This is an excerpt from "Leadership for Sustainability" by R. Bruce Hull, David P. Robertson and Michael Mortimer. Copyright 2020 by the authors. Reproduced by permission of Island Press, Washington, D.C.
Innovating carbon farming
All pathways to a future that limits global warming to safe levels require removing significant amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. Soil stores about 80 percent of the world’s terrestrial carbon stock, so agricultural practices that keep and increase carbon in soil are critical.
Change is difficult, however, because the agricultural system is both local and global (multiscalar), dispersed, complex, and tradition-bound. Stakeholders include farmers, food manufacturers, distributors, investors, grocers, scientists, state regulators, consumers, fertilizer and seed companies, and more. Massive uncertainty exists about how to mobilize enough stakeholders to sequester enough carbon to mitigate enough climate change. The only thing that seems certain is that the status quo must change.