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Plowing Carbon Into the Fields
OzPeter writes "A wheat farmer in Australia has eliminated adding fertilizer to his crop by the simple process of injecting the cooled diesel exhaust of his modified tractor into the ground when the wheat is being sown. In doing so he eliminates releasing carbon into the atmosphere and at the same time saves himself up to $500,000 (AUD) that would have been required to fertilize his 3,900 hectares in the traditional way. Yet his crop yields over the last two years have been at least on par with his best yields since 2001. The technique was developed by a Canadian, Gary Lewis of Bio Agtive, and is currently in trial at 100 farms around the world."
Having absolutely no experience with any farming techniques, any real knowledge of the chemical composition of cooled diesel exhaust or even having read the article, I still somehow feel confident enough to give a vague denouncement of this farming technique.
AHEM.
This will never work because the gas will escape/it will poison the ground/I am so much smarter than whoever came up with this.
Thank you, thank you. Love ya Slashdot. Never change.
So few facts, so many opinions.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
I think the argument to this mechanism is that he is providing an extra carbon source for the nitrogen fixers natively present in the soil. These bacteria convert N2 into ammonia, which can then be absorbed by the plants. Essentially drives the nitrogen cycle more quickly than would occur otherwise. Alternatives in place are to do alternate plantings with plants that have rhizobiums such as legumes.
As to the people saying this is not carbon neutral, I think you should read up on the Haber-bosch process - how ammonia is made for fertilizer. Unlike microbes which can do this at room temperature and pressure, it takes something like 400 C at several times Earth's pressure. This is a very expensive process, and cutting down ammonia production will save a lot of energy.
Funny this sounded familiar, I submitted the story about the Canadian farmer three years ago. That article says it was developed by a farmer named Darrel Carlisle and is generally more informative.
Considering this stuff normally goes into the air and can be brought back down by rainfall... it probably is already in your bread.
That's nothing! NOTHING! Have you even seen what's in pig, chicken, cow, and sheep manure? And they actually use that stuff to grow food. I mean it's the feces of animals, and they're dumping it on our food to make it grow. But somehow the food is okay and safe to eat. Maybe there's something about plants that allows them to thrive on things that are poisonous to us, but allows them to produce fruits and vegetables that are also edible to us.
I have nothing compelling to say
As has been written in here several times, lotta nitrate compounds in diesel exhaust, even more so than gasoline motor exhaust due to the much higher compression ratios that diesel engines require to run on. Plants need CO2, but they also need nitrates and nitrides in order to grow. As far as carbon compounds in the exhaust, I dunno if they escape the soil (being gaseous) or get bound up to become part of the plants immediately or what. I would have loved to see a more technical article than TFA, that's for sure.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
(Currently, California has no additional land for farming or ranching to meet the needs of the ballooning population.)
California has plenty of land for farming. All along the back of the Sierra Nevada there is a huge valley full of decent land; the problem is water. All the water is being diverted into LA for drinking. If LA starts getting their water from the ocean, then we can begin to grow stuff there. The foothills would be another potential place to start growing, if the water were there. Also, if we really need to, we can switch from crops like almonds to crops like wheat or oats.
Wait. Now, you ask, "How will banning immigration help?"
Anti-immigration laws are like the war on drugs: neither one works. You may not realize it, but after drugs, one of the best sources of income for organized crime is human-trafficking: sneaking poor people into rich countries. If you continue to support anti-immigration laws, you will continue to support violence, human exploitation, and all the other problems that come with organized crime. There is no way to stop it. The only thing to do is legalize it.
People who worry about overpopulation don't realize that if we increase women's rights and reduce poverty in developing nations, the problem will take care of itself.
Qxe4
It's nice that you're so sure actual scientists know less than you, and that there's no such thing as nitrogen fixing bacteria, and that they sure aren't fucking anaerobic and like CO2. Christ.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
I found the article by "The Economist". The article debunks the claim that increasing wealth results in a decreasing population. The implications for excessive population growth are alarming.
Or you can read the article and see that CO2 helps anaerobic bacteria that also happen to be nitrogen fixers...guess the journalists know more than you, after all.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Not that blowing it into the atmosphere is much better, but doesn't diesel exhaust contain all sorts of nasty toxins?
I don't recall the exact exhaust gas composition, but in my younger days working at a research lab we participated in a series of animal studies on diesel exhaust. You could pump a lot of diesel exhaust through lab animals without any serious side effects. Some of the high dose groups had lungs that looked like they had been smoking, but none of them died from toxins in the exhaust. I don't remember there being any statistical correlation to cancers or cell differentiation, either. But that was a long time ago.
My vague memory of the conclusions were that you breath a lot of diesel exhaust without harmful side effects, although the particulates would keep your pulmonary macrophage in business.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Immigration is already legal. It's those that try and skip the system in place that give it a bad name. I know many legal immigrants and they hate illegal immigrants more than native Americans because they (the illegals) just made it harder for them (the legals) to follow the rules.
Have you even seen what's in pig, chicken, cow, and sheep manure?
Bullshit.
It seems to be these days that there are a lot of people that can't possibly believe there are any ecological solutions that don't involve the massive reduction in human emissions. When the talk is about global warming and reducing carbon output, they are on board and scream "You aren't a scientist, you have to listen to the scientists!" to anyone who questions it. However, when scientists have any other solution, one that DOESN'T involve an emission reduction, they get pissed off, and denounce those scientists. Suddenly they are experts in all the reasons that must be wrong.
A good example of this is what has happened with the new book Super Freakonomics. Levitt does the same thing he does in the original Freakonomics of stripping away morality from various issues and applying economics. His original book drew ire from conservative types because it presented a convincing argument that legalized abortion has lead to a reduction in crime, but liberal types were generally ok with it.
Well, now he's become someone high up on the enemies list because in Super Freakonomics he analyzes the economics of combating global arming through geoengineering methods, rather than reducing emissions. Note that he doesn't say it isn't real or isn't a problem, just looks at different solutions as being more economically feasible. Yet that has drawn massive ire from the environmentalist types.
It just seems to be an article of faith these days that the only thing good for the environment is to use less. Any solutions that involves anything else is shouted down. This being the same sort of thing. People point to science as the ultimate bastion of truth... so long as what it shows agrees with their world view. Any time something contrary comes out, all of a sudden they are the experts instead of the scientists.
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Depends on the soil. If the soil is alkaline then the carbonic acid (which will form very easily and quickly if the soil isn't bone dry) will react and take the CO2 out.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"I too am calling bullshit on this entire idea. There is simply not enough exhaust to do anything like what was claimed.
No matter how you work the chemical reactions, the amount of diesel required to plow a field combined with the air of combustion will never equal the amount of CO2 and nitrogen found in the proper amount of fertilizer. By sheer weight of the components alone you can deduce this is nonsense.
Plants do consume CO2. Merely plowing under his crop, or the chaff thereof would sequester come CO2, perhaps as long as the next growing season.
Sooner or later you have to add something back in, or plant some other crop that fixes nitrogen or you deplete the soil. His experiment hasn't run long enough to even account for changes in weather, let alone long term damage to the fields.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
You should go hang out with illegal immigrants sometime, you would learn something.
Here's how it works: all the family pools their money together to make the downpayment. The price varies depending on where they come from. Mexico will run around $2000 to $5000 but a trip from China will cost $20,000. Of course a Chinese peasant can't pay all that at once, so they come to America, and work, and pay it off while they are here. Of course it takes time, but they pay it off, otherwise something might happen to their family back at home.
So yes, poor people are the ones who get snuck into the US. Middle class/rich people usually have no desire to come here, at least not the ones I've talked to.
Qxe4
That so-called study is a fine example of lying with statistics - see debunking here http://www.stubbornmule.net/2009/09/baby-bounce/
Look at all these carcinogens
All in extremely low quantities and most of which are filtered out/ broken down by modern DPF and/or SCR.
Diesel is not the dirty thing of yesteryear. Reports of hazardous exhaust is greatly exaggerated and outdated. Basically the only thing that comes out of the tailpipe is CO2 and H2O.
And yes I am a diesel emissions engineer.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".