Planting Trees and Managing Soils to Sequester Carbon

(Page 3 of 3)

January 2009
By Lester Brown, Earth Policy Institute 
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A number of agricultural practices can also increase the carbon stored as organic matter in soils. Farming practices that reduce soil erosion and raise cropland productivity usually also lead to higher carbon content in the soil. Among these are shifting from conventional tillage to minimum-till and no-till, the more extensive use of cover crops, the return of all livestock and poultry manure to the land, expansion of irrigated area, a return to more mixed crop-livestock farming, and the forestation of marginal farmlands.

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Rattan Lal, a Senior Agronomist with the Carbon Management and Sequestration Center at Ohio State University, has calculated the range of potential carbon sequestration for each of many practices, such as those just cited. For example, expanding the use of cover crops to protect soil during the off-season can store from 68 million to 338 million tons of carbon worldwide each year. Calculating the total carbon sequestration for the practices he cites shows a potential for sequestering 400 million tons of carbon each year at the low end, and 1.2 billion tons of carbon per year at the more optimistic high end. For our carbon budget we are assuming, perhaps conservatively, that 600 million tons of carbon can be sequestered as a result of adopting these carbon-sensitive farming and land management practices.

Ending net deforestation and sequestering carbon as described above will put us on the path to the Plan B climate stabilization goal of cutting net carbon emissions 80 percent by 2020.

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  • Darrell 1/15/2009 11:58:33 AM

    Replanting hardwood forests is not only good for the planet it can be profitable as well. The increasing price for tropical hardwood lumber reflects the growing demand and the shrinking supply. In Hawaii, people are starting to replant native species and high demand species of tropical hardwoods for small and large investors. The wood produced by these trees will help take some of the demand off native forests and will tie up carbon for generations in the form of fine furniture, flooring and other high end uses. The very process of turning degraded sugar cane land into forested land will increase organic matter in the soil and improve water retention. Projects like this now make economic sense. Hopefully this trend will be repeated throughout the world.

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