California Pays Farmers to Nurture Plants, Soil as ‘Carbon-Sucking Machines’

Using revenue from its carbon cap-and-trade program, California has launched a healthy soils initiative that will pay farmers to crank up the natural ability of their crops—and especially the soil in which they grow—to sequester carbon.

As “carbon-sucking machines,” Grist reports, plants are natural scrubbers of atmospheric carbon dioxide: after taking it in from the air around them, “they break open the tough CO2 molecule and use the carbon to build their leaves and roots. In the process, they deposit carbon into the ground.”

To ramp this natural process up, California has given almond farmer Doug Lo US$50,000 to help him enrich the soil in his orchards sufficiently to have his trees “pull 1,088 tons of carbon out of the atmosphere every year,” Grist notes.

“We’re trying to sequester some carbon,” Lo said. “It should also help with the water-holding capacity of the soil, and the flowers in the cover crop should feed bees after the almond bloom is over.”

While there has been increasing talk about soil sequestration, Grist notes, there hasn’t been much action—likely because there hasn’t been much talk of funding. Which is what may make the California Healthy Soils Initiative a game-changer.

Or it may not. “A lot is riding on this,” notes Grist, “but it’s not a foregone conclusion that it will work.”

“In theory, compost and cover crops should get carbon out of the sky and into the ground. But will it work in practice on Lo’s farm?” asks senior writer Nathanael Johnson. “With the farm’s particular soil structure, irrigation pattern, as well as the dirt’s microbiome? We don’t know how fast carbon will accumulate in his soil, or how long it will stay there.”

But Lo isn’t alone in what Johnson calls California’s “grand experiment”: 49 other farmers, with other soils, microbiomes, and irrigation patterns, are also participating in California’s scheme to replenish its soils.