Carbon farming: What is it, and how can it help the climate?

For produce farms, carbon farming generally means growing fruits, vegetables, and legumes with minimal disturbance to the soil. One important approach is no-till farming, which implicitly means less disturbance. As much as five times more carbon can stick around in the soil under no-till than with conventional tillage, according to Bernacchi’s study of corn and soybean fields in Illinois. His calculations suggest that if all farms in the U.S. stopped tilling, they’d cut national carbon emissions by 1-2 percent.  Carbon farming may be a buzzword, but the practices themselves are not new – they were simply left by the wayside during the rise of modern industrial farming in the latter part of the 20th century. Today, they’re being rediscovered by some for their climate-friendly ways, but for most, simply because they’re practical once they are up and running. “None of the core carbon-farming techniques we have were developed for sequestering carbon,” Toensmeier says. “They were developed because they’re good for the farm.”  Improving soil also boosts its water-holding capacity – which will become increasingly vital as drought and severe storms continue to increase. It can also potentially mean better yields.  Still, it’s risky for farmers to adopt techniques that may be new to them. For example, moving to no-till can be challenging for organic farmers who rely on tilling to kill weeds, and also for cover-crop operations that use tilling to work the plant residue back into the ground.