How Organic Farming helps in Carbon Sequestration?

The organic farming is a unique combination of environmentally sound practices with low external inputs. It relies not only on the fertilizers of organic origin, such as compost, manure, green manure, and bone meal and places emphasis on techniques such as crop rotation and companion planting but also seeds sown through the organic farming. Before moving on to the discussion on ‘How Organic Farming helps in Carbon Sequestration?’, firstly know that ‘what is Carbon Sequestration?’

“Organic agriculture is a holistic production management system that avoids use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and genetically modified organisms, minimizes pollution of air, soil and water, and optimizes the health and productivity of interdependent communities of plants, animals and people.”

                                                                                               -Codex Alimentarius Commission

What is Carbon Sequestration?

It is the process involved in carbon capture and the long-term storage of atmospheric carbon dioxide. In other words, we can say it is a process of removing carbon dioxide from the Earth’s atmosphere and then stored in liquid or solid form. It can be done through the forest and soil conservation practices that enhance the storage of carbon (such as restoring and establishing new forests, wetlands, and grasslands) or reduce CO₂ emissions (such as reducing agricultural tillage and suppressing wildfires).

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How Organic Farming helps in Carbon Sequestration?

Organic Farming is complimented the Carbon Sequestration because it focus on sustainability without using synthetic fertilizers, pesticides etc. In this farming, organic mulch play important role in carbon sequestration. Organic mulching refers to covering the soil with any organic matter such as applying compost or farm yard manure over the soil surface followed by adding a layer of dry organic matter over it.

This compost contains aligned beneficial microbes, where the dry matter is rich in carbon and the green matter is rich in nitrogenous substances. When decomposition of these components takes place the carbon nitrogen ratio in the soil becomes 10:1, ideal for the proliferation of microbes. This type of farming practices not only improve the soil fertility but also increase farmers’ income.

Hence, we can say Organic farming is one of the best ways of improving soil fertility which co-benefited the sequestration of carbon from atmospheric CO₂.

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