Why Carbon Farming?
image by Seth Cottle
This is a post to explain a bit more about my reasons for getting into carbon farming and to share some articles on the subject if you’re interested to learn in depth what Carbon Farming is and how its helping us fight climate change.
I’ve been involved in the effort to stop climate change for over a decade now. I started out just after finishing university by joining a group in my home town back in the UK called Kidlington Vs Climate Change. In Oxfordshire it’s what we called a Community Action Group and its purpose was to promote community engagement on the issue and encourage residents of the area to take small personal actions to reduce their carbon footprint.
As part of this group I learned about the impact of various activities on the climate. Most of them I was already aware of, such as driving, flying, clearing forests and generally using energy in our homes. However, one that caught me by surprise was the massive impact of agriculture, which at the time was calculated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to be responsible for at least 25% of all greenhouse gas emissions. This was something I’d never even considered before and it started me on a journey, through permaculture design, community gardens, and farming internships to where I am now: a farmer in the movement for regenerative agriculture.
The following are a few links and excerpts from various articles where you can find out more:
1 How Carbon Farming Can Help Stop Climate Change in Its Tracks
“Even if we stopped burning fossil fuels tonight,” Masters says, “we’d wake up tomorrow and still have 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.”
…to stop runaway global warming, tame the fierce extremes of weather we are now experiencing, slow down and eventually reverse the melting of icecaps and glaciers, rescue drowning islands, and revive dying coral reefs, we must also find a way to remove excess carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it in the soil.
“Everything that grows here starts with sugar. Soil microbes eat sugar.” And feeding these soil microbes builds soil and sequesters atmospheric carbon in the ground “at a rate previously thought impossible.”
2 It's a groundswell': the farmers fighting to save the Earth's soil
The UN has warned that soils around the world are heading for exhaustion and depletion, with an estimated 60 harvests left before they are too barren to feed the planet
The apocalyptic nature of the threat was underlined last month by a report that revealed that excessive use of pesticides had depleted the Earth’s soil and contributed to a drastic decline in insect numbers that threatened a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”.
But on his 800-hectare (2,000-acre) farm outside Stevenage, Hertfordshire, Cherry says that he and farmers like him around the world are fighting back.
The conservation agriculture movement he advocates means no ploughing or turning the soil, instead keeping the ground covered with crops all year round and growing a wide variety of plants.
“Through conservation agriculture, farmers can reduce costs, use fewer chemicals and rebuild biological life in the soil, making it healthier, more resilient to extreme weather and able to support more wildlife. It’s win-win for farmers, the people they feed and the environment.”
3 Plummeting insect numbers 'threaten collapse of nature’
The world’s insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”, according to the first global scientific review.
More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century.
…insects are by far the most varied and abundant animals, outweighing humanity by 17 times. They are “essential” for the proper functioning of all ecosystems, the researchers say, as food for other creatures, pollinators and recyclers of nutrients.
If you find any of that a bit scary, just remember that as a part of the Grow Eco community you are an active contributor to a major part of the solution to these issues. My farm is here to empower you to take positive action and you can do even more by sharing this message with your friends and family.
Thanks for reading and bye for now
Farmer Andy