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Sunday, June 30, 2013

Irony alert! Conventional tillage 'creates famine'

Where's the irony? The article is from this week's edition of Straight Furrow farming newspaper.
Here's what I read:

"A three-year study at Massey University has confirmed overseas findings that a significant amount of carbon dioxide is lost into the atmosphere through conventional tillage.
 The study, carried out by graduate student Amandeep Singh Ghatorha, showed that tillage or ploughing loses approximately three tonnes per hectare more CO2 into the atmosphere than Cross-Slot no-tillage. This significant loss contributes to global warming and in turn, depletes the nutrients in the soil."
"His supervisor, Dr Craig Ross, senior scientist at Landcare Research , together with professors Surinder Saggar and Mike Hedley, said the loss from conventional tillage is serious.  "Only about 20 percent of the million hectares of annual agricultural seeding in New Zealand is carried out by no-tillage, so we're discharging about 2.4 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere annually, as well as reducing the organic content of our soils."

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

you’re a bloody idiot guyton! you do nothing but stir, you be-little people, your negative, you run people down. just who the hell do you think you are? YOUR SLIEGH DEVIANT anD AROGANT

fredinthegrass said...

Rg, one of the sadder facts about agriculture is our reluctance to take up new ideas and open our minds to "outside the square" thinking fast enough.
We do, as farmers, get there; but it takes time.
Just ask Dr. John Baker, who has for many years been extolling the benefits of the Cross Slot drilling technique.
The evidence has become 'overwhelming' and it should now be virtually compulsory practice for seed sowing.
The all round benefits are so massive - both to the producer and the environment - it is a total no-brainer not to embrace and incorporate this process in our cultivation/reseeding programs.

robertguyton said...

Anonymous commenter@ 10:43 AM.
Come and talk to me face to face, you coward. Stop hiding behind a fake 'name'. I'm not worried by you at all. Why are you frightened of me? Man-up, there's a good anonymous critic.

robertguyton said...

Fred. Thank you for your comment. The piece I posted here is from Straight Furrow, the farming newspaper delivered to all rural properties, free, and available at our local supermarket, so it's hardly subversive, anti-farmer stuff. The ploughing issue is a real one and I'm pleased to read your comment that supports cross-slot tillage.

Anonymous said...

Robert, we’ve said it before and we’ll say it again - you’re an IDIOT!
You twist things around, miss the point, and are just plain stupid, you think your wonderful in your own little world. You haven’t got a bloody brain cell in that stupid head of yours. Do you any clues about anything? You argue because you like arguing, stir people up simply because you like the attention. It wouldn’t matter what your point was just so long as you can have an argument. You love to run people down, well we’ve had enough, now its your turn you arrogant jerk
I think we’ll call you the self centred arrogant man

robertguyton said...

"We've" had enough, Eggy (I hope you don't mind if I call you "Eggy", it's just that the name you've chosen for yourself is hard to remember), so there's a mob of you? Call me self-centred arrogant man if you wish, I don't mind. After all, I've given you a name.
I hope you don't mind me asking, but if you find what I say upsetting, why do you read my blog? It's like saying, "It really hurts when I put my hand on the stove-top - stove-tops are BAD!"

Paranormal said...

RG - any comment in the article about increased CO2 in the atmosphere improving plant growth? Just wondering.

Having said that we're trying the non dig gardening approach with mixed results. But then that's pumice soil for you.

Anon @10.43 & 9.25 - suggest if you have an issue with RG you either;
1) as he suggests, stop reading and commenting on his blog (and helpfully increasing his stats), or
2) point out to him the error in his ways in a constructive way to show there are alternative viewpoints.

By just slagging him with poorly worded name calling you are only making him seem reasonable and you rabid.

The Professional Countrywoman said...

Lawks! I can't quite see how your post incited such an outburst from eggy. He/she at least started off grammatically correct but it was down hill from there.

Anyway - I heard a couple of weeks ago on Rural roundup that someone had "discovered"that if you put compost, made of the usual including household scraps, on your land, you experienced a much better result than if you used mass commercial fertiliser. Wow I thought to myself. Is that right? But I could have been a little sarcastic at the time.

robertguyton said...

Eggy had had a couple of beers, is my bet. There was no call at all for his outburst and I have to assume he's built up a picture of me that is far from the truth. Not much I can do about someone who 'interviews' himself and draws conclusions from what he imagines I said. That's the way of the world, it seems. I have invited him to come and chew the fat, but I don't expect he'll come out from under his hood.

robertguyton said...

And it's great to hear that someone rural has discovered compost. I hope he/she shares it around.

robertguyton said...

The discovery, that is.

The Professional Countrywoman said...

Hee hee! I wouldn't mind if someone shared compost around as well. Once a long long time ago when we lived in North West Big Smoke and our illustrious mayor was none other than a certain Tim Shadbolt, someone dumped a big truck of horse manure outside the council. I was so jealous.

robertguyton said...

You wish you'd done it, or that he had it?