New Benchmark For Carbon Credit Modeling, Soil Fertility

The study shows that an acre planted with a bioenergy sorghum hybrid accumulates about 3.1 tons of dry root biomass over the crop’s 155-day growing season. Bioenergy sorghum roots also grew to over 6.5 feet deep over their growing season.

These new metrics make it easier to predict how much atmospheric carbon dioxide might be captured inside roots. The numbers can also shed light on how many carbon credits a planted field might earn.

“Frankly, the numbers are quite favorable,” Rooney said.

The numbers are also important for understanding the crop’s potential to improve soil fertility and water-holding capacity by replenishing soil organic carbon. However, previous research has shown that in the U.S., soil organic carbon levels have fallen by 50% over the past 100 years in land planted with annual crops.

This drop in soil carbon levels could be due to cropping practices, microbial activity and changing land use, Rooney said. These complex factors mean that predicting how long it might take to replenish lost carbon requires sophisticated modeling. The restoration process is likely to take many decades.

“For modeling, they need to have a realistic number to start with,” Rooney said. “We haven’t historically had enough info to do that, but this study provides a benchmark for scientists and policymakers.”

Need For Further Research

In this study, Rooney and his team managed the field trials and helped with phenotyping. Mullet and his team characterized the root system and the genes expressed within.

Over multiple years, the study considered in-depth how one bioenergy sorghum hybrid interacts with two soil types, Rooney said. He stresses the need to conduct further research.

“In this study, we didn’t sample the genetic diversity of bioenergy sorghum at all, except for one standard type,” Rooney said. “And looking at multiple environments and expanding the range of we are evaluating is essential.”

Bioenergy Sorghum As Part Of A Sustainable Bioenergy Production System

Modeling studies estimate that millions of acres of abandoned and marginal cropland in the U.S. are available for planting. Many of those acres are in the Gulf Coast region. The region is ideal for bioenergy sorghum production because of ample rainfall, long growing seasons and low competition with grain crops, Mullet said. Furthermore, the crop has improved over the years in terms of productivity, resilience and composition, thanks to Mullet’s and Rooney’s efforts.

“Recently, I’ve decided the most important thing we can do is continue research on bioenergy sorghum optimization, but also to help design and build biorefineries that will process materials from the crop in a way that’s optimal,” Mullet said.

Carbon captured in biofuels and bioproducts at biorefineries, and by bioenergy sorghum roots could generate carbon credits, potentially benefiting producers and industry.

Yet despite the Gulf Coast’s excellent potential for biofuels production, there are no bioenergy research centers and very few biorefineries in the region, Mullet said.

Therefore, Mullet is now working to attract industry and government funding to help build the next generation of biorefineries designed to use bioenergy sorghum biomass for the production of biofuels, bioproducts and biopower.

“The project has expanded to not just producing biofuels and bioproducts, but also directly capturing carbon and sequestering it,” he said.

Source: The White House news release

In July, President Biden signed an Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy to create a fairer, more resilient, and more dynamic economy. Over the last few decades, we've seen too many industries become dominated by a handful of large companies that control most of the business and most of the opportunities-raising prices and decreasing options for American families, while also squeezing out small businesses and entrepreneurs.

The meat and poultry processing sector is a textbook example, with lack of competition hurting consumers, producers, and our economy.

Four large meat-packing companies control 85 percent of the beef market. In poultry, the top four processing firms control 54 percent of the market. And in pork, the top four processing firms control about 70 percent of the market. The meatpackers and processors buy from farmers and sell to retailers like grocery stores, making them a key bottleneck in the food supply chain.

When dominant middlemen control so much of the supply chain, they can increase their own profits at the expense of both farmers-who make less-and consumers-who pay more. Most farmers now have little or no choice of buyer for their product and little leverage to negotiate, causing their share of every dollar spent on food to decline. Fifty years ago, ranchers got over 60 cents of every dollar a consumer spent on beef, compared to about 39 cents today. Similarly, hog farmers got 40 to 60 cents on each dollar spent 50 years ago, down to about 19 cents today.

Even as farmers' share of profits have dwindled, American consumers are paying more-with meat and poultry prices now the single largest contributor to the rising cost of food people consume at home.

To view the complete report, click here.

USDA release

Regional distribution of U.S. irrigated acreage changed significantly from 1949 to 2017. Trends in irrigated cropping patterns, technological advances, water availability, and changing growing-season weather drove this evolution. The arid Mountain and Pacific regions consistently irrigated the most farmland until 2007, when irrigated acreage in the Northern Plains region surpassed acreage in the Pacific region.

Irrigated acreage in the Mountain and Pacific regions remained relatively constant over the 70-year period, despite increasingly limited opportunities for additional water development and increasing competition for water from non-agricultural sectors. The Northern Plains region has experienced the most substantial increase in irrigated acreage, expanding from less than 2 million acres in 1949 to nearly 12 million acres in 2017.

The expansion of irrigated acreage in the Northern Plains is related to advances in groundwater pumping technologies, the diffusion of center pivot irrigation application systems, and the region's abundant aquifer resources. The Southern Plains region experienced similar growth in irrigation until the 1980s, when dwindling groundwater supplies resulted in irrigated acreage declines.

The Mississippi Delta and Southeast regions also have expanded irrigated acreage since 1949 reflecting, in part, changing cropping patterns, abundant aquifer water supplies, and producer responsiveness to changing precipitation levels during growing seasons. This chart was drawn from the USDA, Economic Research Service report Trends in U.S. Irrigated Agriculture: Increasing Resilience Under Water Supply Scarcity, published December 2021.