Fighting climate change may be cheaper and more beneficial than we think

Re:Fighting climate change may be cheaper and more beneficia... by Ensorceled on Wednesday July 10, 2019 @07:39AM (#20400967)

This reminds me of all the small dairy farms that used to exist where I grew up. My grandfathers' farm was pretty typical at 100 acres; 40 acres of rough pasture and wood lot ("the back 40"), almost 60 acres of fields that rotated as hay/grain and temporary pasture. Everything self-contained and fertilized with cow manure until the '70s when everything started ratcheting up.

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Re:Fighting climate change may be cheaper and more beneficia... by hvidgaard on Wednesday July 10, 2019 @08:01AM (#20401110)

At some point the land would be useless, unless biomass from the outside was added. Every product that leaves the farm is from the land and it's ability to support that cycle will be depleted sooner or later.

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Re:Fighting climate change may be cheaper and more beneficia... by Ensorceled on Wednesday July 10, 2019 @10:35AM (#20402342)

That's not how biomass works, biomass is not a zero-sum game. The main issue with sustainable dairy farming is secondary elements and nitrogen fixing. My grandfathers both planted clover in rotation for this reason.

Eventually, the ground will become depleted of phosphorous and potassium. Other trace elements tend to take a really long time to deplete, especially in clay.

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Re:Fighting climate change may be cheaper and more beneficia... by hvidgaard on Thursday July 11, 2019 @04:52AM (#20410094)

That was my point. What we see today in conventional farming is just what your grandfathers did "on steroids". We've become really good at farming, so the depletion happens significantly faster.

For every product that leaves the farm, it takes something from the ground. Some can be amended with legume plants, but minerals will deplete at some point - adding them yearly is responsible farming.

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Re:Fighting climate change may be cheaper and more beneficia... by Nasrudith on Wednesday July 10, 2019 @09:38AM (#20401802)

Biomass does come from the outside though on earth - rainfall and photosynthesis are sufficient to increase the mass unless said farm is a closed cycle hermetically sealed dome.

That said it still could run into problems with other requisite elemental depletion in soil even with assistance of things like bacteria. If the plants need calcium and it is all extracted then thr farm would be limited to simpler life that doesn't need any trace elements. If say algae can get by on just atmospheric gas components, water, and sunlight indefinitely then a hypothetical algae farm could run indefinitely. But there isn't much of a market for algae.

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