How can farmers store more carbon in their soil?

The first way farming can fight climate change is when you turn dead plant material and other compostable items into compost and use it to help the crops grow. A second way farming can help is with the use of cover crops; they can grow with the crops you harvest but at the end of the harvesting season, you can turn the soil, putting the plants back into the soil.  - Ryan

When farmers uses practices that grow food without tilling the soil, this does not release as much carbon in the atmosphere. When farmers replace chemical fertilizers with organic fertilizers high in carbon content, like cover crops and manure, this adds carbon back into the soil. - Leo

1.Compost, mulch, and cover crops provide key nutrients to the soil and provide a layer of protection from the sun. With a small amount of work, a big amount of carbon comes back to the soil.
2.Permaculture (Permanent Agriculture) uses natural ecosystems as a model for farming; simulates plant growth in the wild; and utilizes natural systems to be more productive. “Care for the land, and the land will care for you.” For example, nature doesn’t have monoculture (single crop) so in permaculture you would plant trees, shrubs, ground cover, different plants, animals and insects along with the single crop to simulate nature.

3.With mob grazing animals provide carbon to the soil through manure, animals keep the plant short but move on before they overgraze, so the plant has time to recover before being grazed again. - Aidan

 Here are three ways farmers can store more carbon in their soil:
First, mob grazing is a great pro for farming and climate change. Basically there is a cycle that happens with cattle or any farm animals that graze, and they have the group of animals graze in an area this time of the year then they move. You will end up moving the group of animals around your grazing/farm area and it will become a cycle. The animals eat and step on the grass, which covers the soil to keep it moist and allow more nutrients in it. When the animals poop it also gives the soil nutrients. Then, after you move the animals, you are restoring the soil that they were just grazing on by letting the grass grow back.
Second, hand picking and delivering food and other products. You can sell to a local vender or at a farmers market, etc. This will help cut back on transport emissions being released.

Third, one of the best things farmers can do is put compost in their soil. This allows it to store carbon while the old food decomposes, keeping the other plants happy and healthy. - Piper

There are three great ways that farming can help the environment: mob grazing, planting more than one type of plant, and no-till farming. Mob grazing is what ancient animals used to do, they would eat and trample everything in a small area and then poop everywhere, burying the plants and then go to the next patch. Planting more than one type of plant is very important because it creates a system of resilience and diversity between the plants, making them stronger so they grow bigger and add more carbon to the soil. Tilling destroys the land by removing the topsoil, so that plants cannot grow and carbon is added to the atmosphere. No-till farming makes the fertile ground go lower and adds carbon to the ground, benefiting both farmers and the entire earth. - Josh

Plants absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and create it into oxygen and then transfer the carbon into the soil. Animals can help fertilize soil naturally and grow plants that absorb carbon from the atmosphere. Restoring the soil in farms every year helps store more carbon in the soil and eventually can balance out the amount of carbon in the air and soil. - CJ

 Farmers can make the soil a carbon sink by planting and cutting down cover crops, using mob-grazing, and adding compost to their soil to make it richer and more nutritious.- Alan 

 The organic matter that is added to the soil in organic farming is great for the plants and air quality. Those places also tend to have more carbon storage.
  Secondly, the better crop management is a great way to store the carbon. Taking care of the plants is one of the best ways to store more carbon. When there are bigger and healthier plants, when the plants die, they can be added to the soil, increasing the carbon content for happy and healthy soil. 
  Lastly, we can distribute more organic matter by hand and feed our soil with nutrients. We can do this by not using big machines, which burn fossil fuels. Farming buy hand tends to not constantly feed the atmosphere with carbon and methane. It saves the carbon in the soil and treats it’s plants with water storage and healthy soil. This helps keep the carbon where it belongs. - Emily

 Farming can also help stop climate change. One way they do so is by NOT using synthetic chemicals
in order to keep methane in the ground. Another way to help slow climate change through agriculture is by becoming an organic farm. Organic farms essentially mimic nature and can produce minimal net carbon in the atmosphere. And lastly, to add organic matter to the soil in turn adds carbon to the soil. In conclusion, if we all become organic farmers and follow the practices that make soil a carbon sink, than that will have a massive effect in our battle against climate change. - Owen

 If farmers plant cover crops and don’t till they’ll be helping to increase the amount of carbon and water the soil absorbs. And if you were to stop tilling you would cut back on the total carbon in the atmosphere. - Hudson

 These are positive climate impacts of farming: 1. Carbon is sequestered in soils. Organic agriculture and farming can extract from the air and sequester 7,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air. 2. Agriculture as carbon cap and storage. Scaling up from soil to the entire industry, the agricultural section could possibly be broadly carbon neutral by 2030. This would nullify the agriculture industry’s large carbon footprint. - Henry
http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/6-ways-agriculture-impacts-global-warming.html







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