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In terms of what parts of the
The .largest .soil .organic . country have the potential
carbon .increases .occur .in . for the most improvement,

wetter .climates, .with .cover . a paper released this year
crops .and .no-till .adoption . authored by Mark Sperow at
providing .the .largest . West Virginia University found
increases . it was the wetter regions in the
middle of the country.
—Mark Sperow, . “The largest soil organic car-
West .Virginia .University bon increases occur in wetter

climates, with cover crops and
nitrogen losses. no-till adoption providing the

Farmers with better soils or who have been largest increases,” Sperow’s paper concludes.
employing better management practices over Johnson of The Nature Conservancy said the next
many years may be disadvantaged because the couple of years are going to be confusing for farm-
improvements they can make at this point won’t ers because of the emerging market offerings.
have much impact on their existing carbon
footprint. “There are new companies and new programs
emerging all the time,” he says. “And farmers
“The answer to the question of whether or not can sign up to get paid for activities that store
farmers in different regions will fare better is
yes, basically, in every circumstance, because carbon.” But those different programs will come
some regions are just better and some soils are with “different levels of rigor and quality, and
better at sequestering soil carbon, some systems we’ll just have to kind of wait and see” how the
are better at that,” said Reed of the Ecosystem emerging market shakes out.
Services Market Consortium. Johnson emphasizes that as the market

“The more degraded your soils when you start, adjusts, “we have to make sure good, scientific
the bigger the opportunity, right, to improve soil approaches are used so that carbon claims from
carbon and remove other greenhouse gases,” agriculture can be trusted and can help bring
Reed says. “The healthier your soils, the smaller more funding to farmers to incentivize cli-
the potential.” mate-smart practices.”

28 www.Agri-Pulse.com