They know the amount of carbon in dairy soils has reduced in recent years but they don’t know if it is still declining."
Dairy farmers have been arguing for years that their farm soils are swelling with sequestered carbon. Seems not, from this report.
28 comments:
I am surprised they still call it 'soil' and not 'fertiliser holding media'.
its not clear if this is carbon or carbon dioxide.. after reading the article i suggest it is co2.
interesting to postulate why that might be . certainly plants take in co2 . are species in dairy farms which tend to be more productive also have a greater ability to respire oxygen? or is the increased temp due to more biological activity liberating co2 at a greater rate .
it will be interesting to see if the proposed change in pasture species has an effect
My take is they're talking about sequestered carbon, not the gas. That would mean less volume of soil, less organic matter, I'm thinking. It has always concerned me how much Southland soil goes washed away into our rivers during high rainfall events. I watch it flow under the bridge at Riverton and out to sea - wasted! It's a criminal act against nature, the loss of topsoil through bad land practice.
The 'proposed change in pasture species' you refer to means ge pasture grasses of the sort Fonterra is supporting the trialing-of in Australia, yes?
If it is Co2 the article is referring-to, it flies in the face of claims that soils have been absorbing C02 at far greater rates than previously thought, as reported in the Southland Times 2 days ago.
there we go again mr guyton, making stuff up.
obviously the depth of top soil being added and structurally enhanced on farms thru animal return is colossal, This fact has been known and researched , and well documented ,,, if you want to build soils you need animals. I suggest you take your bucket and spade and dig on a farm and then do the same in the bush and then again in a sand dune. measure the depth of tops soil in each situation?
because you obviously know nothing about agriculture , this most basic of facts is news to you
the reality that much of southland is a sedamentery plain obviously has eluded you also, any chance to bash agriculture from your wealth of inexperience and assumption..
you fail to mention the aparima river has it origins in the takatimu mountains . where there is no farming
why does everything that happens in your life have to culminate in some attack or misguided negative opinion of agriculture .. you mr Guyton are a farming basher.
To answer your question about pasture species , i would suspect a perennial grass and a more balanced sward 35/65% will have different nutrient uptake profile ,.Lack of organic matter [carbon] is most pronounced on cropping operations where there is no animal returns and soil organisms can be depleted.
Anonymouse seems to think that the modern dairy industry is inherently following best practice.
In truth, they aren't doing any such thing over a great deal of NZ farmland. The external inputs to soils and the intensive nature of the modern industry mean that proper soil management is not happening.
Hell, up here they don't even use soil, they bury it between 2 and 4 meters underground with the practice of "flipping" and simply dump fertiliser on bare gravel. No soil required.
They also destroy natural drainage channels that have developed over thousands of years and increase the rate of run off from the land, which is a huge problem in a West Coast downpour.
Soil "management" is not something that matters much when you have cheap urea and ground limestone in abundance, the only thing to manage is when to dump the next lot on.
anonymouse - Shunda's comments don't mesh with yours at all. I wonder how that can be? Both of you are discussing dairying, yet your views seem poles apart.
As to your latest, "You're a rotten cockie-basher, Guyton" rant, you'll recall that you said it was not clear whether the report talked of C02 or carbon in another form. I read it as solid, rather than gaseous and you hit the roof! Goodness, you're a reactive mouse!
Perhaps you'd like to link to these well-documented studies that show soil being built by cows. I've no doubt it's true, it stands to reason. I'd like also, to balance your 'blue-sky' claims about soils on Southland farms, with studies on soil-loss through erosion. I'll start by describing the damage being done to hill country not far from here, where spray and pray techniques where too-steep country is being converted for dairy cows by spraying the tussocks then sowing brassicas into the fragile soils, soils that are bound to flow downhill as soon as it rains significantly or when the cows are let onto the swedes. Stupid land management that. What do you reckon, mouse? I maintain that no soil should be lost to the rivers. If it is being, the landowner is culpable. Do you agree?
i agree with you.. to the extent you dont want to be loosing soils,
however ,, unless you can stop the rain dropping from the sky, you will loose both soil and subsoil and weathered parent material , as yet , not matured to soil,
it is about technique.and it also about time .
remeber my initial piont .. we live on a sedementery plain , formed eions before the advent of agriculture as we know it , weathering . sedimentry transport by rain is part of the " natural' order of things .
but where you are actually comming from i suspect is the assumption that brassicas are bad for soil???? i disagree , a debate for another day perhaps
to respond to you description about steep tussock country being converted for dairy..
im betwixt and between on this one , , but i would think the steep tussock country developed to carry sheep in times past would be in the hundreds of thousands of ha . and evidence of this is of course the advent of aerial topdressing dating from the 40s .
How do we value private property right under free hold title? and an owners right to develope his property as he sees fit?
i think there might be a bit of assumming going on here .. cattle are bad sheep are good. native beech forest is better .
you describe a minumum cultivation technique obviously used to minimise soil disturbance and subsequent downhill movement ,
id guess the actually risk is in the next year when that area was sown into pasture,and existing root structures still present after tussock had decomposed .
a link to soil developement ,, ill do better than that,,,
in your gardening endeavours you incorporate as much organic material as u can to build both fertility and structure ..
plant material as passed thru an animal has speeded that process by breaking down the cellulose through ruminant digestion
a
Your sedimentary plains argument misses the point. The formation of the plains and the mechanisms responsible does not equate with the rapid loss of topsoil through poor farming practice. Despite your assertion that I've not the scientific awareness of such processes, I'm well enough versed in how the Southland Plains came to be. I'm talking however, about a more recent and less admirable process.
Brassicas are bad for soil? I've not said that at all. You've jumped the gun, over-presumed, as is you way. The management of brassica feed crops and the soils they grow in is the issue I'm referring to. The damage done to those soils by hooves and the resulting loss of soil to the nearest waterway after heavy rain is what I'm pointing at. Paddocks with swales that run to creeks, planted with swedes and grazed in winter are a widely recognised issue for water quality in Southland, or do you deny that's a problem as well?
"How do we value private property right under free hold title? and an owners right to develope his property as he sees fit?"
Well, I'm very interested to hear your views on this, mouse. Certainly, our ideas will clash here, I'm betting. You start us off by describing the limits to what a landowner can do on his own land. Can't leave it un-fenced if he's beside a road, for a start, so clearly he/she has obligations despite having title.
"i think there might be a bit of assumming going on here .. cattle are bad sheep are good. native beech forest is better .i"
I think you are the one making assumptions. perhaps you should find out for sure by asking a direct question. If you don't I'll start assuming things about you, such as, 'you're a climate change denier' - now that would be an unfair charge, wouldn't it :-) Maybe, 'you fly to Fiji every winter, on the proceeds of your dairy operation'. Such suppositions aren't helpful.
"you describe a minumum cultivation technique obviously used to minimise soil disturbance and subsequent downhill movement,"
'Minimal cultivation' sounds very sensible, doesn't it, but the devil is in the detail. If the practice results in significant loss of topsoil on steep sites, then it wasn't a good idea at all, was it. There are plenty of examples around Southland where this is/was happening.
My applying the manure from organically raised hens to my garden is very different to a farm where the auroch walks on the soil, has a narrow range of plants to eat and is sometimes dosed with antibiotics and anthelmintics, for example.
Generalisations like the one you made are not always reflective of reality, mouse.
i think you might be doing a bit of guessing yourself here . but never mind ,
organic matter is organic matter , and it is good for incorperation into soil,
you have your organic thing going on but never the less soils associated with livestock are more fertile , retain nutrients and improve structure ,
i would however like to be flying to fiji in the winter and if i was a dairy farmer id like to think people would see the positive contribution agriculture as a whole has made to southland .
i guess we agree this is a great place.. a tad chilly on occasion but no doubt down on the riviera much milder .
i dont think i can agree with you as to sites around southland where land has been degraded due to mismanagement .. i have a better opinion of farmers than i think you do , and it is somewhat ironic that non farming people seem to need to be trying to protect farmland from the people who actually developed it to what it is presently,
and it is somewhat ironic that non farming people seem to need to be trying to protect farmland from the people who actually developed it to what it is presently,
Oh, ok!.
You really are pretty clueless if that is your stance.
If you seriously think that NZ has nothing to repent for regarding land management over our "development" history, you are either a blind fool or hopelessly blinkered.
Either way, you are talking nonsense, the land in NZ has not been respected or properly valued by most to date, it is only in relatively recent years that we have started to realise what we have done and what we are still doing.
Your farmer worship is utterly ridiculous in this regard, as is your presumption that other NZers are detached from the land and aren't qualified to comment.
I think farmland could be in better shape than it generally is now. It's a matter of technique and philosophy.
I have a question for you, mouse:
back in the day, dairy farmers routinely let their milking shed effluent gush freely into nearby streams, as was the accepted practice. Would you have criticised a letter writer who expressed their concern about such a practice to the local newspaper?
" clueless' excuse me ill need to look that up.
ill let that one go , and expect your overdue for a little therapy, which that little out burst has provided
i think there are very few of us that can see things clearly except with the benefit of hindsight.
while one has to be aware that often direct questions are a set up.. ill answer ,
interesting . everything went into rivers .. and during that time southland rivers developed their reputation as world class fisheries.
now i find that curious because nothing goes directly into waterways today and yet the accusation is rivers are more contaminated .. [ and i guess it depends which one and where ]
back in the day. the technology to spread effluent and pump stuff onto paddocks wasnt available so from the piont of veiw of being doable , iguess i would have been critical,
however .. then as now the fact remains nutrients are valuable and need to be retained for their fert value ,
remeber back then there wasnt even access to plastic pipe or pumps to send muck back to where it came from
No set up, mouse. My direct point is, criticism of systems is not necessarily negative or ill-informed, as you repeatedly say mine is. That enlightened soul who wrote pointing to the practice of releasing effluent into waterways was not anti-farmer, he was pro-environment, pro-good practice and a useful member of the community. You would have, I propose, attacked him for his actions. His sort of warnings have had a positive effect on farming practices and had he shut the flock up and held his own counsel, we'd not be where we are today, that is, ahead of where we were in terms of environmental practice. Even toady, you'll find people who care enough to point at practices that need to change. You are the intolerant message-shooter who won't tolerate dissent in the ranks, can't stand outsiders comments, wants nothing said.
Am I right, or am I right :-)
Btw - Your excuse that farmers didn't have the technology to spread their much around on the paddock is tosh - muck spreaders are as old as haystacks. Don't give me that.
What you find 'curious', mouse, is down to the difference between point-source pollution and non-point source pollution. The former has been largely addressed, the latter is an issue that is expanding along with the expanding industry. It's not difficult to understand, if only you try.
no robert effluent spreaders are not as old as hay stacks and were as uncommon as the front end loaders required to load them.
effluent pumping back to land was not a response to an environmentalist , but a machnery sales person comming back from the UK and seeing a chance to manufacture yardmaster effluent pumps and make a buck
you have to realise that your trying to tell the nz farmer how to suck eggs
and by the way we seem to have invented some mythical " enlightend soul " environmentalist from thin air .
ive been in and around agriculture for a long time , seen the advent of muck spreaders , watched the pulse of agriculture in the media ,, the advent of the environmentalist who rides forth on his white charger to lead the ill informed masses to nervana is a modern phenomena.
i think stopping towns and cities from discharging raw sewerage into rivers and the sea , was initial step , and for health reasons .. . but once again you have confined your environmental judgement to farming .
we seem to be drifting back toward farmer bashing robert .,
wouldnt it be interesting if we found that in fact it was piggeries that started the practice of effluent discharge to land and then dairy followed ,, and both these were to predate the urban clean up?.
ill see what i can find
Effluent spreaders, mouse, have been around since haystacks - that is, carts of dung hauled by horses with a bloke wielding a fork, flicking the manure back onto the paddocks - spreading muck, muck spreading, well before the invention of the motor car. You aren't thinking widely enough. I know perfectly well when the first tractor pulled muck spreader came to Southland, I was talking to the contractor just the other day. Perhaps you underestimate me, mouse.
As for trying to teach you to suck eggs, seems you're a slow learner. I won't give up though.
The spreading of mammalian effluent to land is something that here in modern New Zealand, the dairy industry is far superior to what towns do with their humanure. I've argued this for years and years, most latterly in the Council whenever the issue of sewerage comes up for discussion. Of course, waaaaaay back in the day, humanure did go to the soil, as it should. The Chinese market gardeners did it here in early NZ, the Maori did it before any dairy cow appeared here. In some ways, we've gone backwards. Some people though, are able to see ahead and don't have to be always playing catch-up, as you suggested.
well robert ... far be it from me to explain to you that what came out of a cow shed could not be loaded onto a cart and flicked with a fork..
your talking about night bedding etc . incorperating straw, from barns
but we digress into a bit of a pointless pissing contest here .
putting dairy effluent or any effluent into water ways ended a long time ago..
while others are seeing agricultural manures as a bad thing i see them as a resource to develop soils .
id be a bit more touchy about human waste ,, but i take your point about traditional practice in asia .
the fact remains .. go back 150 years and the southland plains were in their natural state .. good to look at but incapable of supporting a nation , a region and a city the size of invercargill.
with out modern farming practice we would have subsistence agriculture where everyone owned their own goat , a couple of sheep and a cow.. of course they would also have their own long drop.
there would be no modern city, center of education and cultural growth,
lets be grateful for an agricultural economy instead of a highly industrialised one .
its easy to be a farmer basher . i prefer to to give credit where credit is due and applaud the most efficient pastoral farmers in the world . and they live here in nz and in southland
You live by the coast Rob, flick your home spun stockings out there and capture some topsoil for yourself. Harness those nutrients and haul em back to Thames St, bag em up and sell em to the cockies who are so desperate to pay for them. One mans trash is another mans treasure don't they say? With all the fortunes you make you could buy a few dairy farms and plant em out in natives. Then you'd be really leading by example!
Yes, Anonymous, keep your dung dry, that's the secret. Modern dairy farming practice is mooving that way now and should never have departed from it. Nor should humans have stooped to mixing their crap with water. Maori have warned against it for hundreds of years but we civilized pakeha didn't listen and still don't - well, some of us are more enlightened and fight the practice of mixing shit with water. You?
Btw - long drops are NOT part of the solution to humanure 'disposal/use. Only a fool exports nutrients off the land it was produced on. Farmers are realising that, townspeople nowhere near the realization. In saying that, how many farmers incorporate their own manure into the soil properly (septic tanks don't make the cut here. It takes more thinking than that. It would be interesting to measure farm humanure management against town humanure management to gauge who is the most enlightened. Clearly, the greenies trump you all. We're way out in front with our compost toilets. Yes?
nonymous - I've considered this seriously. The nitrate-rich muds that flocculate out in the estuary might be a rich source of nutrient, but there are a couple of issues - herbicides, pesticides, anthelmintics and so on from farming operations upstream, heavy metals from industries and sewerage in the towns, leaking retired-refuse dumps beide the Aparima...it goes on and on, doesn't it. None of us can claim much immunity from criticism when it comes to toxifying the environment, can we.
No that's right Rob. Now the burning question, if only a fool exports the nutrients off the land it was produced on I suspect it'd be a smelly suitcase when you are returning from a holiday? Ha ha
You've overlooked the obvious, Anonymous!
Mine doesn't smell.
:-)
Robert, you are feeding the troll responding to this guy.
He is offering a remarkably simplistic and idealistic view of farming and agricultural history of NZ. I would call him a liar, but he actually really seems to believe his bull sh!t, so it would be unfair.
To anon, everyone that criticises poor practice is an anti farming bigot, and in this regard, I don't think there is any real chance of having a rational conversation with him.
I will say though, I am quite astonished that people can still hold such a distorted view on farming history in NZ, he doesn't even seem to know which animal predominated in Southland for most of it's agricultural history.
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