We have to sequester a teraton of CO2 ASAP in order to restore the atmosphere and oceans, and start to drive global temperatures downward. Among several methods being tried, today's idea is paying farmers to get more carbon in their soils using regenerative agriculture. A carbon removal subsidy rather than a tax.
The Terraton Initiative: Agriculture is the most advanced technology for addressing climate change
Scalable, affordable & immediate
Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have risen dramatically over the past century. Our goal is to remove 1 trillion tons of it and bring the concentration back to pre-Industrial Revolution levels. To accomplish that we have to both cut our emissions and draw down the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. While climate change can seem insurmountable, agriculture presents a scalable solution that we can act on right now, starting with the soil beneath our feet.
The site is short on details, but they do name a price for sequestered carbon: $15/ton.
The first question that this raises is how we keep that up. Can we really budget $15 trillion to sequester a teraton of CO2? Or do we let the price drop off at some point?
It is an article of faith in Market Fundamentalist economics that profit is the only duty of corporations. This is of course nonsense. The true purpose of corporations is to advance the social standing of owners and managers. This is why they ignore massive profit opportunities that they consider socially or politically unacceptable. As we see constantly in the energy business.
Regenerative Agriculture according to Terraton
What are Regenerative Farming Practices?
Regenerative practices have been developed to resemble a natural system, like a prairie. But what does that look like? An ideal prairie has many different types of plant species—in agriculture, we can incorporate cover crops and crop rotations—with animals roaming freely around it. This nutrient rich, un-tilled soil provides answers for challenges that have traditionally been solved with inputs like synthetic fertilizers. When applied at scale to farmland and pasture-land, regenerative practices offer a powerful and practical way to address climate change.
Regenerative Farming 101
Cover Cropping
Bare soil is more susceptible to erosion. Cover crops can help keep soil intact, as well as increase soil nitrogen and cycle other important nutrients. Planting cover crops between a farm’s regular cash crop plantings keeps the soil covered with living roots year-round, prevents moisture evaporation, and protects it from invasive weeds.
No- or Reduced Tilling
The practice of tilling dates back many centuries. It is used to de-compact soil in the short term, which can have unintended consequences over the long term. Tilling also exposes the soil to more oxygen which promotes further degradation of beneficial organic matter. By not tilling, we leave the soil undisturbed and allow it to heal, thrive, and regenerate—and we have new technologies that enable us to farm without it.
Crop Rotation
By switching out the crops in different fields in a coordinated sequence, farmers and growers are able to reduce the loss of nutrients that occurs when the same crop is planted over and over again. By cycling through different plant species, we’re adding nutrients back to the soil naturally. Some plants take certain nutrients from the soil, while the next crop can deposit those nutrients back.
Reducing Synthetic Inputs
Opting for natural fertilizers, such as compost, and reducing use of synthetic inputs helps enrich the soil. In addition to providing plants with a wide array of essential nutrients, they usually contain a bevy of carbon-based molecules as well. Many synthetic products only supply a narrowly focused set of specific compounds. The natural sources of fertility contribute to the soil ecosystem, keeping it healthy and allowing it to both lock in carbon and support plant and microbial life that will accelerate the drawdown process.
Animal Integration
Incorporating livestock into cropland with carefully managed grazing can improve total system productivity and health. The fertilizing benefits of animal manure deposited in a field supports crop plant nutrition. The subsequent photosynthesis from the foliage helps lock more carbon into the soil.
IndigoAg
Earn Income for Enriching Your Soil
STEP 1: SIGN UP
You sign up for Indigo Carbon.
STEP 2: GATHER DATA
Indigo works with growers to gather data, analyze soil samples, and verify carbon has been sequestered.
Step 3: ADOPT PRACTICES
You adopt regenerative practices and reduce inputs. We support with agronomic advice.
STEP 4: Verify
We work to collect additional data to verify tons of carbon sequestered or reduced.
STEP 5: PAY
We pay you.
The benefits of Indigo Carbon & regenerative practices
- Price / verified carbon credit for one ton of CO2E increase $15
- Potential increase in carbon dioxide sequestration (CO2 equivalents) / ac. / yr. increase 2-3 tons
- Potential gross income from enriching your soil increase $30-45 / acre / year vesting over 10 years; results may vary
Regenerative Agriculture According to Others
Now you should understand that I don't know a great deal about agricultural technology and markets. I can explain how paying farmers to host wind turbines in their fields works financially, but not all of regenerative agriculture. So I'm telling the story that I have heard, but we would need to see data to believe it. Regenerative agriculture has to prove that it is profitable on its own, against the usual resistance from monster corporations and the lack of agriculture extension services teaching regenerative practices, biology, and economics.
Well, would you believe Forbes?
How Investing In Regenerative Agriculture Can Help Stem Climate Change Profitably
How about some scientific studies? You will notice a significant clash of conclusions in these studies.
[HTML] Regenerative agriculture: merging farming and natural resource conservation profitably
… 45 days ago. RT @AFeldman2: @friends_earth 3. Support and promote #RegenerativeAgriculture …
Regenerative agriculture: merging farming and natural resource conservation profitably … Soil
Science Keywords Agroecology, Biodiversity, Conservation agriculture, Corn, Pest …
Cited by 23 Related articles All 10 versions
Can sustainable agriculture be profitable?
P Madden - Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable …, 1987 - Taylor & Francis
… agriculture is Characterized as a farming system in which an - more profit could be … This article is Pennsylvania Agricultural Experiment Station journal series no. 7666 … of herbicides that find their way into water supplies or foodstuffs would not qualify as regenerative agriculture …
Call of the reed warbler: A new agriculture—A new earth
C Massy - 2017 - CSIRO
… Perhaps in some cases this lack of referencing is because the science does not yet exist to back up the on-ground observations of regenerative agriculture practitioners - and this points to a key requirement for agricultural and rangeland scientists in studying and documenting …
Massy outlines how these industrial agricultural practices, embedded within our prevailing socio-political systems, have depleted Australia’s soils, destroyed vast areas of forest and grassland, driven species to extinction and undermined animal and human health, as well as contributing to anthropogenic climate change.
Regenerative agriculture must be profitable
J Kendrick - California Agriculture, 1985 - calag.ucanr.edu
… A modern agricultural research and extension program in any Land-Grant institution should find no difficulty in setting a goal to achieve profitability for agriculture through regenerative and sustainable farming practices. 2 CALIFORNIA AGRICULTURE, JULY-AUGUST 1985
Cited by 2 Related articles All 2 versions
Cited by 66 Related articles All 3 versions
Mainstreaming low-input agriculture
N Schaller - Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, 1990 - jswconline.org
… that one day we will move beyond sustainability to a still higher end, which he calls regenerative agriculture (7) … agricultural production, thereby threatening food shortages … 3). I do not mean to say that profitability is inherently at odds with the overall sustainability of agriculture …
Sustainable agriculture
JP Reganold, RI Papendick, JF Parr - Scientific American, 1990 - JSTOR
… variants of nonconventional agriculture that are often called organic, alternative, regenerative, ecological or … The program for low-input sustainable agriculture, or LISA, that has emerged from …purchased resources to farms; to increase farm profits and agricultural productivity; to …
D Ehrenfeld - Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, 1987 - JSTOR
… Another example is that of F Farmers' Own Network for Exten Regenerative Agriculture Associat
New Farm … Agricultural Sciences, the recommended top funding priority in fiscal '87 was "increased agricultural profitability," and they noted that, "The goal is maximum profit …
Cited by 9 Related articles
My Conclusion
I really hope this works. It will not be a complete solution, but if we do a hundred gigatons here and a hundred gigatons there, pretty soon we are talking about serious climate mitigation.