Carbon Farming

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The North Sea Region (NSR) faces soil degradation and biodiversity loss resulting from present-day agricultural production processes. Adopting carbon sequestration (CS) techniques in land management can help to reverse these processes and play a crucial role in food security and climate change mitigation. Greening the food supply chain through carbon farming (CF) will restore the organic component of the soil; actively remove atmospheric CO2, increasing soil biodiversity, and providing better nutrient and water holding capacity for crops.The NSR has strong interrelated food production chains, which lack a long-term vision on sustainable soil management and green production processes. The absence of sound, economically viable business cases and a lack of awareness of the potential of CF approaches amongst economic players is hindering their rapid adoption. This will be a key factor in progress towards greening the NSR agrifood sector. Involvement throughout the integrated value chain is required to allow this progress to be sustainable and durable.This project will test and validate economically viable business cases for CS in whole agri-food chain and for third parties to compensate their environmental footprint. It will also raise awareness on the possibilities and benefits of CS amongst entire supply chains. Results are an increased awareness of the economic and ecologic potential of CS, improved soil physics, and 10,000 tons of CO2 (equivalent)/acre sequestered in soil.

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