Carbon neutral farm

Authors • Rene Van Acker Professor and Dean of The Ontario Agricultural College, University of Guelph • Evan Fraser Director of the Arrell Food Institute and Professor in the Dept. of Geography, Environment and Geomatics, University of Guelph • Lenore Newman Canada Research Chair, Food Security and the Environment, University of The Fraser Valley Disclosure statement Rene Van Acker receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Agri-Food Alliance. He is affiliated with The Deans Council, Agriculture, Food and Veterinary Medicine. Evan Fraser consults with a range of vertical farming companies and initiatives including the Weston Family Foundation's Home Grown Innovation Challenge and Cubic Farms. He receives funding from a range of governmental and philanthropic sources including the Canada First Research Excellence Fund, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Arrell Family Foundation. He is affiliated with the Canadian Food Policy Advisory Council, Protein Industries Canada, Genome Quebec, and the Maple Leaf Centre for Action on Food Security. Lenore Newman receives funding from SSHRC and Future Skills Centre Canada. She is chair of the Science Advisory Board for Cubic Farms. Partners The Conversation UK receives funding from these organisations View the full list Languages • • English Globally, about Agriculture is also Several technologies are already available ...

It’s no secret U.S. rice farmers are struggling, trying to maintain or increase yields while keeping production costs as low as possible until higher prices arrive at some point in the, hopefully, not-too-distant future. That’s one reason why a new program that would provide growers with financial incentives to grow rice that could earn the designation of “carbon neutral” has begun attracting attention across the southern U.S. Rice Belt, AgriCapture, a Nashville, Tenn.-based entity providing technology and data-driven solutions to climate change, is working with rice farmers on more than 20,000 acres spread across Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, and Texas to help them implement regenerative practices to produce Carbon-Neutral Rice. The program is expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 100,000 tons annually, beginning in 2022. (Conventional rice farming practices worldwide emit 2.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year, according to McKinsey & Company’s “Agriculture and Climate Change” report. That’s the equivalent of burning 1 billion tons of coal.) “We want to build consumer awareness of the difference between purchasing Carbon-Neutral Rice with zero GHG emissions and rice that contributes to climate change with a massive carbon footprint,” said Sami Osman, president of AgriCapture. Carbon dioxide emissions result from burning rice stubble, which also releases methane and nitrous oxide emissions. Similarly, flooding rice fields for extended periods r...