Fertile Soils Fund

Scalability

Every year, grain crops in North America photosynthesize and turn CO2 in the air into biomass on the same scale as the world’s great rain forests. Except for what is harvested and trucked away as food, after the plants die that biomass usually decomposes back into the air over months or a few years. The opportunity to sequester even a portion of such vast quantities of carbon into long-term microbial biomass in the soil, is one society cannot afford to miss out on any more.

Because microbial bodies and biofilms are carbon based, the majority of their biomass will be made of the CO2 plants fixed that year. Every small amount of the extra mineral elements such as phosphorus and sulfur the microbes need to grow, and which FSF will help farmers purchase to apply on their farms, will have a much larger return in the amount of carbon sequestered.

No new factories or technology needs to be built or deployed.  The majority of what we are working with are the tons of plant residue left in place in the fields.  The residue doesn’t need to be transported or processed, only the relatively small amount of nutrients the microbes need.  Our strategy is extremely energy and resource efficient.

Accountability

FSF will start by working with the top segment of farms that are already putting sustainable levels of phosphorus and sulfur fertilizer (or manure equivalents) on each year, to replace what is taken off of the land in harvested grain. Such farmers have shown a history of land stewardship, that can be verified with records of fertilizer purchases. Partner farmers will also agree to leave all of that year’s crop residue, forgoing the short-term payoff they might receive from selling bales to livestock operations. This can be easily verified with photos of the land in late Fall or early Winter. FSF hopes that by rewarding those farmers already taking the long view and budgeting for sustainability, we will give clear direction and the financial assistance needed finally to vastly improve their soil, inspiring other farmers to move in the same direction.

Cost

Roughly on the order of fifty to one hundred dollars of balancing nutrients, transport, application and the oversight required will lock up at least a ton of carbon in the first two meters of soil on a partner farm (some years conditions will allow even cheaper carbon sequestration, but this is a price-floor we can confidently model to give donors a sense of scale). We dissuade people from trying to use an engineer mindset to strictly compare carbon sequestration techniques based on one number, as a true comparison has to take into account the non-quantifiable benefits of a more robust food system, and the security of soil carbon from logging and fire dangers, etc.

The important facts are that sequestration in this manner is significant and comparable to other nature-based techniques, and efficient enough that sequestration is an order of magnitude more than any of the emissions from sourcing or applying the balancing nutrients required, so it is significantly net positive for the climate. Finally, the added benefits of nitrogen clean-up and soil health and water retention are calculable and substantial (and positive for the environment and human civilization).

Evidence-based

The laboratory and field trials whose findings and data give FSF our ability to accurately model long-term carbon-sequestration in farm soil were conducted by Drs. Clive Kirkby, J.A. Kirkegaard, and Alan Richardson with other colleagues over the last 15 years in Australia.

Dr. Rattan Lal, of Ohio State and the former head of the International Union of Soil  Sciences, endorsed Kirkby et. al.’s work as early as 10 years ago in an interview with Grist reporter Nathanael Johnson, and made the point that the importance of balanced nutrient ratios has been repeatedly found by numerous colleagues over several decades. Dr. Lal has continued to call for such “Carbon Farming” efforts, and argued that farmers need help paying for the nutrients that support increasing microbial biomass, as recently as March of 2024 in his Ellis Lecture at Kansas State University.

None of these people are directly affiliated with FSF, but we have our own expertise on staff.  If you are an agronomist, potential donor or potential partner farmer, and would like more details about our methodology and supporting references and reports, you can contact Dr. T.J. Pray, soil microbial ecologist and executive director of FSF, using tjpray@fertilesoils.org.