How to rebuild your soil’s organic carbon
Organic matter is incredibly important to keep your soil healthy. This organic matter contains roughly 58% organic carbon, which can either be inactive carbon or active carbon. Higher levels of active carbon directly relate to healthier soil, and the good news is that you can rebuild and retain the organic carbon in your soil.
Higher levels of active carbon in soil can also have a massively positive impact on our planet as we battle the effects of climate change. An increase of just 1% carbon in the top 1 metre of terrestrial soils has the potential to reverse climate change.
How to rebuild soil organic carbon
- Increase the infiltration and retention of water.
Water is required for plant development and biosynthesis, hence water management and preservation are critical. - To increase yields and biomass, optimise soil pH, chemistry, and nutrition.
Use only the most necessary soil amendments and fertilisers. Incorrect fertiliser application can degrade soils and burn organic carbon in the soil. - Grazing management is critical.
While herbivores are necessary for healthy soils and carbon formation, overgrazing degrades soil and promotes land loss. Grazing management improves biomass and water infiltration in the long term. - Plants should always be used to cover soils because their growing roots feed and protect the soil.
Reforestation and agroforestry are critical to soil health. Trees cool the soil, are more permanent, and have strong roots that hold the soil together while also bringing nutrients and moisture up from the ground to the surface soil. - Reduce soil disturbance.
Ploughing destroys microbes and burns off organic carbon by breaking up soil aggregates. We lose soil volume, aeration, and water infiltration when we drive over it. - Smarter farming methods are required to increase yields, biomass, and soil health.
Precision agriculture, minimum tillage, climate-smart agriculture, regenerative farming, and cover cropping are all examples of smart agriculture. - Develop landscape management
A change in soil regime, such as logging or eliminating riparian vegetation, can have a wide-ranging impact on the landscape. - Analysis and monitoring of soil, water and air
Research, education, and knowledge exchange are critical to soil restoration. - Reusing and recycling
We can reduce our carbon footprint and improve soils by changing our purchasing habits, recycling valuable waste, and returning as much organic matter as possible to the soil.
Contact Goldsuite today to see how we can help you grow profitable harvests.
Ruth Vaughan (from Cropnuts) recently wrote an online piece about building the resilience of soil, where a large portion was dedicated to the importance of ogranic carbon in soil. You can read the full article here.