Increasing yield of a crop on a given soil is also a kind of carbon sequestration, especially when you consider perennial crops.The NPP (Net primary productivity) is far more higher than many of the yropucal rain forests..And why should we should we minimise cabon footprint, it should be maximised.Dont you feel , higher cabon footprint is directly proportional to crop yield..??
Increasing yield of a crop on a given soil is also a kind of carbon sequestration, especially when you consider perennial crops.The NPP (Net primary productivity) is far more higher than many of the yropucal rain forests..And why should we should we minimise cabon footprint, it should be maximised.Dont you feel , higher cabon footprint is directly proportional to crop yield..??
Dear Drlatief Ahmad , interesting query. Please go through these valuable documents. Hope they will help you in answering your question and give you sufficient explanations.
https://www.climatecolab.org/contests/2015/climate-collaboration-in-boulder-co/c/proposal/1327517
Increase input use efficiency and go for mixed cropping with horticulture.
SOC can be increased by adopting recommended management practices according to site specific conditions: e.g. No till, integrated nutrient management, more organic inputs to soil, green manuring, adopting large scale operations, cover crops, etc...Enhancing SOC is directly proportional to good soil quality which promote nutrient and water use efficiency intended to reduce carbon foot prints.
If you talk about arable crops , they release more carbon than that of short term carbon fixing . Best strategy is agroforestry systems which are capable of sequestring high amount of csrbon in time and space . The fact is recognized by IPCC long back in year 2001 or 2002 .
Muhammad and J.C. Tewari made a few good points to better sequester carbon in agricultural system however, the big challenge should be shifting agriculture from a cultivation of annual plant species to perennials. Agroforestry can assist with this yet humanity depends very heavily on grains for nutrition. It is interesting the to have a look at the work of Wes Jackson at The Land Institute in Kansas, where their "Natural Farming Systems" model, that may lead one day to more perennial crop species, is done without any genetic manipulation, while studying the ecology of the prairie.
I agree with Tewari and Bruno.
However for sure, improving NPP in a broader sense is way towards improving carbon sequestration.
In such Natural farming systems , we also need to abridge the perennial fruit trees ( like mango, citrus, apple, pear , peach, ziziphus, plum etc) whose productive life is long and NPP is distinctively higher than many of the forest species . Such crops need a much stronger intervention in such novel persuit , addition to providing the nutritional security ..
it is not so easy to explain and argue in a short contribution which agricultural system(s) have the best increase to the carbon sequestration, because the exploitation of an agricultural system influences highly how the sequestred carbon will increse or decrease. Grasslands have a much higher C sesuestration potential than arable land. And grazed grassland is better than cutting in this opinion. For arable land, it depends what crops will be grown. The highest C sequestration is for forests.
Agreed. But lets us throw some light , how agricultural systems could be made remunerative from point of view of carbon sequestration vis-a-vis management practices...
One aspect is utilisation of all biproducts like paddy straw, sugarcane trash,potato leaf foliage and other bio residues in the field itself instead of burning it or throwing it alongside roads adjoining farm fields.
Integrated use of water for fish farming,dairy farming and use of crowding for fish or FYM and compost etc.
That's a good pracitce, but don't forget that before the farmer can incorporate these byproducts in the soil, already a big part of the formerly C in these products is lost and mostly there is not always a good idea if anti quality parameters are present (e.g. heavy metals, deseases,...). And what are the costs (for fuel, come they from far away?..) to incorporate them in the soil? How these products will be decomposed in the soil depends of soil type, humidity, temperature, arerobic/anaerobic conditions, the depth of incorprartion, ...So be at least careful.
The goal of the farmer is always to grow a quanititave and qualitative good product on his land not the sequestratrion of C. Sometimes only 50% is harvested and the rest left on the land. And here the farmer must have the (moral) obligation to incoroprate the harvest residues (immediately) in the soil.
There can not be two openion regarding forest / tree plantation are bestsequester of carbon . Now the question is how agricultural production systems can be made carbon fixers to some extent . In my openion farming systems having multipurpose tree species , fruit trees and controled forage grazing , etc . could be best carbon fixing production systems , otherwise simple arable cropping with few modification like appropriate use of crop residue , ploughing left out crop strow , etc.can not make it a candidate for carbon sequester . Sole arable cropping is in fact a carbon relase system because it also cuses lot of soil erosion especially in arid , semi - arid and hilly tracts .
In many of the tropicsl and subtropical humid regions, both annual crops and perennial crops are grown over long period without any serious distinctive effect on production sustainability under virtually zero input. How does such natural farming sustain without their ability to sequester carbon which can last atleast for year after year with soil SOC most of the time over 1%.Is it the calcitrance of carbon that matters..??How do you define quality carbon of a soil vis_a_vis either agricultural practices or ability of carbon sequestration by the crop..??
Hi Drlatief,
Here attached are a couple of references you may find useful to answer your question.
Biochar making from waste could be a viable option to increase carbon sequestration. Agroforestry approaches like alley cropping, silvopasture, buffer/wind break) are also more viable methods. The most important of all however, consists in moving food production/agriculture from the cultivation of annual plant species to perennials.
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