Introduction

igh in the mountains of Veracruz, Mexico, a

small cooperative is practicing agriculture in
a way that fights climate change while simultaneously meeting human needs. Although millions of
people around the world use these practices in some
way, people in Western nations are largely unfamiliar
with them, and there is little coordinated support to
encourage farmers to adopt them. But if widely supported, implemented, and developed on a global scale
in conjunction with a massive reduction in fossil fuel
emissions, these carbon farming practicesa suite
of crops and practices that sequester carbon while
simultaneously meeting human needscould play a
critical role in preventing catastrophic climate change
by removing carbon from the atmosphere and safely
storing it in soils and perennial vegetation.
The cloud forest region of Veracruz, Mexico, is
unique and beautiful. This humid tropical highland

ecosystem combines a mostly temperate canopy of trees

such as oaks and hickories encrusted with epiphytic
ferns, orchids, and bromeliads with an understory of
mostly tropical vegetation such as cannas, wild taros,
passion fruits, and tree ferns. Mexico is one of the five
most biodiverse countries in the world, and this cloud
forest is home to 10 to 12 percent of the countrys plant
species on only 0.8 percent of its land. It is also home to
550 species of ferns and 750 plants found nowhere else
in the world.1
But although it has a long history of human use, the
cloud forest is disappearing. Between 70 and 90 percent
of it has been deforested, and what remains is highly
fragmented, with only tiny pockets of old growth. Much
of the former forest is degraded pasture.2 The clouds
that give the region its name dont just bring rain. Moisture comes in the form of horizontal precipitationfog
from the coast that is captured by the epiphyte-covered

Figure I.1. At 5,636 meters (18,491 feet), Pico de Orizaba towers over the highland cloud forest landscape in Veracruz, Mexico. The humid
tropical highland cloud forest of this region is home to 10 to 12 percent of the countrys plant species on only 0.8 percent of its land.

2 Introduction

trees. Water slowly makes its way through the spongy

forest floor to streams and then to rivers. Intact cloud
forest provides a year-round flow of water to drier
regions downstream. In deforested areas, rain instead
brings floods followed by dry riverbeds.3
Many people in this region are farmers. Cattle and
coffee are the primary products. Neither provides
much income, and cattle farming as practiced degrades
the soil. But people are creative and resilient and are
actively experimenting with alternatives. One model
that provides income while preserving much of the
forest and its functions is the cafetal, an agroforestry
system in which farmers grow coffee in the cloud forest understory. The cafetales help maintain the cloud
forests ecological function and integrity. For example,
pasture has no frog species, while cafetales have 12
compared with cloud forests 21.4 Capture of horizontal
precipitation is good as well. Cafetales also sequester a
lot of carbon in their forest soils and the biomass of the
trees and coffee shrubs.

To Ricardo Romero of Las Caadas, the small cooperative described above, cafetales dont provide enough
income to farmers, however. Nor do they provide farmers with anything close to a balanced diet. He is working
to develop food production systems that provide a complete diet while incorporating as much of the ecosystem
function of the cloud forest as possible. Such systems
could also serve as corridors to reconnect fragments of
intact forest. And it could do all this while sequestering impressive amounts of carbon, helping return our
world to a livable climate.
In 1988 Romero began managing the site for pastured cattle. Over the ensuing seasons, he observed
the continued degradation of the soils and ecosystem
functions. Degraded soils give up much of their carbon
to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.
In 1995 he sold his cows and undertook an impressive
ecological restoration effort, propagating and planting
50,000 native trees on 60 hectares (148 acres) while
allowing another 40 hectares (99 acres) to regenerate

Figure I.2. An aerial view of Las Caadas in Veracruz, Mexico. The many sustainable practices employed at Las Caadas also sequester carbon, helping to mitigate climate change while producing food, fodder, materials, chemicals, and energy. Photograph courtesy of
Ricardo Romero.

 Introduction

naturally. This was the beginning of an ecotourism

enterprise that included tours of an awe-inspiring oldgrowth cloud forest.
Romero also planted native trees on 22 hectares (54
acres) of the remaining pasture and carefully reintroduced cattle. This system, called silvopasture, combines
livestock production with the ecological benefits of trees,
including soil regeneration and capture of horizontal
precipitation. Silvopasture sequesters carbon in the soil
and the biomass of the trees. From there the team at Las
Caadas developed a successful organic dairy business.5
In 2006 Ricardo and his team formed a cooperative,
which today has 22 worker-members. In 2007 they
hosted a workshop with permaculture co-founder David
Holmgren and decided to change direction toward even
greater self-sufficiency. Instead of exporting nutrients
from the farm in the form of cheese while buying organic
fertilizers to replace them, they began to focus on raising as much of their own food, firewood, and building
materials as possible, and generating income from training others in these techniques. Permaculture provided
a design framework and principles with which to do
so.6 Today a tour of their farm is like walking through
an encyclopedia of sustainable practices and crop diversity. But Romero and his team are doing something very
important beyond practicing small-scale sustainable
agriculture, fostering community self-reliance, creating
jobs, improving biodiversity, and bringing degraded land
back to life. These same practices sequester carbon,
making Las Caadas a showcase of some of the worlds
best climate mitigation techniques.
In this book the term carbon farming is used to
describe a suite of crops and agricultural practices that
sequester carbon in the soil. If widely implemented,
these practices have the capacity to sequester hundreds
of billions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere in the
coming decades. (Throughout this book, tons refers
to metric tons.) And if we combine carbon farming with
a massive global reduction in fossil fuel emissions, it can
bring us back from the brink of disaster and return our
atmosphere to the magic number of 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide. Unlike high-tech geoengineering
strategies, these practices can also feed people, build
more fertile soils, and contribute to ecosystem health.

Figure I.3. Las Caadas practices annual cropping methods

that sequester carbon. In this photo, maize and beans are intercropped in a polyculture system. Management of this field uses
carbon-friendly practices, including cover cropping, crop rotation,
and compost application.

This may seem like a bold claimand it isbut as

we scramble for solutions to our climate catastrophe,
the incredible sequestration potential of the crops
and practices I describe in this book has been largely
ignored. In chapter 3 well look more specifically at the
available data on sequestration rates, as well as some of
the challenges of quantifying it. Despite the challenges
and the need for additional research, the evidence is
already clear: these crops and practices have the potential to contribute mightily to what is perhaps the most
pressing issue of our time.
Carbon farming can take many forms. First and
simplest are modifications to annual crop production to
reverse the loss of soil carbon from tillage. For example,
Las Caadas practices biointensive crop production
with very high yields in small spaces through sophisticated organic techniques. Organic practices like this
have been found to sequester more carbon than even
the best conventional annual cropping systems. Their
larger milpas, or crop fields, demonstrate carbon-
sequestering agroecological approaches to production
of maize, beans, and soybeans, including crop rotation,
cover crops, and contour hedgerows. Although these
practices have a fairly low carbon sequestration rate,

4 Introduction

Figure I.4. Livestock can also be raised using techniques that sequester carbon. At Las Caadas dairy cows graze under native alder trees
in a carbon farming silvopasture system. Photograph courtesy of Ricardo Romero.

Figure I.5. Perennial crops have high carbon-sequestering ability. Ricardo Romero of Las Caadas with perennial staple crop
plantings that provide protein (perennial beans), carbohydrates
(banana, peach palm, air potato), and fats (macadamia).

Figure I.6. Bamboo is an outstanding building material and a

powerful tool for sequestering carbon. Ricardo Romero with
edible shoots of giant timber bamboos in a bamboo grove at
Las Caadas.

they are widely applicable and easily adopted and thus

have great global mitigation potential. They also allow
us to continue growing the crops we know and love.
Certain livestock systems also constitute carbon
farming, which is especially significant because both
extensive grazing and confined livestock production
(which depends on annual crop production for feed)
have been identified as part of the climate change
problem. These carbon farming livestock production

systems are climate-friendly even when we account for

methane releases. For example, Las Caadas practices
managed grazing, fodder banks, and silvopastureall of
which have been shown to sequester carbon in addition
to their other benefits. Improved livestock production
models typically have a low to moderate carbon sequestration on a per-area basis, but like improved annual
cropping systems, they dont require people to change
their diets. Given that more than two-thirds of global

 Introduction

farmland is pasture, there is great potential to scale up

these practices to mitigate climate change.
It is perennial crops, however, that offer the highest
potential of any food production system to sequester
carbon, especially when they are grown in diverse
multilayered systems. (On the other hand, these systems
can be challenging to establish and manage, and many
people are also not interested in changing their diet to
new and unfamiliar perennial crops.) With their plant
nursery and seed company, Romero and Karla Arroyo
have assembled a world-class collection of perennial
crops for their climate with a special focus on perennial
staple crops, analogs to maize and beans that grow on
trees, vines, palms, and herbaceous perennials. The
cooperative has also planted a highly diverse bosque
comestible, or edible forest, of these species in a system
called multistrata agroforestrythe gold standard of
biodiversity and carbon sequestration in agriculture.
In their quest for self-sufficiency, resilience, and
livelihoods, Las Caadas is also interested in more than
food. It produces many of its own materials, chemicals,
and energy. One of their emphases is a 2-hectare (5-acre)
planting of clumping bamboos sufficient to provide building materials for all members of the cooperative for the
next 100 years. Bamboo is a powerful climate mitigation
tool, as it stores lots of carbon in the soil and in its woody
parts. Because few resources cover industrial crops such
as bamboo that not only provide the material, chemicals,
and energy that communities need, but also sequester significant amounts of carbon, I devote the entirety of part 4
to these incredible and typically overlooked crops.
All that said, producing food, growing industrial
materials, and sequestering carbon is not enough for
a 21st-century farmer. Agriculture must also adapt to
a changing climate. Las Caadas has a stated goal to
establish production systems that are resilient to prolonged droughts, excessive rains, floods, or abnormal
frosts . . .7 Although carbon farming practices arent
necessarily, by definition, adaptive, in practice almost all
of them are. This is a great co-benefit of carbon farming:
Not only do they, by definition, help mitigate climate
change, but they also help ecosystems and communities
adapt to it. Among many agricultural adaptation techniques on display at Las Caadas are increases in soil

organic matter, crop diversification, and livestock integration. Many carbon farming practices and crops also
yield as well as or better than conventional agriculture.
Many of the crops and practices I describe in the
chapters ahead are already implemented on a scale of
hundreds of millions of hectares globally, although they
are still a small fraction of the nearly 5 billion hectares
(12 billion acres) of world farmland. These are not
minor or marginal efforts, but winwin solutions that
also provide food, fodder, and feedstocks while building
soils and preserving a climate amenable to civilization.
At present, the tropics have stronger carbon farming
options than colder climates; many of the agroforestry
techniques that have the highest sequestration rates are
largely confined to the tropics, at least at present, and
most of the best perennial crops available today are also
native to, or grown best in, the tropics. The head start
the tropics have on carbon farming provides an excellent opportunity for wealthy countries to repay climate
debt by bankrolling mitigation, adaptation, and development projects in the Global South and to take lessons
from the endeavors already under way there.
This book doesnt offer a prescription for a percentage of cropland that should be used in a particular way.
(The many factors that go into selecting appropriate
strategies for any given region or farm are touched on
in part 5.) Nor is this book a how-to manual, although
following up on the references to a given section will frequently provide such information. Nor does it focus on
strategies for agriculture-related emissions reduction or
adaptation to a changing climate. Likewise, reforestation
and timber plantationsboth excellent and essential climate mitigation strategiesare outside of its agricultural
purview. And you will not find much information on the
economics and profitability of these practices here.
What this book does offer is a toolkit for communities, governments, and farmers. It is a starting place
for selecting appropriate crops and practices for your
home region. It provides the rationale behind carbon
farming and discusses strategies for global implementation. And it delves into improved annual cropping and
pasture systems, two sets of mitigation strategies that
have gotten a lot of attention lately. (You will learn that
both annual crops and pastures sequester much more

6 Introduction

There are several, sometimes conflicting, definitions of

carbon farming currently in circulation. Most definitions agree that the term refers to farming practices that
sequester carbon. Some stop there. For example, heres
such a definition from the Marin Carbon Project: Carbon farming involves implementing practices that are
known to improve the rate at which CO2 is removed from
the atmosphere and converted to plant material and/or
soil organic matter. Carbon farming is successful when
carbon gains resulting from enhanced land management
and/or conservation practices exceed carbon losses.8
Some other definitions explicitly link carbon farming to carbon offsets.9 Offsets are a strategy wherein
entities that release greenhouse gas emissions pay other
entities to sequester equivalent carbon or reduce equivalent emissions. These credits are typically traded on
markets. There are two primary problems with carbon
offsets. One is that even when theyre functioning optimally, they dont reduce the total amount of greenhouse
gases and instead just maintain their current dangerous
level (unless a shrinking cap is built in, which has not
yet happened anywhere to my knowledge).10 Two, and
more important, is that they have largely failed to work
and have also been vulnerable to corruption.11 For the
record, Im opposed to the use of offsets as a climate
change mitigation strategy and dont include them in
the definition I use in this book.

For an expert perspective on the subject, I wrote to

Dr. Rattan Lal, the director of the Carbon Management
and Sequestration Center at Ohio State University,
to ask if carbon farming explicitly requires a link to
offsets, or to financing more generally. Dr. Lal is the
author of several key articles that serve as a theoretical underpinning for this book. Dr. Lal provided me
with his definition of carbon farming. First, he said
that farming implies products or ecosystem services.
For example, hog farming produces pork, and organic
farming provides the service of cleaner water downstream.12 He went on to define carbon farming as a
system of increasing carbon in terrestrial ecosystem[s]
for adaptation and mitigation of climate change, [to]
enhance ecosystem goods and services, and trade carbon credits for economic gains.13 In response to my
question, Dr. Lal said that while paying the farmer for
the service of carbon sequestration is essential to the
definition, offsets were not an obligatory mechanism
for doing so as long as the farmers were remunerated
in one way or the other.14
Does this mean you cant say you are carbon farming
if your farm or ranch sequesters carbon, but you dont
get paid for it? It depends whose definition you like.
Whats clear is that it is impossible to scale up the use of
carbon-sequestering agricultural practices to the level
that could provide serious mitigation without major
financing efforts in place.15 Well discuss the world of
carbon finance options in chapter 27.

carbon when trees are added to them.) The core of this

book unpacks the impressive and neglected climate
mitigation potential of perennial crops and perennial
cropping systems. This includes first-of-their-kind
comprehensive profiles of perennial staple crops that
provide protein, carbohydrates, and fats, and perennial
industrial crops for materials, chemicals, and energy.
Ultimately the goals of this book are to place carbon
farming firmly in the center of the climate solutions
platform, steer mitigation funds to the millions of
people around the world who are already doing the
work, and help ignite a massive movement to transform
global agriculture.

Carbon farming alone is not enough to avoid catastrophic climate change, even if it were practiced on
every square meter of farmland. But it does belong
at the center of our transformation as a civilization.
Along with new economic priorities, a massive switch
to clean energy, and big changes to much of the rest
of the way our societies work, carbon farming offers a
pathway out of destruction and a route to hope. Along
the way it can help address food insecurity, injustice,
environmental degradation, and some of the core problems with the global food system. In the pages to come
well explore the promise and pitfalls of this timely
climate change solution.

DEFINING CARBON FARMING