Negotiators at the COP21 Summit are working toward a global agreement to fight climate change levels. With it, an agenda known as carbon farming is one of the many solutions attached to a treaty known as the Lima-Paris Action.
Protecting the forest from fires is an old-fashioned way to save carbon deposits, which has earned a lot of consideration in an effort to fight climate change. Another less-discussed method of restoring carbon deposits on soils is beginning to catch policy makers' attention, which is known as carbon farming.
As the Paris Climate Change Summit continues, politicians and negotiators alike have been in discussion with regard to international treaties to combat catastrophic levels of global warming. In addition, side events and settlements are also being devised like renewable energy sources, electric cars and so on.
One of the agreements being discussed in COP21 is the Lima-Paris Action Agenda. The agenda was already signed by a number of countries, private companies and non-government organizations. The Lima-Paris Action aims to provide practical guidelines for global warming.
The initiative touches a number of sectors, including forests, buildings and financing. Also, one of the solutions the initiative is pushing forward is a type of agriculture that increases soil carbon deposits. Factions of organic agriculture call this as no-till farming, which they have called for long. This is the first time that soil carbon has been included formally in a global plan to fight global warming.
Modern orthodox farming uses digging to overpower weeds and make it easier to plant crops, although tilling processes release carbon deposits stored in the soil to the air. The benefits of carbon farming or no-till farming include a reversal process. Instead of releasing carbon to the air, it pulls it deep down to the soil. Also, the method helps improve soil fertility without using synthetic fertilizers that leads to better production of crops.
According to Ohio State University's Carbon Management and Sequestration Center founder Rattan Lal, carbon is the key to a soil's nutrient storage and biodiversity. Also, a soil with a lot of carbon deposits is good at retaining hydrogen contents. While soil carbon looks like a pretty good idea, it is also something that even gardeners at home can help produce.
