New plan to bury tons of CO2 by changing farming practices

[The Blue Flower]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/06/12/new-plan-remove-trillion-tons-carbon-dioxide-atmosphere-bury-it/?utm_term=.76b49f652031

...Merely planting trees won’t get the world very far. Large and slower-growing trees can sequester more carbon than smaller plants, but the world faces dramatic deforestation and has enormous agricultural needs. Farming seems like a practical focus for how to mitigate growing atmospheric carbon. Whether they can get to 1 trillion tons of carbon is unknown, Perry says, but this represents one of the largest agricultural experiments lately, with software and satellite tools available to every farmer who signs up. The goal is to find out which crops, practices and geographic locations have the ability to drive more carbon into the soil.

To start, Indigo will pay farmers $15 per ton of carbon, using venture capital raised by the company.

Some farmers have already embraced the techniques. Russell Hedrick, a regenerative grower who farms non-GMO and heirloom corn, soy, barley, oats and triticale in Hickory, N.C., has been measuring the carbon in his 1,000 acres and the best he’s ever done is 1.5 tons per acre.He says the Indigo incentives could prove strong, especially at a time when farm bankruptcies are high and crop prices are sagging.

Hedrick says that in 2018, an American farmer on average lost about $60 per acre before subsidies, and made just $20 per acre after federal subsidies. So, if a farmer can put a ton and a half of carbon in each acre of soil and get paid by Indigo, they could double their profits.

more at link

[The_jackalope]

1. Feels a bit like grasping at straws

We emit 33+ billion tonnes of CO2 (~10 billion tonnes of carbon) per year at the moment.
There are 4.6 billion acres of cropland in the world. Not all acreage could absorb 1.5 tonnes, given the soil type and the crops grown.

Say each acre of cropland could be induced to store an average of 0.5 tonnes of carbon per year.

We would then be able to sequester about a third of last year's annual production. Enough to take our net emissions back to the level they were in ... 2002.

Mitigation is a mug's game.
Adaptation is the name of the only game left in town.

Start here: Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy (PDF)

[Duppers]

2. Downloaded

For later reading. Thanks!