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Paige Stanley

@paigestanley_ag

1 Oct

1) Overselling regenerative agriculture could be the demise of an otherwise promising movement. Can regen ag reverse climate change? NO. Can it sequester C & do other good things? YES YES YES.

But it is maddening to see such BS around its benefits.

civileats.com/2020/10/01/doe…

@CivilEats

To be fair, this @CivilEats doesn't get it totally right either. Humus IS 👏 NOT 👏 A 👏 REAL 👏 THING. We have a much more evolved understanding of SOM now.

And no, soil C sequestration *doesn't* have to be accompanied by some crazy rate of fertilizer application. Come on.

@RodaleInstitute

This @RodaleInstitute white paper is dangerously incorrect. They misuse data from my own work to say that regen "pasture management" (??) could sequester 114% of all CO2 emissions. Tell that to the arid soils of the Western US. Regionality is a thing.

rodaleinstitute.org/wp-content/upl…

Read 6 tweets

Paige Stanley

@paigestanley_ag

30 Jul

THREAD: What happens to #carbon once it's sequestered in soils? How can we lock it in & ensure it doesn't return to the atmosphere as CO2?

Soil scientists use "fractionation" methods for that^. Fractionation tells us about different pools of C-some stay forever & some are quick

Consider it like food for the body.

Some of the energy in your food will get used to build your bones-it stays there & is permanent. Some of the energy gets digested & respired as CO2 when you breathe. Not permanent, but you still need it. & some is intermediate-stored as fat.

In soils, we call the permanent fraction MAOM (minerally associated organic matter). This is the soil C that gets stuck to minerals & stays forever.

The faster fraction is called POM (particulate organic matter). This pool is a lot more dynamic

nature.com/articles/s4156…

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Paige Stanley

@paigestanley_ag

30 May

Let's talk about GWP100 vs GWP* for short lived climate pollutants.

I see lots of folks in the regen grazing community latching onto this metric as a get-out-of-jail-free card on CH4, the one GHG area where grazing really suffers compared to conventional beef.

I often err on the conservative side of grazing & GHGs that way there's no question of methods.

GWP* is newish (not yet codified by IPCC GHG accounting, to my knowledge), but I do think it rectifies an important problem with CH4 as a short lived climate pollutant.

CH4 is a "flow" pollutant, meaning it doesn't accumulate in the atmosphere in the same way that "stock" pollutants like CO2 do. But GWP 100 doesn't take this into account.

In short, that means constant CH4 emissions will reach an equilibrium w/ atmospheric removals.

Read 6 tweets

Paige Stanley

@paigestanley_ag

2 May

twitter.com/share?text=Tru…

1. You might find it ironic that my stepdad works at Perdue Farms chicken plant in rural GA, where 3 people have tested + for COVID. My mom is a nurse. Both recently quit smoking after 20+ yrs.

This executive order puts them even more at risk.
twitter.com/share?text=Tru…

COVID has exposed the absolute lack of resiliency in our concentrated food system, w/ meatpacking companies among the worst. They fail pretty often: JBS gets fined for fraud, Tyson gets a slap on the wrist for price setting.

But then nothing changes. Ever.

DECENTRALIZED 👏 FOOD 👏 IS 👏 ESSENTIAL. Not the interests of the meat majors. It is no coincidence that the companies who help destroy the env also put our families (their workers) at risk to make a buck. We've essentially given them permission to over and over and over.

Read 5 tweets

Paige Stanley

@paigestanley_ag

7 Mar

@UCBerkeley

(thread) I don't consider myself a strike person, but enough is enough. @UCBerkeley prides itself on being one of the foremost research universities in the world, consistently ranking #1 for env science. Except they refuse to pay graduate student workers a living wage.

The grad student union has tried to negotiate higher salaries (we're talking ~$30,000 here, not a fortune) for YEARS- but the UCs refuse to come to the bargaining table. Right now, I pay ~60% of my monthly salary on rent. The threshold for being considered rent burdened is 30%.

For the past 3 years I've been at UCB, class sizes have significantly gone up, student:grad student instructor (GSI) ratios have skyrocketed, grad student salaries have stagnated with more & more hours required, and undergraduate education has suffered.

Read 6 tweets

Paige Stanley

@paigestanley_ag

5 Mar

1. In criticism of beef, I usually hear some statistic of how much land cattle take up compared to other proteins. And almost always, more land is bad in the public/environmental eye.

I present to you Exhibit A: marginal land (note the big fat rocks)

2. Cattle graze rangelands/marginal lands. Lots of folks don’t realize this when talking about the scale of land that ruminants are on. I’d argue some folks don’t even know what marginal land is.

It’s land that hasn’t been used for anything else... and usually for good reason

This particular location in Paicines, CA is +/- 30% slopes, clayey, rocky, & pretty remote. All the reasons why it hasn’t been cropped or developed.

But guess who can use this land? Ruminants. & we have lots of it. So, there’s some context behind the amount of land in grazing.

Read 4 tweets

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