California Considers ‘Carbon Farming’ as a Potential Climate Solution. Ardent Proponents, and Skeptics, Abound

by Emma Foehringer Merchant (Inside Climate News) Supporters of pending legislation see it as an important step toward meeting the state’s climate goals while using its ample farmland. But critics say natural carbon sequestration is hard to measure and verify. -- ... Today, Solidarity Farms, which sits on a plot of land leased from the Pauma Band of Luiseño Indians, farms not only fruit and vegetables, but also carbon. Starting with funds received from the state of California in 2017, Solidarity Farms began incorporating practices that improve soil and help suck carbon out of the atmosphere, like spreading compost and reducing tilling on fields, rather than applying fertilizer or plowing. The farm applied for the money after the devastating heat. It was a shot, they hoped, at making the farm more resilient to the changing environment. Any potential carbon sequestration would be an added benefit.

Now, California legislators are considering promoting those same types of practices on more farms, by establishing an overall greenhouse gas reduction target for the state’s “natural, working, and urban lands.” A bill under consideration would create new natural carbon sequestration programs and boost greening the state’s cities and suburbs. Supporters of the legislation see the goal as an important step toward California meeting its climate targets while using its ample farmland.

If passed, the bill would appear to be the first setting such a state target by law, said Torri Estrada, executive director at the Carbon Cycle Institute, an organization that advocates for nature-based carbon removal that co-sponsored the bill.

Experts at the World Resources Institute and scientists at universities like Purdue and Colorado State have raised concerns about how accurately that carbon can be measured and monitored over time and across varying geographies at scale. In 2021, environmental groups like Food & Water Watch and Friends of the Earth sent a letter to federal lawmakers asking them to vote against a climate bill creating a voluntary carbon market that would include farmers, instead urging them to support policies that build local food economies and make farming more sustainable.

Still, other university scientists argued in a 2020 paper that “the science is clear” that regenerative agriculture can contribute to fighting climate change, and that all solutions must be used in confronting the challenge.

Carbon Cycle provides technical assistance to farmers across the state on how to incorporate longstanding practices like no-till agriculture and planting vegetation called cover crops, which can reduce erosion and add nutrients back to the soil, that now fall under the umbrella of carbon farming. Tillage, or plowing, land removes carbon from the soil and releases it into the air as carbon dioxide.

Solidarity Farms worked with the organization while it was implementing some of those techniques. Encouraging carbon sequestration on agricultural lands in California, which cover about 43 percent of the state, is a given, according to Estrada, because carbon sequestration is inherent to how plants grow.

“Carbon sequestration is not just a technique; it’s part of photosynthesis,” Estrada said. “It’s what farming is.”

A Nature Conservancy report from the same year found that the state could sequester about 514 million metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2050, which equates to an average of roughly 20 million tons per year. READ MORE

Excerpt from U.S. Biochar Initiative: In this 48-minute film from NHK World Japan, learn how carbon farmers Gabe Brown in the US, Toshimichi Yoshida in Japan, and others are taking action against the climate crisis by employing regenerative agriculture or carbon farming. READ MORE