Landwards Spring 2022
Technical:
Soil & Water Management Centre - carbon conference
Dr David Powlson
Soil 22 – Carbon, traffic and tillage Farming’s environmental impact and its ability to sequester carbon is under the spotlight like never before with much talk of soil protection, management and making carbon pay. This year’s Soil and Water Management Centre conference focussed on these issues with a group of leading farmers and researchers.
Carbon for crop stability Sequestering carbon into farmland could ensure stable crop yields in future, David Powlson from Rothamsted Research told the event. While it cannot guarantee increased crop yields it does have several other benefits: 20
“Increasing carbon will help yield stability and the soil’s physical properties.” But he reminded farmers that soil carbon levels do not increase indefinitely. The greatest gains come in the early years, but those gains can be lost in later years.
But even a small increase in levels can have a significant impact on the soil’s physical and biological properties. Thinking on the subject, has moved on significantly since the 1980s and 1990s, when the favoured option was to remove land from production.
