Can soil help solve our climate problem?

POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Tuesday, May 18, 2021 14:36
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SIGNYM

Tuesday, May 18, 2021 2:36 PM

This was from C&E News, which I get being a member of ACS.

I'll correct the formatting later
Sorry!

Quote:

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Kelly Garrett has an audacious goal for his farm this season.

“I want to set the state record for corn in Iowa, and I want to do it in a sustainable way,” he says. That means harvesting more than 442 bushels per acre (27,742 kg per hectare), the record set in 2002 by Francis Childs.
In brief

Can the world’s food producers help combat climate change? Experts in soil health say yes, and some farmers are already getting paid to do that. They grow crops that take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in the ground in the form of organic matter. But in most croplands and pastures, the organic matter has been used up or washed away, leaving the soil depleted. That makes today’s agriculture industry a greenhouse gas emitter. When growers stop plowing fields and turn instead to practices like growing cover crops, they can store atmospheric carbon in their soil for centuries. Read on for a look at the market for agricultural carbon credits, a new way that companies and governments plan to reward farmers for taking on the climate challenge.

Garrett, a self-described extreme farmer, sounds confident in his chances. He is the seventh generation in his family to grow corn and graze cattle in western Iowa. “Everything we do is important,” he says. But when it comes to huge corn yields, there is one crucial element: carbon.

Garrett says his farming methods accomplish two laudable goals at once: they remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and they use the carbon to build healthy soil. “Everyone needs to understand that carbon is energy to the soil,” he says. “The more carbon you can put in the soil, the more your plants can become. We need to put carbon in our soil to improve our yields and to make the world a better place. We need to put as much carbon in the soil as we can to improve our bottom line.”

The idea that farmers can capture carbon and improve their bottom lines at the same time is gaining ground in the agriculture community and among business leaders and policy makers. They would like to pay farmers for adopting practices, such as using cover crops and low-till methods, that take carbon from the atmosphere and store it, presumably for centuries, in the soil. Large-scale adoption of so-called carbon farming, proponents say, can transform the industry from a greenhouse gas emitter to a global carbon absorber.

One way farmers can get paid is to sell carbon credits for each metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent they sequester. Private marketplaces for those credits are popping up now, and while their methodologies for verifying carbon practices and certifying credits appear robust, they are not all the same.
09918-cover-planting.jpg
A tractor rolls a rye cover crop to the ground and plants cotton seeds at the same time.

Ted Kornecki/USDA

The Biden-Harris administration has directed the US Department of Agriculture to help farmers adopt practices that sequester carbon. And in the Senate, the bipartisan Growing Climate Solutions Act would enable the USDA to standardize private carbon credit markets and certify third-party verifiers to boost farmers’ confidence in the schemes. The European Commission is crafting similar farm supports and plans to launch a verified carbon market this year for the European Union.

But opinions vary in the farm and environmental communities about the best ways to help growers transition to climate-smart practices. Some experts say focusing just on carbon credits takes too narrow a view of soil health practices, while others fear the programs will benefit only large landowners. Meanwhile, scientists are still researching the mechanisms of soil carbon sequestration, including how much carbon can be stored, for how long, and how to measure it.

As one of the first farmers in the US to sell carbon credits, Garrett acknowledges that not everyone is on board. “There’s a lot of skepticism out there,” he says. “I do think there should be

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