Farmers.

Recharging Soils With Carbon Could Make Farms More Productive

Agriculture has historically been a circular industry where crops use nutrients in the soil to grow which are then replaced through compost or manure. But globalisation and industrialisation of the food supply chain has disrupted this cycle, driving farming practices that have helped degrade a third of the planet’s land.

September 24, 2018 | Source: Horizon | by Steve Gillman

Turning crop waste and discarded paper into a material called biochar could help to capture carbon from the atmosphere and store it in the soil while also helping to enrich farmland.

Agriculture has historically been a circular industry where crops use nutrients in the soil to grow which are then replaced through compost or manure. But globalisation and industrialisation of the food supply chain has disrupted this cycle, driving farming practices that have helped degrade a third of the planet’s land.

Scientists are now looking at ways of tackling this problem with an approach that will not only restore nutrients to the soil but also help to offset the greenhouse gas emissions produced by agriculture.

‘Farm land could work as carbon sinks,’ said Dr Jan Mumme, an agricultural engineer at the University of Edinburgh in the UK. ‘This probably wouldn’t work with intensive livestock farming, but sustainable crop production and integrated farm systems (a balance between crops and livestock) could do it – and biochar is one way to help.’