Carbon Farming
Why Carbon Farming is the Future
Why Carbon Farming?
“Globally, about 25% of our climate change pollution is caused by food and agriculture” - Jonathan Foley (CNBC 2021).
Agriculture is one of the largest global pollutants. Our world cannot sustain and defend a growing population against climate threats without an effective and resilient food system.
Local farmers are at the forefront of carbon farming initiatives. Carbon farming is mutually beneficial. It replenishes the soil with organic material while reducing emissions into the atmosphere. Carbon farming is the future. It will help communities by improving crop production, mitigating air pollution, and increasing the resilience of food systems.
What is Carbon Farming?
The goal behind carbon farming, also known as regenerative agriculture, is to sequester as much carbon into the soil instead of releasing it into the air.
Plants naturally photosynthesize and in doing so, they take carbon dioxide from the air and integrate it back into the soil.
Six Different Ways to Implement Carbon Farming
Soil sequestration is the process of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it in the soil through the carbon cycle (Jansson C 2021).
Plants photosynthesize CO2 from the air and some of that carbon becomes part of the plant tissue.
When the plant dies, it decomposes and the carbon is then restored into the ground.
Low till or no-till practices reduce soil disturbance. Frequent soil disturbance releases carbon dioxide stored in organic material in the soil back into the atmosphere. In single pass no-till farming, crop residues are rolled flat and become mulch that covers soil surfaces, feeds beneficial microorganisms, and makes soil sequestration more efficient and effective.
Additionally, low-till and no-till farming will “increase rainfall infiltration to help prevent storm flooding and limit soil erosion, while enhancing soil moisture retention—adding protection for the farmer against drought” (Green America 2022).
Farmers can rotate crops between years and/or seasons instead of planting the same crop on the same plot of land year after year.
Using crop rotation instead of monoculture prolongs the lifetime of soil ecosystems by replenishing the soil with nutrients and protecting the soil structure. As a result, farmers will produce more nutrient-dense crops on more pest-resistant soil.
Cover cropping is the process of planting different species of plants in the offseason of the primary crop to protect the soil.
Some examples of cover crops include: wheat, radish, barley, and peas.
Cover cropping “significantly reduces soil erosion and agricultural runoff” (Green America 2022).
Agroforestry involves planting and protecting trees in and around agricultural areas.
Trees absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and improves water, air, and soil quality.
Rotating livestock increases animal and soil health.
Adaptive multi-paddock grazing mimics the movement of wild herbivores to sequester carbon into the soil.
Poor grazing practices increase land degradation and carbon and methane emissions.
Carbon Markets
In simple terms, the carbon markets turn emissions reductions and removals into tradable assets. On a global scale, countries can buy or sell units of greenhouse-gas emissions in an effort to meet their national limits on emissions.
However, carbon markets are in no way a perfect system.
The obvious downside to carbon markets is ethics.
It can be argued that companies can buy “permits to pollute” (credits) to excuse their emissions rather than actually reducing the harmful emissions all together.
We have researched possible solutions to the issues surrounding the carbon market. One being...
Having an upper limit on the amount of carbon credits corporations can buy so at a certain point they can no longer buy themselves out of a situation.
For a global carbon market to be successful, we would need to be able to incentivise corporations to buy carbon credits from farms in developing countries just as much as they buy from farms in industrialized countries.
A way to further help farmers is through a Carbon Farming Certification. Certified carbon farmers’ items will have labels acknowledging their low emissions practices, making their products premium and more appealing to buyers.
“A Carbon Farming Certification would equip consumers with knowledge to make consumer decisions with the carbon footprint of a product in mind… Additionally, a carbon farming certification gives producers and governments… a mechanism to meet corporate sustainability goals, treaty-based emissions targets, and additional financial opportunities for carbon trading” (Marks 2020).
Iowa Farmer has Success With Carbon Farming
Iowa farmer and carbon seller, Kelly Garrett found $341,000 hidden in his soil. As a 7th generation farmer, Kelly Garrett has been tending to lush fields of corn, soybean crops, and raising cattle for beef for years.
He even co-founded Xtreme.Ag.farm, a website where Garrett and six other farmers review agricultural tools and practices to help other farmers.
It was through this side gig that Kelly Garrett discovered he could tweak his own agricultural techniques to capture carbon out of the atmosphere and get incentivized.
Garrett had already been using many regenerative practices such as no-tilling and cover crops to improve his soil health and he expanded his use of them.
Now, his farm, Garrett Land & Cattle, has become 100% no-till and he has implemented regenerative practices such as utilizing manure, composting, livestock grazing and crop rotations.
It was confirmed that over the course of 5 years, Garrett’s farm of almost 7,000 acres had removed nearly 23,000 metric tons of carbon from the atmosphere.
That’s about equal to the average yearly emissions of almost 5,000 cars.
So who is paying Kelly Garrett for capturing carbon?
CarbonNOW, a globally recognized carbon farming program developed by Locus Agricultural Solutions (Locus AG).
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It wasn’t only Garrett’s agricultural techniques that brought him revenue, but the combination of his practices and participation in the carbon market that increased his profits.
"This is a way to do our part to farm in a regenerative, sustainable manner while continuing the things we need to do" - Kelly Garrett
Through carbon farming practices, farmers can improve their soil quality producing a higher yield, get incentivized by the carbon market, and ultimately reduce carbon emissions from the atmosphere.
The Pros and Cons of Carbon Farming for Farmers
Why Some Farmers Are Against Transitioning to Carbon Farming
Two of the main reasons carbon farming may seem unappealing to farmers is because it costs more than ‘regular farming’.
Another is that the information surrounding carbon farming can be difficult to understand.
To feel more comfortable considering carbon farming, farmers would “need ‘specific information about carbon yields from revegetation in [their] rainfall zone/soil type’” (Kragt ME et al. 2017).
How Carbon Farming Can Benefit Farmers
As the idea of carbon farming gains more traction, we begin to see the positive effects it is having on crops by producing a higher yield.
Other possible benefits for farmers is the potential to become part of the carbon market, where they could gain money for the amount of soil they sequestered into the ground.
In a study done in the Western Australia wheatbelt,
carbon farmers were asked a series of questions pertaining to carbon farming.
Roughly half the respondents said they were implementing carbon farming in some way, from revegetation activities to emission reduction activities to minimum/no-till cropping (Kragt ME et al. 2017).
When asked what made them switch over to their current practices, there were a variety of responses such as improved soil condition and an increase of yield.
They also valued the biodiversity these carbon farming practices brought to their land and that it made their crops more resilient towards the impacts of climate change (Kragt ME et al. 2017).
Some farmers recognized that carbon farming helped them “‘contribute to global reductions in climate change risk’ [with] the opportunity to earn Australian carbon credits [as] one of the least important reasons to undertake carbon farming’” (Kragt ME et al. 2017).
These farmers' responses demonstrate the variety of positive effects carbon farming has from greater biodiversity to improved soil health to higher yield.
What We Can Do
Conclusion
Carbon farming is a sustainable and reliable form of agriculture that reduces emissions from farms. With its variety of practices, such as no-till, cover cropping and agroforestry, it has many positive benefits for farmers as well, such as healthier soil, greater yield, and overall more crop resilience to climate change.
As we progress, we need a resilient agricultural system to support our growing population and protect our planet. We need to see greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture decrease. Carbon farming provides ways to achieve the more sustainable, resilient agriculture we should strive for.
Now that we have planted the seeds for a carbon farming world, we must root it into the foundation of a more sustainable future.
Acknowledgment
We would like to acknowledge and give thanks to Dr. Gabriela García and Clara Scheutz for making this work possible.
We would also like to thank the Climate Resilience Institute at Tufts University for providing us with this opportunity.
Bibliography
1) Green America. What is Carbon Farming?. Green America, Washington DC. Available from https://www.greenamerica.org/food-climate/what-carbon-farming (accessed July 2022).
2) * Evans MC. 2018. Effective incentives for reforestation: lessons from Australia's carbon farming policies. ScienceDirect DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2018.04.002 .
3) * Jansson C, et al. 2021. Crops for Carbon Farming. Frontiers in Plant Science DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2021.636709 .
4) * Kragt ME, Dumbrell NP, Blackmore L. 2017. Motivations and barriers for Western Australian broad-acre farmers to adopt carbon farming. ScienceDirect DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2017.04.009 .
5) * Dumbrell NP, Kragt ME, Gibson FL. 2016. What carbon farming activities are farmers likely to adopt? A best-worst scaling survey. ScienceDirect DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2016.02.002 .
6) Sharma M, Kaushal R, Kaushik P, Seeram R. 2021. Carbon Farming: Prospects and Challenges. ProQuest DOI: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/19/11122 .
7) CNBC. 2021. Why Carbon Credits Are the Next Opportunity For Farmers. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7SNlRUopSQ (accessed July 2022)
8) * Marks, Alexia B. 2020. (Carbon) Farming Our Way Out of Climate Change. University of Colorado Law School.
9) Green America. Regenerative Agriculture & Farming to Reverse Climate Change. Green America, Washington DC. Available from https://www.greenamerica.org/farming-reverse-climate-change-regenerative-agriculture (accessed July 2022).
10) Johnson, N. Kempe, Y. 2021. The US is about to go all-in on paying farmers and foresters to trap carbon. Grist. “Available from https://grist.org/agriculture/us-carbon-removal-capture-offset-forests-farms-trees-soil/” (“Accessed on July 21, 2022”).
11) 2021. Carbon Is A New Cash Crop For Some Midwest Farmers. NPR, Kansas City. “Available from https://www.kcur.org/news/2021-02-24/carbon-is-a-new-cash-crop-for-some-midwest-farmers” (“Accessed on July 21, 2022”).
12) 2020. Iowa Farmer Finds $341,000 Fortune Hidden in his Soil. Locus Agricultural Solutions. “Available from https://locusag.com/learning-center/iowa-farmer-finds-341000-fortune-hidden-in-his-soil/” (“Accessed on July 21, 2022”).
13) Long, N. 2021. How this farmer is benefiting from Truterra’s Carbon Program. Lando’Lakes Inc.. “Available from https://www.landolakesinc.com/Blog/December-2021/How-this-farmer-is-benefiting-from-Truterra” (“Accessed on July 21, 2022”).
14) Grist. 2021. Kelly Garrett carries supplies on his 7,000-acre farm in Iowa. Available from https://grist.org/agriculture/us-carbon-removal-capture-offset-forests-farms-trees-soil/ (accessed July 2022).
15) Locus Agricultural Solutions. 2020. Ecommerce giant Shopify has already purchased $75,000 worth of credits from Garrett. Available from https://locusag.com/learning-center/iowa-farmer-finds-341000-fortune-hidden-in-his-soil/ (accessed July 2022).
*n = peer reviewed
