Where livestock are run regularly there is regular supply of dung. Nature provides dung beetles to bury the dung underground. Provided no insecticides are applied to the animals or soil the DBs thrive.
If Biochar (BC) is given to cattle at a rate of 300gm/cow/day or to other herbivores at pro rata rates several things happen:
The cows masticate and swallow the BC. The BC has therapeutic effects on their digestion reducing scouring (loose bowel), absorbing and removing toxins and generally aiding digestion and suppressing disease. The BC is not digested. The inert, now finely crushed BC is all expelled in the faeces/dung. The dung beetles then proceed to bury the dung at depths of up to 500mm where the BC/carbon is permanently sequestered and the nutrients in the dung are accessible to plants thereby stimulating more top and root growth with more arbuscular mycorrhizal activity on the roots producing more glomalin and more medium term carbon capture (up to 50 years). Internal parasites and bushflies are denied a place for their eggs and larvae, breaking their breeding cycle, thus eliminating two expensive and annoying pests.
There are over 600,000 cattle in the South west agricultural area and another 600,000 in the remaining agricultural areas making a total of 1.2m head.
At 300gm/day each cow will consume, defaecate and sequester just over 100kg of BC/year or 10 cows/t. 100,000 cows would sequester 10,000t of BC. At the relevant % carbon content and converted to tonnes CO2 equivalent, this is a significant impact on greenhouse gas production if adopted by only 10% of the agricultural herd.
Furthermore methane emissions from the cattle will be significantly reduced and removal of surface manure will dramatically reduce GHG emissions from that source.
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