Is monocropping carbon the answer to climate change?

Monocropping is the agricultural practice of growing a single crop year after year on the same land. The number of acres committed to monocropping today accounts for almost 50% of US agricultural production. The case for monocropping is simple: economies of scale. Essentially, farmers grow the same crop each year or rotate among one or two to minimize the cost of inputs, equipment, and labor by streamlining production needs.

There’s no doubt that monocropping advanced agriculture technologies and output. Growing a few crops across millions of acres opened the door for innovations in agriculture that increased productivity per acre. The agricultural sector saw major advancements in specialized equipment and precision agriculture. And, as cloud computing became available and more and more farm data was captured, there was a rapid acceleration of data science applied to agriculture. Farming organizations could access insights across thousands of acres with the tap of a finger. Limited crop diversity and the investment in specialization led to the desired outcome — higher yields and profits per acre.

The case for monocropping has been: with a global population that is expected to reach 10 billion people before 2050, we need to ensure we can meet the food production demands of the future. And we need to do it using the same amount or fewer resources, thus requiring a need for specialization to improve yield. Over time many in agribusiness have concurred that to maximize yield per acre advanced seed technology and precision farming techniques combined with controlling crop diversity are required to tap into economies of scale, resulting in an optimal profit outcome for the producer.

The challenges of monocropping

Those that oppose monocropping argue the long-term impact of planting the same crops in the same soil year over year destroys soil health and biodiversity, often leading to rapid nutrient depletion and consistent soil degradation. Large scale industrial agriculture often relies heavily on pesticides and fertilizers, practices that have had a direct impact on soil health, accelerating erosion, and runoff of chemicals into our water tables. This has resulted in disastrous outcomes like the ‘Dead Zone’ in the Gulf of Mexico — an area that is choked of oxygen due to algae blooms that feed off the chemical runoff, making it almost impossible for marine life to survive.

With the persistence of farming techniques that rely heavily on chemical usage and fertilizers to provide nutrients to monocropped land or even land that practices limited crop rotation between corn and soybeans or wheat, we are on pace to run-out of topsoil in 60 years. Looking at this another way, we’re losing some 30 soccer fields of soil every minute due to intensive farming, says Volkert Engelsman from the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movement. If we run out of topsoil, growing crops from our land will be almost impossible.

It’s clear that soil health is struggling and that farmers around the world are struggling to profit. Farmers account for the largest demographic likely to die by suicide each year. The industrial agriculture practices we have invested in over the past 50 years do not support the average farmer. Clearly, something is wrong with the economics of farming.

Relying solely on yield-based outcomes is destroying American farmland. If producers haven’t felt an impact yet, they likely will. According to USDA pre-pandemic data, farmers are losing money with the 2020 medium farm household income at a loss of-$1,840. If the farming model does not change, the average farmer is likely to go out of business.

Why not monocrop carbon?

Agriculture, responsible for 10% of carbon emissions, has a huge ability to be a net beneficiary to pull carbon out of the atmosphere into the soil, essentially farm carbon (also referred to as carbon sequestration). If increasing carbon in our soil became the focus of every farmer, we may just be able to use modern agriculture to positively impact soil health, improve biodiversity, increase nutrients in our food and impact climate change. ‘Climate Positive Farming’ embodies these changes in agriculture practices. With climate positive farming, not only does carbon get captured from the air by regenerative farming techniques, but the productivity of soil and crops on the farm goes up.

So why are we not farming this way yet? To transition to a system where carbon is marketed we need to align on its value and price. Unfortunately, a mature global financial market to incentivize this system does not yet exist. To achieve similar adoption and growth that the corn and soybean market experienced, we need a market where all stakeholders understand the input:output exchange. A market where farmers can profit. We know this playbook. It’s how we excelled at monocropping to begin with.

What will it take?

To activate a carbon market we’ll likely need a combination of public and private partnerships to value carbon, alongside incentives to pay farmers to adopt conservation measures or transition to regenerative practices. Policies that go beyond yield to support a market that incentivizes better outcomes — a combination of production, carbon sequestration, soil health vitality, and a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions — will create a formal, global market for a new breed of ‘crop’ — carbon.

Now is the time to double-down. It’s going to take significant collaboration across the public and private sector to structure and bring to life a carbon market based on soil sequestered carbon credits that are well understood by all stakeholders, farmers, investors, the public, and monitored by an international compliance agency.

American agriculture has another chapter — a climate positive one. What could it look like? I see a market that demands traceability and reduced chemical use in exchange for a premium price. To get there, it will require the convergence of the right innovations, better policy, a marketplace to connect stakeholders and, most importantly, farmers who are willing to embrace change, move beyond the status quo, and adopt new land management practices. If you believe that these systematic changes are important and are the future, there is no better time than now to plan and act. You’ll be well-positioned in the future food economy that rewards farmers who capture carbon and grow a premium product.