Author says “carbon farming” can feed people while cooling the planetFarming methods like agroforestry exhibit the highest levels of biodiversity of any anthropogenic ecosystemEven industrial crops like oil palm and rubber can be grown in ways that have multiple positive benefits
Conversations that involve lowering the amount of carbon in the atmosphere by agricultural means rarely include the sort of techniques championed by award-winning author, Yale University lecturer, and Project Drawdown senior fellow Eric Toensmeier, but his new book, The Carbon Farming Solution, suggests that their popularity could be on the rise. By one estimate, a billion farmers worldwide are already practicing agroforestry, one method of “carbon farming.” Beside carbon sequestration, such techniques can also boost food production, biodiversity, water quality, and more. Toensmeier recently answered Mongabay’s questions about it during a wide-ranging conversation.
AN INTERVIEW WITH ERIC TOENSMEIER
Mongabay.com: As a climate solution, what does “carbon farming” offer?
Toensmeier: In order to avoid catastrophic climate change we need to return to 350 ppm of atmospheric carbon dioxide or below. Even if we stopped all emissions today, that would leave us stranded at over 400 ppm, well beyond the tipping point and on our way to a point of no return. So we need to remove the excess carbon dioxide in our atmosphere and store or “sequester” it somewhere safe. Reforestation is one great way to do that, but the need for farmland to feed humanity means that we can’t reforest enough to do the job. In fact, the total amount of storage capacity available in soil and biomass is much less than the amount of fossil fuel remaining underground. So only with an aggressive plan to reduce emissions and aggressive implementation of reforestation and carbon farming can we mitigate climate change to a safe level.
None of the carbon farming practices profiled in the book were developed for the purpose of climate mitigation. Their sequestration benefits are only gradually becoming understood. Instead they were created to provide productivity benefits on the farm and/or ecosystem services. Investing in carbon farming for climate mitigation brings co-benefits like biodiversity, reduced erosion, improved