Posted on Sep 19, 2023
How ‘carbon farming’ could help Oregon reach its climate goals
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Rancher Jeanne Carver threw her leg over a fence lining her property in Central Oregon.
“Let me go first,” she said. “It’s snake season.”
Watching for rattlesnakes, she led the way into a field her family converted back into grassland after a century of crop production.
Homesteaders cleared the rocks and plowed this field to plant grain and hay on what is now the Imperial Stock Ranch, which grazes sheep and cattle and grows wheat and hay in Maupin.
“This was tough country to farm,” Carver said. “They had to pick areas where they had more soil than rocks.”
Traditional dry land farming practices eroded and degraded the soil, she said, because every other year the ground would lie fallow and bare.
“So you left thousands of acres with no plants in it exposed to both wind and water erosion with runoff,” she said.
Carver and her family have spent decades reversing the damage, reseeding crop fields with permanent plants and changing their farming practices to avoid tilling up the soil.
“What we’ve done is return it to a more natural state,” she said, “to encourage the land to be healthier, richer.”
“Let me go first,” she said. “It’s snake season.”
Watching for rattlesnakes, she led the way into a field her family converted back into grassland after a century of crop production.
Homesteaders cleared the rocks and plowed this field to plant grain and hay on what is now the Imperial Stock Ranch, which grazes sheep and cattle and grows wheat and hay in Maupin.
“This was tough country to farm,” Carver said. “They had to pick areas where they had more soil than rocks.”
Traditional dry land farming practices eroded and degraded the soil, she said, because every other year the ground would lie fallow and bare.
“So you left thousands of acres with no plants in it exposed to both wind and water erosion with runoff,” she said.
Carver and her family have spent decades reversing the damage, reseeding crop fields with permanent plants and changing their farming practices to avoid tilling up the soil.
“What we’ve done is return it to a more natural state,” she said, “to encourage the land to be healthier, richer.”
How ‘carbon farming’ could help Oregon reach its climate goals
Posted from opb.org
Climate Change
Science
Posted 7 mo ago
Responses: 2
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PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."In 2020, Carver hired a team of scientists to study the results of all these changes. Several years of data show that the combination of restoring grasslands, changing grazing patterns and producing crops without tilling didn’t just improve the soil health on the ranch. It also pulled significantly more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and into the ground.
The data from 21 sampling sites on 32,000 acres of land show the Imperial Stock Ranch practices are adding 1.86 tons of carbon per acre to the soil every year, offsetting all of the greenhouse gas emissions from its own operations and banking an additional 60,000 tons of carbon in the soil.
That’s enough for Carver to make some extra money from a practice known as carbon farming. Last year, the ranch entered a 10-year contract to sell carbon credits through Agoro Carbon Alliance.
It’s an example of a promising strategy for reducing climate change in Oregon and beyond. Federal and state leaders are offering incentives for working farms and ranches to change their management practices in ways that sequester more carbon in the soil, and they’re looking at just how much storage potential might exist across millions of acres of land."...
..."In 2020, Carver hired a team of scientists to study the results of all these changes. Several years of data show that the combination of restoring grasslands, changing grazing patterns and producing crops without tilling didn’t just improve the soil health on the ranch. It also pulled significantly more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and into the ground.
The data from 21 sampling sites on 32,000 acres of land show the Imperial Stock Ranch practices are adding 1.86 tons of carbon per acre to the soil every year, offsetting all of the greenhouse gas emissions from its own operations and banking an additional 60,000 tons of carbon in the soil.
That’s enough for Carver to make some extra money from a practice known as carbon farming. Last year, the ranch entered a 10-year contract to sell carbon credits through Agoro Carbon Alliance.
It’s an example of a promising strategy for reducing climate change in Oregon and beyond. Federal and state leaders are offering incentives for working farms and ranches to change their management practices in ways that sequester more carbon in the soil, and they’re looking at just how much storage potential might exist across millions of acres of land."...
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A very interesting concept Chip. It is very much like wetland banking where when a developer doesn’t physically have the room and/or resources for required wetland mitigation on their project, they can purchase mitigation credits from created wetlands that are approved by the appropriate agencies. There is a lot that goes into it that I won’t take the time to explain now.
The concept of ‘carbon farming’ is very similar. It’s worthy to note all plants put carbon back into the soil. I am going to look into this a bit more to understand it because to me it seems it can very easily be abused if not strictly monitored. It can even do harm.
Thanks for a good article.
The concept of ‘carbon farming’ is very similar. It’s worthy to note all plants put carbon back into the soil. I am going to look into this a bit more to understand it because to me it seems it can very easily be abused if not strictly monitored. It can even do harm.
Thanks for a good article.
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