Sequestering Carbon
Russon Family Farm’s has a strong commitment to helping to reverse climate change. This involves implementing regenerative agriculture practices that take carbon out of the air and sequester it in the soil.
In order to determine the amount of carbon that it is able to sequester Russon Family Farms is partnering with The Soil Inventory Project (TSIP).
TSIP is a neutral, science-led nonprofit, that was co-founded by former Vice President Al Gore. It just received funding from the USDA for a program to help farmers to run field research to link soil carbon outcomes with land management.
Russon Family Farms is Beta testing a mobile app on which TSIP has uploaded a sampling design. With these tools, RFF is collecting soil samples to establish a carbon baseline.
Future soil testing will enable RFF to attribute changes in the baseline to its regenerative agricultural practices.
For example, RFF is taking 30 acres of degraded farmland out of production and planting native grasses and flowers through USDA’s CREP program.
RFF wants to see how long it takes to repair the soil. It also wants to see if its actively managed permaculture operation can sequester more carbon than the set aside acres.
