Carbon Farming: Agriculture’s Solution to Climate Change

Climate change is one of the greatest threats that humanity has ever faced. Even in its early stages, we have seen its tragic consequences in New Orleans, Houston, Puerto Rico, the historic droughts and vast fires in California and catastrophic climate disasters in many other locales. Yet there seems to be a dearth of practical solutions.

Without question, the world must transition to renewable energy, but making that transition, even at the rate of the most optimistic projections, won’t be fast enough to stabilize the climate. In addition to renewable energy, we must draw down carbon from the atmosphere and replenish the depleted stores of carbon in the soil where it enhances fertility, boosts productivity, and creates drought resilience. Agriculture can be a driving force to mitigate climate change by adopting carbon farming practices.

“Carbon Farming: Agriculture’s Solution to Climate Change” presents solutions, practices and the latest research on how farmers and ranchers can play a preeminent role in addressing climate change and ensuring food security by stewarding working landscapes to sequester carbon.

Farmers, ranchers, scientists, food systems activists and ecologists, who are developing a deep understanding of how to use carbon as an organizing principle in their work, share how they are shifting the perception of carbon as a problem and designing systems that use carbon as a benefit and a solution.

 
Videos
 
Rebecca Burgess and Fibershed are building a regional economy that connects ranches producing wool with artisan clothing manufactures, supporting a regenerative fertility cycle.

Fibershed: Building Local Economy and Healing the Climate – Rebecca Burgess

 
Dr. Whendee Silver of UC Berkeley is working with the Marin Carbon Project to establish a scientific basis for carbon farming practices that could have a significant impact on mitigating climate change if implemented globally.

Managing the Soil for Carbon is Good for the Climate – Whendee Silver

 
John Wick and the Marin Carbon Project are developing innovative carbon farming practices, which draw down atmospheric carbon and sequester that carbon in the soil where it becomes an agricultural asset that increases fertility, yields and make farms more resistant to droughts.

Cooling the Planet with Carbon Farming – John Wick

 
This video features ranchers, farmers, scientists, and food system activists sharing solutions, practices and the latest research on how carbon farming can play a preeminent role in addressing climate change and ensure food security by stewarding working landscapes to sequester carbon.

Carbon Farming: Agriculture’s Answer to Climate Change

 
John Wick and Calla Rose are visionary leaders of the Marin Carbon Project, a gold standard of carbon farming research demonstrations. Sequestering carbon in the soil is rapidly growing as a a movement among farmers across the country, including in conservative communities – because it IS about conservation… of the land and soil.

Carbon Farming with Calla Rose Ostrander and John Wick

 
 
Emerging science proves that shifting to regenerative forms of agriculture such as agroecology, agroforestry, cover-cropping, holistic grazing and permaculture will allow us to store excess carbon safely in the ground.

Soil Solutions to Climate Problems – Narrated by Michael Pollan

Articles
 
How can local economies value carbon farming practices in finished consumer goods? Fibershed represents a 160-member producer community, spanning from the Oregon border to San Luis Obispo and from the Pacific Ocean to the Sierra foothills, that is managing working landscapes strategically to sequester carbon.

Creating a Carbon-based Local Economy

 
Elly Brown, Director of San Diego Food System Alliance and Dr. Puja Batra of Batra Ecological Strategies first met at the Montado Ranch in San Diego where the Marin Carbon Project created a test plot to see how compost applications on Southern California soils could sequester carbon from the atmosphere.

Agriculture Can Help Meet Climate Action Targets in San Diego

 
Mark Shepard is the CEO of Forest Agriculture Enterprises who has developed a 106-acre polyculture farm by combining Permaculture, agroforestry and biomimicry principles. He is the author of Restoration Agriculture, a book that shares his experience on how to create an agricultural system that imitates the form and function of nature.

Mimicking Nature, Managing for Carbon

 
Janaki Jagannath is an advocate for farmworkers who, as the former Coordinator of the Community Alliance for Agroecology, works to advance environmental justice in California’s San Joaquin Valley where chemical farming continues to impact the health of rural communities. She gave this talk, edited below, as part of this series.

Healthy Soil and Environmental Justice in California’s San Joaquin Valley

 
Calla Rose Ostrander, an environmental consultant to the Marin Carbon Project, discusses the methods she’s used to advance the carbon farming movement and related agricultural policy locally and federally, and how we can expand the model.

Putting Carbon at the Center of Agricultural Policy

 
Paul Muller, a partner at Full Belly Farm in California’s Capay Valley, has been farming organically for 33 years. Full Belly is designed to maximize the layers of life per acre–plant, soil microbes, insects, and animals–while harvesting as much sunlight as possible and growing over 70 different fruit and vegetable crops.

More Layers of Life Per Acre: Creating a Rich Farm Ecology by Paul Muller

 
Dr. Whendee Silver is Professor of Ecosystem Ecology in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at the University of California, Berkeley. She is researching the biogeochemical effects of climate change and human impacts on the environment, and the potential for mitigating these effects.

Can Soil Carbon Sequestration Affect Global Temperatures, By Dr. Whendee Silver

 
This article by Sara Newmark was originally published in “B the Change”, which exists to inform and inspire people who have a passion for using business as a force for good in the world. She calls on all of us, and the business community in particular, to support our farmers and to protect the environment on which we all rely.

We All Rely on Soil, But We Treat It Like Dirt, By Sara Newmark

 
“Agriculture and land management have been underestimated if not completely missing from the climate conversation. A deeper understanding of how the carbon cycle works and how that informs climate smart soil management practices may very well be the most realistically hopeful solution in solving our most intractable problem.”

Carbon Farming: Building Soil to Radically Mitigate Climate Disruption
By Arty Mangan

 
Podcasts
 
Calla Rose Ostrander and John Wick of the Marin Carbon Project are taking carbon out of the atmosphere and putting it back where it belongs: in the soil. In so doing, they’re also revitalizing the soil, conserving water, and building agricultural resilience.

Vice To Virtue: From Carbon Crisis to Carbon Farming

 
Will Allen, an organic farming leader for over 40 years, is now at the forefront of the regenerative agricultural movement using his farm in Vermont as a carbon farming model, as well as influencing agricultural policy at the state level. In this podcast, Will talks about the powerful potential of regenerative agriculture.

Regenerative Agriculture Can Help Solve Climate Chaos with Organic Farmer Will Allen

 
Ariel Greenwood, Rebecca Burgess, and Guido Frosini explain how drawing carbon from the atmosphere and capturing it in the soil can reverse climate change.“Our soils have a carbon debt. Our atmosphere is gushing with carbon. The carbon over our heads is literally in the wrong place.”

Carbon, Climate, Food and Fiber with Rebecca Burgess, Guido Frosini, and Ariel Greenwood

Related Materials
 
This report is intended for policy makers, farmers & ranchers and anyone else who is interested in what San Diego is doing to to make San Diego more climate-friendly. It introduces the benefits and opportunities of carbon farming, and highlights the important role that San Diego County can play.

Building a Climate Friendly San Diego

 
Arty Mangan reports on his time at the Taste of Place workshop, part of the Regenerative Agricultural Field Day at Paicines Ranch produced by Eco Farm.

Soil Tasting: The Pleasures and Benefits of Healthy Soil, by Arty Mangan

 
What role do our food choices play in mitigating climate change? Arty Mangan looks at climate models created by Ben Houlton of U.C. Davis, who studies the greenhouse gas emissions of food production. Turns out what’s good for the planet is also good for the body.

Climate Cuisine: Food Choices Impact Climate Change, by Arty Mangan

 
Paul Hawken is Executive Director of Project Drawdown, a nonprofit dedicated to researching when and how global warming can be reversed. This is an excerpt from “Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming”, edited by Paul Hawken, published by Penguin Books, 2017. (reprinted with permission)

Eating Plant-based Diets Can Play a Huge Role in Limiting the Effects of Climate Change, by Paul Hawken

 
Knowledge-intensive farmers Adam Cline and Paul Muller are keenly observing the dynamics of their land, experimenting and learning how to manage soil biology and carbon not just for the benefit of their production, but also for the health of the ecosystem and ultimately the planet.

California is a Leader in Climate Smart Agriculture, By Arty Mangan

 
Ariel Greenwood is a “feral agrarian” and grazer who manages a herd of cattle while restoring ecosystems. “What I like to tell people is the scale at which you’re participating in your food system really matters, and you can’t make intelligent decisions . . . unless you understand the bioregion that you are living in.”

Producing Food and Capturing Carbon: An Interview with Ariel Greenwood

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