It is nice to see that they are
paying attention. I believe though that
the important quick fix remains the implementation of the biochar protocol to
both increase soil carbon and general nutrient retention.
It is good to see the attention
been also paid to supporting the hydrological cycle.
The combination can restore soil
vitality everywhere and through back dry lands to at least historical
reaches. Australia
In the meantime, paying attention
to natural cycles should be a given and imitated as much as possible while also
been careful to take the right lessons from it all.
Natural Sequence Farming.
by Staff Writers
Improving land management and farming practices in
Natural Sequence Farming is a descriptor used when sustainable
agriculture mimics the once highly efficient functions of the Australian
landscape. NSF pioneer Peter Andrews of Denman in New South Wales and
coordinator of the NSF movement, Duane Norris of Hardy's Bay, New South Wales
Agricultural practices such as clearing, burning, plowing, draining,
and irrigation, have become commonplace across the Australian continent, as
they have elsewhere.
Their effect on the organic carbon content of soil has led to a decline
in soil quality across farmland on the continent with levels currently a tenth
of what they were 200 years ago prior to the major European settling of
Australia.
Andrews and Norris point out that this has had implications for
atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and will continue to impact on global warming
if farming practices are not modified.
"Soils hold twice as much carbon as the atmosphere, and three
times as much as vegetation," the team explains, "But carbon in soil
exposed by common agricultural practices
leads to the oxidation of the carbon and the release of carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere."
Estimates suggest that soils that once contained carbon matter 4,000 to
10,000 years old, are now holding carbon that is a mere two years old because
poor management of livestock grazing leaves soil de-vegetated and in an
oxidizing state.
Plants extract carbon from carbon dioxide in the air by photosynthesis,
the team says. This carbon is critical to soil health and plant fertility, but
it is lost when a ploughed paddock is left bare with no plant cover. More
carbon is released when grassland and trees are cleared.
However, when vegetation is allowed to break down, even if it is weedy
cover, the carbon content of the soil is raised and growing conditions improve.
But plants also have another critical function - relevant to both
soil fertility and to climate stabilization. This is the atmospheric cooling
that takes place through the evaporation of moisture from leaves, as it rises
to form rain clouds,
and then falls again restoring of the small water cycle to a local area. In
this respect, hands-on NSF research in Australia
The team adds that careful water management, planting, and mulch
farming all work together in NSF practices so remediating eroded land. NSF
techniques have been developed to restore ecosystems by re-coupling the carbon
and water cycles and could overcome the calamitous decline in soil carbon
content caused by oxidation, soil erosion and loss to the sea because of
fast-running water flows and floods.
There are four guidelines for Natural Sequence Farming:
+ First, restoring fertility held by nutrients and organic matter to
improve the biological function of soils.
+ Second, reinstating the hydrological balance to increase groundwater
storage in the floodplain aquifer, increasing freshwater recharge and hence
reducing saline groundwater discharge.
+ The third principle is to re-establish natural vegetation succession
through pioneer species to promote the healthy growth of native plant
communities. The fourth guideline is to understand the hydrological and
biogeochemical processes that drive the natural landscape system, which will
allow their management to restore ecological function.
The researchers recognize that Australians cannot turn the clock back
100,000 years to recreate the forested continent of mega fauna and sediment-carrying
flood plains that existed before humans arrived.
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