Tag Archive for: Soil Carbon Sequestration

Grassland Management Holds Key to Carbon Capture, Gas Reductions

/by

Author: Karen Briere | Published: February 16, 2017

Planting perennial forages and improving soil organic matter are good management practices for cattle producers but they also offer the added benefit of sequestering carbon, says a federal researcher.

Alan Iwaasa, grazing management scientist at the Agriculture Canada Research and Development Centre in Swift Current, Sask., said producers are looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprint in light of increasing em-phasis on climate change, carbon tax and greenhouse gas emission reduction.

“We have a wonderful opportunity here with our soils,” he told the Saskatchewan Beef Industry Conference.

Soils that are in poorer condition can still build organic matter. There are about 14 million acres in the brown soil zone across Western Canada; about 10 million acres are in Saskatchewan.

The province also has 5.5 million acres in the semi-arid brown soil zone, or very dry land.

“Even traditional crop lands that are in environmentally marginal areas do have potential that we could convert those to perennial forages,” Iwaasa said.

Natural grasslands have been depleted since modern agriculture began. Only about 28 million of the original 151 million acres remain, he said.

The potential to sequester carbon in grasslands could be a huge advantage for Saskatchewan producers looking to offset emissions.

“Uncultivated grasslands of Western Canada contain two to three billion tonnes of carbon to the depth of one metre,” he said.

The associated ecosystem benefits of increased water holding capacity, improved soil structure and quality, nutrient cycling and reduced soil erosion are all advantages to cattle producers.

“In many cases you’re doing that already because you want to in-crease your production, you want to have healthier pastures, you want to improve your biodiversity,” he said.

Ways to improve or enhance carbon sequestration include different grazing management practices.

These can help the physical break down and compaction of vegetation, increase decomposition and soil incorporation and therefore restore degraded soils, he said.

“The challenge though is that in a lot of cases grazing systems’ intensity and frequencies may impact carbon storage but the effects are often difficult to measure and often are inconsistent due to the environment.”

Drought, flood and weather all affect carbon storage.

“These treatments need to be utilized consistently and over a long time to actually see the benefits, not just three or four years but sometimes for decades,” he said.

A paper published in 2014 examined the impact of agriculture and loss of bison on grasslands from 1927 to 2007 and the potential to sequester carbon even on land disturbed years ago.

 KEEP READING ON THE WESTERN PRODUCER 

The Magic of Carbon Farming

/by

Author: C B Ramkurmar | Published: February 4, 2017 

Farmers have always been life givers, as they work to feed the millions in this planet. The service they provide of growing food for all of us is invaluable. This importance of farming is even greater for economies that are dependent on agriculture as the primary contributor to the economy. Now, this humble age old practice of farming has now taken on a role, that is making climate activists and scientists smile.

Until now, we know farmers who farm fruits, farm vegetables, farm millets, etc. but attention is now going towards farmers who farm carbon! And this is what is drawing the attention of the climate change community.
“There’s a really significant potential for carbon farming worldwide to play a role in reversing the climate crisis,” said Stedman, an agricultural consultant at AppleSeed Permaculture. Stedman explained that plants pull carbon out of the air and bury it in the ground. While this seems like an obvious truth that all of us learnt in school, the problem is when all the carbon is then released to the atmosphere because of the modern farming practices.

All agricultural production has photosynthesis at the centre of it. Plants use sunshine to combine carbon dioxide from the air with water and micro nutrients from the soil to produce plant material that we see growing in farms.

These plants have a root system that is below the ground that we do not see. As the plant grows, it stores some of the carbon it produces below the ground. As farmers till the soil and as live stock grazes, the carbon that is stored in the soil is released into the atmosphere. As much as one third of the Co2 in the atmosphere that is driving climate change has come from land management practices.

On the other hand, carbon can be stored in soils for decades and centuries too, and this process is called soil carbon sequestration. Carbon farming is a process when the rate at which Co2 is removed from the atmosphere and converted to plant matter is accelerated.

This results in reduction of Co2 from the atmosphere. Carbon farming is successful, when the amount of carbon that is removed from the atmosphere by the plants is greater than the amount of carbon that escapes into the atmosphere as a result of farming processes like tilling. So the trick is to now engage in smart farming practices that keeps this formula in mind.

KEEP READING ON DECCAN CHRONICLE 

Reversing Climate Change One Step at a Time

/by

Author: Alex Madison | Published: February 11, 2017

Carbon is the basis of all life. Plants, animals, humans and everything living is made up of the element, but carbon once combined with oxygen becomes carbon dioxide, the excess of which is the primary cause of global warming.

In fact, just recently, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced 2016 as the hottest year on record. As in the hottest year since modern record keeping began in 1880. 2015 and 2014 made the same record in their time.

Although President Trump has previously said global warming is a “hoax” created by China, and the climate change webpage has now been removed from the White House’s website, an overwhelming consensus of scientists disagree.

In California, a large contributor to CO2 emissions is agriculture, accounting for more than 8 percent of the emission in the state, and globally accounting for roughly 16 percent. This is due to a number of factors like tilling and the manure and gas of livestock. California being one of the leading agricultural states in the nation, took action with the passing of a climate law in July 2016 to regulate cow methane, which requires the reduction of methane emission coming from dairy farms by 40 percent by 2030.

So what are farmers doing? Or maybe the better question, who is helping these farmers understand sustainable agriculture practices and how to become part of the solution, not the problem?

This is the ambition of Torri Estrada, environmental scientist and co-founder of the Carbon Cycle Institute in Petaluma. Its mission is to stop and reverse climate change by advancing natural, science-based solutions that remove atmospheric carbon. For the Carbon Cycle Institute, it’s all about the soil.

KEEP READING ON PETALUMA360

Digging Deep Reveals the Intricate World of Roots

/by

Author: Becky Harlan | Published: October 15, 2015

If you’ve ever driven past wild prairie grasses swaying in the Kansas breeze and felt a wave of appreciation for America’s heartland, you should know that those visible grasses are just the tip of the iceberg.

“We’re pretty blind to what’s going on beneath the soil,” says photographer Jim Richardson, who became well acquainted with the world of dirt while working on “Our Good Earth,” a 2008 National Geographic magazine story.

The bulk of a prairie grass plant, it turns out, exists out of sight, with anywhere from eight to fourteen feet of roots extending down into the earth. Why should we care? Besides being impressively large, these hidden root balls accomplish a lot—storing carbon, nourishing soil, increasing bioproductivity, and preventing erosion.

Unfortunately, these productive, perennial grasses (which live year round) are more rare than they once were.

“When [you] say the American Midwest is a breadbasket, essentially what you mean is that you have taken out the prairie grasses. You went out with Willa Cather and the plow that broke the plains, plowed up the grassland, and started planting annual grasses like wheat, sorghum, corn, any of the big grains that supply most of our calories,” says Richardson.

A challenge in raising the profile of this tallgrass ecosystem is that so much of it is underground and therefore difficult to visualize. Enter photography.

KEEP READING ON NATIONAL GEOGRAFIC 

Beyond Organic: Carbon Farming Is a Pathway to Climate Stabilization and Resilient Soils

/by

Author: Derek Markham | Published: January 30, 2017 

Addressing the climate crisis calls for an ‘all of the above’ approach to reducing carbon emissions and increasing carbon sequestration, and although many of us are inclined to supporting organic farming practices, it’s high time we started focusing on carbon farming practices as well. Organically grown food, while a preferable choice for green shoppers in grocery stores and farmers markets, isn’t necessarily the same thing as food grown using smart carbon farming practices, and though the two aren’t mutually exclusive, demand for organics is driven more by marketing, while the other is still a bit of a mystery to the average person.

We’ve covered the concept of carbon farming and carbon sequestration in general many times here on TreeHugger, but it’s one of those topics that, while not nearly as sexy as e-bikes and tiny houses and amazing animals, bears further discussion.

Most of us are probably able to name just a few key examples of carbon farming practices, most likely the addition of compost and/or biochar, and moving to a no-till system with cover crops, but there are a host of other practical methods as well, which may vary a bit depending on the location where they’re implemented. In this short video from Nexus Media, Connor Stedman, a consultant with AppleSeed Permaculture, offers some insights into the importance of carbon farming:

KEEP READING ON TREEHUGGER 

Carbon Farming – Video

/by

Published: January 30, 2017 

Some people farm corn. Some farm wheat. Some, like Connor Stedman, farm carbon.

“There’s a really significant potential for carbon farming worldwide to play a role in reversing the climate crisis,” said Stedman, an agricultural consultant at AppleSeed Permaculture.

KEEP READING ON CLEANTECNICA 

A Mind-boggling Carbon Deposit Was Just Discovered in the Congo

/by

Author: Maddie Stone | Published: January 16, 2017 

A newly-discovered peatland in the Congo Basin of central Africa contains an estimated 30.6 billion tons of carbon in its waterlogged soils—equivalent to three times the total annual carbon emissions of every human being alive today.

Covering an area the size of England, the Cuvette Central is the largest tropical peatland area on Earth, dramatically increasing the amount of carbon stored in our planet’s hot and humid midsection, according to an analysis published last week in Nature. Now that this vast carbon sink has been identified, experts say we need to take every action possible to ensure it remains in the ground.

“Peatlands are only a resource in the fight against climate change when left intact, and so maintaining large stores of carbon in undisturbed peatlands should be a priority,” lead study author Simon Lewis said in a statement. “Our new results show that carbon has been building up in the Congo Basin’s peat for nearly 11,000 years.”

Peatlands only cover about three percent of Earth’s land surface, but they contain up to a third of all of the carbon sequestered in soils. Peat forms in waterlogged regions where plants add lots of organic material to the soil, but where decomposition is inhibited by a lack of oxygen (and, in the case of boreal and tundra peatlands, low temperatures). Over time, the highly organic, dark brown-to-black muck soils that characterize peatlands can compress into coal. That is, unless the soil warms up and dries out, at which point all of that carbon is liable to escape back to the atmosphere.

KEEP READING ON GIZMODO

Agriculture Is Part of the Climate Change Solution

/by

Author: Lois Ross | Published: January 24, 2017

Small farmers face pretty much the same issues no matter what part of the world they happen to till — access to land, seed, financing and more.

I learned that lesson while rolling through the hills of northern Nicaragua, acting as an interpreter for a brigade of Canadian farmers hoping to transfer their skills to support local farmers. At that time mechanization for many small farmers in Nicaragua seemed to be the main impediment. But thinking back to the exchanges I translated, the lack of tractors, chemicals and artificial fertilizers presented challenges but also possibilities to explore.

How do you grow food in a world where resources are limited? For small farmers in developing regions, resources have always been limited. These Canadian and Nicaraguan farmers wanted to learn from each other, and the challenges each group faced related to producing food, farming methods, and taking care of the soil and their communities. The question was how best to do this in a global system based on profit and not on stewardship. At the end of the brigade’s stay, it would be fair to say that the Canadians learned as much if not more than their Nicaraguan counterparts. Both realized that the problems facing agriculture were much larger than farmers themselves. Still, they persevered.

These progressive farmers knew that agriculture could be part of the solution — for community, health, food security and much more.

Agriculture and climate change

Despite the attempts of certain farm groups, for many years agricultural practices in so-called developed nations have been environmentally destructive. We have been told that the industrial model of agriculture is necessary to ensure production and food security. It’s an old story, one that has created a false reality. And the North has promoted that false reality. Aid programs targetting developing nations have long tried to transfer the industrialized model to smaller, poorer countries. Industrial agriculture has been supported as the only model that is successful. The costs have been huge.

The time has come to look at how agriculture might actually be a huge part of climate change mitigation.

Agriculture can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but it is going to mean putting stewardship and food production ahead of profit and expansion. It is possible.

KEEP READING ON RABBLE

4 Per 1000 | Soils for Food Security and Climate

/by

Human activities release enormous quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This intensifies the greenhouse effect and accelerates climate change. The world soil contains 2 to 3 times more carbon than the atmosphere. Increasing this storage of carbon by 4 parts for 1000 in the top 30 or 40cm of the soil could stop the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. This is the proposal of the “4 parts for 1000, soils for food security and climate”.

LEARN MORE HERE 

The Potential Is There

/by

Author: Claire Woodcock  | Published: January 12, 2017 

In 2008, during the first days of Ollin Farms, owner Mark Guttridge says the Longmont soil produced only “nubby” carrots. A picture of his wife holding their then year-old daughter, Amber, illustrates the problem; the carrots were wide and short, mutant-like in their girth — maybe right for a county fair prize for “heaviest carrot,” but not the kind of produce folks buy at the farmers’ market.

By 2012, the carrots from Ollin Farms had slimmed down and stretched, now reaching from Amber’s shoulder down to her waist.

These were quality carrots.

“It was this foot-and-a-half-long carrot,” Guttridge says. “That never would have been possible four years previously when the soil was the way it was.”

Today, Ollin Farms grows 10 different varieties of carrots each agricultural cycle and Guttridge credits the success to carbon sequestration, the process of pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to build healthy topsoil.

Over centuries of traditional agricultural practices, farmers have plowed their fields, releasing carbon stored in the soil in the process. When that carbon collides with the oxygen in the air, it creates carbon dioxide that is then released into the atmosphere and contributes to global warming. Scientists estimate as much as 80 percent of soil carbon in heavily cultivated areas has been lost, according to Kristin’s Ohlson’s 2014 book The Soil Will Save Us. Furthermore, practices such as traditional farming, overgrazing, deforestation and erosion, what Ohlson calls “land misuse” in her book, account for approximately 30 percent of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide.

But a growing number of farmers around the world, including several Boulder County farmers, are implementing carbon sequestration practices to recapture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in soil, where the carbon aids crop growth while helping to mitigate climate change at the same time.

KEEP READING ON BOULDER WEEKLY