More than a third of global greenhouse gases (GHGs) come from
agriculture and a new theory suggest human can reverse global warming by
sequestering several hundred billion tons of excess CO2 through
regenerative, organic farming, ranching and land use.
Scientists
believe increasing the soil's organic content will not only fix carbon
and reduce emissions, it will also improve the soil's ability to retain
water and nutrients and resist pests and droughts.
To mitigate GHG
emissions and retain soil fertility, organic agriculture might be a
wise choice for decreasing the intensive use of synthetic fertilizers,
protecting environments, and further improving crop yields.
Recent
research showed that replacing chemical fertilizer with organic manure
significantly decreased the emission of GHGs. Organic farming can
reverse the agriculture ecosystem from a carbon source to a carbon sink.
To
explore the potential of farmlands acting as a carbon sink without
yield losses, Jiang Gaoming, a professor at the Chinese Academy of
Sciences' Institute of Botany, conducted an experiment on a temperate
eco-farm in eastern rural China.
Crop residues were applied to
cattle feed and the composted cattle manure was returned to cropland
with a winter wheat and maize rotation. Crop yield and greenhouse gas
(GHG) emissions were carefully calculated according to the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Guidelines for National
Greenhouse Gas Inventories 2006.
This study showed that replacing
chemical fertilizer with organic manure significantly decreased the
emission of GHGs. Yields of wheat and corn also increased as the soil
fertility was improved by the application of cattle manure.
Totally
replacing chemical fertilizer with organic manure decreased GHG
emissions, which reversed the agriculture ecosystem from a carbon source
(+ 2.7 t CO2-eq. hm-2 yr-1) to a carbon sink (- 8.8 t CO2-eq. hm-2
yr-1).
Making full use of crop residues as forage for cattle,
collecting and composting cattle manure, and replacing part of the
chemical fertilizer input with organic manure have been successfully
shown to be ideal choices to reduce energy waste and cut GHG emissions
without crop yield losses.
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