California Healthy Soils Initiative: NRCS conservation practices with ghg mitigation and/or carbon sequestration benefits

[Paula Phipps]

NRCS Conservation Practices included in COMET-Planner are only those that have been identified as having greenhouse gas mitigation and/or carbon sequestration benefits on farms and ranches. This list of conservation practices is based on the qualitative greenhouse benefits ranking of practices prepared by NRCS.

...on-line COMET-Planner tool, which was developed by Amy Swan and others at CSU for USDA NRCS to measure the greenhouse gas impact of conservation practices, has been improved so that its projections are more regionally specific to California. Such a change could help provide better estimates of the carbon benefit of healthy soils management.

[Jack Kittredge]

The trouble with COMET is that it does not even look at synthetic or toxic chemical use in agriculture. How you can hope to provide healthy soil carbon build-up when carbon stabilization is so dependent on soil life, which is decimated by ag chemicals, is beyond me. Until NRCS is willing to address toxic chemicals in agriculture their other wonderful work in the area of cover crops and other good practices is flawed. When they say "no-till" they are not talking about organic no-till. They are talking about no-till using herbicides! 

Jack Kittredge

NOFA/Mass Carbon Analyst

411 Sheldon Rd.

Barre, MA 01005

voice: 978-355-2853

fax: 978-355-4046

ja...@nofamass.org

On Jan 29, 2017, at 3:41 PM, Paula Phipps wrote:

NRCS Conservation Practices included in COMET-Planner are only those that have been identified as having greenhouse gas mitigation and/or carbon sequestration benefits on farms and ranches. This list of conservation practices is based on the qualitative greenhouse benefits ranking of practices prepared by NRCS.

...on-line COMET-Planner tool, which was developed by Amy Swan and others at CSU for USDA NRCS to measure the greenhouse gas impact of conservation practices, has been improved so that its projections are more regionally specific to California. Such a change could help provide better estimates of the carbon benefit of healthy soils management.

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[erichjknight]

Yes I agree somewhat with Jack, however even no till with roundup has shown to reduce erosion, and build soil carbon .

Yes organic practice builds more, and more stable SOM , but putting away the plow, at least until soil compaction retards permeability and keeping the soil covered with both cover crops and crop waste

, along with expeditious use of NPK, can also help transition our majority of wasteful farming practices towards the right path .

Such baby steps will bring around the most recalsetrent farmer to more and more carbon recalsatrent practices.

Sent via my Samsung Galaxy, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone

[Glenn Gall]

I and others have found COMET forms to be taxing.  For Ohio's glaciated Alfisols, and I would extrapolate to the west for the same soils, OSU has developed a model based on farming processes. 

http://www.go.osu.edu/SOMCalculator

Developed by Dr. Vinayak Shedekar, Research Engineer at OSU South Centers, under Dr. Rafiq Islam, this tool is based on a large amount of acreage for each farming method, and is simple to use.  Dropdowns include common crop types, manure types, and tillage types.  Spreadsheet based outputs include OM Pools by weight, and %OM, annually, for as many years as practical.

Overview of the tool -- https://southcenters.osu.edu/sites/southc/files/site-library/site-documents/soilwater/demonstration_powerpoint_som.pdf

See p. 14 for a graphic output of SOM% for various input types, and p. 17 for "Where to get it."

For questions, email Dr. Shedekar shede...@osu.edu.

I have been pushing this for an organization who intended to pay farmers up front for predicted carbon savings.  COMET is unworkable for them.  Yes, I know C increases can't be accurately predicted, but that program would encourage farmers to adopt better practices. 

I'm interested in feedback.

Glenn

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Glenn Gall

Oberlin, Ohio