Managing Soil Carbon

Restoring soil carbon is essential to enhancing soil quality, sustaining and improving food production, maintaining clean water,and reducing increases in atmospheric CO². Short-sighted farming practices have resulted in loss of an estimated 4 + 1 gigatons (Gt) of carbon from soils of the United States, and 78 + 12 Gt from the world's soils, a large fraction of which ended up in the atmosphere( 1). Soil carbon loss has come principally from plowing that turns over the soil, making it susceptible to accelerated erosion( 2). This is exemplified by the Dust Bowl era in the United States and is a serious issue in most developing countries