October 11, 2024

Farms with mix of arable crops and livestock can better store carbon in soil, research found

Research by the Soil Association Exchange (SAE) shows that farms with a mixture of arable crops and livestock have about a third more carbon stored within their soil than those with only arable crops, thanks to the animals' manure.

This also has an effect on biodiversity: mixed arable and livestock farms support about 28 grassland plant species in every field, compared with 25 for arable-only and 22 for dairy-only.

Joseph Gridley, chief executive of SAE, which was set up by the Soil Association in 2021 to support and measure sustainable farming, said it was unlikely that carbon captured in soil would balance out the enormous amounts of methane created by cattle.

"It's pretty unequivocal in the data that having livestock on your farm does mean you have more emissions – five or six times more emissions," he said. "But if you integrate livestock into the system, on every metric on soil health, there's an improvement, and on a lot of the biodiversity measures as well."

Lee Reeves, UK head of agriculture at Lloyds bank, which helps fund SAE, said that the research showed farmers were taking steps to improve sustainability if they could see a direct link between a grant and a new farming practice.

He suggested government officials should create a decarbonisation strategy, and a standardised carbon calculator, so that farmers and other businesses could use a single tool to calculate their carbon impacts.

"Moving from traditional to regenerative farming can see a dip in profitability for the first five years, so the government needs to support farmers and banks in that," he said.

- The Guardian