Why doesn't our forests and no till farming qualify ...

[jazz]

So long as we are growing canola and pulses, organic matter is not going to increase. That would require crops with greater biomass so mostly cereals, hemp, corn, even alfalfa and hay. So the govt should pay farmers to go into a cereal hay rotation, might as well make the leap to organic then too.

There are so many more ideas out there than a stupid tax but our politicians are near retarded so it never gets figured out.

[farmaholic]

Jazzman..... I think you should refine your O.M. statement. Canola and peas can have alot of biomass, combines can smash the residue up to smithereens and maybe appear to be less than there actually is /was. Lentils and flax on the other hand....not so much, especially the short stature lentils and we all know what most people do with flax straw.

In my farming career our dirt has never been mellower than it is now. I wish continuous cropping had the same affect on my personality....i just keep getting harder and more miserably bitter.

[Wheatking]

I think the numbers are that every one percent of organic matter inthe soil equals 12,000 lbs of carbon. The last time we we are able to establish a cover crop we boosted organic matter by 1.5% in one year only. Amazing. But to think that represented 18,000 lbs of carbon?! If that doesn't get the climate dingbats' attention then their agenda is motivated by something other than climate.

It's impossible that you raised your organic matter 1.5% in one year. Maybe 0.15%

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Every year I raise the OM of large problem areas by multiple percentage points, but it takes hundreds of tons of composted manure and or peat moss per acre to do it.

As for canola, every climate is different, but around here, it returns the most above ground biomass of any annual crop. Twice we have silaged failed canola crops and had 14 tons per acre, and that was the poor crops that got silaged, not the heavy stands. I'd guess that we seem to grow twice as much biomass to get the same yield as drier areas do. It may not add a lot of OM in the root system, but contribute massively to thatch on the surface, and it takes years to break down.

[jimmy]

So long as we are growing canola and pulses, organic matter is not going to increase. That would require crops with greater biomass so mostly cereals, hemp, corn, even alfalfa and hay. So the govt should pay farmers to go into a cereal hay rotation, might as well make the leap to organic then too.

There are so many more ideas out there than a stupid tax but our politicians are near retarded so it never gets figured out.

I think you can forget about any reward from growing alfalfa as it’s food for planet destroying cows

[Guest]

Jazzman..... I think you should refine your O.M. statement. Canola and peas can have alot of biomass, combines can smash the residue up to smithereens and maybe appear to be less than there actually is /was. Lentils and flax on the other hand....not so much, especially the short stature lentils and we all know what most people do with flax straw.

In my farming career our dirt has never been mellower than it is now. I wish continuous cropping had the same affect on my personality....i just keep getting harder and more miserably bitter.

same here and our dirt is a lot different than yours i think
cont. cropping best thing that ever happened to this dirt
saw some ditches full of topsoil where an organic fellow summerfallowed last year and there was hardly any runoff this year

[bucket]

If you put a price on carbon.....shouldn't there be a price or funding for those that help reduce the effects according to the envirowhackos....

Seems odd but all those kids out protesting the other day haven't done shit to reduce carbon.....they just assume protesting will get it done....

It like knowing vegans that raise cattle for a living.....

[Horse]

Mabey we better be careful what we ask for,being paid for storing carbon,how about paying for releasing carbon (carbon tax) with the permafrost melting it the canadian artic (and russia) very large reserves of carbon will be released,should we pay for that,active volcanos,forest fires .riping up old grass,lots of possibilities once you open the box.
Hard to put that baby to bed once you wake it.

[wd9]

Every year I raise the OM of large problem areas by multiple percentage points, but it takes hundreds of tons of composted manure and or peat moss per acre to do it.

As for canola, every climate is different, but around here, it returns the most above ground biomass of any annual crop. Twice we have silaged failed canola crops and had 14 tons per acre, and that was the poor crops that got silaged, not the heavy stands. I'd guess that we seem to grow twice as much biomass to get the same yield as drier areas do. It may not add a lot of OM in the root system, but contribute massively to thatch on the surface, and it takes years to break down.

No you don't.

[SASKFARMER]

It should but then why would any one want to use common sense or science to pay farmers.

[grassfarmer]

Every year I raise the OM of large problem areas by multiple percentage points, but it takes hundreds of tons of composted manure and or peat moss per acre to do it.

Not sure about the tonnages needed or the timescale but you can probably increase OM substantially that way. We had a little mound on our last farm that was insanely productive - something like 300 cow days/acre production from quackgrass. We sampled it and found 14% OM and every other nutrient through the roof. It had been a bedding pack at one time that grew over.

On the payment for carbon sequestration topic I can see merit in paying for good practices - but it works both ways - every tree, wetland and slough a farmer terminates costs them. Every time you "work it black" costs you, every time pasture is converted to crop land it costs you. Payment for zero tillage practices can't be based on historic events as the goal would be to increase sequestration going forward. If you've zero tilled since 1989 you are not increasing sequestration from 2018 to 2019 but another farmer zero-tilling for the first time this year is making a difference.
Not immune on the ranch either as we'd have to keep increasing sequestration year on year to generate value to get paid on. Not so easy to do once you've made the transition from overgrazed to well managed and grazed. You sequester less in a drought, if you're growing cattle feed from annual crops you're in the same boat as the grain farmer in terms of cultivation/fertilization methods. You can increase production better with high legume pastures but that generates more damaging emissions. If you convert crop land to pasture you get paid but if you break it up to go back to grain it's going to cost you.

In short it would be a bureaucratic nightmare and I'm not sure any of us would want to operate within these constraints.

[furrowtickler]

Not sure about the tonnages needed or the timescale but you can probably increase OM substantially that way. We had a little mound on our last farm that was insanely productive - something like 300 cow days/acre production from quackgrass. We sampled it and found 14% OM and every other nutrient through the roof. It had been a bedding pack at one time that grew over.

On the payment for carbon sequestration topic I can see merit in paying for good practices - but it works both ways - every tree, wetland and slough a farmer terminates costs them. Every time you "work it black" costs you, every time pasture is converted to crop land it costs you. Payment for zero tillage practices can't be based on historic events as the goal would be to increase sequestration going forward. If you've zero tilled since 1989 you are not increasing sequestration from 2018 to 2019 but another farmer zero-tilling for the first time this year is making a difference.
Not immune on the ranch either as we'd have to keep increasing sequestration year on year to generate value to get paid on. Not so easy to do once you've made the transition from overgrazed to well managed and grazed. You sequester less in a drought, if you're growing cattle feed from annual crops you're in the same boat as the grain farmer in terms of cultivation/fertilization methods. You can increase production better with high legume pastures but that generates more damaging emissions. If you convert crop land to pasture you get paid but if you break it up to go back to grain it's going to cost you.

In short it would be a bureaucratic nightmare and I'm not sure any of us would want to operate within these constraints.

You have some very good points .
But sometimes land needs to be worked to be productive. Not all land or area is the same

[Blaithin]

I recently listened to a podcast that interviewed an Economist about her ideas regarding this and how it's what she feels needs to be done.

https://rr2cs.ca/farming-with-biodiversity-part-three/

It's not incredibly in depth but she does touch on how complicated it could get regarding different GHG, different amounts sequestered, different land, perhaps how much GHG the farmer is producing already, etc. etc. Considering how unorganized bureaucracies tend to be and how long it takes them to get their shit straight, it almost seems like a pipe dream to get that much stuff lined up to pay farmers back for environmental benefits. Oh but if and when they do... that would be great!

[furrowtickler]

As to the original OP ....
the answer is easy ... the globalist elite dreamt up this scam to pull money from the peasants not pay them .

[Guest]

Walter Jehne. Sought after speaker around the world. This from the Healthy Soils Australia website. Carbon is the new economy, get used to it.
https://www.healthysoils.com.au/carbon