What If Fighting Climate Change Were Easy?

Here's One Quick, Easy-To-Understand Example
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An article in Mother Jones, coupled with a comment on that article:

1. An Ohio farmer never tills his fields, always grows cover crops, uses less pesticides, has healthier soil, much less runoff, and returns carbon to the ground.

2. A comment from that article asks why federal assistance to farmers doesn't involve help in converting to this no-till, cover crop method as a pre-condition.

3. If all farms were so converted, each year would see 100 million metric tons of carbon removed from the atmosphere, according to an Ohio State professor quoted in the article.

4. That's about 2% of all fuel-burning emissions; a good start to cutting carbon, good for so many other reasons, and an example of a simple switchover that would only take a decade or so to implement. Plus, such a changeover would be sucking 100 million metric tons of carbon out of the air every year, even when we eventually produce much less--meaning the percentage would then be much greater than 2%.

Here are the comments I mentioned.  The first quotes and comments on someone who is using our cover crop system during a drought. The second is a reaction to the first.

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Handypants2
"...his yields were near the normal season average while other farmers saw yields drop 50 percent—or lost their crop entirely."

That has to be a major consideration and makes it all worth it.


DavidD  -->  Handypants2
I can see aspects of federal crop insurance hindering these methods if you are willing to mine the soil for a quick return and have Uncle Sugar pick up the tab if your gamble fails.
If the Feds said no crop insurance unless you adopt these methods then I think you would be right,it would be a major consideration and make it all work.

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Note: the Mother Jones article I reference originally appeared in 2013, and was republished this week.  It's age is betrayed by the use of the term "one weird trick", which I now realize I no longer see on the internet.