Tag Archive for: Reverse Climate Change

Considerations for the Biden Administration Regarding a National Carbon Farming Program

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A national carbon farming program at the USDA level would be a tremendous leap forward with regards to incentivizing agricultural practices that can help mitigate climate change. However, the current primary focus on no-till and cover cropping is narrow in scope. While cover cropping is an extremely important and impactful agricultural practice, it is merely a part of a larger system needed to regenerate healthy soils on a nationwide basis.

Designing a Whole-System, Outcome-Based Approach

Rather than focus on single farming practice benefits, designing a whole-system approach will create synergy between practices and enterprises, and bring about significant soil carbon sequestration, GHG emissions reductions, and other ecological co-benefits. Fortunately, there are myriad other management interventions that the USDA can fold into their strategy to ensure that the agriculture sector maximizes its full potential in the fight against climate change.

In order for the Biden Administration to ensure that money spent on climate-related USDA incentive programs is supporting real net impact, these programs must be spurred by practice-based incentives that are holistic in scope and supported by comprehensive outcomes-based assessments.

Furthermore, these outcomes must be quantified by a hybrid approach that includes:

  • Ground-basedmonitoring,
  • Remotesensing,
  • Process-basedmodeling

In addition, outcomes must be assessed comprehensively, within the context of whole systems, throughout supply chains, and across all GHGs (including methane and nitrous oxide) and emissions scopes.

Integrating cover crops into a row crop system can:

  • Increase levels of soil organic carbon,
  • Increasesoilwaterinfiltrationandholdingcapacity,
  • Reducetheneedforsyntheticfertilizers.

However, the system where cover crops are adopted will dictate how these benefits are achieved.

Limitations of Current Soil Carbon Measurement Standards

For example, in annual row-crop systems that use conservation tillage and chemical no-till practices, research has demonstrated that gains in soil organic carbon in the top 20-30 cm of soil in these systems can be offset by losses in deeper layers, and therefore these practices are likely not as effective as previously understood (1,2).

It is now clear that the ability to monitor and model changes in SOC deeper in the soil profile is essential to assessing real outcomes. Thus, having the right kind of monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) strategy that can adequately and comprehensively assess the ecological, social, and economic impacts of a comprehensive, sector-wide incentive program is of the utmost importance.

Traditionally, carbon offset methodologies for the agriculture sector have relied solely on process-based modeling, the quantification standard in data-poor environments. However, process-based models are only as good as the ground truth data used to develop them.

The most widely used modeling tool to-date is the USDA’s COMET-Farm tool, which is designed to estimate GHG emissions and sequestration at field scale, based on management practices. While this tool has been developed over the course of decades, with data from dozens of research projects throughout the Midwest and Great Plains, it lacks the sophistication to adequately quantify outcomes.

The two most limiting factors of this particular model are its inability to estimate SOC sequestration below 20 centimeters (8 inches), and its inability to quantify the impacts of a broad spectrum of management practices related to cover cropping, grazing, and manure management (3). As a result, necessary practice and system innovation are not supported by these tools. Furthermore, there is a larger limitation with models in general, which is that their output is focused at field scale, and therefore excludes upstream and downstream impact.

In our opinion, the Biden Administration will face grave political consequences and fail to achieve its urgently needed climate goals in agriculture if it follows through with a narrowly-defined incentive program supported by inadequate quantification infrastructure.

Direct measurement of outcomes in an incentive program should be the holy grail.

The greatest challenge to direct measurement is decreasing the sampling burden enough while still capturing spatial and climatic variability. As satellite and ground-based sensor technology advances, the potential for adequately quantifying variability to support cost-effective sample stratification is significant (4,5).

In addition, as the development of process-based modeling must always be an ongoing project, satellite and ground-based sensors can continuously feed necessary ground truth to further advance the accuracy and sophistication of models, and to automate the model input process.

Proper Funding for Soil Health Measurement Technology is Key to Program Success

It is essential that the Biden Administration allocate funding to advance the state of the art of NASA’s Earth Observing System satellites, and to engage in public private partnerships with the world’s best satellite data providers, with the goal of enhancing our ability to leverage remote sensing as a means to monitor the ecological impacts of the agriculture sector. Note: Further efforts to develop and deploy earth observing satellite platforms should be focused on:

  • Advancing sensor technology,
  • Enhancing spatial and temporal resolution of satellite data,
  • Making data publicly available

This will allow for the necessary access to correlative datasets to further develop accurate monitoring platforms.

It is also essential that the USDA support the strategic deployment of sector-wide ground-based sensors, monitoring sites and stations across crop fields, CAFO facilities, and at points throughout critical watersheds facing immense pollution pressure (such as the Mississippi and Chesapeake Bay). This will serve to support the development of remote sensing and process-based modeling tools, and also to provide a critical feed-back system that can allow USDA program officials to conduct regular impact assessments based on directly-observed outcomes, and to more rapidly recalibrate the approach to management recommendations.

The current state of ground-based sensor technology, including in-situ soil and water monitoring systems, is such that national-scale monitoring can be rolled out with the necessary degree of standardization.

When considering the environmental impact of the agriculture sector in the United States, it is important to consider the extent to which agricultural enterprises have become consolidated, dis-integrated and specialized compared to a century ago. Therefore the sector as a whole should be considered as one large system, with one type of enterprise (i.e. grain) providing inputs that feed into another (i.e. livestock). In this holistic context, it is clear that the impact of a single management intervention in a certain sub-sector, such as cover-cropping, will be much less in the aggregate (or even fully offset) when measured against the impacts of other downstream sub-sectors, such as CAFO methane emissions.

Therefore, fully functioning incentive programs would be comprehensive and sector-wide, would facilitate GHG emissions reductions and atmospheric drawdown across supply chains, and would consider and quantify not only GHG emissions reductions and SOC sequestration, but also other forms of ecological impact related to water (6) and biodiversity, as well economic and social impact.

Expand and Fully Fund Conservation Programs – CRP and Regenerative Grazing

The expansion of existing USDA programs can also go a long way towards supporting a comprehensive carbon farming program, if high-level principles of regenerative organic agriculture are considered. These principles include biodiversity, tillage reduction, annual-perennial crop rotations, animal integration, aerobic manure management, natural fertility inputs, and protection of waterways.

One of the largest pieces of low-hanging fruit with regard to existing programs is the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). There are two simple ways in which CRP can support carbon farming in the U.S.:

1) Expanding the CRP budget to increase enrolled acres, and

2) Developing a grazing program on enrolled CRP land that establishes a supply chain between cow-calf operations grazing on public and private land in the western U.S., and CRP grazing permittees, which will have the effect of diverting animals from feedlots to pasture, which will increase domestic production of grass-fed beef, a market for which there is significant demand in this country that we are not currently meeting domestically.

This will also significantly decrease GHG emissions associated with feedlot production and crop production. In order to support a CRP grazing program, funding for fencing and water infrastructure could be met through expanding the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) budget. In addition, EQIP funding for cover crop seed and planting equipment, and composting infrastructure (7), will go a long way towards further reducing methane and nitrous oxide emissions associated with crop and livestock production. Direct coordination with USDA and the Bureau of Land Management and the US Forest Service, in the form of rangeland management and rangeland health assessments, is also essential to supporting a national carbon farming program.

Healthy rangeland is a tremendous carbon sink, and presents perhaps one of the greatest opportunities in this country to sequester carbon in soils. The USDA must work with BLM and USFS to improve rangeland health assessments using satellite and ground-based monitoring (8), and to provide technical and financial support for improved rangeland management. This kind of monitoring approach will provide a comprehensive geospatial feedback mechanism that can help pinpoint best grazing management practices and support data-driven implementation.

The Biden Administration has a tremendous opportunity to deploy a robust carbon farming program across the United States, and can leverage many existing USDA programs in support of its goals. However, pains must be taken to ensure that the scope of such a program is sector-wide. This will ensure the full spectrum of opportunities to reduce emissions and sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide are on the table, so as to avoid perceptions of greenwashing and industry placation. Additional pains must be taken to include in this program the farmers and ranchers who have already taken financial risks by adopting and implementing best management practices absent any robust federal program to-date.

 

Matthew Sheffer is the Managing Director at Hudson Carbon.

References:

  1. 1.)  No-till and carbon stocks: Is deep soil sampling necessary? Insights from long-term experiments – Humberto Blanco-Canqui a, *, Charles Shapiro a, Paul Jasa b, Javed Iqbal a
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.still.2020.104840
  2. 2.)  Tillage and soil carbon sequestration—What do we really know? – John M. Baker a,b,*, Tyson E. Ochsner a,b, Rodney T. Venterea a,b, Timothy J. Griffis b
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2006.05.014
  3. 3.)  Comparison of COMET-Farm Model Outputs to Long-Term Soil Carbon Data at Stone House Farm – Matthew Sheffer, Mike Howardhttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1dVx_ICmMSKeiELIR00v6JHsJoBxABLu_WDyl0Chwick/edit?usp=sharing
  4. 4.)  A New Index for Remote Sensing of Soil Organic Carbon Based Solely on Visible Wavelengths – Evan A. Thaler* ,Isaac j.Larsen, Qian Yuhttps://doi.org/10.2136/sssaj2018.09.0318
  5. 5.)  Optimizing Stratification and Allocation for Design-Based Estimation of Spatial Means Using Predictions with Error

– J. J. De Gruitjter* B. Minasny A. B. McBratney

  1. 6.)  https://doi.org/10.1093/jssam/smu024Understanding the temporal behavior of crops using Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2-like data for agricultural applications – Amanda Veloso ⁎,1, Stéphane Mermoz, Alexandre Bouvet, Thuy Le Toan, Milena Planells, Jean-François Dejoux, Eric Ceschia
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2017.07.015
  2. 7.)  Compost: Enhancing the Value of Manure; An assessment of the environmental, economic, regulatory, and policy opportunities of increasing the market for manure compost – Sustainable Conservation, 2017 https://suscon.org/pdfs/compostreport.pdf

8.) Beyond Inventories: Emergence of a New Era in Rangeland Monitoring – Matthew O. Jones , David E. Naugle , Dirac Twidwell , Daniel R. Uden , Jeremy D. Maestas , Brady W. Allreda
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rama.2020.06.009

Necesitamos regenerar todo nuestro planeta en el Día de la Tierra

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En esta era del Antropoceno, donde las actividades humanas son las fuerzas dominantes que afectan negativamente al medio ambiente, el mundo se enfrenta a múltiples crisis ambientales, sociales y económicas. Esto incluye la crisis climática, la inseguridad alimentaria, una epidemia de enfermedades crónicas no contagiosas, nuevas pandemias de enfermedades contagiosas, guerras, crisis migratorias, acidificación de los océanos, el colapso de ecosistemas enteros, la extracción insostenible de recursos y el mayor evento de extinción en la historia geológica.

¿Estamos preparados para sostener un mundo donde casi mil millones de personas no tienen suficientes alimentos para comer, otros mil millones tienen deficiencia de nutrientes clave y más de dos mil millones tienen sobrepeso porque tienen demasiada comida? ¿Un mundo en el que la mayoría de las personas no tenga acceso a una atención médica y una educación adecuadas? ¿Un mundo donde la mitad de la población enfrenta múltiples formas de discriminación como violencia, propiedad de la tierra, finanzas personales, educación, control sobre su fertilidad, ascensos laborales, representación en juntas, gobierno y liderazgo por su género? ¿Un mundo donde las sustancias químicas tóxicas persistentes están dañando toda la vida en el planeta, incluyendo la nuestra y la de nuestros hijos? ¿Un mundo donde la base misma de la vida, el ADN, está siendo alterada sin ningún control basándose en ciencia defectuosa con tal de de incrementar las ganancias de los cárteles del veneno multimillonarios? Un mundo donde hay guerras y conflictos continuos. ¿Dónde el 1% controla el 99% de la riqueza mundial e influye de manera injusta en las agendas políticas, sociales, sanitarias y medioambientales para aumentar su poder y riqueza?

Simplemente ser sostenible no es suficiente. ¿Queremos mantener el status quo actual o queremos mejorarlo y rejuvenecerlo? La regeneración mejora los sistemas.

Necesitamos regenerar nuestras sociedades, por lo que debemos ser proactivos para garantizar que todas las personas tengan acceso a la tierra, la educación, la atención médica, los ingresos, los bienes comunes, la participación, la inclusión y el empoderamiento. Esto debe incluir a mujeres, hombres y jóvenes de todos los grupos étnicos y raciales.

En el Día de la Tierra, Regeneration International, con nuestras 360 organizaciones afiliadas en casi 70 países de África, Asia, América Latina, Oceanía, América del Norte y Europa, continuará promoviendo, facilitando y acelerando la transición global hacia la alimentación, la agricultura y la gestión de la tierra regenerativos para restaurar la estabilidad climática, acabar con el hambre en el mundo y reconstruir los deteriorados sistemas sociales, ecológicos y económicos.

Nuestra visión es lograr un ecosistema global saludable en el que los agricultores que implementan la agricultura y el uso de la tierra regenerativos, en concierto con los consumidores, educadores, líderes empresariales y legisladores enfríen el planeta, nutran al mundo y restauren la salud pública, la prosperidad y la paz a escala mundial.

 

Andre Leu es el Director Internacional de Regeneration International. Para suscribirse al boletín de RI haga clic aquí.

We Need to Regenerate our Whole Planet on Earth Day

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Leer en español aquí

In this era of the Anthropocene, in which human activities are the dominant forces that negatively affect the environment, the world is facing multiple environmental, social, and economic crises. These include the climate crisis, food insecurity, an epidemic of non-contagious chronic diseases, new pandemics of contagious diseases, wars, migration crises, ocean acidification, the collapse of whole ecosystems, the unsustainable extraction of resources, and the greatest extinction event in geological history.

Are we prepared to sustain a world where nearly a billion people do not have enough food to eat, a billion more are deficient in key nutrients and more than two billion are overweight because they have too much food? A world where the majority of people do not have access to adequate healthcare and education? A world where half the population face multiple forms of discrimination such as violence, land ownership, personal finances, education, control over their fertility, job promotions, representation on boards, government and leadership because of their gender? A world where persistent toxic chemicals are damaging all life on the planet including ours and our children? A world where the very basis of life, DNA, is being uncontrollably altered based on flawed science for the sake of the profits of billionaire poison cartels? Where there are continuous wars and conflicts. Where 1% control 99% of the world’s wealth and unfairly influences the political, social, health and environmental agendas to increase their power and wealth?

Simply being sustainable is not enough. Do we want to sustain the current status quo or do we want to improve and rejuvenate it? Regeneration improves systems.

We need to regenerate our societies so we must be proactive in ensuring that others have access to land, education, healthcare, income, the commons, participation, inclusion and empowerment. This must include women, men and youths across all ethnic and racial groups.

On Earth Day, Regeneration International, with our 360 partner organizations in almost 70 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Oceania, North America and Europe, will continue to promote, facilitate and accelerate the global transition to regenerative food, farming and land management for the purpose of restoring climate stability, ending world hunger and rebuilding deteriorated social, ecological and economic systems.

Our vision to is to achieve a healthy global ecosystem in which practitioners of regenerative agriculture and land use, in concert with consumers, educators, business leaders and policymakers, cool the planet, nourish the world and restore public health, prosperity and peace on a global scale.

 

Andre Leu is the International Director for Regeneration International. To sign up for RI’s email newsletter, click here.

El cuidado del suelo, política central de una nueva cultura regenerativa

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Necesitamos un cambio profundo de paradigma en nuestro sistema de producción agropecuaria. Es momento de cuestionar con firmeza los falsos modelos de desarrollo que anteponen las ganancias a corto plazo por encima de la salud de los ecosistemas. Debemos hacer esta transición a nivel global, y pasar de la actual agricultura química, de monocultivo y degradación de suelos, hacia un modelo agrícola holístico y regenerativo como camino de verdadera prosperidad. La mejor manera de garantizar la seguridad alimentaria, lograr erradicar la pobreza y combatir la crisis climática, es apoyando sistemas agropecuarios resilientes que protejan la biodiversidad y fomenten la recarbonización de los suelos. Necesitamos políticas públicas que acompañen a los productores en esta transición y no dejen espacio a prácticas agrícolas insostenibles. En este sentido, me viene a la memoria una gran frase de Franklin D. Roosevelt que dice: “Una nación que destruye a su suelo, se destruye a sí misma”.

Quienes buscamos acelerar una transición hacia una nueva cultura regenerativa debemos ayudar a instalar en el debate público las temáticas que son realmente importantes. Uno de los temas centrales para salir de la crisis socioambiental que atraviesa la humanidad, es comprender el rol que cumplen los suelos en la salud de los ecosistemas y el grave peligro de degradación que sufren hoy, debido a prácticas agrícolas insostenibles. Según la FAO, el 33% del suelo mundial esta degradado.

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Agroecología, la agricultura de la biodiversidad

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¿Sabías que los suelos acogen una cuarta parte de la biodiversidad de nuestro planeta? El suelo es uno de los ecosistemas más complejos de la naturaleza y uno de los hábitats más diversos de la Tierra. Cobija infinidad de organismos diferentes que interactúan entre sí y contribuyen a los procesos y ciclos globales que hacen posible la vida.

Sin embargo, el uso que hacemos de él se encuentra entre las actividades humanas que más inciden en el cambio global y climático. Los modelos agrícolas dominantes durante los últimos cien años, junto con el sobrepastoreo y la deforestación, son responsables de un deterioro del suelo que implica la desertificación y la transferencia de grandes cantidades de carbono desde la materia orgánica que se encuentra bajo nuestros pies hacia la atmósfera, lo que contribuye al calentamiento global y, por ende, afecta a la salud de los seres vivos.

¿Es posible un modelo agroalimentario que ayude a regenerar los ecosistemas y que, a su vez, asegure los alimentos y la salud en un planeta con más de 7.700 millones de seres humanos y en pleno cambio climático?

CONTINUE LEYENDO EN 20 MINUTOS

Why Regenerative Agriculture Must Be Measured

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The natural and organic movement has been the nexus for many elevated claims, but most notably the intersection of human health and environmental impact. The data around the human health component is becoming higher resolution and more widespread. And most of the New Hope readership is probably already of the mindset that making better choices about what we eat and wear can scale up environmental impact to save the planet. But how exactly does that happen, to what degree is it occurring and is it being optimized?

Civilization, at least as we know it, is running out of time; the United Nations stated in 2014 that at current rates of soil degradation and erosion there are only 60 harvests left. Humans have an affinity for procrastination; we are in essence facing the biggest exam of our existence. The test is tomorrow morning and we have no other choice than to start cramming right now in order to get a passing grade.

Why Regenerative Agriculture is Important for the Future of our Planet

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Our planet is in the middle of a climate crisis; the cause is anthropogenic carbon dioxide, the potent greenhouse gas released when fossil fuels are burned for electricity generation, industry, and transportation. The agricultural sector is also a significant contributor and, together with forestry and other land use, it is responsible for around 25% of all human-created greenhouse gas emissions.

As the global population rises, how land is used will continue to change. More forests will be felled to make way for farming and livestock, and emissions of powerful greenhouse gases released through our current agricultural practices will rise.

A recent study found that unless farming methods change, rising emissions from human land use will jeopardize the aims of the Paris Climate Agreement. Poorer countries (Latin America, Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa) have had the greatest increase in land-use change emissions due to population expansion; developed nations (Europe, North America) had negative land-use change, but still extensive farm-originated pollution.

KEEP READING ON AZO CLEAN TECH

The Rodale Institute’s Soil-Carbon Solution and the Future of Regenerative Agriculture

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According to a recent white paper from the Rodale Institute, global implementation of regenerative practices could sequester more than 100 percent of human-related carbon emissions.

One decade ago the United Nations Environment Programme predicted that in a worst case scenario, yearly global greenhouse emissions could reach 56 gigatons in 2020. And Rodale Institute’s paper notes that in 2018 total emissions approached this projection, reaching 55.3 gigatons. Global agricultural production accounts for roughly ten percent of these yearly emissions.

Despite this, Rodale Institute remains confident the world is already equipped with the tools it needs to achieve massive drawdown. The action paper assures that the technology necessary for a massive ecological rehabilitation is already available.

The paper defines regenerative agriculture as a set of farming practices that return nutrients to the earth and rehabilitate entire ecosystems, rather than depleting them. These practices include farming organically without synthetics and chemical sprays, diversifying crop rotations, cover cropping, and integrating livestock with rotational grazing.

And the Institute stresses the importance of incorporating these techniques into conventional farming in the hope that every farming model may make use of its most valuable tool: healthy soil.

The paper indicates that soil can contain three to four times as much carbon as the atmosphere or terrestrial vegetation. This implies that even small changes to the quantity of carbon stored in the soil can vastly impact levels of atmospheric carbon.

“There are very few cost-effective tools that work as well as the soil, that can be implemented across such a broad spectrum of topographies and cultures,” Jeff Moyer tells Food Tank. “We’d be amiss to not use this tool.”

Moyer says that cover crops, when grown to maturity, are one of the easiest and most cost-effective tools farmers can use to sequester carbon anywhere in the world. But this isn’t always a priority. In the United States, for example, activists say that crop insurance doesn’t incentivize farmers to take advantage of the benefits of cover crops. “We have very conflicting incentives, and we need to change that,” Moyer says.

Producers and consumers also have a key role to play. “If we don’t incentivize [regenerative agriculture] at the policy level, then we have to incentivize it from within the supply chain,” Moyer says.

Elizabeth Whitlow, Executive Director of the Regenerative Organic Alliance (ROA), says incentivizing regenerative farming and generating trust with shoppers may go hand-in-hand. In 2017, ROA created a certification, Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC), to incentivize regenerative practices from within the supply chain.

“We wanted to create a high-bar standard to demonstrate and clarify what regenerative can and should be: a holistic type of agriculture that regenerates resources and considers all players in the farm system, from the soil microbiome to the animals to the workers,” Whitlow tells Food Tank.

According to Whitlow, ROC surpasses what is required by most other certifications. To pass, farms must apply with a baseline of organic certification and meet strict requirements under each of ROC’s three pillars: soil health, animal welfare, and social fairness. Since its founding, the program has certified 15 brands through its pilot program, including Dr. Bronner’s and Patagonia Provisions.

Whitlow says brands will have a significant role to play in driving interest and investment in regenerative organic farming. While she believes consumers are ready to start making purchases in line with their values, producers may need a push from their supply chains.

“Growers operate on razor-thin margins,” Whitlow tells Food Tank. “To adopt regenerative organic practices, which carry more risk than chemical-intensive methods, growers need buyers that will pay a premium and commit long-term through the trials and tribulations of adopting new, innovative methods.”

Reposted with permission from Food Tank

Fighting Climate Change with Plants: An Inefficient Solution from the Salk Institute

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Excerpt from a book in progress

On March 22, 2021, The Del Mar Garden Club of Southern California held an informational session called “Fighting Climate Change with Plants”. As a person who is extremely concerned about the looming apocalyptic events due to climate chaos, but not extremely well informed about what we can do to prevent them, I signed up.

I quickly realized that the presentation was not going in the direction that I had hoped, meaning extolling the innate virtues of plants that have the ability to sequester carbon if we just let Mother Nature do her job. No. Featured speaker Joanne Chory, a plant geneticist from the Salk Institute, based in San Diego, CA shared how she and her team were genetically engineering plants to have bigger roots, longer roots, and roots that sequester more carbon by manipulating the gene that makes suberin to make more suberin and therefore hold more carbon, and then put those genes into crop plants. They were going to start with Sorghum. (I will talk about why that is interesting later.) She showed slides depicting what would be manipulated and how the roots were in fact growing longer in preliminary trials. I actually considered that it might be a good idea. For about a second.

Then I remembered, and she confirmed, that the goal was to get these seeds into the hands of every farmer in America. That means to sell for a profit. With a technology premium of course. She claimed that the genetic engineering that she just said was genetic engineering was not considered by the FDA to be a genetically modified organism (GMO). This is because other species (like fish DNA) were not being introduced into the test subject plants (like GMO tomatoes). In these plants, their own genes were being manipulated. This type of genetic engineering has been classified (wrongly) as a hybrid by our FDA. She confirmed that the seeds would need to be repurchased by farmers (instead of saving them for free) every year.

Chory was very clear that the goal was to get the seeds planted on 500 million hectares, which is 1.2 billion acres. To put this in context we currently only have 896 million acres of farmland in America. My blood began to boil as I realized their goal was to take over all agriculture and push GMO seeds even on organic and biodynamic farmland. I am not asserting that their intention is to maliciously wipe out organic farmland. She made it very clear that their intention was to draw down 4-8 gigatons of carbon per year and play a major role in reversing climate change and saving the planet. The end result, however, which should not be ignored, would be that all of the acres that are currently being farmed as organic or biodynamic would need to be converted to GMO farming in order for them to meet their goals. And you can be sure anyone interested in funding their work, whether it be a San Diego philanthropist or the government, would be invested in Salk meeting their goals.

Chory mentioned that they had an advantage, however, with the technology, because the ag industry has farm subsidies (ie: tax pay dollars) and farmers would be supported to plant these crops. (My question is will they NOT be supported if they don’t?) In addition, Chory pointed out that the Carbon Bank was projected to be in place by 2030 and corporations would be able to pay farmers for sequestering the carbon they produce. So instead of being innovative and creating methods to reduce carbon emissions, or use technology that runs on renewable, clean energy, corporations can go on their merry way utilizing fossil fuels and just pay someone else to clean up their mess. Hmmm…

The Salk Institute scientist showed how they currently have 4 test sites in America and plan to have 20 by the end of the year, to test the suberin enhanced, carbon-absorbing plants in different types of soils. They also needed to confirm that the plants did in fact sequester more carbon. For some reason, she mentioned that the soil in Yuma, where one of the GMO test plots lies, “is almost completely devoid of nutrients in the soil.” Interesting. So GMO farming made the soil completely devoid of nutrients (and its ability to sequester carbon) and now they want to use GMOs to fix this problem? She additionally admitted that Agriculture (and the predominant form of agriculture in the USA is GMO) is a major contributor to greenhouse gases. Exactly.

She said “Are are on an aggressive timeline to meet the climate crisis change,” leaving out the fact that GMO scientists and farmers helped create the climate crisis by monocropping, factory farming, and the wholesale destruction of our topsoil.

Then the question and answer period started and a person asked, “Are there any native plants that already do this?”

Chory answered, “I don’t know.” She had not researched native plants! I was shocked. Product development 101; before you invest any time or energy into making anything – is to do your research and see if that product already exists! Geez, Louise.

Someone asked her if she gardened, as it was a gardening club after all, and she responded, “You know my daughter likes to say that I know a plant better on the inside than the out. So if you put a canola plant in front of me I probably wouldn’t know.” Excuse me? A person who wants every farmer in America to buy her company’s products cannot identify a canola plant? My mother taught me to see the good in everyone but my brain was telling me that this was just not good on any level.

To confirm or dispel my suspicions I turned to an expert, one of our Moms Across America advisors, Dr. Don Huber. A 60+ year plant pathologist and Professor Emeritus at Purdue University, a verified expert on plants and soil. He pointed out the following issues with the Salk project, in summary, below.

1. If they wanted the suberin to sequester more carbon they would have to stop spraying all glyphosate. Glyphosate disrupts the shikimate pathway and Suberin is formed in the shikimate pathway. Glyphosate, and some other herbicides, are strong mineral chelators that immobilize iron (Fe), a critical co-factor for peroxidases and other enzymes so suberin and lignin production in the roots can be stopped because adequate Fe is not available for it to be formed.

2. Focusing on the gene that produces suberin in the roots is myopic. That means only focusing on one aspect, not the whole. Suberin is produced through secondary metabolism.  Photosynthesis is the best way to sequester carbon, and that requires every cell of the whole plant.

3. If they truly want to increase carbon sequestration they should look at how to make all plants healthier for more efficient photosynthesis. The best way to make the plants healthier is to stop using glyphosate and other agrochemicals because they damage the necessary physiological pathways of the plant and therefore reduce its ability to sequester carbon.

4. Getting rid of glyphosate use in agriculture would accomplish many things that improve the health of plants including increase nutrient density of the plant, increase disease resistance, increase carbon sequestration and increase yield. The organic regeneratively tended soil would also increase in organic matter and absorb tons of carbon per acre separately from the plant. The increased organic matter in the soil will absorb more water, reduce drought and erosion, and minimize the potential dust-bowl effects of climate change.

5. Diverting energy to make the roots larger through suberization would compromise nutrient density and yield of the rest of the plant. Root growth is dependent on critical micronutrients such as manganese (Mn), calcium (Ca), and boron (B) whose availabilities are disrupted by various agricultural and environmental factors that are already often in short supply for primary growth.

6. Using the sorghum plant is an interesting trial choice because it is already one of the leading plants that sequester carbon. Claiming that it was only the genetic manipulation that led to the carbon sequestration will be something to look out for. Comparative studies will need to be done not only with the same species of plants but with other native plants, perennial grasses, maize (corn), and sugar cane (a high carbon-absorbing plant), or other c4 highly photosynthetically efficient plants as well.

7. Focusing on sequestering only carbon does not fix the problem. Nitrous Oxide is just as much of the climate problem (heat being retained in our atmosphere) and it can be addressed through nitrogen-fixing plants like legumes, or nitrification inhibiting plants (climax ecosystem species) which can be used in regenerative organic farming as cover crops.

8. Focusing on the roots also means creating a landfill so to speak, of carbon. Huber explained that we don’t want a dump of carbon. We want the carbon working for us to produce an abundance of nutrient-dense, safe food at an affordable price. We can do that by maintaining the health (eliminating toxic agrochemicals) and growth of the plant through photosynthesis.

Here’s the problem (for them). The Salk Institute, Bayer, Dow/Dupont, or other major conglomerates cannot patent photosynthesis (yet, anyway) and make money off of it. Mother Nature created that a long time ago. The idea to genetically engineer the gene that produces suberin, while an interesting concept that may be successful in its own singular intended outcome in a lab setting, is overall an inefficient plan for reversing climate change. There are plants existing now, and methods that exist now, for sequestering carbon and we don’t have to wait another 15-20 years for the trial testing and implementation for planting 1.2 billion acres with these GMO plants for 4-8 gigatons of carbon sequestration per year.

Where is the money coming from to fund this project?

One more issue that must be acknowledged is the funding. This project will take dozens of brilliant scientists 10 years of development at Salk and then hundreds more people for marketing and sales. Hundreds of thousands or millions of farmers and their resources will be needed to implement the project and absorb the carbon for another 10 years. Those resources need to be spent on other issues that are far more efficient and necessary.

Instead of spending countless hundreds of millions, much of it likely taxpayer dollars, on genetically engineered plants, why not direct that funding to farmers to transition to regenerative organic, and start sequestering carbon right now? Or how about providing homes for our homeless, evicted by Covid repercussions or severe weather, innovation education for our children, school lunches that won’t make them sick, or giving care to veterans and elderly that leaves them with at least an iota of dignity? Why not put the money somewhere that will take care of thousands or millions of underserved people right now instead of to a few dozen scientists in a lab in Southern California? It simply is an injustice to spend money on a “pipedream” as Dr. Huber classified it, rather than the harsh reality millions are facing right now and the available solutions, like regenerative organic agriculture.

According to Regeneration International:

Just transitioning 10 percent of agricultural production to best practice regenerative (organic) systems will sequester enough CO2 to reverse climate change and restore the global climate.

Ten percent of agricultural lands under BEAM (Biologically Enhanced Agricultural Management- a process developed by Dr. David Johnson of New Mexico State University, that uses compost with a high diversity of soil microorganisms) would sequester 18.4 gross tonnages (GT) of CO2/yr. Ten percent of grasslands under regenerative grazing would sequester 9.8 Gt of CO2/yr. This would result in 28.2 Gt of CO2/yr being sequestered into the soil which is just under double the amount of sequestration needed to draw out more CO2 than is currently being emitted.

This plan is not a pipedream, it is doable. Farmers are transitioning to regenerative organic agriculture right now. Consumers are seeing the benefits, and they want food that is not only good for their families but good for the soil and planet as well. We already have the solution, and it is biodiverse, beautiful, healthy, and rewarding. It is regenerative organic agriculture.

Moms Across America requests that the Salk Institute reinvest their funding for this suberin genetic engineering into supporting farmers transition to organic. We request that philanthropists and the government also invest in nonprofits and groups who are supporting the transition to organic such as Rodale Institute, Savory Institute, Regeneration International, Farmer’s Footprint, and Kiss the Ground; and consumers organizations who are educating the public about the benefits of these foods (because after all, someone needs to buy the food) such as the Organic Consumers Association, Green America, and Moms Across America. Thank you.

Organic Farming Practices Could Boost Carbon Sequestration By Double-Digits, New Study Finds

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While organic agriculture has long been hailed as key to building a sustainable food system, a new study pinpoints the critical role that it could play in combating climate change. In a meta-analysis of over 4,000 studies, researchers found that best management organic farming practices could lead to a significant double-digit increase in the amount of carbon captured in soil.

Organic farmers could be amplifying their positive climate impact by adopting the best agricultural practices to boost carbon sequestration. The study, undertaken by scientists at the University of Maryland in collaboration with Washington D.C.-based nonprofit research organisation The Organic Center and published in the journal Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, found that the amount of carbon captured in soil increased by 18%, while the amount of microbial biomass carbon storage went up by 30%.

Over 4,000 scientific articles were included in the meta-analysis led by Professor Kate Tully and Dr. Rob Crystal-Ornelas to identify the specific carbon-building techniques that farmers could implement.

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