“We’ve not yet begun to sequester,” is the rallying cry for a new group of agriculturists, people who are exploring the addition of soil carbon as a primary goal rather than just an interesting bonus of improving yields and biological health. They are looking at innovative ways to achieve significant net carbon gains by adding a pasture-livestock “crop” to extended rotations, mixing trees with various crops or grazing, and remediating badly deteriorated soils.

Improved farming techniques can fight climate change in many ways. Most have secondary benefits, making farming practices one of the key strategies for enabling our food production to be more biologically efficient, less fossil-fuel dependent, and better suited to consumer demand for health, safety and sustainability.

Climate-friendly practices, in general, work in two basic ways that impact everyone. They can:
• Mitigate damage by cutting emissions of greenhouse gases that seem to increase risk of climate instability
• Biologically sequester carbon and reduce excess loading of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by intentionally supporting the natural process of photosynthesis.

Within agriculture, a third route outlines ways to maintain productivity in the face of current climate and weather pattern changes, lumped under the heading of “adaptation.” This includes actions such as:

–Tweaking crop selections to cultivars and varieties that grow better under drier or hotter conditions
–Fighting off new diseases and pests introduced with changed growing conditions
–Increasing soil organic matter to retain soil moisture in dry times
–Increasing crop diversity to improve odds crops will succeed with encountered weather extremes
–Re-integrating livestock on crop farms to increase economic value of forage crops that add organic matter during their phases of rotation.