Spring 2021 EN

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English Issue Biogas Journal | Spring_2021 carbon and nitrogen in the soil for a long period. Neither carbon nor nitrogen will be bound in the soil without energy. “The close relationship that exists between nitrogen and carbon is often misunderstood in climate discussions,” Dreymann said. “My aim is to achieve a five-percent humus level on my fields in the long term,” says Kalle Rave to the group of seminar participants. That is an ambitious goal, as right now his fields have a humus level of two percent. But he is confident that he and his successor Ole Dietz will succeed. They plan to finance the additional costs required to store more carbon in the fields with a bonus from regional commercial enterprises in which they have their CO 2 emissions compensated for by targeted humification. That will give crop plants and mixed crops, that normally do not achieve sufficient revenues on the agricultural markets, a new significance, as they will revive local diversity, contribute to reducing their share of CO 2 and also help to generate heat, electricity and fuel. Dreymann and the biogas farmers Kalle Rave (second from the right) explains to his colleagues which characteristics have to be taken into account when cultivating the cup plant Silphium perfoliatum. Humification on Kalle Rave’s farm Kalle Rave’s farm comprises pig fattening, 270 hectares of arable land and a biogas plant with an output of almost one megawatt. Rave wants to achieve humification with a crop rotation range of wheat, rye, triticale, silage maize, Szarvasi grass, beets and mixed winter grain consisting of rye, triticale, Welsh grazing grass, vetches and clover. Although it is getting increasingly dry in other regions, Rave can hardly complain about a lack of rainfall in his area. Quite the contrary: Precipitation levels in Ausacker have even risen from formerly 850 millimeters to 980 millimeters per square meter and year in the past 30 years. He fertilizes his crops with manure and fermented manure, if available – the rest is fertilized “on a mineral basis”. He used the so-called SOBAC system this year for the first time. He hopes, that will enable him to reduce fertilization costs in the future. He still uses a plough for the spring crops and only has to use “relatively small amounts of herbicide”. The northern latitude makes Schleswig-Holstein a border region for maize; the soil in that federal state between the seas warms up later and more slowly after the winter compared to other regions in Germany. Rave knows that this is one more reason why the maize needs well loosened soil that optimally enhances the development of the roots. So far, non-inversion tillage has not been an issue in northern Schleswig-Holstein. “That can only be done from a humus content of five percent upwards,” said Rave. Although he does not use any biological supplements like compost tea or enzymes, he is nevertheless open to these approaches. In the past, he added sauerkraut juice to the manure and the digestates to improve their treatment. Meanwhile, venting the manure on his farm has proven to be difficult because the manure is in a closed container and is only pumped into the open container shortly before it is distributed on the fields. But Rave consistently uses vegetable carbon in the fermenter. That binds the nitrogen in the fermented manure and minimizes both the amount that is leached in the soil and what is discharged into the atmosphere when it is applied to the fields. 26
Biogas Journal | Spring_2021 English Issue Pumps- and Agitators Classical tillage under scrutiny: Can tilling be done without a plough? from Ausacker agree that that will not work with classical-conventional arable farming with classical cash crops, like rapeseed, wheat and barley. Rave is not alone in times of climate change. He is a member of the Boben Op association that is aiming to promote a local energy transition and is actively tackling new approaches to CO 2 sequestration. By now, about a dozen famers are participating in Boben Op with the aim of obtaining revenues of 1,500 euros per hectare within a period of five years by means of climate-friendly humification. There is a comparable project in the metropolitan area of Munich in southern Germany, where the participants of the “Himmelserde” project are pursuing similar goals. Even if they are still in the early stages, these concepts encompass new opportunities that the biogas industry should definitely take advantage of in times of deteriorating weather and soil conditions. Author Dierk Jensen Freelance Journalist Bundestr. 76 · 20144 Hamburg 00 49 40/40 18 68 89 dierk.jensen@gmx.de www.dierkjensen.de 27 Longshaft- and Submersible agitators Components for Biogas Progressive Cavity-, Centrifugal-, Feeding- and Longshaftpumps ARMATEC - FTS GmbH & Co. KG Friedrich-List-Strasse 7 D-88353 Kisslegg +49 (0) 7563 / 909020 +49 (0) 7563 / 90902299 info@armatec-fts.de www.armatec-fts.com
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