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But exposing soil lets carbon compounds oxidize into the
atmosphere, where they can no longer do what they’re meant
to: feed plants. The plow cuts like a double-edged sword—
increasing yields but cementing reliance on fertilizer.
Thanks to these methods, we’ve released up to 600 giga-
tons of carbon—about 30 percent of what humanity’s flung
into the atmosphere—since we began farming. Soil scientist
Lal estimates that it’s possible to recapture 4 to 5 gigatons
per year through better land management.
Today, ditching tillage seems unfathomable, but
ecosystems have long managed to produce robust growth
without it. In his 1943 book, Plowman’s Folly, American
agronomist Edward Faulkner posited that we’d be better off
working the land in a way that mimics nature.
Faulkner’s wisdom languished in obscurity for decades,
but soil depletion has slowly forced cultivators to embrace
the idea. “No-till” tractor attachments emerged in the 1980s
and ’90s. These cut a slit through crop residue without dis-
turbing the soil, leaving a carbon-rich mulch atop fertile dirt.
Parking the plow isn’t a blanket solution, though.
Small-seeded vegetables like lettuce struggle to take root,
while large- seeded commodities like corn and soy (the two
most planted crops in the US) readily adapt. A farm’s yields
might dip in the first few years after tilling stops, but adopt-
ers who master the art find they produce just as much—with
significant savings on labor and fuel. Devotees tout the re-
turn of carbon to the ground as a panacea: Healthier soil
begets healthier crops that require less fertilizer.
Cover crops further bolster the carbon- farming lifestyle.
Sown to enrich the soil rather than for harvest, plants like
clovers, vetch, and various inedible radishes and ryegrasses
are among the most common. Started after harvest in fall,
before planting in spring, or as groundcover during the main
growing season, they pull in carbon and add nutrients to the
earth after they die. The cost adds overhead to a stead’s del-
icate fiscal existence, but according to a USDA survey of
farmers, improved yields and reduced fertilizer spending
help the practice pay for itself in an average of three years.
Those who combine no-till and cover crops capture
about a half-ton of carbon per acre annually, according
to analysis from Project Drawdown, an international col-
laboration of academics and advocates that assesses the
potential impact of mitigation strategies.
Hardcore carbon farmers reach even further into the
past and integrate trees—like Lanier and his silvopasture.
The approach sponges up nearly 2 tons of atmospheric CO 2
per acre per year. Other forms of mixing crops with woods
(termed “agro forestry”) grab even more, making it the most
potentially impactful shift, according to Drawdown’s data.
The method can also be lucrative. Shade-grown chocolate
fetches a premium for Brazilian farmers, and the hogs that
become Spain’s famed jamón Ibérico fatten on oak-dropped
acorns. Yet adoption faces a huge hurdle: It can take decades
to recoup the cost of planting and nurturing a canopy.
At Cherry Farm, lead USDA researcher Alan
Franz luebbers has begun to chew on the early data from his
team’s gas sampling. As expected, the systems with the least
soil disturbance and the most plant life hold more carbon.
But smaller insights could lead to new tweaks. For instance,
pine and walnut trees are better sinks than cypress and ash
(good news for Lanier). Ultimately, Franz luebbers will con-
vert those findings into climate- conscious recommendations
for the sandy plains of eastern North Carolina; similar ex-
periments are running parallel in other regions. “We have to
return carbon to the soil,” he says. “We need to move much
quicker than we are.” Intrepid farmers aren’t waiting around.×ON A CLEAR, COLD DAY IN EARLY MARCH 2019,
Justin Jordan, a fifth-generation grower in Lacona, Iowa,
pores over old maps spread across his dining-room table. One
creased, yellowing chart shows a soil-conservation plan his
grandfather created with the USDA in the 1950s, including
terraces for controlling erosion and areas designated for tree
planting. The agency was working to reverse critical topsoil
loss from decades of mass-scale plowing.
His grandfather implemented portions of the scheme. But
new synthetic fertilizers, which could boost yields by 50 per-
cent, made the situation less dire, so he continued tilling their
corn and soybean fields each year. As did Jordan’s dad, and
most other farmers. Over the past 150 years, cultivation has
chewed up about half of Earth’s topsoil.
Jordan, an impeccably polite, soft- spoken man in his late
30s, stopped plowing and began planting cover crops when
he took over in the early 2000s. “I was eager to do things in
a different way,” he says. “It just seemed like every year the
topsoil was getting thinner.” Jordan tends 410 acres—larger
than most farms hawking vegetables at Saturday markets,
but tiny compared with 10,000-acre corporate operations.
Aerial photos show the contrast between his land and that
of other farmers, most of whom continue heavy tilling. His soil
is dark and rich, but from the air, his fields appear lighter, cov-
ered in accumulated mulch. Strips of perennial hay grass (for
his cattle) and native prairie species like milkweed meander
across the slopes— year-round flora that pump carbon into
the soil. Neighboring barren fields steadily release it.
Once Jordan brings in his corn in October, he sows a
cover of rye among the drying stalks that stays green
through the following spring, when he cuts it down and
seeds next year’s crop in the mulch. He sprinkles his soy-
bean fields before the September harvest with a cocktail of
rye, radishes, and oats, creating a mini forest beneath thePOPSCI.COM