Carbon farming

Carbon farming is a set of agricultural methods that aim to store carbon in the soil, crop roots, wood and leaves. The technical term for this is carbon sequestration. The overall goal of carbon farming is to create a net loss of carbon from the atmosphere.^[1] This is done by increasing the rate at which carbon is sequestered into soil and plant material. One option is to increase the soil's organic matter content. This can also aid plant growth, improve soil water retention capacity^[2] and reduce fertilizer use.^[3] Sustainable forest management is another tool that is used in carbon farming.^[4] Carbon farming is one component of climate-smart agriculture. It is also one of the methods for carbon dioxide removal (CDR).

Agricultural methods for carbon farming include adjusting how

Carbon farming methods might have additional costs. Some countries have government policies that give financial incentives to farmers to use carbon farming methods.^[5]

As of 2016, variants of carbon farming reached hundreds of millions of hectares globally, of the nearly 5 billion hectares (1.2×10¹⁰ acres) of world farmland.^[6]

Carbon farming is not without its challenges or disadvantages. This is because some of its methods can affect ecosystem services. For example, carbon farming could cause an increase of land clearing, monocultures and biodiversity loss.^[7] It is important to maximize environmental benefits of carbon farming by keeping in mind ecosystem services at the same time.^[7]

Aims

Modification of agricultural practices is a recognized method of carbon sequestration as soil can act as an effective carbon sink and thus offset carbon dioxide emissions.^[8]

Agricultural sequestration practices may have positive effects on

Compared to

In part, soil carbon is thought to accumulate when decaying organic matter was physically mixed with soil.^[15] Small roots die and decay while the plant is alive, depositing carbon below the surface.^[16] More recently, the role of living plants has been emphasized where carbon is released as plants grow.^[17] Soils can contain up to 5% carbon by weight, including decomposing plant and animal matter and biochar.

About half of soil carbon is found within deep soils.^[18] About 90% of this is stabilized by mineral-organic associations.^[19]

Scale

Carbon farming can offset as much as 20% of 2010 carbon dioxide emissions annually.

As of 2016, variants of carbon farming reached hundreds of millions of hectares globally, of the nearly 5 billion hectares (1.2×10¹⁰ acres) of world farmland.[6]

However, the effects of soil sequestration can be reversed. If the soil is disrupted or intensive tillage practices are used, the soil becomes a net source of greenhouse gases. Typically after several decades of sequestration, the soil becomes saturated and ceases to absorb carbon. This implies that there is a global limit to the amount of carbon that soil can hold.^[21]

Methods used in agriculture

All crops absorb CO
₂ during growth and release it after harvest. The goal of agricultural carbon removal is to use the crop and its relation to the carbon cycle to permanently sequester carbon within the soil. This is done by selecting farming methods that return biomass to the soil and enhance the conditions in which the carbon within the plants will be reduced to its elemental nature and stored in a stable state. Methods for accomplishing this include:

• Use cover crops such as grasses and weeds as a temporary cover between planting seasons
• Concentrate livestock in small paddocks for days at a time so they graze lightly but evenly. This encourages roots to grow deeper into the soil. Stock also till the soil with their hooves, grinding old grass and manures into the soil.^[22]
• Cover bare paddocks with hay or dead vegetation. This protects soil from the sun and allows the soil to hold more water and be more attractive to carbon-capturing microbes.^[22]
• Restore degraded, marginal, and abandoned land, which slows carbon release while returning the land to agriculture or other use.^[23] Degraded land with low soil carbon pool has particularly high potential to store soil carbon, which can be farther enhanced by proper selection of vegetation.^[24][25]

Adjusting livestock grazing

Livestock, like all animals, are net producers of carbon. Ruminants like cows and sheep produce not only CO₂, but also methane due to the microbes residing in their digestive system. A small amount of carbon may be sequestered in grassland soils through root exudates and manure. By regularly rotating the herd through multiple paddocks (as often as daily) the paddocks can rest/recover between grazing periods. This pattern produces stable grasslands with significant fodder.^[26] Annual grasses have shallower roots and die once they are grazed. Rotational grazing leads to the replacement of annuals by perennials with deeper roots, which can recover after grazing. By contrast, allowing animals to range over a large area for an extended period can destroy the grassland.^[27]

Silvopasture involves grazing livestock under tree cover, with trees separated enough to allow adequate sunlight to nourish the grass.^[26] For example, a farm in Mexico planted native trees on a paddock spanning 22 hectares (54 acres). This evolved into a successful organic dairy. The operation became a subsistence farm, earning income from consulting/training others rather than from crop production.^[28]

Adjusting tillage

Carbon farming minimizes disruption to soils over the planting/growing/harvest cycle. Tillage is avoided using seed drills or similar techniques.^[29] Livestock can trample and/or eat the remains of a harvested field.^[26] The reduction or complete halt of tilling will create an increase in the soil carbon concentrations of topsoil.^[11] Plowing splits soil aggregates and allows microorganisms to consume their organic compounds. The increased microbial activity releases nutrients, initially boosting yield. Thereafter the loss of structure reduces soil's ability to hold water and resist erosion, thereby reducing yield.^[6]

Using organic mulch and compost

Mulching covers the soil around plants with a mulch of wood chips or straw. Alternatively, crop residue can be left in place to enter the soil as it decomposes.^[26]

Compost sequesters carbon in a stable (not easily accessed) form. Carbon farmers spread it over the soil surface without tilling.^[26] A 2013 study found that a single compost application significantly and durably increased grassland carbon storage by 25–70%. The continuation sequestration likely came from increased water-holding and “fertilization” by compost decomposition. Both factors support increased productivity. Both tested sites showed large increases in grassland productivity: a forage increase of 78% in a drier valley site, while a wetter coastal site averaged an increase of 42%. CH
₄ and N
₂O and emissions did not increase significantly. Methane fluxes were negligible. Soil N
₂O emissions from temperate grasslands amended with chemical fertilizers and manures were orders of magnitude higher.^[30] Another study found that grasslands treated with .5" of commercial compost began absorbing carbon at an annual rate of nearly 1.5 tons/acre and continued to do so in subsequent years. As of 2018, this study had not been replicated.^[27]

Working with biochar and terra preta

Mixing anaerobically burned biochar into soil sequesters approximately 50% of the carbon in the biomass. Globally up to 12% of the anthropogenic carbon emissions from land use change (0.21 gigatonnes) can be off-set annually in soil, if

Perennial crops offer potential to sequester carbon when grown in multilayered systems. One system uses perennial staple crops that grow on trees that are analogs to maize and beans, or vines, palms and herbaceous perennials.[32]

Methods used in forestry

Reforestation

Forestry and agriculture are both land-based human activities that add up to contribute approximately a third of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.^[33] There is a large interest in reforestation, but in regards to carbon farming most of that reforestation opportunity will be in small patches with trees being planted by individual land owners in exchange for benefits provided by carbon farming programs.^[34] Forestry in carbon farming can be both reforestation, which is restoring forests to areas that were deforested, and afforestation which would be planting forests in areas that were not historically forested.^[4] Not all forests will sequester the same amount of carbon. Carbon sequestration is dependent on several factors which can include forest age, forest type, amount of biodiversity, the management practices the forest is experiences and climate.^[35][36] Biodiversity is often thought to be a side benefit of carbon farming, but in forest ecosystems increased biodiversity can increase the rate of carbon sequestration and can be a tool in carbon farming and not just a side benefit.^[36]

Bamboo farming

A bamboo forest will store less total carbon than most types of mature forest. However, it can store a similar total amount of carbon as rubber plantations and tree orchards, and can surpass the total carbon stored in agroforests, palm oil plantations, grasslands and shrublands.^[37] A bamboo plantation sequesters carbon at a faster rate than a mature forest or a tree plantation.^[38] However it has been found that only new plantations or plantations with active management will be sequestering carbon at a faster rate than mature forests.^[39] Compared with other fast-growing tree species, bamboo is only superior in its ability to sequester carbon if selectively harvested.^[40] Bamboo forests are especially high in potential for carbon sequestration if the cultivated plant material is turned into durable products that keep the carbon in the plant material for a long period because bamboo is both fast growing and regrows strongly following an annual harvest.^[37][41]

While bamboo has the ability to store carbon as biomass in cultivated material, more than half of the carbon sequestration from bamboo will be stored as carbon in the soil.^[41] Carbon that is sequestered into the soil by bamboo is stored by the rhizomes and roots which is biomass that will remain in the soil after plant material above the soil is harvested and stored long-term.^[38] Bamboo can be planted in sub-optimal land unsuitable for cultivating other crops and the benefits would include not only carbon sequestration but improving the quality of the land for future crops and reducing the amount of land subject to deforestation.^[38] The use of carbon emission trading is also available to farmers who use bamboo to gain carbon credit in otherwise uncultivated land.^[38] Therefore, the farming of bamboo timber may have significant carbon sequestration potential.^[42][43][44]

Costs and financial incentives

Many factors affect the costs of carbon sequestration including soil quality, transaction costs and various externalities such as leakage and unforeseen environmental damage. Because reduction of atmospheric CO
₂ is a long-term concern, farmers can be reluctant to adopt more expensive agricultural techniques when there is not a clear crop, soil, or economic benefit.

Carbon farming methods might have additional costs. Individual land owners are sometimes given incentives to use carbon farming methods through government policies.^[5] Governments in Australia and New Zealand are considering allowing farmers to sell carbon credits once they document that they have sufficiently increased soil carbon content.^{[22][45][46][47][48][49]}

Approved practices may make farmers eligible for federal funds. Not all carbon farming techniques have been recommended.^[27]

Challenges

Carbon farming is not without its challenges or disadvantages. When ecosystem restoration is used as a form of carbon farming, there can be a lack of knowledge that is disadvantageous in project planning.^[7] Ecosystem services are often a side benefit of restoring ecosystems along with carbon farming, but often ecosystem services are ignored in project planning because, unlike carbon sequestration, is not a global commodity that can be traded.^[7] If and how carbon farming's additional sequestration methods can affect ecosystem services should be researched to determine how different methods and strategies will impact the value an ecosystem service in particular areas.^[7] One concern to note is that if policy and incentives are only aimed towards carbon sequestration, then carbon farming could actually be harmful to ecosystems.^[7] Carbon farming could inadvertently cause an increase of land clearing and monocultures when species diversity is not a goal of the landscapes project, so there should be attempts to balance the goals of carbon farming and biodiversity should be attempted.^[7]

Critics say that the related regenerative agriculture cannot be adopted enough to matter or that it could lower commodity prices. The impact of increased soil carbon on yield has yet to be settled.^{[citation needed]}

Another criticism says that no-till practices may increase herbicide use, diminishing or eliminating carbon benefits.^[27]

Composting is not an NRCS-approved technique and its impacts on native species and greenhouse emissions during production have not been fully resolved. Further, commercial compost supplies are too limited to cover large amounts of land.^[27]

Carbon farming may consider related issues such as groundwater and surface water degradation.^[2]

Related concepts

Climate-smart agriculture

Blue carbon

By country or region

Australia

In 2011 Australia started a

The largest international effort to promote carbon farming is “four per 1,000”, led by France. Its goal is to increase soil carbon by 0.4% per year through agricultural and forestry changes.[27]

North America

By 2014 more than 75% of

• California appropriated $7.5 million as part of its Healthy Soils Program. The objective is to demonstrate that "specific management practices sequester carbon, improve soil health and reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases." The program includes mulching,
  hedgerows and buffer strips.^[54] Nearly half of California counties have farmers who are working on carbon-farming.^[27]
• Maryland's Healthy Soils Program supports research, education and technical assistance.[54]
• Massachusetts funds education and training to support agriculture that regenerates soil health.^[54]
• Hawaii created the Carbon Farming Task Force to develop incentives to increase soil carbon content.^[54] A 250-acre demonstration project attempted to produce biofuels from the pongamia tree. Pongamia adds nitrogen to the soil. Similarly, one ranch husbands 2,000 head of cattle on 4,000 acres, using rotational grazing to build soil, store carbon, restore hydrologic function and reduce runoff.^[55]

Other states are considering similar programs.^[54]

See also

• Agroforestry
• Carbon sink
• Effects of climate change on agriculture
• Effects of climate change on livestock
• Greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture
• Seaweed farming
• Soil carbon feedback

References