The introduction of carbon credits for sequestering carbon into the soils is now on the political agenda. This may well herald a golden era for agriculture. Scientists and politicians are slowly realising that there is simply no alternative but to reward and motivate farmers
The introduction of carbon credits for sequestering carbon into the soils is now on the political agenda. This may well herald a golden era for agriculture. Scientists and politicians are slowly realising that there is simply no alternative but to reward and motivate farmers to undertake this urgent task. If the entire world were to immediately reduce carbon emissions by 100%, then in 200 years time we would have reduced atmospheric CO2 to the levels found in our atmosphere in 1975, which is still too high! We are, in effect, locked into self-destruct mode but there is an escape.
The saviour is humus. Carbon credits are already available for tree planting but in actual fact the soil offers a better investment. Carbon remains in biomass for an average of 10 years but it can be stored in the soil for 35 years. The Americans raise the hackles of the developing world with their greenhouse vandalism. 300 million people (just 5% of the planet’s population) generate 8 billion of the 30 billion tonnes of CO2 we spew into the atmosphere each year (over 25%) and this is obviously unfair. However, if we were to build organic matter by just 1% in US agricultural soils we would remove 4.5 billion tonnes of the offending gas from the atmosphere, representing a 50% offset of their emissions.
The Ultimate Win/Win
Humus is the single most important determinant of success in high production agriculture. It seems a remarkable stroke of luck that we are destined to be paid to increase our profitability via payment for sequestration of soil carbon.
Several years back the National Bank researched the reason for so many failed loans in the rural sector. In a study involving several hundred properties in the Hillston region of NSW, they were seeking to determine the key criteria for financial success when embarking on a new venture. Researchers found that soil carbon was the key to business success and they went as far as to link levels of organic matter to farm value. If one property featured soils with 1.4% organic matter and another had soils averaging 1.6%, then that extra 0.2% increased land value accordingly and it was suggested that future loans should be evaluated on the basis of carbon based productive potential.
The benefits of organic matter are manyfold. Water is an increasingly scarce resource and it is so much more effective to store water in humus (which holds its own weight in moisture) than in dams where evaporation is massive and there is a significant carbon footprint in delivering the