The
'greening
of a brown land'
would increase soil carbon sequestration, increase soil moisture
retention, reduce heat radiation and reduce the concentration of both
CO2 and water vapour in the atmosphere. These factors would reverse the
'Global Warming Effect'. As a bonus, the adoption of Yearlong Green
Farming techniques would markedly improve the productivity of
agricultural
land.
Dr Christine Jones
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Ohio State University Extension
Fact Sheet
Soil Carbon Sequestration—Fundamentals
Alan Sundermeier,
Randall Reeder, and Rattan Lal.
Adding
organic matter to farmland is good for soil quality and crop yields,
both short-term and long-term. Continuous no-till is an efficient way
of doing this. Cover crops and manure also help raise carbon levels. If
you want to sequester carbon to reduce global warming (and possibly
receive a small annual payment) think of it as a bonus for being a good
farmer. Soil carbon sequestration is a natural, cost-effective, and
environmentally-friendly process. Once sequestered, carbon remains in
the soil as long as restorative land use, continuous no-till, and other
Best Management Practices are followed. It is a win-win option. While
mitigating climate change by off-setting fossil fuel emissions, it also
improves quality of soil and water resources, enhances agronomic
productivity, and buys us time to identify and implement viable
alternatives to fossil fuel.
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Increased Photosynthetic Capacity
Reverses
Global Warming
"Decreased
soil carbon levels have been recorded worldwide under most current
broadacre cropping and grazing regimes. This soil carbon has been
emitted to the atmosphere.
It
is sobering to compare the CO2 emissions from soil with those from the
burning of fossil fuels. Dr Rattan Lal, Professor of Soil Science at
Ohio State University and Director, Carbon Management and Sequestration
Center, USA, has calculated that 476 Gt
of carbon has been emitted from farmland soils due to inappropriate
farming and grazing practices, compared with 270
Gt
emitted from over 150 years of burning of fossil fuels.
These
trends can be reversed by increasing the photosynthetic capacity of the
landscape through the adoption of Yearlong Green Farming (YGF)
techniques."
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| "The nation that
destroys its soil destroys itself" (Roosevelt 1937)
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