Hello,
I would like to embrace the no-dig method for a new market garden project that I am about to start next fall and I would like to promote as much as I can these wonderful practices through this project. One of the questions I’d like to answer is the all-around impact on greenhouse gas emission of the system. (I can easily see the beneficial impact on biodiversity, water pollution, etc.)
Hot composting is a forced decay process that releases more CO2 than a slow natural decay and it involves some heavy machinery to process in large quantities.
But on the other hand, no dig uses near-zero machinery on site and produces so much in such a small space that you can dedicate perennial space for carbon farming (green manure, prairies, tree planting, etc).
For example, if someone converts 2ha of conventionnal mechanized bare-soil veg growing to 2000sq meters of no-dig. Let’s assume the same amount of annual crop is produced in a tenth of the space used before. The rest (1,8ha) is then dedicated to low maintenance perennial plants for carbon farming.
What would be the carbon impact of the conversion?
I know a bunch of parameters come into play but I’m looking for a very rough order of magnitude (2x better, 10x better, even, worse?) to make sure that such a conversion will go in the good direction in terms of carbon emission and anticipate criticism about the important use of hot compost, its non-upscalability, its emissions, etc.
Many thanks if someone has some numbers to share on the question that I hope does not seem too irrelevant.
Cheers,
Nicolas
