Carbon dioxide. What can we do?
Most of the carbon (as Carbon Dioxide) in the air was once in the soil. Our growing methods, particularly intensive agriculture since the last war, have removed carbon from the soil and put it into the air, adding to the climate emergency.
If we change to regenerative growing we can start to reverse that process and put some of that carbon back into the soil.
This will help reduce atmospheric Carbon Dioxide levels to address the climate emergency and will make our soils more fertile.
The main techniques which we can apply on our land are:
- Reducing digging and tilling to a minimum.
- Actively adding carbon to the soil by mulching with carbon rich mulches.
- Cutting down on the use of artificial fertilisers.
- Keeping the ground covered as much as possible by using catch crops, cover crops and green manures.
- Using green manures to find and hold nitrogen and add to soil carbon.
And of course burning your waste materials puts all this carbon into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. It can also be a health risk to some of your neighbours.