Seeking to Reverse Global Warming by the Adoption of Agricultural

These two organizations are collaborating to create an Agricultural Carbon, or carbon farming program. Ag Carbon seeks to reverse global warming by advancing the adoption of agricultural practices proven to sequester soil carbon and permanently remove atmospheric CO2 — offering the significant co-benefits of making ranches and farms more drought resilient, improving on-farm productivity and enhancing ecosystem functions. This is being done through applied research, policy advocacy, and development of economic incentives for producers and land managers, with a near-term focus on producers in Marin and Sonoma counties.

Over the last year, the Ag Carbon program has provided critical support to the Marin Carbon Project (MCP) during its transition from research to implementation, developing a working carbon farming model that can be adopted throughout Marin and by other regions across California and the United States. This support has included technical assistance and on-farm conservation planning; co-development of the Rangeland Compost Protocol for formal review by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and American Carbon Registry; and leading the development of policy support and economic incentives at the county, regional, state and federal levels so producers and land managers can receive carbon offset and climate change mitigation funding.

The Ag Carbon program has the long term potential to shift land management practices on the majority of agricultural land in the world to fundamentally transform the material economy to be based on producing yields while bio-sequestering carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

Action for 1st Round of Funding

Our initial funding has paid for a site assessment, soils mapping and producer education on the first ranch site and for a carbon farming training in Modoc county.

• Site Assessment and Soils Mapping. Staff of the Carbon Cycle Institute and Fibershed, the owners of the Bare Ranch, and members of the Alturas NRCS office convened January 7th to tour the ranch and survey the landscape to identify the areas that would benefit from the implementation of a Carbon Farm Plan
• Education. Carbon Cycle Institute staff traveled to Modoc County to present on Carbon Farming at a soil health workshop in Cedarville, CA on February 19th. In addition to the Bare Ranch owner, about 40 local producers attended.

Action for 2nd Round of Funding

Fibershed used the second tranche of funding from World Centric® to develop and finalize the soil maps and carbon farming plan for the Bare Ranch in Modoc county. This led to the successful negotiation of a direct purchase of Climate Beneficial wool in 2015, and in tandem negotiated a deal to support a direct donation to the ranch from the end user to pay for compost creation and application. i.e., Thousands of pounds of wool were produced using climate beneficial practices thanks to the carbon farming planning that World Centric®helped support. Fibershed is working on scaling this work to 40,000 pounds of Climate Beneficial Wool in 2016.