Farms Harvest Cuts in Carbon Dioxide via Soil

Increasingly more research shows that agricultural practices like cover cropping, no-till farming, composting or even the use of biochar can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, boosting the organic matter in the soil.

It is a “low-hanging fruit” in the fight against climate change, said Rattan Lal, the director of the Carbon Management and Sequestration Center at Ohio State University.  Farmers worldwide using a combination of conservation practices could sequester roughly 1 gigaton of organic carbon per year, he has estimated.  That would be like taking nearly 800 million passenger cars off the roads.

The strategy has received attention worldwide, including with the French minister of agriculture, who has said that boosting the organic matter in soils by 0.4 percent each year could compensate for global greenhouse gas emissions.  In the United States, the federal government has increasingly funded agricultural practices with climate benefits

But perhaps nowhere is better positioned for “carbon farming” to take off than California. Agriculture is a nearly $50 billion industry there that emits more greenhouse gases than the commercial or residential sectors.  And the state has billions in revenue from its cap-and-trade system slated specifically for programs that reduce greenhouse gases.

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