HOLISTIC COWBOYS AND CARBON FARMERS - MEAT: A Benign Extravagance - page 237

important element of arable soil carbon sequestration. Allan Yeomans' 2005 book Priority
One is a rollicking good read if you like challenging ideas; but his contention that all of
the excess carbon in the atmosphere can be sequestered in the soil through organic carbon
farming would be more convincing if some of the facts and figures were backed up by ref-
erences. It would be even more convincing if the longest chapter in the topic did not consist
of a 150 page-long conspiracy theory explaining how virtually every environmental cam-
paign, from land rights struggles against hydroelectric dams to the use of bicycles in cities,
is funded and promoted by the fossil fuel industry, in order to detract attention from the
real short term solution - carbon sequestration. His attack on 'the slogan dominated cult
of rainforest protection' and his proposal to replace a massive chunk of the Amazon with
sufficient sugar cane plantations to power the entire American car- fleet sits uneasily with
his uncompromising insistence on organic farming. Politically he is to the right, brandish-
ing a contempt for land rights and a conviction that the imperial nations did not exploit the
resources of other countries but 'pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps'. Perhaps
it is because he is an embarrassment that Graham Harvey, who seems to share Allan Yeo-
mans' belief that soil sequestration on its own can solve global warming, doesn't mention
him in his own book, The Carbon Fields , referring instead to Yeomans' brother, Ken, and
their father.
Allan Yeomans argues that to reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmo-
sphere from the current 380 parts per million to below 300 ppm we would have to remove
about 167 billion tonnes of carbon. For this to be sequestered in the world's five billion
hectares of arable and grazing land, each hectare would have to absorb, on average, an
extra 32.8 tonnes of carbon. This is the equivalent of converting 1.6 per cent of the top
12 inches of soil into organic matter. 32 These figures are consistent with those given by
mainstream experts such as Dr Rattan Lal, of Ohio University. 33 It doesn't sound like a
massive amount, and according to Yeomans it is easily achievable through a three pronged
approach:
• organic farming, because chemical nitrogen not only fails to introduce organic
matter in the form of manure, but also restricts the fungal and bacterial activity that
provides humus; 34
• 'controlled overgrazing', in the manner described by Voisin and Savory; • the use of
subsoil ploughs because
'the one thing the animals can't do in the development of soil is to loosen up the
ground to let in air and rain as easily as can a wise farmer with a chisel plough or
subsoiler.' 35
The potential benefits of organic farming and minimum tillage in respect of sequestering
carbon are widely (though by no means universally) acknowledged, and the only element
in Yeoman's recipe that might be viewed as wacky is the 'controlled overgrazing'. In this