On a recent morning in the Santa Ynez Valley, a crowd of people gathered at the Ted Chamberlin Ranch to discuss soil health and so-called carbon farming.
The event –– hosted by the Community Environmental Council, the Cachuma Resource Conservation District, and the Santa Barbara Agricultural Commissioner’s Office –– showcased successful carbon farming trials recently conducted on the ranch, and was attended by local landowners, environmental activists, scientists and county officials.
Matthew Shapero, Livestock and Range Advisor for the UC Cooperative Extension, explained that the grasses surrounding the site had sprouted green last spring and have since died in the heat of summer, becoming what he calls “residual dry matter.” Now the brittle, golden shoots have become a sparse cover for hard-packed soil that’s cracked and dry.
These dry fields pose a fire risk, and even when rain falls on them, much of it evaporates rather than soaking into the soil. But if the contingent of activists and researchers led by the Community Environmental Council and Cachuma Resource Conservation District can get carbon farming to take hold in Santa Barbara County, the hillsides could soon become much greener.
Allegra Roth, Food and Climate Program Associate of the CEC, explained that carbon farming refers to agricultural practices that capture atmospheric carbon and transfer it to the soil. All photosynthesizing plants sequester carbon, so the basic idea behind carbon farming is that the more plant matter being grown on a given plot of land, the more carbon that land harvests from the atmosphere.
As an added benefit, the plants and grasses that naturally die each season become part of a nutrient-rich topsoil that locks in moisture and makes the land more fertile, accelerating future growth, according to the CEC.
There are many techniques for carbon farming, but the one being discussed at the Ted Chamberlin Ranch event was the simple strategy of applying a thin layer of compost to the land. Doing so increases the land’s capacity to hold water, makes pastures more abundant for grazing cattle, and can help mitigate the severity of climate change — all while offering ranchers and farmers economic incentives to