Farmers prospect: how does C farming affect crop production, and farm biodiversity and profitability?

It has often been said that carbon farming is at odds with crop and pasture productivity. However, many innovative farmers have taken the plunge of modifying their management strategies to embrace sustainability by sequestering carbon in soils and vegetation. Changes from intensive to sustainable agriculture can be more or less far-reaching, and ranges from adopting single practices (e. g. tillage reduction/elimination, cover crops) or combinations of several of them to modifying drastically the economics, organization structure and social ethics at a scale that exceeds that of the farm.    

We propose a session dedicated to farmers’ view of this debate. We will invite farmers and farmer associations compromised with C farming at different levels to explain their experience with farm productivity and profitability and with conserving or enhancing environmental services in their farms.  

A call for pitches will be previously open, and some selected short pitches and a brief explanation of the conclusions reached within CREDIBLE Focus Group 1.3. on “How to avoid threat to food production and biodiversity and support positive synergies” will precede an exchange of views between farmers, academics and technicians in small groups.  

Some topics to be discussed are 

(a) in which direction science and technology should progress to support farmers in optimizing global environmental and monetary benefits while adopting C farming strategies, 

(b) what kind of partnerships are needed to optimize the benefits of carbon farming for farmers and which stakeholders should be involved? 

(c) which realistic indicators can be proposed to evaluate success in carbon farming adoption at the farm scale?  

The session will close by sharing the conclusions reached by all debate groups.