Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Alaska or bison on the American plains, multi stomached herds are always moving
onto fresh ground, following the cycles of grass.
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Salatin moves his cattle every day - 'my neighbours think I'm insane'. He points out that
as well as favouring grass growth 'short duration stays allow the animals to follow their
instincts to seek fresh ground that hasn't been fouled by their own droppings, which are
incubators for parasites'. Three days after the cows have left the patch, Salatin moves on
his chickens to pick out the maggots and the worms from the cowpats. His entire farm (like
any good farm) is a web of symbiotic relationships. The chickens also introduce fertility,
but that is another matter that I will come to in a minute.
Pollan goes on to explain how the regular grazing system brings more sunlight to
groundhugging clovers, and hence more nitrogen into the soil, increasing productivity:
The productivity means Joel's pastures will, like his woodlots, remove thousands
of pounds of carbon from the atmosphere each year, instead of sequestering all that
carbon in trees. However, grasslands store most of it underground, in the form of soil
humus. In fact grassing over that portion of the world's cropland now being used to
grow grain to feed ruminants would offset fossil fuel emissions appreciably. For ex-
ample, if the sixteen million acres (6.4 m ha) now being used to grow corn to feed
cows in the US became well-managed pasture, that would remove fourteen billion
pounds (6.4 Mt) of carbon from the atmosphere each year, the equivalent of taking
four million cars off the road.
The penultimate chapter of Dagget's
Gardeners of Eden
homes in on the same matter.
The black, spade-friendly, root-packed humus on the holistic side of the 30 Pollan, Michael
(2006),
Omnivore's Dilemma
, Bloomsbury, p 192. fence sequestrates far more carbon than
the compacted pan on the ungrazed side. Targeted grazing of cheatgrass means that it is
converted into manure and humus; continuous grazing or minimal intervention means that
it goes up in smoke. Dagget interviews a Utah rancher and consultant called Greg Simonds
who is developing a package of satellite mapping and computer monitoring techniques for
estimating the amount of carbon sequestrated on ranches. 'I've seen where carbon sequest-
ration has sold for about $25 a ton' says Simonds. 'A ranch, even in this dry country can
sequester about a ton of carbon per acre. Twenty-five dollars an acre, that's a very good
return for a rancher in this kind of country.'
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The only book I have found which attempts to explain the holistic cowboy's approach to
carbon farming comes from an Australian called Allan Yeomans (a lot of these mavericks
are called Allan for some reason). His father, PA Yeomans, developed a mathematically
ingenious system of contour ploughing, known as the Keyline system, and also manufac-
tured Australia's first chisel plough for breaking up the soil without turning it over - an
