Soil carbon

Although costs for monitoring, reporting and verification are high for many result-based schemes, the European Commission favours a wider implementation.

IPCC report says that climate change increases pressure on land, meanwhile land use causes almost a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. 

Livestock can under certain conditions and for limited periods of time contribute to carbon sequestration in grasslands, but this can at best offset no more than 11 per cent of all livestock emissions.

Whether grass-fed beef is good or bad for the climate is the focus of a new report from the Food Climate Research Network, entitled “Grazed and Confused?”.

Soil has become a vulnerable resource. A new FAO report shows which areas have the best carbon storage potential and suggests improvements in monitoring and measurement.

Greenhouse gas and nitrogen emissions from agriculture in the Nordic countries could be reduced by up to 80 per cent with a diet of purely organic produce from an almost self-sufficient food system.

In a recent study published in Nature, 50 researchers from around the world confirm the concerns that they have had for a long time: soils will release a large amount of carbon in response to the rising air temperature.

The agriculture sectors accounts for at least one-fifth of total emissions of greenhouse gases. A new FAO report discusses the challenge of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions while at the same time meeting the world’s demand for food.