Newly published research from MSU demonstrates how to evaluate soil carbon stock changes more accurately. This calculation has significant implications on measuring the actual environmental benefits of regenerative agriculture practices and economic consequences through emerging carbon markets.
The findings were published in Scientific Reports, a Nature Portfolio journal.
The project was led by Bruno Basso, a John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor in the departments of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences, as well as the W.K. Kellogg Biological Station.
His team included two members of his laboratory: Ames Fowler, a crop modeling research associate, and Neville Millar, a postdoctoral fellow. Will Brinton, the founder and chief science officer for Woods End Laboratories in Maine, also contributed.
The importance of agriculture is impossible to overstate, providing the food, fiber and fuel that supports a growing world population. But challenges abound, with climate change proving to be one of the most difficult to tackle. Farmers, scientists and corporations are investigating ways to make this indispensable industry more sustainable.
According to a 2022 summary for policymakers from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, agriculture is responsible for 23% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Given the advances in regenerative agriculture such as cover crops and no-till systems, however, Basso said this presents opportunities to employ meaningful modifications.
“Agriculture is the main sector affecting soil and landscape management, so improving agricultural management and policy that supports it is essential to reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” he said. “This includes sequestering carbon in the soil, which several private industry and nonprofit organizations have begun valuing.”
Soils are able to hold vast quantities of carbon — greater than the atmosphere and vegetation combined — which helps the environment and, more recently, farmers’ bottom lines. Soil carbon incentives and markets have led private companies and nonprofits to pay farmers for sequestering carbon in soil. But many farmers remain skeptical.
The cost of soil sampling, remote sensing image analysis, modeling and other carbon stock assessment methods currently renders the economic benefit tenuous. Basso said farmers are looking for certainty in identifying changes in soil carbon stocks.
In addition, many countries around the world use soil carbon stock changes as a way to determine the success of agricultural policy shifts, but similar problems with cost and unreliable information persist.
One of the principal challenges, Basso said, has been the adoption of a unified way of measuring soil carbon changes accurately.
“Science offers an important perspective in the business of carbon markets and agricultural policy,” Basso said. “If we aren’t capturing carbon stock changes appropriately and precisely, then we never develop a true understanding of the effectiveness of our sustainability efforts.”