Wednesday, December 06, 2006

No Till Farming In an earlier post, I raised some questions about soil depletion due to burning of plants as biofuel. It turns out that very little of the carbon in plants gets there by being absorbed from the soil. This makes sense because plant roots don't have teeth, digestive systems and the other apparatus necessary to take up fibrous organic material. However, it is still the case that common farming practices do release substantial amounts of carbon dioxide anyway, as a quick search on No Till Farming reveals. While I don't understand the underlying mechanisms, apparently simply turning over the soil releases trapped carbon dioxide. (Is it as simple as just shaking it loose?) We also have all the carbon dioxide released by the fuel for the tractors, etc. 4:17:34 PM  permalink  comment []

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