Carbon Emissions: The Misunderstood Villain in Climate Change
What if the answer to our biggest crisis was hiding right under our feet? The narrative of climate change is often told through the lens of carbon emissions. We read articles vilifying carbon dioxide produced by large oil companies and see the headline pictures with chimneys belching out clouds of smoke. But carbon is not the bad guy in this story. If anything, carbon is the backbone of our very existence, and the problem lies not as much in carbon’s production as in its storage.
As of today, the majority of carbon escapes into the atmosphere, where it absorbs heat and contributes to global warming. But there were times when carbon’s traveling cycle was kept in check by nature’s divine pattern in which soil acted as a carbon sink, soaking in CO2 and storing it safely underground. The soil is still doing its job but after the mass land conversion and the unbalanced agricultural practices—monoculture, heavy tilling, chemical use—the soil is not retaining carbon as well as it once had.
Regenerative Farming Benefits Soil
This is why regenerative farming, a method that restores ecosystems and sequesters carbon, is the key to building soil health and as such, mitigating climate change. Capay Organic, our second-generation family farm use crop rotation and cover crop to help rebuild organic matter in the soil, creating a thriving environment for microorganisms, fungi, and worms who make the soil more fertile. Instead of monoculture, that is, growing a single crop year after year, regenerative farmers promote polyculture and crop rotation, which initiates a crop system that is more resilient to extreme weather events.
The science, too, has backed the practices of regenerative agriculture. The new research led by the former chief scientist at the UN environment program, Jacqueline McGlade, shows that even the small improvement to agricultural soil around the world could increase carbon storage just enough to keep the world within 1.5C of global heating. Regenerative agriculture, in other words, is what can keep us from ecological self-destruction.
Beyond Climate: Other Benefits of Regenerative Farming
But regenerative farming isn’t just about carbon—it’s about the bigger picture. While the immediate benefit is its ability to address climate change, regenerative farming also offers a host of other environmental and social benefits like breathing life into rural economies. By moving away from industrial monocultures and adopting diverse, sustainable farming practices, farmers are able to produce higher-quality, more nutrient-dense food that serves local communities and contributes to the growing demand for ethically-produced crop in the marketplace.
“Whether regenerative farming will make a dent in global warming depends in part on how every single person eats, drinks and shops,” writes Michaela Haas for Solidarity Farm. For regenerative farming to become the norm, it requires support from all of us—not just farmers, but policymakers, businesses, and especially consumers. We can shift the conversation around climate change from one of despair to one of hope. By embracing solutions like regenerative farming, we can build a future where agriculture is not the cause of environmental destruction but the key to its reversal.
