The UK Soil Association has a wide-ranging and thorough report on the potential of agriculture to increase soil carbon. Highly recommended as a broad overview of the soil carbon opportunity

http://www.soilassociation.org/Whyorganic/Climatefriendlyfoodandfarming/...

How To Take CO2 Out of the Sky, Timothy J LaSalle from CA Climate and Agriculture on Vimeo.

An excellent and trenchant summary of the principles underlying Masanobu Fukuoka's practice, which also describes biosphere process:

"Soil is created by living plants working with microorganisms, and by the plants' residues and the microorganisms' corpses after their death. Soil is drained of nutrients by cultivation, NOT by plants."

http://fukuokafarmingol.info/foverfound.html

Sir Albert Howard, in his An Agricultural Testament (1943), wrote of the Wheel of Life, the balance between growth and decay. The chapter "The Nature of Soil Fertility" is reproduced here:

http://www.journeytoforever.org/farm_library/howardAT/AT2.html

NOTE: In an elevator, at a conference on climate change. Each paragraph represents a different speaker.

Well folks, that movie made it clear. There is too much carbon in the atmosphere.

It's grim. But I'm not buying the emissions reduction solution, as obvious as it might seem. According to the IPCC, even with zero emissions (hah!), it will take way too long for atmospheric carbon dioxide to subside to safe levels, and we lose the cooling aerosol effects immediately. So we've got to take out the legacy load.

Isn't there a technology for capturing carbon out of the atmosphere?

Well, maybe. But it takes lots of energy and capital expenditure to collect and concentrate a trace gas into a huge, somewhat hazardous, disposal problem. Who is going to do this, or pay to have it done? "Not me, said the horse."

What about trees? Don't they capture carbon?

Some say the Amazon will burn. There is already too much human and climatic pressure on trees and forests for them to absorb and hold the excess.

What a huge, insoluble problem we've got! And look at the multiple styles of denial, hopelessness, survivalism, and insanity it is generating! (Not to mention the passenger miles to these conferences.) Anyway, here's my floor. G'bye.

Instead of trying to wipe out the problem, let's add to it: There is too much carbon in the atmosphere, and not enough in soils.

Great, now we have two problems instead of one! An excess, and a scarcity.

by Vandana Shiva

From the Chandigarh Tribune http://www.tribuneindia.com/2009/20090410/science.htm NOTE: This opinion piece does not necessarily represent the views of the Soil Carbon Coalition. It may be an example of how difficult it is to distinguish between ideas or management tools, and their implementation. It also typifies the reactive debate over solutions to climate change.

Burning trees and biomass has ironically emerged as a “solution” to climate change.

Following the false solution of industrial bio fuels we now have the waste left from production of bio fuels as the next magic bullet. The process used is pyrolysis – incineration that chemically decomposes organic materials by heat in the absence of oxygen. Through pyrolysis organic matter is transformed into gases and small quantities of liquid, used as bio fuels. The waste is a solid residue containing carbon and ash. This waste has now been given the elegant name “biochar”. It is being wrongly treated as the same as “Terra Preta de Indio” — the black soils created by the indigenous people of the Amazon by burying charcoal over hundreds of years. Charcoal in every soil and every ecosystem can prove to be an ecological disaster.

“Biochar” is basically the next new trick of global investors to make money on the global market of carbon trading. As the biochar website www.biochar.org clearly states “A prerequisite for the above mentioned management practices is access to the global carbon trade.” The global carbon market which has a potential to grow to $ 1 trillion by 2020, and this is what is driving “biochar” — not love for the soil, nor the wisdom of indigenous people.

The collapse of Wall Street in 2008 should be enough reason for governments and people to be cautious about the charcoal solution. We cannot afford to have an economics of greed and fraud drive false solutions to climate change.

Lee Pengilly in Canada has written a wonderful "cowboy" guide to greenhouse gas sinks and sources, published by the Canadian Cattleman's Association. Includes a simple monitoring guide for water cycling, nutrient cycling, energy flow, and succession.

Download below (right click, save as). Here is a sample from the "Kyoto Cowboy" poem that ends the document.

I’ve heard it said by some folk that of “climate change” they have some doubt.
“It won’t happen in my life-time, so there’s nothin’ to worry about.”
But after thinkin’ closely, of grandkids comin’ on someday,
I figure I’d rather be safe than sorry, I’ll make Kyoto pay.
I’ll be the Kyoto Cowboy, I hold Ranchin’ deep within my heart,
And about those greenhouse gases, I guess I can do my part.

My cows I’ll highly manage - through small fields they’ll daily graze.
With fresh, green grass a growin’ it’ll show that fencin’ pays!
There’s no manure build-up, dung beetles work to fertilize.
Manure disappears so quickly - it has no time to volatize.
The creek will be protected, with very limited access.
I’ll capture tons of carbon through photosynthesis.

On Feb 15 the Australian Landline program broadcast a documentary about Christine Jones and her efforts to promote awareness of the soil carbon opportunity.

Her message is simple: Rebuilding carbon-rich agricultural soils is the only real productive permanent solution to taking excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

"She's frustrated that scientists and politicians don't see the same opportunities she sees. This year Australia will emit just over 600 million tonnes of carbon. We can sequester 685 million tonnes of carbon by increasing soil carbon by half a per cent on only two per cent of the farms. If we increased it on all of the farms, we could sequester the whole world's emissions of carbon."

Transcript here:

http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2008/s2490568.htm

Ohio State University soil scientist Rattan Lal writes, "We are dealing with 10 global issues at the moment: food security, availability of water, climate change, energy demand, waste disposal, extinction of biodiversity, soil degradation and desertification, poverty, political and ethnic instability, and rapid population increase. The solution to all of these lies in soil management. It doesn't mean that agriculture is the only solution, but it plays a major role in addressing these issues."

For the rest, including 10 recommended steps to better soil management, see

http://www.agriculture.com/ag/story.jhtml?storyid=/templatedata/ag/story...

Help spread the word on the soil carbon opportunity! To the majority of people, even those very concerned about climate change, water shortages, human health, and biodiversity loss, the role of soil organic matter is unknown. The Flash widget below is an invitation to begin learning more.

You may copy the embedding code below and paste into a webpage to use this Flash widget in your website. (Facebook users: you must include an application such as My Stuff or My Embed Stuff in your account to post this code; you can search for it and add it.)

<embed src="http://soilcarboncoalition.org/swf/earthIQ.swf" quality="high" wmode="transparent" width="220" height="330" name="earthIQ" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" allowFullScreen="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" /></embed>