Bifurcated Carrots

I’ve written before about the EU air quality directive, which is completely lacking in real science and focusing on the wrong things.  While I appreciate clean air, and dislike any sources of pollution in our environment, I also dislike lies and don’t think it’s necessary for people to have to spend extra money on useless technology.  In addition, right now carbon emissions and global warming are more important than any other type of pollution, and I dislike the way air quality is being conflated with greenhouse gases.

Rice Fields

Recently it’s been possible to see the way similar lies are being told around the world.  It’s not obvious the way agriculture, and in particular burning rice fields, impacts air quality.  Growing rice generates a great deal of straw.  There’s no question returning this straw to the ground is the healthiest solution for the environment, but it’s also the most expensive.  For a long time now various solutions have been explored, but in today’s need for the cheapest possible food, the only real practical solution has turned out to be burning the straw in place after the rice is harvested.

Rice also grows in specific areas.  It’s generally grown in flooded paddies, and it can’t tolerate northern latitudes.  It also can’t be grown too far south where the climate would be too tropical and there would be less water.  It’s usually grown in slightly mountainous areas, so the water can be captured as mountain snow melts, then released to flow downstream.  It’s a major crop in Asia, and the most populated part of Asia is in areas like this.

When Paradise Burned

I live now in Amsterdam, Netherlands.  It’s a little bit of a coincidence, but before living here I lived in Paradise, California, and before that in the nearby community of Chico, California where I was a student.  Paradise has been in the news recently because it burned down, together with the surrounding area in what is known as the Camp Fire.

Before I lived in Paradise and Chico, I lived in several parts of the Bay Area, where I moved after growing up and going to High School in the Chicago area.  I remember when I moved to the Bay Area in autumn how acrid the air seemed — like something was burning.  I had never encountered that before.  Growing up in Chicago I lived through the period pollution controls were introduced on cars and leaded fuel was phased out, and the Bay Area seemed to have a very different kind of pollution.  The Bay Area is known for it’s air pollution, and all car owners at the time had to get their cars regularly tested for emissions.

When Paradise and the surrounding area burned, the smoke caused serious pollution in the Bay Area.  I thought it was a little strange that no one seemed to question why this happened.  These two areas are about 5 hours driving distance from one another, and there are other populated areas around.  Why did the majority of the smoke seem to blow into the Bay Area?

Air Quality in Paradise and Chico

When I lived in Paradise and Chico, the air was generally clean.  The one major exception was in the autumn when they burned the rice fields.  This area is a major rice area, one of the largest in the US.  As is the case in many agricultural and rice areas, the farmers have a lot of political clout.  They were allowed to burn their fields, and everyone else had to accommodate this.  The farmers were given a schedule, to prevent air quality from getting too bad.  Other people, like gardeners who wanted to burn their garden waste, had to get special permits and weren’t allowed to have fires when there were air quality issues.

So where did all this smoke go, and isn’t it logical the air currants were similar to when the Camp Fire took place?  Isn’t it logical to think this was the acrid smell I encountered when I first moved to the Bay Area?

Another study showed about 29% of the air pollution in the Bay Area came from China. China is a major grower of rice. Even though this particular study concerned a particular lead isotope, it’s a clear indication that smoke from rice fields can travel long distances.

If pollution in the Bay Area comes from other sources, clearly doesn’t even smell like car exhaust, why all the lies? Why is it necessary to constantly blame cars, diesel engines (but ignore diesel trucks) and other obviously incorrect sources, but not talk about agriculture? Diesel especially, how can it be there are so many diesel trucks, but for some reason it’s bad to drive a diesel car? How could anyone think anything can be accomplished by driving an electric car?

Vacation to India

While Paradise was burning, I went on holiday to the only place in the world with worse air quality than the Bay Area.  I went to New Delhi, India.   I went expecting to find a congested and polluted city, which I did, but it wasn’t completely what I expected.

Air pollution has been a problem there for a long time.  In addition, Indians have something of a culture of believing what others tell them.  For example the problem of farmer suicides is well known, and at least part of this is Monsanto selling them seeds promising huge harvests and big profits, which turn out not to be true.  Recently in the news has also been lies spread on social media resulting in mass violence.

In Delhi it’s clear all the advice has been taken on how to solve the problem of air pollution.  Except for a few old timer cars, nearly all the vehicles on the road are reasonably new with modern pollution control systems.  Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) is very popular there.  Except for a few old 2-stroke models, nearly all the tuk-tuks are electric.  One old smoky diesel truck passed me while I was there, otherwise none of these were visible.  Even many of the streetlights were LED.  We arrived just after Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, and there were signs this had been enthousiasticly celebrated at least in part with low energy light bulbs.  There didn’t seem like there was very much left for the people of Delhi to buy. 

On the sides of the streets, no pollution from cars was obvious.  The air was very polluted, and in particular there was lots of dust everywhere, but little if any pollution from cars.

If you ask almost anyone in Delhi they will tell you the air pollution comes from the nearby rice fields being burned by the farmers.  If you take a train in almost any direction from Delhi, you will travel through the burned out landscapes or see the clouds of smoke hanging over the fields.

If you read the newspapers you will read about all the solutions from the politicians.  No round the clock construction, only dawn to dusk, in order to minimize dust.  Plans for the introduction of odd-even days for driving according to your car license plates, with exceptions for CNG and lady drivers, because walking in some areas can be dangerous for women.  There’s really a major disconnect between the politicians and reality.

Many Other Problems with Burning Rice Fields

Air quality is only one of many problems that go along with burning rice fields, and only one reason it’s not a sustainable practice.

Desertification is a major problem all over the world in agricultural areas.  It’s what happens when the ground is overused and basically turns to dust.  This dust by itself is probably a significant contributor to Delhi air pollution.  If rice straw is returned to the ground, either by composting and spreading or just turning it under the ground, it will build up the soil and add humus, which will counter desertification.

Rice straw, as with almost any agricultural product burned in the fields, is very high in volume and almost pure carbon.  When it’s burned it releases very large amounts of both air pollution with many particulants, and greenhouse gases.  These greenhouse gases would be sequestered if incorporated into otherwise healthy ground.

Rice straw being high in carbon is also needed to bind with sources of nitrogen pollution, like animal manure, in order to prevent this from polluting the environment.

Conclusions

Of course we can’t stop growing rice tomorrow, but there are a lot of possibilities for doing it more sustainably.  We need to stop entertaining lies about air pollution and global warming, and get serious about the underlying reasons and solutions to problems.