State agencies are calling for more ranchers and farmers in Marin County and elsewhere to play a crucial role in combating the effects of climate change by drawing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and into the soils.
This month, the California Wildlife Conservation Board created a program that teams scientists and engineers with farmers and ranchers to develop site-specific plans that will not only work to sequester carbon, but also improve these agricultural operations through water conservation and improved pastures, for example.
Don Crocker, senior environmental scientist with the California Wildlife Conservation Board, said working lands have the potential to be a huge carbon sink because their soils will be able to capture the greenhouse gas.
“It really does take a coordinated approach,” Crocker said. “You have to take a look at a farm completely, plan it out as much as you can and you’ve got to set it up in a way that it’s attractive enough for people. …These practices have been around for thousands of years, but it’s this new focus of climate that makes it sort of a new imperative.”
But these practices are voluntary, which is why the Wildlife Conservation Board voted last week to invest $1.4 million from the state’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund to encourage more farmers to come on board. The state is partnering with 10 resource conservation districts including Marin’s to set up pilot farms that have set up carbon sequestration and habitat improving amenities such as wind breaks to reduce evapotranspiration of water from the soils, row crops in orchards to sequester carbon and improvements to local creeks, for example.
Marin Resource Conservation League executive director Nancy Scolari said the organization is working with 16 farms and ranches to develop plans through the Marin Carbon Project. These 16 plans alone have the ability to offset the greenhouse gas emissions produced by 10,000 cars each year, Scolari said.
The new state program will take these efforts a step further, she said, by having engineers and other experts go out to working lands to make property-specific plans to working lands throughout the state.
“We need to actually take carbon out of the atmosphere and store it in the soils,” Scolari said. “The way that can happen is farming and ranching. That is one of the biggest ways we can make a difference and we need to make a difference.”
Chicken farmer Don Gilardi, of Gilardi’s Family Farm in outer Petaluma, is set to begin making some of these changes to his farm through the Marin Carbon Project. Working with the Carbon Cycle Institute, Gilardi received a 63-page plan that calls for planting hedgerows, cover crops and trees on his property. He’ll also be recycling the exhaust water from his egg processing plant to irrigate these new plantings.
And the chickens should be pleased with the changes too, Gilardi said.
“That will let the birds have overhead cover, to disperse more, to provide the most welfare, and that’s the name of the game,” Gilardi said. “It’s basically building out a poultry wonderland and Disneyland.”
Gilardi said state grants will cover about 75 percent of his costs, and that he finds it well worth it to cover the remaining 25 percent given the benefits to his farm. With the state now planning to fund more plans, Gilardi is recommending more farms and ranches to participate.
“The way that I look at it is nobody can be good at everything, but if you surround yourself with the right people, you can achieve a lot more,” Gilardi said.
