@aleCcowan,
Great post. You did a fantastic job of showing how even the most modern conventional no-till soybean production is not nor could ever be the solution, not even as good as "adding 4 or 5 mm of dried mulching" that any simple gardener could do. Most people really don't understand the reason nor the magnitude of how bad the current CAFO system of growing soy for those animals really is, nor how relatively easy a more modern scientific management system that emphasizes carbon sequestration in the soil could potentially be in comparison. Your post does a seriously good job of explaining that in terms people can get their head around. Bravo!
No, my post doesn't because it doesn't relate with that. The photo linked there showed the carbon in plain sight. Hint, it's the green and brown parts in the figure. You are replying to that with just words, including these ones looking more like a promise: «
how relatively easy a more modern scientific management system that emphasizes carbon sequestration in the soil could potentially be in comparison». That sounds like propaganda. And surely that is not information.
There is one part of your post that puzzled me though. You realise why the soy can never even come close to being a solution, you realise how easy even the simpliest of techniques for adding carbon to soil, scaled up, will easily fix the problem, but then you back down because you think any solution must be perfect 100%?
No, because any solution must go in the right direction, not in the wrong one, and that is enough, so no absolute was never in the plate. Months have gone and you continue to dissociate feeding mankind and ditching carbon in soils. You focus in one goal and suppose the other one fulfilled by means of a verbose prose and never by means of a careful analysis done simultaneously on both elements, containing mainly figures and not discourse. It's like you are talking all the time about what the powerpoint shows, but you forgot the powepoint at home, so it urges that you amend your ways while discussing here and show hard data
while you are discussing it.
Cows on the other hand actually do far better on 100% pasture.
What do you think we eat here?
So you can hold your standard of perfection as to absolutely no grain or soy inputs there.
I don't hold that standard nor anything that I've said suggests in any way that I may do that. So stop adding imaginary elements to the conversation only to fuel rhetorical devices.
The sequestration potential of rotational grazing is significantly greater than your "adding 4 or 5 mm of dried mulching" example too.
No, it isn't at all. You want that to be true but figures tell the opposite. That's why your argumentations are as a general rule almost completely devoid of figures. Show us you're serious about the notions you promote, by using figures within your posts and not by linking anything and telling it says this and that -and not what it says-, the way you are doing with what I wrote.
So that should easily absorb the imperfections you seem to find in raising a chicken with less inputs instead of zero inputs.
You continue to imagine things that I'm supposed to have said. Besides, I'm well aware about the law of conservation of energy. Are you?
So far, I have to tell you, if you didn't understand what I wrote and why I wrote it, you could've asked about it instead of repeatedly asserting what's not there explicitly or implied.
For your second part I thought I just did earlier. Maybe if I change it slightly, it will be easier for you to understand. Every soil is slightly different. But a reasonable factor for the weight of carbon in soil is : 0.58 tC/ha/cm/SOC%
In other words, for every % of SOC in every cm of depth in the soil you can expect .58 tons per hectare. So get a soil test done. Take the % soil organic carbon, multiply by the depth of the soil in cm, multiply by .58 and the result is the tons SOC in your soil as a baseline. When you test again take the new % SOC and run it through the same formula and it will give you a rough idea of the total tons new sequestered carbon. So scaling it to the scale you want to understand it...... to get that 2 tons per hectare, you would have to increase the % SOC in the soil 1% to a depth of 4cm. (roughly) Not nearly as "impossible" as so many posters here seem to think, because they were mislead by irrelevant figures.
Please any of you math guys out there, correct me if I made a math error.
Your problems with math are the least of them. A 1% of carbon in 1cm of soil is 0.18 to 0.21 kg. Your 0.57 is by inch and not centimetre, and that is considering amorphous carbon to be almost as dense as graphite.
But, letting the math wad appart, the problem is that you are not addressing my question at all but it would seem like you were looking for some loophole instead, I hope not. To put it in the simplest of terms, it is like I said: "I have 8 million dollars and I want to have 20 million dollars in one year from now, explain me how can I get that money?" and you're just replying "you have to get one million a month; look at your bank account at the end of the period and subtract what you had at the beginning of the period; the difference is what you have earned."
Again, show how 2 tons of carbon are gained in the soil in a 365-day period while doing, for instance, 100% grass fed bovines. Don't forget to set a value both for carbon content in the soil and yearly degradation of humus content. Justify your figures. Of course, forgot about buying bales of hay elsewhere. You have just your soil, rain and sunlight ... and mooing legged racks of ribs in the making, of course.
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) to do a cost-benefit analysis, and this is just one pilot, but it has potential. Worth watching, I think.