(Plant) Food for thought

I don't know where you stand on the whole climate change/global warming deal.  I also don't care. Because for the purposes of this article, it doesn't matter.  I will make one tiny little political statement and then I'll get to the point.

It is unfortunate that we (ALL of us in agriculture) have come to a place where "sustainability" has become almost a 4-letter word because it's been co-opted by the far-left.  Why on earth do we view economic and environmental stewardship as a dichotomy?  From what I've learned from some of the best farmers on the planet, not only are these two things not at war - they actually go hand in hand.





But anyway, the only reason I bring any of that up is because in this article I'm going to talk about CO2 - or as all of our commercial agricultural crops know it - FOOD.


Look, here's the reality of the situation, there is no debating the fact that CO2 levels have been rising over time.  There's not.  Because they have.  Period.  (See the image below, which comes from here.) What is up for debate, however, is whether or not that's all bad.


Global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration from 1850

Now, if you're adamant about climate change, you're thinking, "What does he mean it might not be all bad?!" and if you're one of the infamous "climate change deniers" you're probably thinking, "I can't wait to share this article without fully reading it or trying to understand it because it clearly supports my point!"


With all due respect... both of you, please shut up and just listen here for a second.  


In order to understand my point, you need to watch two quick videos.  In the first video, you'll see a NASA model of the global CO2 fluctuations for the year 2006.  Please pay close attention to those fluctuations.





Ok... now for the second video.  In this video, Gary Zimmer goes on a short (but very animated) little tirade about how CO2 can actually be a limiting factor.  Pay close attention to his point about the TIMING of the release of CO2.



If you put the information from these two videos together, here's one plausible conclusion: We have an excess of CO2 over the fall and winter because we don't have anything actively growing to soak it up and utilize it for photosynthesis.  (By the way, if you want to sound smart at the next party with your friends, you can say that, "over the winter months we tend to lack terrestrial sequestration.") And yet, at the same time, we actually lack the CO2 over the course of the growing season that we need to truly maximize our yields.



If you think that sounds far fetched then you should probably check out what the almighty "university data" has to say about this. Check out this table that's adapted from Rogers & Dahlman (1993).



And keep in mind that this study was published over 20 years ago. There have been numerous more studies that have examined the yield benefits of CO2 since that time with some fairly similar results.  Now, one of the chief criticisms about a lot of this data is that it was done in an environment that was too controlled. In other words, these results may not translate very well in an open air field environment.  


Well, guess what.  The University of IL has already been addressing this with their soyFACE experiments.  So what have they found in a more "real world" scenario compared to the controlled experiments?  They've found that the yield increase in these real world trials run about half of what they are in the controlled experiments... at least on C3 plants (e.g., soybeans). Now, as you read the studies, it becomes pretty clear that there is a strong climate-change agenda behind their interpretations, and I think that because of that they may miss an important opportunity to connect with those of you who actually farm. 

  • For example, Long, et al. (2006) wrote, "The average increase observed for C3 crops in FACE was 20% for the daily integral of photosynthetic CO2 uptake, 17% for total biomass, and just 13% for yield" (p. 1921; my emphasis added).  
  • Similarly, Morgan, et al. (2005) wrote "Although increases in both above ground net primary production (17–18%) and yield (15%) were consistent across three growing seasons and two cultivars, the relative stimulation was less than projected from previous chamber experiments" (p. 1856).
I'm sorry, but a 13-15% yield increase is not "just" anything to me other than "just pretty darn good."  I mean, if we're going to all be honest that CO2 levels ARE in fact rising, we might as well be honest that a 15% yield bump is not something to ignore. That means that if you're growing 60 bushel beans, you've just jumped to 67.8 - 69 bushel beans.  At $10 beans (because I'm bad at math, and $10 is easy to estimate), you just increased your gross profit almost $80/acre.  Now, I haven't worked out the economics on this yet.  I have no idea what it would cost to increase your CO2 the way they have. Maybe it's not economically feasible to boost the COto your crops.  In fact, it seems highly improbable that it would, because having pipes up to blow CO2 across your whole fields would cause other logistical issues (e.g., spraying).  That's why this article was just meant to be (Plant) Food for Thought.  ;) I want to get you thinking.  

So where am I going with all of this?  Well... we know that there are a couple of things that cause pretty massive CO2 release, so let's start there.  

  1. Spreading manure
  2. Tillage
These both tend to be fall activities, do they not?  And remember above how I talked about the problem with COrelease in the fall/winter because there's nothing growing?  Well what if... what if these were spring activities?  Of course the argument here is that it's too wet.  Ok, fair point.  But what if you had a cover crop growing in the fall/winter to do that whole terrestrial sequestration thing? Not only would that help to act as a sink for the COthat gets released in the fall, but it could also help to dry out the soil in the spring so that you're dry enough to put manure on, and (if you absolutely have to) to work the ground (but seriously... consider no-till or strip-till).  

Wait... what?!  This article was a LOT better when he was just ripping on those stupid climate change people.  Who does he think he is pushing no-till and cover crops!  Doesn't he know that $#!T doesn't work here?  Doesn't he know that's what the lefties push! 

Easy there, killer.  Remember what I said allllll the way back at the very beginning?  Here, let me remind you: 
"Why on earth do we view economic and environmental stewardship as a dichotomy?  From what I've learned from some of the best farmers on the planet, not only are these two things not at war - they actually go hand in hand. "
Yep... Believe it or not it may be possible that economic stewardship and environmental stewardship go hand in hand.  Is it possible I'm completely wrong about all of this.  Yep.  For sure.  

Then again, what if I'm right?  


The only way to know for sure is to try something different on your own farm.  Don't you dare go switch every acre because of something some rogue agronomist said on the internet once.  But DO go figure out which 10 acre plot you can dedicate to goofing around with and giving the neighbors something to talk about. ;)


As always, thanks for taking the time to read.  If you'd like help designing or implementing any of your experiments, or help interpreting the results, please feel free to hit me up at DynamiteAg.com or call 641-919-5574.

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