Carbon farming defintions

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Background
World attention is being directed at Green House Gas levels and their impact on Climate Change. Emissions Trading Schemes and carbon tax policies of various sorts are forcing both politicians and businesses around the world to look for ways of reducing their greenhouse gas emissions.

A basic understanding of the facts surrounding the impact on the levels of carbon in our soils, vegetation, atmosphere and people is of paramount significance to the world’s future.

All of the following definitions are applicable to pastoral farming systems.

Greenhouse Gases
Greenhouse gas emissions comprise a mixture of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone gases and water vapour. They cycle through the atmosphere, plants, soils, water, animals, and humans and are the basis of life.

Kyoto
The Kyoto Protocol is an agreement sponsored by the United Nations that ensures signatories take responsibility for all emissions over 1990 levels. The NZ government is therefore imposing the rules and tradeoffs it faces onto businesses and landowners.

Climate Change
Climate change is the result of atmospheric concentrations which are affected by emissions therefore the only way to avoid climate change is to reduce the concentrations by reducing emissions or sequestering.

Sequestering Carbon
The capacity for appropriately managed soils to sequester atmospheric carbon is enormous. The world’s soils hold around twice as much carbon as the atmosphere and almost three times as much carbon as the vegetation. Soil represents the largest carbon sink over which we have control. Improvements in soil carbon levels could be made in all rural areas, whereas the regions suited to carbon sequestration in plantation timber are limited. Therefore appropriately managed farmlands could effectively ‘mop up’ most of the excess carbon being emitted to the atmosphere, converting a potential hazard into an extremely productive opportunity.

Prof. Rattan Lal, Director of the Carbon Management and Sequestration Center at Ohio State University, is on record as saying “Scientists now believe that Carbon Farming can reduce CO2 in the atmosphere fast enough to avert the very worst consequences of Global Warming”.

Carbon
Carbon is the basic building block for all life on and in the earth. We cannot live without it. Neither can our soils. Carbon provides the structural basis for thousands of different compounds. It is so common, we take it for granted.

Organic carbon begins and ends its journey as a gas, carbon dioxide. Atmospheric carbon is an extremely valuable resource that when sequestered in topsoil as organic carbon, it brings with it a wealth of environmental, productivity and quality of life benefits. An understanding of the carbon cycle and the role of carbon in soils is essential to our understanding of life on earth.

Photosynthesis
Photosynthesis which takes place in green leaves, combines carbon dioxide from the air and water from the soil, to capture sunlight energy and store it in the form of a simple sugar – glucose. Through a myriad of chemical reactions, this glucose forms the basis of a great diversity of carbon compounds, including carbohydrates, proteins, organic acids, humic substances, waxes and oils – and our ‘fossil fuels’ coal, oil and gas.

The cheapest, most efficient and most beneficial form of organic carbon for soil life is exudation from the actively growing roots of plants in the Poaceae family, which includes most pasture grasses and cereals. The breakdown of their fibrous roots is also an important source of carbon in soils. Organic carbon additions are governed by the volume of plant roots per unit of soil and their rate of growth. Therefore the more active plant roots there are, the more carbon is added. It’s as simple as that.

Stable soil carbon
Organic carbon moves between various ‘pools’ in the soil, some of which are short lived while others may persist for thousands of years. Glomalin and humic substances are two of the relatively stable forms of soil carbon. Their creation and destruction are strongly influenced by land management.

Humic substances have significance above and beyond the relatively long-term sequestration of atmospheric carbon. They are extremely important in terms of pH buffering, inactivation of pesticides and other pollutants, improved plant nutrition and increased water-holding capacity of soil. Loss of humus therefore has a highly significant effect on the health and productivity of soil.

Carbon and nitrogen
Nitrogen moves between the atmosphere and the topsoil in similar ways to carbon. The main difference is that the ‘way in’ for atmospheric carbon is via green plants whereas the ‘way in’ for atmospheric nitrogen is soil microbes. Soils acting as net sinks for carbon are usually also acting as net sinks for nitrogen. The flip side is that soils losing carbon are usually losing nitrogen too. In poorly aerated soils, some of this loss is in the form of nitrous oxide (N2O), a greenhouse gas up to 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide, while other losses include easily leached nitrate (NO3-) which often takes calcium, magnesium and potassium with it, leaving the soil more acidic (lower pH).

Carbon Measures
It is widely recognised that the breakdown of fibrous roots from specific plants is an important source of carbon in soils.

And the levels of carbon sequested in our soils is governed by the volume of plant roots per unit of soil and their rate of growth. Therefore the more active plant roots there are, the more carbon is added. It’s as simple as that.

With the realisation that feed quality has a significant effect on the profit per Kg consumed for all livestock classes farmed the emphasis on measuring the quality of pastures and soils has been revisited in a huge way. Hence the introduction of Brix meters, visual assessment of both soils and pasture and measuring the carbon levels in soils.

As a bonus increased levels of carbon in soils result in the production of food much higher in vitamin and mineral content and lower in herbicide and pesticide residues than conventionally produced foods.

Therefore eCOGENT Farming Business Systems Ltd has resourced the world to identify a range of smart technology that enables a range of parameters to be measured and therefore managed. It has robust and reliable field measures and laboratory tests in place for its members to regularly measure the levels of carbon in the soil.

Carbon Credits
Rewarding landholders for farming in ways that build new topsoil and raise levels of soil carbon and nitrogen would have a significant impact on the vitality and productivity of New Zealand’s rural industries. It also reduces the incidence of dryland salinity and soil acidity and improves the water holding capacity as well as reduce the levels of greenhouse gases.

eCOGENT has therefore taken the iniative to establish a means for registering carbon credits for international trading purposes. It considers that sufficient precedence has been established in other countries to commence to take up this opportunity to increase the profitability from pastoral livestock farming.

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0800 433 276(07) 981 5030 (Tel)(07) 823 7428 (Fax)

0800 433 276

(07) 981 5030 (Tel)
(07) 823 7428 (Fax)