Carbon farming is a name for a variety of agricultural methods aimed at sequestering atmospheric carbon into the soil and in crop vegetation and biomass. The aim of carbon farming is to increase the rate at which carbon is sequestered into soil and plant material with the goal of improving farm productivity, increasing soil health and creating a net loss of carbon from the atmosphere.

Increasing a soil's organic matter content can aid plant growth, increase total carbon content, improve soil water retention capacity and reduce fertiliser use.

The practice of carbon farming is often done by individual land owners who are given incentive to use and to integrate methods that will sequester carbon through policies created by governments.

‍Sequestration of soil organic carbon (SOC) is a process that involves the net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere by plants and micro-organisms and its storage in vegetative biomass and in soil.

What is Carbon Farming?

The removal of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere via plant photosynthesis.

Photosynthesis is a process used by plants and other organisms to convert light energy into chemical energy that, through cellular respiration, can later be released to fuel the organism's activities.

This chemical energy is stored in carbohydrate molecules, such as sugars and starches, which are synthesised from carbon dioxide and water.

Photosynthesis is largely responsible for producing and maintaining the oxygen content of the Earth's atmosphere, and supplies most of the energy necessary for life on Earth.

Plant leaves have small openings, called stomata, all over their surfaces. The stomata open to absorb the carbon dioxide needed to perform photosynthesis. They also open to release the oxygen produced by this process.

The metabolism of Carbon Dioxide, Hydrogen and Oxygen (CO2, H+ and O2) within the plant using sunlight’s energy to make carbohydrates and retained in the form of plant biomass.

In hot and dry conditions, plants close their stomata to prevent water loss. Under these conditions, CO2 will decrease and oxygen gas, produced by the light reactions of photosynthesis, will increase, causing an increase of photorespiration and decrease in carbon fixation.

Some plants have also evolved mechanisms to increase the CO2 concentration in their leaves under these conditions.
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The transfer of carbohydrates into the soil through roots (to feed fungi in return for minerals) and from plant residues into soil organic matter (SOM) where it is stored in the form of soil organic carbon.

Through these processes, carbon is made bioavailable to the microbial metabolic “factory” and subsequently is either respired to the atmosphere or enters the stable carbon pool as microbial necromass, which is the mass of dead plant material lying as litter on the ground surface.

A plant's photosynthetic efficiency varies with the frequency of the light being converted, light intensity, temperature and proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and can vary from 0.1% to 8%.