.😎

Been doing it for 10 years now, works well in dry years we have had a few hiccups along the way. But had a couple of failures with ploughing.
Although James Hutton have found that with DD and ploughing in Scotland Carbon release is much more equal.... Not a lot of people know that🤷‍♂️🤫
 
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Old apprentice

Member
Arable Farmer
The season in the area where I am does not lend it's self to cover cropping to short a window from harvest to getting ww or wb in some times when we or if we get usual weather . Late sept or oct it can justake set on and rain.
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
That link was really good. Folks should read it if they are interested in the subject.
Stumbled across it on Google. Clear and well written. Interesting that a huge amount of nitrogen will also need to be added to the soil to maintain the right C to N ratio for a healthy soil biology. (We used to call combined C and N “farmyard manure”)
Nothing is ever quite as straightforward as it first appears. But in general building soil OM is a good thing on many levels, though admittedly a bit of a nightmare to predict and measure.
Fascinating that you are injecting CO2 into underground storage. Presumably pumped down as a gas? Equally can you be certain it won’t leak or dissolve in groundwater and escape? Will it get to enough pressure to solidify underground? How would the latent heat get out.? I’m no geologist as you can tell!
 

oil barron

Member
Location
Aberdeenshire
Stumbled across it on Google. Clear and well written. Interesting that a huge amount of nitrogen will also need to be added to the soil to maintain the right C to N ratio for a healthy soil biology. (We used to call combined C and N “farmyard manure”)
Nothing is ever quite as straightforward as it first appears. But in general building soil OM is a good thing on many levels, though admittedly a bit of a nightmare to predict and measure.
Fascinating that you are injecting CO2 into underground storage. Presumably pumped down as a gas? Equally can you be certain it won’t leak or dissolve in groundwater and escape? Will it get to enough pressure to solidify underground? How would the latent heat get out.? I’m no geologist as you can tell!
Pumped in as a gas and will stay as a gas or go into solution with the formation water. It’s very heavily regulated. Requires the geology to be correct with an impermeable seal, the casing has to be super duplex steal as the formation water turns acidic with dissolved CO2 and the cement has to include fly ash for the same reason. Then you have to drill monitoring wells into the groundwater above the seal to measure for any increase in CO. You also have to take liability from the state.

The interesting part of that article was that if your direct drilled crop is producing less biomas then it is sequesting less carbon than a conventional tilled crop which probably explains beltbreakers point above about Scotland. Also if you have been DD a while and you have a high OM surface layer but a Sandy soil then deep ploughing will allow the soil to incorporate more OM and hence CO2.
 

Sid

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
South Molton
i’m selling ISO accredited carbon certificates

i believe the qty is calculated quite pessimistically and then only 80% sold to provide margin for error

if you want details speak to Thomas at Gentle Farming who i’m sure will explain the detail
The process is ISO certified so I'm sure it's credible - its not "just" no-till however - its the entire farming system that calculated the carbon capture you have to sell

Pessimistic
Margin of error


and the we get ISO certified?


Sounds like it's made up and could come back and bite you on the ass .....and bank account big time!
 

farmerm

Member
Location
Shropshire
The disturbance and exposure to the atmosphere boosts aerobic biological activity and the carbon from all the extra activity is lost as Co2 in the process.
But does that aerobic biology not also help mineralise nutrients that ultimately produce higher crop yields? Higher yielding crops sequester more carbon both above and below ground, does higher yields not offset and additional Co2 released in soil inversion. Frankly some none inversion tillage systems boost aerobic activity just as much as ploughing..!
 

delilah

Member
Although James Hutton have found that with DD and ploughing in Scotland Carbon release is much more equal.... Not a lot of people know that🤷‍♂️🤫

The interesting part of that article was that if your direct drilled crop is producing less biomas then it is sequesting less carbon than a conventional tilled crop which probably explains beltbreakers point above about Scotland. Also if you have been DD a while and you have a high OM surface layer but a Sandy soil then deep ploughing will allow the soil to incorporate more OM and hence CO2.

I would suggest that the above - and i'm sure that there is plenty more to be learned on the subject - makes the below bang out of order.

crazy to even consider doing it in 2021 or that its still legal given the clear present state of our climate

surely only a lunatic would continue to damage their own environment ?

There really is no need to plough though and there is no doubt that it is responsible for a LOT of pollution
 

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quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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