BY WOODY REHANEK, CAMPAIGN FOR REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE

“If compost were added to 5% of California’s rangelands, UC Berkeley bio-geochemist Silver calculates, those 3.2 million acres could eliminate 7.6 million tons of carbon emissions over a three-year period, equal to taking about 2 million cars off the road annually.” – Erik Neumann, “Science Has Found a Brilliant New Use for Your Kitchen Scraps,” Mother Jones,March 2, 2016

This gets a little wonky, but for me, metrics are where climate change and healthy soils converge. Our Santa Cruz and Watsonville Climate Action Plans, as well as the county’s, mention organic/regenerative carbon sequestration in the same breath as tree planting, but there are no details and no metrics. We could be using Comet Planner’s Healthy Soils computer program–developed by USDA and NRCS—to estimate carbon sequestration by various climate smart farming practices, such as compost application, hedgerow planting, cover cropping, mulching, reduced tilling, conservation crop rotation, grassed waterways, etc. 

The Comet Planner gives estimates in metric tons per acre per year for each practice. For example, in 2023 Santa Cruz County had 8,000 organic acres. The fundamental first step for transitioning to organics, other than ending the application of toxic chemicals, is to apply compost in order to revitalize soil and inoculate it with carbon-sequestering microbes. Comet Planner estimates that an application of quality compost results in average carbon storage of 4 metric tons per acre per yr. 8,000 x 4 = 32,000 metric tons of stored carbon, per year, for 3 years or more. These metrics could, and should, be factored into all climate action plans.

The more climate-smart on-the-ground practices applied, the more carbon is sequestered. For example, a mixed legume cover crop planted on 2,819 acres of county apples, wine grapes, and miscellaneous fruit orchards, calculates at 1.6 metric tons CO2 per acre per year, or 4,510 metric tons per year. And so on. The Comet Planner is grouped into Annual Cropland, Orchards and Vineyards, and Ranchland. Each category lists carbon sequestering practices and calculates C02 storage in metric tons per acre per year.

At the extreme wish list end of things, if all 64,000 acres of Santa Cruz County’s farm and ranchland went organic at the wave of a magic wand, one compost application per acre would result in estimated 264,000 metric ton per year C02 storage for 1-3 years. To put that in perspective, Watsonville’s Climate Action Plan estimates that the city in 2030 will be 100,000 metric tons short of carbon neutrality.

Our county could follow Santa Clara County’s lead in quantifying carbon storage in healthy soils, where, Rep. Zoe Lofgren earmarked $750,000 of federal money for Santa Clara County’s Agricultural Resilience Incentive (ARI) program. It funds specific “agricultural management practices that help sequester atmospheric carbon and improve soil health, water retention, and irrigation efficiency, which would benefit regional ecosystems, ag operations, and the public at large. The first round of funded projects is expected to span 3,700 acres and capture between 1,860 and 2,400 metric tons of atmospheric carbon per year, equivalent to reducing annual vehicle miles traveled by 6,282,995 miles or swapping out 94,753 incandescent light bulbs to LEDs every year.” — Pajaronian, 1-23

The grants, up to $30,000, are aimed at small farms. The application process is only 2 pages long, and the deadline in Santa Clara County is May 31. Farmers and ranchers can request funds for multiple practices, with a total cap of $30,000 per farm or ranch.

Last November, Campaign for Organic and Regenerative Agriculture, CORA, met with our county’s Commission on the Environment. The Commission voted unanimously to send a letter to our County Office of Response, Recovery and Resilience [OR3], asking them to contact Santa Clara County in order to move forward with our own version of their Agricultural Resilience Incentive program. CORA has also contacted Rep. Zoe Lofgren in order to funnel federal funds into such a program.

Adelante! Action Items: Contact Zoe Lofgren’s Salinas Office at 831.867.6000 to request federal funding for an Ag Resilience Incentive program in Santa Cruz County, similar to the program in Santa Clara County because such a program promotes healthy, climate-smart, carbon sequestering soil. Or email: BoardOfSupervisors@santacruzcountyca.gov