It is nice to see that they arepaying attention. I believe though thatthe important quick fix remains the implementation of the biochar protocol toboth increase soil carbon and general nutrient retention.
It is good to see the attentionbeen also paid to supporting the hydrological cycle.
The combination can restore soilvitality everywhere and through back dry lands to at least historicalreaches. Australia
In the meantime, paying attentionto natural cycles should be a given and imitated as much as possible while alsobeen careful to take the right lessons from it all.
Natural Sequence Farming.
by Staff Writers
Improving land management and farming practices in
Natural Sequence Farming is a descriptor used when sustainableagriculture mimics the once highly efficient functions of the Australianlandscape. NSF pioneer Peter Andrews of Denman in New South Wales andcoordinator of the NSF movement, Duane Norris of Hardy's Bay, New South Wales
Agricultural practices such as clearing, burning, plowing, draining,and irrigation, have become commonplace across the Australian continent, asthey have elsewhere.
Their effect on the organic carbon content of soil has led to a declinein soil quality across farmland on the continent with levels currently a tenthof what they were 200 years ago prior to the major European settling ofAustralia.
Andrews and Norris point out that this has had implications foratmospheric carbon dioxide levels and will continue to impact on global warmingif farming practices are not modified.
"Soils hold twice as much carbon as the atmosphere, and threetimes as much as vegetation," the team explains, "But carbon in soilexposed by common agricultural practicesleads to the oxidation of the carbon and the release of carbon dioxide into theatmosphere."
Estimates suggest that soils that once contained carbon matter 4,000 to10,000 years old, are now holding carbon that is a mere two years old becausepoor management of livestock grazing leaves soil de-vegetated and in anoxidizing state.
Plants extract carbon from carbon dioxide in the air by photosynthesis,the team says. This carbon is critical to soil health and plant fertility, butit is lost when a ploughed paddock is left bare with no plant cover. Morecarbon is released when grassland and trees are cleared.
However, when vegetation is allowed to break down, even if it is weedycover, the carbon content of the soil is raised and growing conditions improve.
But plants also have another critical function - relevant to bothsoil fertility and to climate stabilization. This is the atmospheric coolingthat takes place through the evaporation of moisture from leaves, as it risesto form rain clouds,and then falls again restoring of the small water cycle to a local area. Inthis respect, hands-on NSF research in Australia
The team adds that careful water management, planting, and mulchfarming all work together in NSF practices so remediating eroded land. NSFtechniques have been developed to restore ecosystems by re-coupling the carbonand water cycles and could overcome the calamitous decline in soil carboncontent caused by oxidation, soil erosion and loss to the sea because offast-running water flows and floods.
There are four guidelines for Natural Sequence Farming:
+ First, restoring fertility held by nutrients and organic matter toimprove the biological function of soils.
+ Second, reinstating the hydrological balance to increase groundwaterstorage in the floodplain aquifer, increasing freshwater recharge and hencereducing saline groundwater discharge.
+ The third principle is to re-establish natural vegetation successionthrough pioneer species to promote the healthy growth of native plantcommunities. The fourth guideline is to understand the hydrological andbiogeochemical processes that drive the natural landscape system, which willallow their management to restore ecological function.
The researchers recognize that Australians cannot turn the clock back100,000 years to recreate the forested continent of mega fauna and sediment-carryingflood plains that existed before humans arrived.
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