On Tuesday I went to a field day on no-till tobacco production. Tobacco is a warm season solanaceous crop -- like tomatoes or peppers -- that is usually transplanted into freshly-tilled soil in late spring. After fall harvest the remaining stubble is usually left to decompose in the bare soil until the next spring, when the plow comes around again.

In recent decades people have started to recognize that soil suffers when it's left bare, or routinely disturbed by cultivation. Bare soil is susceptible to wind and water erosion. Cultivation destroys the soil structure, further increasing its susceptibility to erosion. Cultivation also introduces a lot of oxygen to the soil very quickly, resulting in a brief boom in the microbial population, and a rapid depletion of the soil organic matter that the microbes eat. (Organic matter is a valuable component of soil because it holds on to the nutrients and water that plants need; soil microbes help release nutrients into the soil solution, making them accessible to plants, and exude sticky material that holds soil particles together, reducing soil's susceptibility to erosion.) In the long term, cultivation reduces soil organic matter content and soil microbial populations.

No-till grain production is now fairly common, but very few farmers grow transplanted crops, like tobacco, without cultivating. It turns out that one of them happens to be a sixth-generation Kentucky farmer who took the 'Introduction to Sustainable Agriculture' course that I co-taught last semester. The field day was at his farm.

We saw a nice demonstration of how soil that hasn't been tilled holds together better than soil that is routinely cultivated. Clods of soil collected from sections of the farm that hadn't been cultivated for 10 years were suspended in water next to a clod collected from a routinely cultivated section. You can see the clod on the left disintegrating while the clod in the middle holds firm:

 

 

After harvest the land is seeded to a winter cover crop that protects the soil from winter erosion, saves nutrients that might leach out of the soil in the absence of plants, and feeds soil microbes. The farm is experimenting with different winter cover crop mixes, most of which include a nitrogen-fixing legume species.

At the Kentucky State University Research and Demonstration Farm we often use a mixture of rye, which grows quickly and out-competes weeds; and hairy vetch, which fixes nitrogen and twines its way up the rye. Here are the two plants together, towering over a yardstick:

 

 

Nitrogen-fixing crops like hairy vetch harbor bacteria in their roots that are able to convert nitrogen gas from the air around us into nitrogen that is available to plants. A winter cover crop of hairy vetch can add more than 100 pounds of nitrogen to the soil per acre (Kansas State University pdf), enough to feed a nitrogen-demanding crop like corn.

Of course organic farmers have been using nitrogen-fixing cover crops for decades; the organic standards don't allow synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. Conventional farmers have known about the advantages of cover cropping, but using nitrogen fertilizer has long been cheaper than managing cover crops. Soaring fertilizer prices have changed that. Suddenly tactics like no-till production and cover cropping aren't just better for the soil; they're cheaper, too.

Michael Bomford provides research and extension services related to organic agriculture and small-scale renewable energy production through Kentucky State University's Land Grant Program.

A startup company called EFuel100 is taking orders for its new MicroFueler, an energy-efficient fermentation, distillation and dehydration system that turns sugar and water into ethanol.

The MicroFueler is the brainchild of Floyd Butterfield, who designed the award-winning Butterfield still back in 1980. The Butterfield still was designed for farm scale, energy-efficient ethanol production from carbohydrate-rich crops. 250 acres of corn could keep it going for a year. (Most new ethanol plants need about 200,000 acres of corn to operate at capacity for a year.) Although a modern ethanol plant gets about 15% more ethanol from each bushel of corn than the Butterfield still (2.7 vs. 2.3 gallons/bushel), Butterfield's system was more compatible with small, diversified farming operations, and didn't require long-distance trucking of feedstock.

With the MicroFueler, Butterfield takes the "small is beautiful" philosophy one step further, aiming to bring ethanol production from the farm scale to the home scale.

The MicroFueler makes fuel out of sugar, which is food. Most large-scale conventional ethanol plants start with starch, which is food. The first step in their process is to break down the starch into sugar for fermentation.

The holy grail of current ethanol science is the production of ethanol from non-food, high cellulose materials, like switchgrass or corn stalks. The major barrier to most cellulosic ethanol production is the development of efficient means of breaking cellulose down into sugar for fermentation. In other words, to make ethanol from non-food crops we're trying to figure out how to turn them into food. Whether the sugar comes from starch or cellulose, all fermentation starts with sugar.

Sugar is the building block of life. Photosynthesis is the light-driven reaction that makes sugar and oxygen from carbon dioxide and water. Organisms digest sugar to get energy, turning it back into carbon dioxide in the process. Plants store energy in the form of starch, which is a long string of sugar molecules that can be broken down relatively easily. They also make strings of sugar molecules into cellulose, a structural material that doesn't break down easily, and is found in cell walls.

Even if you aren't a chemist you can probably tell from the figure on the left that starch and cellulose are made from the same stuff. The molecule in the square brackets is glucose, or sugar.

The promotional material for the MicroFueler claims it will make a gallon of ethanol from about 12 pounds of sugar. For the past decade 12 pounds of unrefined sugar on the world market has cost about 30% less than a gallon of gasoline in the US. Between 1976 and 1996 a gallon of gasoline generally cost about 15% more than 12 pounds of sugar. Today's commodity investment advice? Buy sugar.

 

 

According to the promotional material (pdf), the MicroFueler "solves the ethanol transportation issue by containing the refinery and pump delivery system within the same system – in other words, people can produce where they consume, using the MicroFueler to both create ethanol and pump their vehicle with fuel."

Since the Energy Farms Network is based on the premise of local resource cycling and local production, I was curious to estimate the land needed to produce enough sugar to use the MicroFueler to run my car. Last year our sweet sorghum crop gave us about three-quarters of a pound of sugar per square yard. Each gallon of ethanol, then, would require about 16 square yards of sweet sorghum to be harvested, juiced and fed into the MicroFueler. Ethanol has about two-thirds the energy density of gasoline, so I might expect my Toyota Corolla, which gets about 37 miles per gallon of gasoline, to get 25 miles per gallon on ethanol. To drive it 10,000 miles per year I would need about 400 gallons of ethanol, or about 1.3 acres of sweet sorghum.

That's about 8 times more land than I have in my backyard. I guess it's back to my bike...

Michael Bomford provides research and extension services related to organic agriculture and farm-scale renewable energy production through Kentucky State University's Land Grant Program.

Yesterday we confirmed that the rape/canola plants and seeds growing in the energy garden are indeed free of Monsanto’s Round Up Ready genes. We are growing two small (3 ft. x 5 ft.) plots for oil seeds as an example of one of the options available for local and ecologically appropriate sources of liquid fuel for agriculture. Of course, the seeds were certified GMO-free and organic, but we decided to test ourselves as well. We ordered a test kit from Envirologix in Portland, Maine.

As we face the need for non-petroleum, renewable fuels, fuels required for feeding our current population, fuels for field work, refrigeration, transportation, we must keep in mind basic ecological and economic guidelines. Here are three at the top of the list:
- Take care of the soil
- Don’t pollute the water, the air or any other natural resource
- Diversity leads to stability

We do not support a genetically modified food or fuel supply. We do not support an alternative fuel supply to petroleum that causes soil degradation, ecosystem pollution or loss of even a part of our genetic heritage.

As we continue working to create a sustainable food system, and one that is prepared for peak everything, we face very complex choices. We need alternative fuels, but we need them to be from truly renewable sources. We need to source them in ways that don't compromise other basic ecosystem and economic functions.

Seed companies like the one in Stockton from which we acquired our seeds must be supported and encouraged. Our future food system depends on our access to good seeds that are genetically appropriate to our regions and specific needs. We’ll be making this test kit available to growers in the area who may be growing organic canola or brassica species near RR Canola that could cross-pollinate.

Some of the questions we are attempting to address are:

-what are the most important uses of liquid fuels in the food system?

-what are the most effective conservation actions?

-do we have the technology we need for each part of the food and fuel system?

-at what scale, and in which applications are different alternative fuels appropriate?

-how do we diffuse innovations and knowledge about farming methods and food preparation and transportation which don’t require fossil fuels?

-how do we build a production system and an economy that serves human food needs without further damaging our ecosystems and communities?

I just spent three days talking about biofuels with other scientists who work at historically black land grant universities. These institutions exist in most southern states because of an 1890 law requiring states to either set up a land grant institution for people of color or demonstrate that race was not an admission factor at their existing institution. Kentucky State University, where I work, is one of these '1890 land grants.'

The 1890 land grants are interesting because of their mission to serve under-served constituencies, including minorities and people with limited resources. The 'get big or get out' prescription sometimes associated with land grant universities ought to be an anathema to 1890 land grant universities.

This week's meeting was called to explore ways for 1890 land grants to contribute to USDA goals, including "the development of biofuels and processes to efficiently convert renewable plant products to fuel." It came at a time when food prices are skyrocketing and people are going hungry, in part because a growing proportion of America's corn is being turned into fuel.

At one point I expressed to a USDA economist my opinion that the large scale corn to ethanol program has been a complete failure, neither reducing carbon emissions, nor contributed to energy independence. The economist surprised me with his defence that neither of these were program objectives. The real goal, he said, was to raise corn prices. By that measure the program has been a resounding success(!).

After three days of intense discussion we hammered out a list of research objectives for 1890 land grants working on biofuels. They are:

1. Identify, produce, characterize and improve alternative feedstock crops.
2. Develop and optimize small scale technologies for biofuel production.
3. Evaluate and improve biofuel and byproduct quality.
4. Educate and train students, farmers, and other professionals regarding biofuels.
5. Analyze economic, environmental and social impacts of biofuel production and use.

So those are my guiding principles as I continue to participate in the Energy Farms Network and collaborate with the Post Carbon Institute. Over the summer I'll work with researchers from Virginia State University and North Carolina A&T University to pull together a full proposal, based on these objectives, for a collaborative project involving all eighteen 1890 land grant universities.

Some of my current research is funded by Southern SARE, so I took note when the organization released a position paper on the type of biofuel research it will fund in the future. SARE identifies eight themes for future projects to "expand the focus in bioenergy beyond corn- and soybean-based ethanol and biodiesel:"

1. Energy conservation and efficiency;
2. Energy efficient production practices;
3. Non-biomass renewable energy sources;
4. Alternative biomass feedstock production systems;
5. Environmental impact of bioenergy production;
6. Community and rural development impacts of bioenergy production;
7. Local and regional economic impact of biofuel production; and
8. Whole farm integrated energy systems.

It looks like the Energy Farms Network is on the cutting edge.

-----

• The goal is to feed more people, not fewer people. There is an old adage that has already been quoted about putting all your eggs in one basket. If I were one of those fifty people who was being fed by only one farmer, I'd be more worried than if there were four or five-or ten. Suppose the one farmer dies?
• Two and a half percent of the population is feeding all the rest. That is very small. And as far as I can see, nobody is worrying about where the cutoff point is. There is always a bottom half. We are always concerned about eliminating the bottom half because we say they're inefficient. I think that our doctrine of efficiency is suspect anyway because it only applies to major quantities. We waste stuff at our place all the time because we can't sell it. It's too little to sell. You can't give it away unless you cook it for somebody.
• How small do you let the percentage of farmers get before you are in danger? We have no alternative energy source on the farm now. When one farmer's feeding fifty people he is absolutely dependent on petroleum. When the economy shifts to reflect the realities of energy, it may be too expensive to produce some of this food; certainly at current prices.
• --Wendell Berry, 1974 http://www.tilthproducers.org/berry1974.htm

The US Energy Information Administration  (EIA) says that Americans consumed about 105 exajoules (EJ) in 2006, and predicts that energy consumption will exceed 120 EJ by 2025. That projection looks unrealistic. Here's my attempt to do better.

EIA records show that US energy consumption has increased almost every year for a long time. A look at the period between 1950 and 1973 shows each year's increase in energy consumption was even greater than the year before.

High energy prices caused energy use to decline between 1973 and '75 and again between 1979 and '83. When growth resumed after the second energy crisis there was a difference: Each year's increase was less than the year before.

If the trend established in 1980-2006 were to continue then US energy consumption would crest around 2015 before starting to decline. Consumption in 2025 would be about the same as in 2006. This projection is much lower than the EIA's, but I still think it unrealistically high. A more likely scenario is an immediate reduction in energy consumption in response to high energy prices, as occurred in the previous energy crises. A 1.2% annual decline in energy consumption, sustained until 2025, would bring the nation back to consumption levels of the mid-1980s.

Renewable sources currently provide just 7% of the nation's energy. The EIA predicts this will be up to 11% by 2025. Just as the EIA appears to have overestimated the availability of non-renewable energy sources in the near future, it appears to have underestimated the contribution of renewables. 

A coalition of business, labor, and environmental groups is calling for plans to increase renewable energy production to meet 25% of the nation's energy consumption by 2025. The 25 by '25 vision has its opponents, particularly now that the corn ethanol push is widely recognized as an environmental, social, and financial disaster. Sooner or later, though, the nation and the planet must return to 100% renewable energy.

What might a 17 year transition to a 25% renewable energy economy look like? One scenario would involve a 30% reduction in non-renewable energy use coupled with a doubling of hydro, biomass and geothermal energy use and 12 and 24-fold increases in wind and solar energy use, respectively. That might have some pretty serious economic, environmental and social ramifications, but it would get us to 25%. The rate of decline in renewable energy use would be pretty similar to the rate of increase that got us where we stand today.

 

The Kentucky State University Energy Farm project is just beginning its first field season. We grew vegetables through the winter in our solar-heated high tunnel; now we are beginning to move outdoors, where a thick winter cover crop of rye and hairy vetch has been building soil organic matter and nitrogen levels. Temperatures still sometimes dip below freezing at night (we had frost on Tuesday!), but the first of our cool-season vegetables -- like peas, lettuce, and kale -- have been braving the temperature swings outside for the past month.

Our project will incorporate both food and energy crops: The energy crops -- sweet sorghum, sweet potato, corn, and soybean -- are all warm-season crops that will be planted in late May. Each of these crops is high in carbohydrates, making them either high-calorie food for humans or a source of sugars, starches, or oils that could be used for biofuel production.

We will grow our energy crops at three different scales. The smallest scale will be a biointensive system, in which only hand tools are used. Our medium scale will be a market garden system, using a combination of hand tools and a walk-behind tractor with attachments. The largest scale system will be tractor-based. We will measure the land, labor and energy use efficiency of production at each of these scales.

It is somewhat amusing to see the Wall Street Journal cover this topic.  After all, they are the paper of Wall Street, which I imagine has a “look down the nose” attitude about the people who grow food for a living, especially small-scale farmers who don’t use giant machines or buy inputs from Fortune 500 companies.   Perhaps I need to get over a prejudice?

 

Check out what this reporter did…and on page A1 to boot:

 

Green Acres II:
When Neighbors
Become Farmers

Suburban Arugula Is
Organic and Fresh, but
About That Manure...

By KELLY K. SPORS
April 22, 2008; Page A1

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120882472974233235.html?mod=todays_us_page_one

 

Not bad!  The people doing this work are good looking, young, suburbanites.  Probably makes it more palatable to the readers because they can relate to them. 

 

The music on the video included at the web site, however, is kinda hill-billyish.  I enjoy banjos and blue grass myself, but don’t know any farmers of the generation depicted who listen to it regularly.  If more young farmers are needed, it might be better to associate them with rock stars instead. 

 

I appreciated the coverage of the SPIN farming method:  http://www.spinfarming.com/

 

It is great that there is now a marketed entry path to farming in urban/suburban areas.  I would like to point out where SPIN differs from what we are advocating in the Energy Farm Program.  The article explains:

 

Start-up costs for a one-eighth-acre farm run about $5,500, says Ms. Christensen of Spin-Farming. That includes a walk-in cooler to wash and store fresh produce, a rotary tiller and a farm-stand display. Annual operating expenses, including seeds and farmers-market stall fees, can add about $2,000. Such a farm can generate $10,000 to $20,000 in annual sales, she says. That's "an entry point into farming to see if they have a talent for it," Ms. Christensen says. "Those that do will eventually be able to expand and increase that income level quite substantially."

 

Where we differ is in the use of hand tools instead of rototillers, and passive cooling techniques instead of walk-in coolers requiring electricity.  Also, we would probably be more circumspect about the inputs of manure and other fertilizers and ask farmers to work on green manure cover cropping and compost making on site instead.  This is all about the need to “get off the sauce” of oil, and fossil fuels in general.  Good hand tools are incredibly efficient at the scale needed for home-scale veggies (http://www.energyfarms.net/node/1509 ).

 

The Wall Street Journal does have some great reporters.  Good going Kelly!  Too bad the editorial pages of the WSJ are full of garbage about energy and climate issues. 

Last year we developed a toolset that allowed us to clear an abandoned baseball field of perennial sod and convert it into a vegetable producing mini-farm. This petrol-free toolset included a low-wheel cultivator made by Glaser and a two-foot wide broadfork. It is quite likely that we used these tools in a more rigorous way then they were intended, (opening new land instead of working pre-established vegetable beds), yet the tools withstood hours of work with only a handful of needed repairs. After last year’s experience we consider the combination of the broadfork and the low-wheel cultivator to be an appropriate toolset for small-scale vegetable cultivation because they efficiently use manual labor in place of fossil fuel powered equipment to prepare vegetable beds.

This blog will revisit our method for preparing vegetable beds in light of the fact that we are no longer fighting against tough perennial sod, and instead, we are removing our over-winter cover crops.

Step 1: Removing Cover Crop

We use a sharp scythe to cut the cover crop off as low to the ground as possible. Once the crop has fallen we rake up the remains and cart it off as a nitrogen input to our compost piles. In the earliest part of spring, we are careful to remove only the cover-crop from the vegetable beds that we immediately plan to prepare for transplant or direct seeding. This allows the other areas of cover crop to continue growing as much as possible in the increased temperatures and daylight hours of spring.

Jason Using Sharp Scythe to Clear Cover Crop

Cover Crop Cut Close to the Ground With Scythe

Step 2: Breaking Ground

After the cover crop has been removed we are left with the gentle stubble of annual cereals and legumes. We have noticed that the loam soil is quite soft and easy to work with, and we attribute this to the fact the area we are working was established last year. A prime consideration at this stage of bed preparation is soil moisture. We want to be careful not to work the soil too wet or we will remove an unnecessary amount of soil as we cut through the stubble of the annual cover crops.

Low Wheel Cultivator Cutting Into Soil

Step 3: Loosening the Bed

After the stubble of the previous crop has been broken free from the soil, the next step is to broadfork the soil. The broadfork is two feet wide and includes five tines that sink into the soil about ten inches. It is amazing how much easier it is to broadfork the soil this season than it was last year. We have changed the width of our beds this year from 5-foot wide beds to 4-foot wide beds. This change has put us into some areas of soil that is similar to last year when we had to combat the sod. Pushing the broadfork into the previously worked sections versus the reclaimed sod sections really shows what one-years-worth of work accomplished for reducing compaction and improving aeration. Again we want to be aware of soil moisture, so that we do not smear wet soil together in the prying and lifting action of the broadfork.

Chris Sinking Broadfork into and Prying Down

Step 4: Cross-cut the sod and rake

After the bed has been forked, there are entire clumps that have been lifted and are uneven. We use the low-wheel cultivator with a 3-tine cultivator attachment to cross cut the bed and thereby remove the clumps. By the time we are finished with cross cutting we have up to five inches of loose soil on the surface which makes a good seedbed. It is also easy to transplant into the newly cross cut bed. If we intend to seed the bed we rake the surface smooth and make sure there is no trash that could interfere with the drill-seeder.

Jason Cross-Cutting Bed with Three-Tine Cultivator

We like this toolset because it clears an area of grass or cover crop and produces a vegetable bed that is suitable for direct seeding or transplant. In this method the soil remains loose and aerated up to ten inches and it does not entail the soil disruption of double digging or rototilling. By making sure to compost the soil and debris that is removed from the area in which you intend to make a bed, you make a good step toward sustainable soil management in which no soil is lost and on-site nutrients are cycled back into the beds in the form of compost.

If you are curious you can click here to check out and contrast our bed preparation method from last year.

The attached PDF contains:

- crop layout

- calculations of plant numbers

- planting successions

- theoretical calore yield

- theoretical compost yield

- calculation of share numbers

- planting calendar

- harvest calendar

 

Updated Crop Assessment for Sebastopol Energy Garden

 

At the Sebastopol Energy Garden eggs account for a large portion of the calories that we produce. Of the estimated 1,476,765,3 calories that we can produce over the next growing year, 136,218 of that comes in the form of eggs.

On average our flock of five chickens produces an egg/chicken/day, each weighing roughly 61g, and containing 93.3 calories.

Supporting a flock of chickens; however, requires energy as well. Each chicken needs at least 200 calories/day to survive, and while about 30% of those calories can be obtained by foraging, the other 70% needs to be provided for them. Our chickens are allowed access to the compost piles and obtain some additional calories from the food scraps we recycle, but this is not enough.

Because hens allocate so much of the protein that they consume toward egg production it is also essential that we support the needs of our flock by providing a protein rich feed for them. It is recommended that 16% of a chicken's diet be protein.

Recommended Daily Value (chicken): 200 cal/day (5 chickens) (365) = 365,000 cal/ year

FOOD SOURCE % PROTEIN, BY WT

Dried fish flakes 76
Dried liver 76
Dried earthworms 76
Duckweed 50
Torula yeast 50
Brewers yeast 39
Soybeans (dry roasted) 37
Flaxseed 37
Alfalfa seed 35
Beef, lean 28
Earthworms 28
Fish 28
Sunflower seeds 26.3
Wheat germ 25
Peas & Beans, dried 24.5
Sesame seed 19.3
Soybeans (boiled) 17
Wheat bran 16.6
Oats, whole 14
Rice polish 12.8
Rye 12.5
Wheat 12.5
Barley 12.3
Oats 12
Corn 9
Millet 9
Milo 9
Rice, brown 7.5

Chicken feed can be purchased from most feed stores and while this may be a simple enough solution for most, it is our goal to produce chicken feed on-site so that we may decrease our dependece upon off-site materials and reduce our energy consumption.

The majority of chicken feed is produced through unsustainable, agricultural methods which rely heavily upon the use of petroleum. The proces behind producing, storing, and transporting feed is a very energy requiring process; by producing chicken feed on-site, on a small scale, we can avoid a lot of the energy inputs of conventional production.

By calculating the theoretical calorie yield of each crop intended for chicken feed as well as their protein content, we can determine the amount of required growing space for feeding the chickens. When it comes time to harvest the grains, and process them we will already have calculated how much to allocate towards the chickens. Then all we need to do is grind the grains and mix them accordingly. In the batch that we just prepared we used a combination of Peredovik Sungflowers seeds, Sorghum, Millet, and Ground corn.

Hand powered Corona Mill

[video]

Corn Millet

Peredovik Sunflower Dale Sorghum

Chicken Feed