This winter HMI Certified Educator Blain Hjertaas participated in a panel presentation with Darrin Qualmin on “The End of High Input, High Cost, High Emission Agriculture (?)” at the Prairie Organics Conference in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada. In his portion of the presentation, Blain shared the amount of CO2 he has been able to sequester and the value of that ecosystem service.

The research on Blain’s farm in Saskatchewan shows that in 2011 he had 221.07 tons of carbon/hectare. In 2014 he had 239.61 tons of carbon/hectare or an increase of 6.19 tons of carbon/hectare per year. That is the equivalent of 22.88 tons of CO2 sequestered/hectare per year.

The average Canadian’s emissions are 18.9 tons of CO2/year. Alberta is currently taxing at $30/ton of CO2. Using that value, the amount of CO2 Blain is sequestering in his soil is worth $274/acre/year. As Blain points out, if farmers were being paid for the carbon they were sequestering we could address the issue of excess CO2 in the atmosphere rapidly.

Read my previous blog on the Science Supporting Holistic Management® to learn more about the research showing the results of effective grazing and farming practices on increasing soil carbon.

Visit our Addressing Climate Change page to learn more about how Holistic Management helps with agricultural carbon sequestration.

To tell your carbon sequestration story, join our Community Map.

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