Here you have the capitalist holy grail, a product that costs nothing to produce giving a 100% return with no outlay, no wonder the money grubbers are loving this latest snake oil scam, they are trading thin air and who pays in the end? the individual consumer of course.
The carbon traders/the UN/governments will make lots of money and that I fear is the prime motivator here, carbon traders stand to rake in billions and the administration costs will be huge, the UN will increase its income stream and power and the governments will make lots in taxes, everybody wins eh? Well not quite everyone, ordinary people will suffer hugely but who cares about them? certainly not the snake oil salesmen thats for sure.

Sorry Cassandra, this isn’t capitalism, it’s rent-seeking. It’s the opposite of capitalism. These companies are lobbying to have the government force these schemes upon us. Capitalism does not rely upon coercion, but instead relies upon free people acting upon their own free will.

Progressive like hide behind words like ‘industrial policy’ when hatching these schemes. A better word for it is ‘extortion’.

It’s time to scrap cap & tax and anything else to do with the global warming scam.

http://cropwatch.unl.edu/input$/no-till.htm

Advantages of No-till

Advantages to no-till farming include time, labor and fuel savings, reduced wear and tear on machinery, better plant stands due to improving soil tilth (less soil crusting), reduced soil erosion, reduced soil water evaporation, increased water infiltration into the soil and increased soil organic matter levels over time. There are other environmental benefits to no-till farming, but the main reasons why many farmers are no-tilling dryland crops is because of the potential for higher yields in low rainfall years, timeliness in planting and being able to expand farming operations.

and

No-till Trial, UNL Rogers Memorial Farm

There is an ongoing long-term tillage system study on the University of Nebraska Rogers Memorial Farm (8 miles east of Lincoln). It uses a corn/soybean rotation (was sorghum/soybean) and compares no-till yields to those from different tillage practice. These research plots have shown that long-term, continuous no-till has better soil structure, more residue cover and less surface crusting than conventional tillage. The long-term no-till plots have improved water infiltration rates and reduced runoff, making rainfall more effective. With no tillage operations, better soil structure, and higher yields, UNL researcher Paul Jasa says no-till is the most profitable tillage system. The yield results from 1986 to 2004 for sorghum/soybeans and from 2005 to 2008 for corn/soybeans are in Table 1.

Conclusions: The “no-till drill” beats walking through the field with a pointed stick and a bag of einkorn seed.

Earth Science Picture of the Day for April 14, 2009

Like a lot of people, after a moderate February and March the last thing I want is any more cold weather. I think it’s spring! Well, wheat is the same way. Give it warm weather in late-winter (see chart below) and the last thing the plants need is a dose of really cold weather. When it is abnormally warm, the plants rev up their maturation schedule and become more vulnerable to freeze events. Unfortunately, that scenario played out in Oklahoma earlier this month during a spell of unusually cold weather. The moisture was much needed, but the cold was not. Wheat damage from the frigid weather following the storm resulted in various levels of injury from cosmetic damage to total sterility.

As shown above on the above freeze duration map from the Oklahoma Mesonet, temperatures dipped below freezing across the entire state the nights of April 5-7, in some places for 20 hours or more. Obviously, the colder and longer the freezing temps occur the worse the damage will be. It’s not just wheat that can be damaged; any vulnerable crops, including those of an ornamental variety in urban settings, are at risk during these types of cold snaps.

They no till farm to save money and it works just as well at a lower cost. The only downside is that you need the chemicals to no till.

No till is not something new.

I live across from Detroit, Michigan in Canada and all the farmers around here no till farm and have been doing no till for years. Works fine and is a lot less expensive and time consuming.

One of the main reasons to plow was to kill off insects and weeds by turning up the soil for the Winter. No with modern chemicals, weeds and insects are easily controlled with a little chemical warfare.

I’m sure there is a lot of truth to this.

But since we’re talking about a major change in conventional farming methods, I’d think the advocates might want to demonstrate — no, proove its effectiveness irrefutably. Otherwise, Ag offices should be running “experimental” farms to get the answers.

I’ll post two bits from Wickipedia:

As defined by the USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service strip-tillage should till no more than 1/4 of the field area.</blockquote

Sounds to me like soil productivity is pretty seriously compromised by this method. I’d have to know more, but at its most basic, aren’t we talking about a method of farming use a few millennia ago, before the plow was invented?

A man walks along some moist bottomland near the river carrying a long wooden stick sharpened at one end. He stops periodially, lifts the stick overhead and jabs it down into the ground, forming a “pocket” of compact soil. He drops a few seeds in, sloshes in some water from the skin hanging over his shoulder, kneels, and smooths over the hole. Standing, he tamps this mound down with his bare foot, then moves on, keeping a sharp eye out for sabertooth tigers and his wandering mate, who seems to like some guy in the cave downriver. Seems he’s got this new-fangled thing that turns over the soil. (Ahh, shoot! I’m getting ahead of myself. That hasn’t been invented yet!)

An interestingly-brief line from Wiki (may have been from a contrarian who disagreed with the otherwise approving descriptions of “no-till”):

However, newer research shows that no-till may not improve carbon sequestration, as preliminary research did not sample soil deep enough to measure the soil carbon flux completely[3].

Where’s the research demonstrating yields? Comparing two adjacent fields over several years?

What are those relative yields?
What is the soil productivity?
What crops could successfully be raised?
What herbicides and pesticides were needed in both fields?
What was the investment in machinery?
What was the difference in labor specifically?

Sorry, till some of this is shown, I have to conclude this is just another brain fart of the environmentalists. A little less fiber and a few more basic nutrients, please!

Codetech

“Little old France grows more wheat than Canada. The mighty prairies aren’t so mighty.

We produce far better crops around here than the prairie farmers could dream of.

Corn, soybeans, tomatoes, vegetables, fruits, etc. Stuff you can’t grow on the frozen prairies”.

Yes Codetech, this is all correct but we have to take a close look at the agricultural history of France.

In the colder periods France was hit by severe crop loss due to cold and wet weather conditions.

These conditions triggered the French Revolution when hungry people took to the streets.

We are facing similar conditions short term world wide as the current cooling process continues.

With more mouths to feed and ample food reserves available and politicians blinded by the hoax of run away Global Warming a real disaster is in the making.

Little old France grows more wheat than Canada. The mighty prairies aren’t so mighty.

We produce far better crops around here than the prairie farmers could dream of.

Corn, soybeans, tomatoes, vegetables, fruits, etc. Stuff you can’t grow on the frozen prairies.

One of the main reasons to plow was to kill off insects and weeds by turning up the soil for the Winter. No with modern chemicals, weeds and insects are easily controlled with a little chemical warfare.