Tag: plants
What I learned from the Soil Carbon Challenge
This nonprofit organization, the Soil Carbon Coalition, was inspired in part by Allan Yeomans's 2005 book, Priority One: Together we can beat global warming, which Abe Collins and I had been reading. Yeomans suggested that increased soil carbon could make a difference for climate. In 2007 Joel Brown of the NRCS gave a talk in Albuquerque in which he said that according to the published literature, good management by land stewards did not result in soil carbon increase, and that it was too difficult to measure anyhow. With that, I resolved to begin measuring soil carbon change on ranches and farms that were consciously aiming at greater soil health.
I had done plenty of reporting on land stewardship and plenty of rangeland monitoring. I studied research-grade, repeatable soil sampling and analysis methods and combined them with some rangeland transect methods I had learned from Charley Orchard of Land EKG. In 2011 I bought an old schoolbus, made it into living quarters, and for most of the next decade I traveled North America slowly, putting in hundreds of baseline transects and carbon measuring sites mainly on ranching operations that had some association with holistic planned grazing. I resampled over a hundred at intervals of 3-8 years. The question I was asking was: Where, when, and with whose management, was soil carbon changing over intervals of several years? I called this project the Soil Carbon Challenge.
A lot of data accumulated. What did it show, what did it mean?
In order for there to be meaning or learning, there needs to be a context, a purpose. My purpose in embarking on this project, the question behind the question, was 1) to see if measuring soil carbon change over time could provide relevant feedback or guidance to land stewards who were interested in soil health, and 2) to see what soil carbon change, if it were significant and widespread, might imply for climate policy that was narrowly focused on more technical rather than biological solutions. Everywhere I traveled, water was the main issue for people, whether it was floods or drought. I measured soil carbon because it was central to the flow of sunlight energy through soils, critically influential for soil function, and easier to measure change than measuring soil water. At no point did I advocate for the commodification of soil carbon into credit or offset schemes.
The soil carbon change data that I got on resampling baseline plots was noisy and variable, especially in the top layers (0-10 cm depth). There were some pockets of consistent change, such as a group of graziers in southeast Saskatchewan showing substantial increases, even down to the 40 cm depth that I often sampled to. But the majority of change data that I collected did not offer solid support to the hypothesis that holistic planned grazing or no-till, for example, in a few years would increase soil carbon in every circumstance or locale, or that soil carbon would faithfully reflect changes in forage production, soil cover, or diversity.
Many of the people on whose ranches I sampled did not know what to do with the data or results, or simply interpreted the data as a judgment: a high or increasing level of soil carbon indicated good management, and low or decreasing was bad. Measured soil carbon change, especially at one or two points, was not meaningful, useful, or in some cases timely feedback, and may not have contributed much to their learning and decision making as I had hoped it might. For the most part the ranches I sampled on were widely scattered, and there was little interaction between them or mutual support, little opportunity for discussion or the development of a shared intelligence or a community of practice. The "competition" framing or context that I suggested in 2010 did not help. The effort tended toward an information pipeline rather than a platform that enabled people to take responsibility for their own learning. For a while I posted the data on this website, but that did little to foster discussion or interpretation, or encourage people to add learning to judgment.
Nor did the noisiness and variability of the data I collected offer solid support for soil carbon increase as a strategy for reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide and easing climate change--a strategy that was growing increasingly popular, with many people and organizations advocating for it, and which has resulted in new programs, policies, and markets to try and reward ranchers and farmers for increases (usually modeled rather than measured) in soil carbon.
So the Soil Carbon Challenge was at least a partial failure, in that it took aim at the problems and technical issues at the tip of the iceberg, and fostered judgment more than learning and new questions. I did take some lessons from this decade of travel, conversations, workshops, transects and soil sampling, sample processing and analysis, data entry, and associated reading and research into the history of the discovery of the carbon cycle, water cycle, and climate issues. Some of these lessons resonated with what I had learned, and then forgotten, in the trainings I took in holistic management and consensus building in the 1990s.
Like many attempts at "solutioneering" the problems of soil health and climate, the Soil Carbon Challenge focused on the tip or immediately visible portion of the "iceberg," and was not designed around the center of gravity: human or people issues, paradigms and power, relationships and trust.
What I learned (or saw from a new perspective, or rediscovered):
1. Energy is a context for all life
and energy flow, from sunlight, is a pattern that connects all knowledge and activity. However, energy is an abstraction: we can only know it, sense it, or measure it by its results, the work it does, the changes it creates. Our planet is an open system largely run by sunlight energy. As I wrote here, "We are riding an enormous, incredibly complex, fractal eddying flow of sunlight energy used in many ways by interrelated communities of self-motivated living organisms whose metabolisms, behaviors, and relationships are increasingly influenced by our own." And, as Selman Waksman, Aldo Leopold, and others realized, soil is a major hub for sunlight energy flow.
2. Learning networks
are a context for the emergence of a community of practice, of a shared intelligence. These are social groupings where people share what they are learning, and are able to witness or share in the learning of others, and so gain an enriched perspective, with dialogue. It helps if these are participatory, ongoing, local, and include evidence as well as new questions. Some degree if trust is needed in order for judgments to ripen into learning, and listening is a key ingredient. Over the past year or so I have developed soilhealth.app as a way of supporting learning networks around soil health and sunlight energy flow, and am seeking partnerships on that project.
It's not that measuring soil carbon is a bad or useless thing, but a good context or purpose is needed. We learn from differences. Here are 4 suggestions for learning, about different kinds of differences, all of which may surprise and spark your curiosity:
- To learn more about flows of sunlight energy, get an infrared heat gun ($15 and up) that measures or estimates radiant heat, and begin playing with it, pointing it at various stages of sky, soil, plants, and other surfaces and objects.
- Use infiltration rings to gauge how well water infiltrates into various soil surfaces. Remember that soil moisture held in soil pores represents a huge capture of free sunlight energy.
- Record change over time in some kind of indicator, quantity, or measurement you are interested in or curious about. Precipitation or infiltration for example. For ranchers, animal days of grazing on a particular pasture for example, or pounds of gain. Repeatable observations need some kind of recording system.
- Share your observations and learning with others in a learning network. As two eyes helps you see depth, so do multiple perspectives enrich and deepen your learning.
When will politicians care about reality, never we fear …Coonabarabran drug bust: Cannabis operation worth around $67 million busted by NSW Police
Around every six months, politicians and certain parts of the Australian media act surprised when the latest “biggest bust” of cannabis occurs..there’s lots of wringing of hands, political mileage, and more money for law enforcement. Then six months later it happens again Then six months later it happens again The dumbass “war on drugs” continues, […] TopFlower Is Introducing a Perfect NFT Farming Game
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Jan 19, 2022 - (ACN Newswire) - TopFlower, a unique platform that allows users to get into the diverse yet beautiful world of flowers, has announced its plan to introduce a perfect non-fungible token [NFT] farming game. Offering everyone an opportunity to sink into the beautiful world of flowers, admire and take care of these unique and equally beautiful plants, and more importantly, harvesting a ton of these flowers to earn tokens, TopFlower seeks to introduce an NFT game that commingles diverse, feature-replete, plentiful and suitable game modes—2D, 3D, AR, and Metaverse.
Prioritizing interaction and growth between community members, TopFlower will connect users with other farmers in the ecosystem, in the process building a strong society with a solid and long-lasting economy. Built on the motto; "play to earn, earn forever", these farmers will have the opportunity to search, invest, and accumulate a variety of tokens. Aimed at striking the balance between "playing for fun" and "playing to earn", this platform has introduced the TopFlower Task feature which will deliver the best value in both an amazing gaming experience and the possibility of collecting a ton of tokens.
One impressive feature of this game is the PVE and PVP modes. Designed to fight uninvited guests in a player's garden, the PVE mode comes with a plethora of preparation tools. The PVP mode, on the other hand, allows farmers to coordinate and enter into agreements with others as well as engage in numerous fights to protect their gardens from unwarranted ingress. Integrating an unparalleled gaming experience—the 3D AR Metaverse—the development team is combining a virtual garden with a player's current habitat. This will offer more support as gamers seek to care for their gardens and earn sizable rewards in the process.
A play-to-earn NFT farm game in the budding space, TopFlower has designed a feasible and succinct roadmap, one of which its first mission is the development of a marketplace where players can sell in-game assets and NFTs. Like most of the other projects, TopFlower has a native token, $TPF which will serve as both the reward for play-to-earn and staking on the network.
With a maximum supply of 500 million $TPF, this token has been scheduled for release on PancakeSwap, one of the top decentralized exchanges.
About TopFlower
This is a unique play-to-earn gaming platform that has been designed to offer players the opportunity to delve into the world of flowers while allowing them to collect several tokens as rewards. Aimed at delivering the perfect NFT game for farmers, TopFlower is working to build a strong community of farmers who, through this platform, will interact and build a strong, sustainable economy.
Social Media
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Telegram channel: https://t.me/TopFlowerChanel
Telegram group: https://t.me/TopFlowerOfficial
Discord: https://discord.com/invite/pvpfvMBaBV
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/-UC8NS1K_qU937_yiKw_ivY9w
Contact:
TopFlower
Andy Cao, Head of Marketing
Email: support@topflower.games
Website: https://www.topflower.games
SOURCE: TopFlower
Copyright 2022 ACN Newswire. All rights reserved. www.acnnewswire.com
UK Leader Of The Opposition, Sir Keir Starmer, States Unequivocally On London Call In Radio Show That He Is Against Cannabis Decriminalization
Leaders of both of the UK’s major political parties won’t even consider decriminalization, nevermind legalization. Talk about being blinkered. Meanwhile, this happens on a daily basis. UK: Cannabis Plants Found Inside Famous Haunted Stoke-On-Trent Pub Once Frequented By Josiah Wedgewood North Wales: Industrial scale cannabis factory discovered at pensioner’s farm UK: Southampton. […] UK: Cannabis Plants found inside famous haunted Stoke-on-Trent pub once frequented by Josiah Wedgewood
Is there a building in the UK where you won’t find a cannabis plant these days! Stoke on Trent live reports Police have found a cannabis factory inside one of Stoke-on-Trent’s oldest pubs. Staffordshire Police made the discovery at The Leopard, in Burslem, after reports of suspicious activity at the historic boozer. Officers attended the […] The US Federal Government Just Bought a Ton of Marijuana for Medical Research for the First Time Ever
Since 1971, a single facility at the University of Mississippi has been in charge of producing cannabis plants for research purposes at the federal level. This monopoly prevented other facilities (public and private-owned) from growing marijuana for experimental reasons. In 2016, the DEA began to remove the monopoly on marijuana for medical research. Finally, they achieved what they set out to do in May 2021. The applications of several cannabis companies were approved by mid-2021. Groff Hemplex and the Biopharmaceutical Research Company revealed that they have been fully registered in the DEA database and have started cultivating cannabis plants. The first phase of harvest, which started about a month ago, will be forwarded to research facilities. Marijuana researchers across the country have commended this development.
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