How Farms can Draw Down Carbon

September 19, 2022

Posted by greenman3610
Filed in Crock of the Week

3 Comments »

3 Responses to “How Farms can Draw Down Carbon”

William Haaf Says:

September 19, 2022 at 10:56 am
Call me skeptical. there are lots of variables. Show me the data and studies on various soil types; areas of country. if they till any Carbon will be sent back to atms. as soil heats up microbes eat more- release more Co2. cover crops are good for erosion not storing carbon. very misleading. cite sci references . not just listen to happy talk being paid by govt to farmers.

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- Jon in Austin Says:
  
  September 19, 2022 at 11:17 am
  My governmental agency is wrestling with these same questions. We have a large tract of grazing land which our current land manager is proposing to manage for soil carbon sequestration and carbon credits. I agree that this is theoretically and technically feasible, but there are so many variables that may limit the success of the project. The carbon credit promoters make projections that are highly speculative at best and terribly short on real data. I get really queezy when I think about the carbon credits and their markets. We will be cautious.
  
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- rhymeswithgoalie Says:
  
  September 21, 2022 at 3:24 am
  The blurb at the end mentioned a mere $31 million being spent by the DoE on multiple pilot projects that presumably have actually sampling and analysis of the soils. I think the point is to try a bunch of things and find out what truly works, and what’s cost-effective.
  
  It’s always good to be skeptical of money-based claims as to how much emissions are reduced. It’s too easy to over estimate the benefits and just not look into the costs (or other unwanted side-effects). We’ve already seen the problems with using tree-planting as a means to count carbon credits when the trees have a good chance of burning down in a decade or so.
  
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