Keeping carbon in check: Carbon farming to address a changing climate

In the face of climate change, the agriculture industry is taking two complementary approaches toward decarbonization: reducing emissions and pulling carbon out of the atmosphere to store it in the soil, where it benefits crops and entire ecosystems.

But carbon itself is often misunderstood in agriculture and climate science. Consider the carbon atom: without it, life as we know it wouldn’t exist. Together with hydrogen and oxygen, carbon is one of the literal building blocks of all life on Earth — including crops and the countless people who rely on them.

Farming and climate change

Every aspect of our climate — including temperature, sunlight, rain and wind — is important to agriculture. Conversely, agriculture is increasingly important for our climate. In agriculture, plants convert carbon dioxide into oxygen and energy molecules called carbohydrates. This process contributes to the air we breathe and the food we eat. In climate science, carbon affects global temperatures, soil salinity, ocean levels, weather patterns and more.

As civilization has evolved, we’ve developed a more nuanced understanding of carbon’s contributions to climate change, as well as the roles that fossil fuels, deforestation and tillage play in the carbon cycle. It’s clearer than ever that the carbon cycle needs rebalancing. For that reason, agricultural scientists have united around developing practices that enable farmers to reduce carbon emissions, thrive in the face of climate change and even mitigate its effects.

Agricultural innovation and environmental stewardship can enrich one another. The Climate FieldView™ digital farming platform, for example, is empowering farmers around the world to cultivate their crops while reducing their impact on our planet. By harnessing data gathered from satellites, in-field sensors and smart combines, the Climate FieldView™ app uses historic insight and predictive analytics to help farmers connect more intimately with their fields, so they can identify and address problems before they take hold. In addition to helping farmers accomplish more with fewer resources, it also helps to reduce carbon emissions by maximizing efficiencies. Coupled with digital sensors that monitor the soil’s composition, farmers can actively track their progress in sequestering carbon in their fields to support more productive crops and a healthier planet.

A net-zero carbon future starts on the farm

The emissions produced by farming come mainly from tilling the soil and burning fossil fuels to run equipment. Every time a tractor travels across a field, it generates emissions. That’s why crop scientists and data engineers at Bayer have developed tools like smart GPS and techniques such as precision agriculture to help farmers reduce fuel consumption. Practices like no-till farming are also exceedingly beneficial in reducing emissions because they keep carbon in the soil where it benefits the plants and microorganisms that need carbon to thrive.

But innovations in agriculture can go beyond empowering farms to reduce emissions and actually pull carbon out of the atmosphere. This is the insight behind the Bayer Carbon Program, which enables and incentivizes farmers to adopt climate-smart practices that capture and store carbon in their fields. Currently underway in the United States as well as in Brazil, Argentina and select European countries, these programs simultaneously prioritize soil health, farmers’ livelihoods and our climate, to lay a strong foundation for a net-zero carbon future. That’s good for growers, consumers and our planet.

“As an agriculture and technology company, we see Bayer as optimally positioned to help align stakeholders to deliver a climate-smart revenue stream for farmers,” noted Senior Vice President Leo Bastos in a recent testimony on Bayer’s U.S. carbon programs before the United States Congress’s House Agriculture Committee.

Closing in on carbon literacy

As the building block of life, carbon itself is not inherently problematic — rather, it’s the imbalance of carbon in our atmosphere that causes widespread climate challenges. Through agriculture, today’s brightest minds are finding ways to correct that imbalance to support our climate now and well into the future. By driving unprecedented breakthroughs in data science, farmer incentives and climate-smart agricultural practices, modern agriculture is helping growers improve their operations while reducing their impact on the climate. The result? A promising step forward for global food security and the ongoing health of the planet we all share.