Organic Farming Sucks (Up Carbon)

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/448-farm-and-food-policy/17907-organic-farming-sucks-up-carbon

We've known for a while now that organic agriculture is good for the climate: It does a better job at grabbing carbon from the air and turning it into soil than industrial agriculture, which often does just the opposite.

Last year, researchers reexamined all 74 studies that had looked at organic farming and carbon capture. After crunching the numbers from the results of these studies they concluded that, lo and behold, organic farms are carbon sponges.

This makes some intuitive sense: It's generally the organic farmers who are most concerned with building up the soil - they can't rely on synthetic supplements if the soil chemistry runs low, after all. And when farmers talk about building up the soil what they mean - on a fundamental level - is creating more dirt. The new dirt comes from plants, which, in turn, are made of carbon (in part). More topsoil means less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

But it's still a mystery as to exactly how this works. Why don't microbes chomp up every new organic molecule introduced into the soil and fart it back into the air? And why would a different form of agriculture change microbial behavior? Figure that out, and there would be hard evidence to spread the practice.