Carbon farming technique: What can we learn?

1. INTRODUCTION

The risk posed by global warming due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
will be a major challenge for human beings in the coming decades (IPCC, 2007; World Bank,
2010). The agricultural sector is one of the largest producers of nitrous oxide (N2O) and
methane (CH4), which are two GHGs with significant global warming potentials (GWP). The
GWP of N2O and CH4 are 310 and 21, respectively – which means that they will trap 310 and
20 times more heat than CO2 over a 100-year time horizon (Povellato et al., 2007; Jackson et
al., 2009). Agriculture produces about 6.1 giga tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) per
year, accounting for 10 to 12 percent of global GHG emissions (Bonesmo et al., 2012). It
represents the dominant form of land use globally covering 38% of the world's land surface
(Dale and Polasky, 2007). A rapidly growing world population and land scarcity is, however,
forcing tradeoffs between the provision of food, conservation of natural habitats, and
mitigating climate change (Phalan et al., 2011). There is increasing evidence that agriculture
can play an important role in removing GHG from the atmosphere. For example, agricultural
soils offer the potential to absorb CO2. Lal (2004) suggested that, globally, agricultural soils
can offset about 15 percent of global GHG emissions.
For example, In Australia, agriculture accounts for over 50% of land use (ABS, 2013), and
for approximately 15% of total greenhouse gas emissions (Department of Environment,
2015). Nevertheless, there are opportunities for agriculture to mitigate these emissions and
contribute to greenhouse gas (GHG) abatement. Some agricultural practices are estimated to
have a significant GHG reduction potential, for example reduced tillage intensity, residue
management, replanting native grasses and trees, improved fallow, or improved manure
management (Smith et al., 2014).
In recent years, policies aimed at encouraging GHG mitigation activities have been
adopted in different parts of the world. These include the European Union Emissions Trading
Scheme, Japan's Voluntary Emission Trading Scheme, New Zealand's Emissions Trading
Scheme, and the Emission Reduction Fund in Australia. Such policies can provide incentives
to encourage the adoption of carbon farming practices by landholders. Carbon farming
practices refer to those agricultural activities that can sequester carbon and/or reduce GHG
emissions. Carbon farming programs aim to combat climate change by encouraging land
managers to adopt ‘carbon farming practices’. These practices may involve either

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sequestering carbon in soils/vegetation, or reducing emissions. To sequester carbon in
vegetation, land managers can plant trees, protect remnant vegetation, restore native
vegetation or reforest degraded lands. Sequestration in soil can involve adopting minimum or
no-till cropping, retaining crop residues, or increasing the amount of land under pasture
relative to crop (e.g., Grace et al., 2010; Kragt et al., 2012; Sanderman et al., 2010). To
achieve emissions reductions, farmers may change fertilizer management, implement
savannah/crop residue burning regimes, and manure management; or reduce methane
emissions from livestock and rice production. Carbon farming encompasses land-based
management practices that either avoid or reduce the release of greenhouse gas emissions
(e.g., through avoided deforestation), or promote active sequestration of carbon in vegetation
and soils. Approved sequestration practices include the reintroduction of woody vegetation
into landscapes, protecting native forests, new farm forestry plantations, or increasing soil
carbon by reducing soil disturbance (e.g., through no till farming or increased stubble
retention). Farmers can also choose to avoid emissions through early savanna burning, or
through changing livestock feed (Department of Environment, 2014). Some of these practices
present an opportunity to deliver environmental benefits other than climate change
mitigation. For example, increasing soil organic matter improves soil quality for cropping.
From an economic perspective, one expects farmers to only adopt a carbon farming
practice if the change in practices is profitable. There have been also several studies
evaluating the economics of agricultural GHG mitigation. These studies address, for example,
the costs and profits of carbon farming for landowners, the efficiencies of various mitigation
strategies, and the effectiveness of different policy incentives (e.g., Antle et al., 2001; De
Cara et al., 2005; Kragt et al., 2012).
This review report attempts to discuss about the carbon farming technique by conducting a
comprehensive review of the literature and to identify key lessons. The rest of the paper is
structured as follows. In the next section I will describe the methodology used to review. The
discussion is given in Section 3. Section 4 provides a conclusion.

2. METHOD

I reviewed some analyses of carbon farming published in peer-reviewed journals between

2001 and 2019. I also took some from the class teaching material. A search for relevant
publications was conducted in Google Scholar, SpringerLink, and Science Direct. I used the
following search terms: carbon farming, carbon farming technique, greenhouse gas, climate

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change, soil carbon, farmland GHG emission, cropland GHG emission, and agroforestry. The
returned literature included many studies that focused on the carbon farming technique.

3. DISCUSSION

Carbon farming was initially established in Australia as a voluntary baseline-and-credit

offset scheme, which was designed to work in conjunction with a legislated carbon price of
AUD23/tCO2e (increasing by 5% per annum) from July 2012. The Carbon Farming Initiative
(CFI) was considered to be the world’s first national scheme to regulate the generation and
trade of carbon credits from farming and forestry. Through the CFI, landholders could
generate Australian carbon credit units (ACCU) using an approved methodology
determination (‘method’) and then trade these credits on domestic or international voluntary
markets. All carbon sequestration projects were required to be maintained for 100 years to
meet permanence requirements, and a 5% risk of reversal buffer is applied to account for the
risk of carbon release due to fire or other cata- strophic risks.

Carbon farming ideas have been proposed from 1950. The first in 2011, Australia started
a carbon trading program called Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) that was
focused on carbon reductions mainly through biological means and replenishment of soil
carbon. In 2015 the agency that administers California's carbon-credit exchange began
granting credits to farmers who compost grazing lands and by 2016, more than 25 countries
pledged to adopt carbon farming in the Paris agreement. In 2017 multiple US states passed
legislation in support of carbon farming and soil health and have farmers who are working on
carbon-farming.

In a nutshell, a carbon farm plan takes a look at farm from a carbon cycling perspective.
The management practices that take place on the landscape influence the ins and outs of
carbon moving through the system. Land management can push the meter towards increasing
carbon into the system or releasing it out of the system. Developing a carbon farm plan
creates a blueprint of management practices that lead to a net gain of carbon into the land
system. This figure below shows the example of a carbon farm plan.

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 There are a number of methods which can be deployed in order to increase the soil carbon
pool. These include restoration of the soil, regeneration of woodlands, no-till farming, crops
which provide cover for the soil, management of soil nutrients, and the application of
manures and sludges to ground. All of these approaches aim to conserve the quantity of
carbon locked up in the pedosphere. There are a number of specific approaches to carbon
farming, which have received significant attention:

• No-till farming

In traditional farming methods, the soil is tilled between crops. This is to say that the soil
is mechanically agitated – either by humans, draft animal power, or mechanical means. Soil
microbial activity increases rapidly as a result of the exposure to air, and the inversion of
different soil layers. This microbial activity leads to the decomposition of organic matter and
the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It has been estimated that 78 billion metric
tons of carbon emissions has resulted from the practice of tillage. Those industrial
agricultural practices have depleted the uppermost layers of cropland soils presents an
opportunity – as the depleted nature of these soils makes them receptive to use as a carbon
sink. In addition to preventing emissions of carbon, no-till farming also reduces emissions of
nitrogen oxide, another greenhouse gas. In place of the mechanical agitation of soil, no-till
farming uses organic residues that result from previous crop cycles left on the surface of the
soil, and methods of sowing and fertilization that can be carried out without disturbance to
the soil. This biomass becomes incorporated with the soil, improving its carbon content.
There are other corollary benefits to no-till farming. It helps to combat soil erosion and also
ensures that water and nutrients are retained in the soil.

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• Biochar

Biochar refers to the use of charcoal as an agent for soil improvement. The charcoal is
produced from the pyrolysis of biomass, which has been grown specifically for the purpose.
Burying this charcoal in the soil helps to sequester carbon emissions, with the objective that
the process has a negative carbon balance. There are corollary agricultural benefits to this
approach – the improved soil has the potential to be more fertile, productive, and resistant to
disease. Early European settlers to the Amazon basin noted the incorporation of charcoal into
the soils that they found and called this soil terra preta de Indio. This soil had charcoal, bone,
and manure added to improve its fertility. Fragments of pottery and other human artifacts
have led archaeologists to the conclusion that this soil was the result of human activity. It is
unproven whether terra preta was deliberately created; however, it has been found to be more
fertile than unimproved soil.

• Desert-based carbon farming

In order to address the concerns of those who feel that carbon farming methods could
compete with or potentially compromise agricultural activities for food production, there is a
significant body of knowledge to suggest that carbon farming efforts should be directed to
land which cannot be used for other agricultural purposes. It is estimated that a hectare of the
plant Jatropha could capture 25 tons of carbon dioxide per annum when grown in desert or
marginal conditions. There would also be other derivative benefits to growing Jatropha in the
desert. Potentially, desert areas could become more habitable. Furthermore, the plants seeds
can be harvested for biofuel production. However, one of the barriers to this plan is the
availability of desalination plants. Water, additionally, is a precious commodity, and
production of clean water from sea water is an energy intensive activity in itself. Some have
advocated an industrial ecology approach to this problem – using biomass grown as a result
of desert afforestation projects, to provide the power for desalination in a self-sustaining
circular process.

• Reforestation/afforestation

Reforestation is the process of restoring forests that have been destroyed, while
afforestation is the process of establishing a new forest in a place where there has not been

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one before. As the trees grow, they absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. However,
this is a reversible process, as if they are later burnt, that carbon is released again.

• Manure management

Animal wastes result in the emissions of greenhouse gases. They also result in nuisance
odors. Both of these problems can be brought under control by better management of animal
wastes. Anaerobic digesters can be used to capture the gases produced by manure as it is
digested. This gas, rather than entering the atmosphere, can be used to generate energy, which
can be fed into the grid. The carbon dioxide that results from burning the gas has a
diminished global warming potential compared to the methane and nitrous oxide captured
from the digestate.

Carbon farming is believed to lead to a number of potential co-benefits. These additional

co-benefits include water quality improvement, soil health improvements, and biodiversity
protection, but also social benefits such as poverty relief, food security, public health benefit,
infrastructure improvement, and indigenous community development (Department of the
Environment, 2014b). Studies have shown that the co-benefits of carbon farming are an
important motivator for farmers to undertake carbon management. For example, Miller et al.
(2012, 2014) found that private forestland owners in the Lake States region of the US may be
more interested in the co-benefits of afforestation than the income from selling carbon credits
per se. The combination of GHG emission mitigation and its associated co-benefits will have
an impact on the results of bio-economic analyses of carbon farming, and sometimes these
impacts may be considerable. This figure below shows the potential environmental and socio-
economic co-benefits of carbon farming in addition to climate regulation.

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 Despite many advantages can be gained from the carbon farming techniques, carbon
farming also has many disadvantages, such as risk of a carbon depletion event due to fire,
locusts or severe drought, requires proper landscape planning and heavy labor if not
consequences will be drastic, potential of increased operational management costs as day-to-
day activities may become more difficult due to increased vegetation cover, foreign species
of plants and animals may be introduced and they become pests, and proper seasons should
be followed.

There are a number of initiatives globally that seek to promote the practice of carbon
farming. One of the most notable carbon farming initiatives is the CFI, a scheme which
allows for Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) to be earned from agricultural and
forestry carbon farming projects. This scheme is administered in Australia by the “Clean
Energy Regulator.” It provides for farming businesses to earn ACCUs through both schemes
to reduce carbon emissions through sequestering carbon in soil – but equally, through
avoidance of other greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide. The scheme allows
farmers to earn carbon credits if they follow a series of “approved methodologies.” These
methodologies are in place to provide a robust assurance that the stated carbon aims will be
achieved through the agricultural practice. There is an additional guarantee that these
methodologies are robust, as a result of external scrutiny from another department, the DOIC
– the Domestic Offsets Integrity Committee.

4. CONCLUSION

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 With the latest climate science emerging from the IPCC’s Fifth Report, the anthropogenic
origins of climate change are undisputed. The measures required to reduce carbon emissions
worldwide in an equitable manner are tough. Carbon-reduction measures of the magnitude
required will require substantial changes in lifestyles, the way we configure our societies, and
the technologies we use to deliver the goods and services that we use. It is for this reason that
measures such as carbon farming, which can help mitigate against carbon emissions but have
relatively small impact on many people everyday lives, are seen as seductive in their
simplicity. Undeniably, the twin pressures of resource scarcity and climate change will shape
agricultural processes and practices in the years to come. Carbon farming potentially has
consequential benefits when integrated with other agricultural practices – not only for the
atmosphere but also for soil quality and the biosphere. That said, there are also substantial
risks involved. Providing subsidy and incentive mechanisms for carbon farming, without
appropriate consideration of regulation, has the potential to lead to unforeseen impacts. We
can see many parallels in the biofuels debate, where misguided subsidies have caused
multifarious environmental and social problems. Incentives based on targets, without
effective oversight, have the potential to lead to environmental destruction. Furthermore,
there are also risks with the loss of productive agricultural land which could otherwise be
used for food production. Carbon farming has the potential to encounter the same problems
that biofuels have created in reference to food versus fuel. That said, as the consensus
regarding climate change becomes increasingly solid and immutable, the need for practical
solutions will become increasingly urgent. Carbon farming has a role to play in carbon
reduction if well implemented.

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