by: Jordan Osterman
There exists a legitimate opportunity for the United States to reduce our carbon footprint while simultaneously improving water quality, biodiversity, and overall human health. Agricultural carbon sequestration is essentially the employment of sustainable agricultural practices on agricultural land. Practices such as conservation tillage or riparian buffers increase the amount of organic matter in the soil, which in turn, sequesters carbon out of the atmosphere and places it into long-term storage in the soil. The large quantity of agricultural land in the United States amounts to massive potential for use as a carbon sink. Additionally, the ease of conversion to sustainable agriculture practices combined with the immediate sequestration ability of crops makes for a valuable tool for battling climate change on a short-term basis.
Currently there exists little legislation that encourages conversion from traditional agriculture to sustainable agriculture, but under the guise of carbon sequestration policy makers have a large incentive to promote its use. Currently, the Senate is debating the Kerry-Boxer Bill, which, amongst other things, includes legislation that will initiate a Cap and Trade market for trading carbon credits. Included in the bill is language that promotes the use of carbon sequestration for offsetting carbon emissions. The ease of agricultural carbon sequestration along with the co-benefits often associated with the practice should make it one the clear choices for use in the Cap and Trade in market. I sincerely hope that the senate specifically identifies agricultural carbon sequestration as an effective tool in our effort towards curtailing America’s carbon emissions. To learn more about agricultural carbon sequestration go to http://www.epa.gov/sequestration/index.html.
25 comments:
This sounds like a great plan. I do like the idea but i would also like to know some data on how much Carbon the plants would uptake. Im sure eventually this will pass because its a very easy way to deal with the Cap and Trade carbon credits.
I also think that this will pass and sounds like a solid start to begin decreasing our carbon foot print.
ROBERT SEADER
This is very interesting. Have there been many long term studies done regarding using the soil as a carbon sink? Are there any long term negative effects to this type of agriculture? The cap and trade would be a good opportunity for the government to intervene on the actions of a private entity causing public harm, and if this "agricultural carbon sequestration" is everything that it appears to be from this small blog, I would like if it was seriously considered by Congress as well...
It is time to start really talking about different agricultural practices in regards to water conservation and carbon sequestration. It is good to hear some focus is being put into that sector. With so much reliance on our agricultural system, why not make it as sustainable as possible?
It seems like this plan would require that the plants not be harvested, otherwise wouldn't it negate the carbon they are turning into biomass?
This sounds like a decent idea, I am a little skeptical though at how much Cap and Trade could harm our economy.
Another thing, why is our farming not more efficient. I remember hearing about multi-floored buildings for growing food using hydroponics.
I dont know, it just seems inefficient to me, considering hydro can increase your crop yield.
Using agriculture to reduce our carbon footprint sounds like an amazing idea to me! Not only would this method be extremely effective, but it would also be practically free to do. With the huge ratio of benefits to costs I can't imagine why some sort of policy wouldn't be put into effect to make this practice mandatory for all farmers. Reducing our carbon footprint for such a small cost is an amazing discovery and we should not let this opportunity pass us by.
This is awesome! Not only will we be able to store some carbon in the short term, we will also be able to go toward a greener nation, by helping farmers tranisition to a more sustainable agriculture practice. But what happens when the soil starts to reverse itself (as the current studies believe) and all the carbon that we were storing releases back to the atmosphere?
I think this is a great idea. It bascially turns out to be a win-win. It will greatly help farmers and also provide a solution to our societal environmental problems.
What a neat idea! I have a feeling this might really take off, since it doesn't require major carbon emission reductions like other climate change policies that the government fears so much. The only problems that jump out at me are the fact that it's only a short-term solution, and I don't know the relative costs. This will not prevent climate change anymore than a fat man can deplete a restaurant's food supply. And is it possible that major polluters would now have less incentive to not pollute now that their emissions have a place to go, besides our lungs? What about the other greenhouse gases, such as sulfur dioxide? This theory has a lot of potential, but it is definitely not going to solve climate change. Though the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step...
I don't really understand whats going on here but from what I gather we take the carbon that would be released into the air and instead put it in our soil? As nice as it sounds i feel like there must be something else here. Remember, people initially thought the smokestack would be the fix for diminished air quality. Someone please tell me I'm being stupid I would like to be convinced.
This seems like such a great idea and makes me wonder why slightly more emphasis has been placed on practices such as this. Not only is this good for the environment but is a sustainable practice that moves human kind in the right direction.
The concept of water quality improvement, and toxcity reduction are most interesting to me. The utilization of basicly free systems to sequester toxins, which can then be harvested in a timely fashion and disposed of properly is something i think will be critical to our agricultural future. This will play a major role in the future of our water systems to as demand increases.
I think the cap and trade system would work the best for a situation like this because we get reduced carbon emissions at the least cost. I think the legislation needs to be careful in how it describes "sustainable agriculture," because if the term is used as loosely as "organic" then there will be great abuse of the amount a farm actually needs to do to be considered sustainable. If the legislation gives good enough incentive and sets the standards right then i think there is great potential to improve our soil and air quality.
I think that farmer will definitely react to some kind of benefit for them to switch over. It would be interesting to know how much farmers would get and would it take care of the coast of switching?
andrew sieving
This is a great example of government coercion that leads to a positive outcome. We often think of government coercion as a bad thing but in this example they are encouraging positive outcome.
Another thing to think about is how much carbon could be captured by switching to biofuels either from food sources like corn/soybeans or from algae/cyanobacteria. The carbon cycle for biodiesel is pretty much at 0. Just as much CO2 that is emitted from burning it is soaked up by the plants that are grown to make it. For fuels like gasoline, new research in cyanobacteria and their ability to produce gasoline-like fuels such as isobutanol is proving to be successful while having a similar neutral carbon foot print. People argue against using food based biofuels (mainly biodiesel, ethanol is retarded) because they compete with food security. Well the truth is that the way we are currently running our farms in this country is not sustainable and in the case of fighting hunger most know that it is not an issue of not having enough food, rather that it is not fairly distributed (food as a commodity, not a right).
This plan sounds pretty efficient in that it promotes sustainable practices and environmental improvement/preservation. I am curious as to whether this increased amount of carbon will have an effect on the different types of foods produced sharing the same soil. And, if these foods could eventually contribute to adverse human health risks among consumption.
I have heard about carbon sequestration in other classes. There has been talk of using it in conservation strategies for saving forests because of the amount of carbon they store. The company that is considering this is called REDD. Although this is a good idea, it fails to consider other ecosystems to conserve, as well as the amount of biodiversity it the forest being protected. It is good to know that people are considering agricultural carbon sequestration, but other places need to be considered too.
I know this sounds like the stereotypical Boulder comment, but Hemp is an excellent candidate for this type of agriculture. It is a hardy plant that requires little, if no, herbicides and pesticides. It is also used in several other "green" industries
Soils, sediments, rocks, and forests could prove to be very important carbon sinks for anthropogenic emissions. More research should be dedicated to finding ways for sequester our carbon outputs.
I know that native grass also stores carbon underground and acts as a carbon sink. There has been some talk about the possibility of producing biofuels from grass, but the land needed to for this would be huge. Do you know on average how big of an impact these types of agricultural carbon sequestration could have on reduction of atmospheric CO2 concentrations?
Wow, this is a pretty cool idea that I had never heard of before. By riparian buffers do you mean forests being placed around the agricultural land so that they collect the carbon emissions?
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