“The land can be… an opportunity to solve most of the ongoing global crises,” Luc Gnacadja, Executive Secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), told a news conference in New York.

“If we want to tackle climate change challenges, we must look to the untapped potential of the soil to sequester carbon,” said Mr. Gnacadja, calling it a “win-win” situation. “By doing that, we are improving biodiversity of the soil ecosystem and improving the productivity of the soil, therefore impacting the livelihoods of affected populations.”

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=28756&Cr=desertification&Cr1

At the recent Slow Food conference in Turin, Italy, Vandana Shiva spoke about the need for carbon farming. Noted commentator Tom Philpott on Grist:

Where Gore dreams of a "low-carbon" or even "carbon-free" world, Shiva pines for a "carbon-rich" future -- one in which agriculture systematically builds organic matter into the soil, capturing it from the atmosphere.

http://gristmill.grist.org/print/2008/10/25/904/94558?show_comments=no

Last year Steve Rayner and Gwyn Prins wrote a fine paper on climate change policy. Though the authors do not show awareness of the soil carbon opportunity, or of biological factors in the carbon cycle in general, the 41-page paper is a splendid takedown of the top-down carbon market approaches exemplified by the Kyoto protocol, and projects a framework into which the soil carbon opportunity fits nicely.

They point out that the recent debate over climate change (not over yet) is about values, not about science. They point out that good markets have costs and benefits in proximity to each other. They are persuasive on what is wrong with Kyoto, and describe some characteristics of good solutions to climate security.

"What makes a problem 'wicked' is the impossibility of giving it a definitive formulation: the information needed to understand the problem is dependent upon one's idea for solving it. . . ."

"We have been arguing that we have made the wrong cognitive choices in our attempts to define the problem of climate change. Although it may comprise some straightforward, tame problems of applied science and diplomacy, it is essentially a wicked problem. Strategic judgment in such circumstances places a premium upon understanding what we don't know."

Right click and Save Link (Target) As to download.

Dr Christine Jones keynote presentation at the 2008 Queensland Landcare Conference, "Sustainability by Design", September 22, 2008, at Monto, Queensland, Australia. For more video visit www.qldlandcareconference.com. Camera by Beryl and Cec Bleys, Monto History Centre. Video and Web Production by eco2oh and THINKeEXTENSION.

Christine Jones has spent 20 years working on the soil carbon opportunity. She is the founder of ASCAS, the Australian Soil Carbon Accreditation Scheme.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

The Rodale Institute has recently come out with a policy document titled "Regenerative Organic Farming: A Solution to Global Warming."

"Successful implementation of regenerative organic farming practices on a national basis will depend on two factors: a strong bottom-up demand for change, and a top-down shift in state and national policy to support farmers in this transition."

Download the report from http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/20080425/gw6

Methane is an important greenhouse gas that contributes to global heating. But methane emissions from ruminant digestion play a minor part in atmospheric methane levels, according to a recent article published on the website of the International Atomic Energy Agency's Animal Production and Health branch.

Atmospheric methane has stabilized at 1999 levels, though livestock numbers have been increasing by an average of about 17 million per year, according to UN FAO data. "At this time there is no relationship between increasing ruminant numbers and changes in atmospheric methane concentrations, a break from previously assumed role of ruminants in greenhouse gases."

http://www-naweb.iaea.org/nafa/aph/stories/2008-atmospheric-methane.html

Methane is an important subcycle of the carbon cycle. Methane (CH₄), like carbon dioxide (CO₂), is a transparent, odorless gas. Per gram, methane has about 21 times the greenhouse potential of carbon dioxide, but unlike carbon dioxide it breaks down fairly quickly in the atmosphere.

Methane is produced during anaerobic fermentation of plant material. In the carbon cycle, lignin and cellulose are typically broken down by methanogenic bacteria, such as are present in the digestive systems of ruminant herbivores and termites, and which cannot survive in the presence of oxygen.

A recent PowerPoint presentation by Abe Collins, attached below this article, outlines the soil carbon opportunity, the role of carbon farming, and policy directions to realize the opportunity. Right click and choose "Save link (or target) as" to download it.

Lecture to the Royal Society in October 2007 by James Lovelock. "Climate change on a living earth," 65 minutes. Lovelock eloquently depicts the fragmentation of scientific understanding, which makes us unable to grasp global heating or to counter it. "In our hubris, we believe that we can be stewards of the earth long before we understand it."

"Perhaps the saddest thing is that if we fail, Gaia will lose as much or more than we do. Not only will wildlife and whole ecosystems go extinct, but in human civilization the planet has a precious resource. We are not merely a disease; we are through our intelligence and communication the planetary equivalent of a nervous system. We should be the heart and mind of the Earth, not its malady. Perhaps the greatest value of the Gaia concept lies in its metaphor of a living Earth, which reminds us that we are part of it and that our contract with Gaia is not about human rights alone, but includes human obligations."

Draft of lecture here.

Says Prof. Ross Garnaut in Australia, who heads an independent commission on climate change commissioned by Australia's Commonwealth, State and Territory Governments:

"I don't think it's impossible to measure either the carbon in soils - the increase in carbon - or the vegetation on properties. It is going to be much easier if groups of farmers within a region band together so that you reduce overall costs in that way. But in the end we're going to need to develop satellite imaging, remote sensing and other new tech ways of measuring these things so we can get the costs down." He says scientific work on measurement 'should be given very high priority'. "The opportunity in the Australian countryside is very large."

http://carboncoalitionoz.blogspot.com/2008/09/soil-carbon-credits-as-soo...

By Martha Holdridge, West Wind Farm

Editor's note: This article is reproduced with permission from the Summer 2008 Grassfed Gazette, published by the American Grassfed Association.

American Grassfed Association member Martha Holdridge, owner of West Wind Farm, used soil samples to determine that her West Virginia farm sequestered 15 tons of CO2 per acre over the past four years (photo by Kenny Kemp, Charleston WV Gazette).

From 1987 to 2007, at West Wind Farm, we regularly sent soil samples from our pastures to the West Virginia University (WVU) testing lab--in some years requesting organic matter tests. In those same years, there has been increasing public alarm about greenhouse gasses and global warming. In the fall of 2007, Dr. Ed Rayburn, extension forage agronomist at WVU, reminded me that an increase of organic matter in the soil means that carbon dioxide (CO2) is being drawn from the air into the soil. He kindly agreed to calculate the rate of carbon sequestration in the pastures of West Wind Farm.

Our average organic matter in 2002 was 4.1 percent, in 2004 it was 7.0 percent, and in 2007 it was 8.3 percent. According to Rayburn’s calculations based on a 2-inch deep sample, over five years (2002-2007) we had sequestered 15 tons of CO2 per acre or four tons of carbon per acre.

How do you measure or estimate soil carbon?

Here are some handbooks

1. Peter Donovan. Measuring soil carbon change: a flexible, practical, local method. 2010. A basic guide for do-it-yourselfers and the method for the Soil Carbon Challenge. Includes planning worksheet and plot data sheets.

2. Pearson, Timothy, Sarah Walker, and Sandra Brown. 2006. Sourcebook for Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry Projects. Winrock International.
http://www.winrock.org/ecosystems/files/Winrock-BioCarbon_Fund_Sourceboo... (661 K pdf file; right click and "save link as" to download)

Winrock also has a sampling cost calculator available from
http://www.winrock.org/ecosystems/tools.asp

3. Stolbovoy, V., Montanarella, L., Filippi, N., Jones, A., Gallego, J., and Grassi, G. 2007. Soil sampling protocol to certify the changes of organic carbon stock in mineral soil of the European Union. Version 2. European Commission, Joint Research Centre. ISBN 978-92-79-05379-5
http://eusoils.jrc.ec.europa.eu/esdb_archive/eusoils_docs/other/EUR21576...

summary poster:
http://eusoils.jrc.it/ESDB_Archive/eusoils_docs/Poster/Soil_Sampling.pdf

4. McKenzie, N., Ryan, P., Fogarty, P., and Wood, J. 2000. Sampling, measurement, and analytical protocols for carbon estimation in soil, litter, and coarse woody debris. Australian Greenhouse Office, Technical Report 14.
http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/ncas/reports/tr14final.html

5. Harnessing Farms and Forests in the Low Carbon Economy: How to create, measure, and verify greenhouse gas offsets edited by Zach Willey and Bill Chameides, Duke University Press, 2007.