UC Davis Magazine Interviews Director Houlton on Carbon Farming
Quick Summary
- Read Director Ben Houtlton's take on how we can slow global warming through carbon farming, which is a way for farmers to store carbon in their soil with real benefits for both our food supply and also our climate.
By Ashley Han
“Agriculture might just be the single most important industry on the planet for creating negative carbon emissions under current economic policy,” said Professor Benjamin Houlton, director of the John Muir Institute of the Environment and champion of the One Climate Initiative.
Houlton said carbon farming is the key to help solve climate change. His mission is to counteract a simple, startling fact: A single carbon dioxide molecule remains in the atmosphere for more than 100 years, locking us into climate change in the future.
“Farmers and ranchers can capture carbon and store it in the soil,” Houlton said. “They can create negative emissions, which means the amount of greenhouse gases that are going into the air from their industry is lower than the amount that they’re drawing out of the air.”