How to Get Rid of Carbon Emissions: Pay Farmers to Bury Them
Mr. Hora - a seventh-generation Iowa - farmer experiments with “regenerative growing practices” that improve soil health, boost yields, reduce water and fertilizer use, and carry a significant collateral benefit: they sequester in the soil carbon released from burning fossil fuels. Mr. Hora could soon be rewarded for providing this social benefit. Indigo Ag Inc., a Boston-based company specializing in agricultural technology and management, is setting up a market for carbon credits. Companies and consumers with voluntary or compulsory commitments to reduce their carbon footprint can, rather than reduce emissions themselves, pay farmers to do it for them. Via the Indigo Carbon marketplace, they can pay farmers like Mr. Hora $15 to sequester one metric ton of carbon dioxide in the soil.
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The Rodale Institute, a think tank that promotes organic agriculture and has partnered with Indigo, cites trials that suggest through regenerative growing practices, an acre of agricultural land can sequester one to 2.6 tons of carbon dioxide a year. Extrapolating to the world, that equals the about 37 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide released globally through fossil fuel use each year.
That’s not realistic, according to Rattan Lal, a soil scientist who heads the Carbon Management and Sequestration Center at Ohio State University. He says the maximum soil sequestration that can be achieved, under ideal conditions, is nine billion tons and even that—given the political and practical obstacles—“is a dream.” In 2015 France persuaded the world to commit to raising the carbon content of soil by 0.4% per year and it has yet to trigger any meaningful action. A more feasible goal, he says, would be six billion tons globally, including one billion in the U.S. That won’t absorb all or even most fossil-fuel emissions, but could offset those from sectors with no realistic alternative to fossil fuels, such as aviation and steel making.
Existing schemes encourage carbon sequestration in forests but face an intrinsic tension: A landowner must give up the income a forest generates—such as wood, paper or as farmland—for the world’s greater good. By contrast, increasing soil’s carbon content makes farming potentially more profitable. Plants convert atmospheric carbon dioxide into carbon through photosynthesis. As plants die they deposit that carbon in the soil. Traditional farming undoes that process. Tilling disturbs carbon structures, causing them to recombine with oxygen and enter the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, while fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides leach carbon into the water and air while generating nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas.
Regenerative farming reduces atmospheric carbon dioxide by increasing the volume of plants grown and keeping more of their carbon in the soil when they die. Instead of disturbing the soil with tilling, farmers drill holes to plant seeds. Rather than leave the earth between cash crops bare, they plant cover crops that reduce erosion and add plant matter. Indigo sells seeds treated with naturally occurring microbes to resist pest and fungal disease and drought, reducing the dependence on pesticides, fungicides, water and genetically modified organisms.
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-get-rid-of-carbon-emissions-pay-farmers-to-bury-them-11568211869 (paid subscription)
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