Holistic Management and Climate Change
Climate Change is the most urgent and important problem of humanity and the planet; and this problem is growing exponentially every day.
We have already exceeded the limit of “350 carbon dioxide equivalent greenhouse gas particles per million – 350 ppm in the atmosphere” (www.350.org), which is the “pre-disaster upper limit” agreed upon by scientists, and we have exceeded 400 ppm. Since this is a process whose effect comes later, it is known that the difficulties we are experiencing at the moment will be a drop in the ocean compared to the increasing chains of disasters in the next 20 years.
It is very, very difficult to say that countries and political leaders gave a good test in the face of this pessimistic picture – although the CO2 levels in the atmosphere, which must be reduced to 350 ppm quickly, have reached 400, the fossil fuel-based energy, food, industry and transportation sectors continue to grow. . Many activists, scientists, artists and citizens in Turkey and around the world carry out awareness activities against Climate Change, put pressure on decision makers and organize campaigns. As Anatolian Grasslands, we support all these efforts with respect and gratitude.
On the other hand, the gigantic and concrete solution possibilities offered by Regenerative Agriculture and Holistic Management to combat Climate Change in the dimensions of mitigation and adaptation are still suprisingly not known exactly.
Carbon in the atmosphere, which is the main cause of Climate Change caused by human activities, is in a cycle between the sinks on and inside the planet. These sinks are, in order of size, the oceans, fossil fuel reserves, soil, atmosphere and all living things on the surface.
The upper-soil layer under our feet, varying in depth from 20 cm to 100 cm, is actually a gigantic carbon sink. Moreover, it is an extremely "hungry" sink.
Let's ask a clear question and make a simple calculation: If we had a magic wand and increased the organic matter content of soil in only 10% (1.5 billion hectares) of the earth's land area by only 0.1% within 1 meter of soil, how much carbon dioxide would we have removed from the atmosphere?
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Mass of one cubic meter of soil (average): 1.3 tons
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0.1% of soil mass per cubic meter (organic matter increase): 1.3 kg (So, increasing the amount of organic matter by 0.1% will mean producing 1.3 kg of organic matter per square meter)
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Organic matter increase per hectare (10,000 m2) = 1.3kg x 10,000 = 13 tons
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Organic matter increase in 5 billion hectares = 13 tons x 1.5 billion =19.5 Gigatons
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An average of 55% of organic matter consists of carbon atoms. So, 19.5 Gigatons of organic matter = 10.7 Gigatons of carbon
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The atomic weight of carbon is 6 and that of oxygen is 8. That is, the atomic weight (22) of the CO2 (carbon dioxide) molecule is 3.66 times the atomic weight of carbon.
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So for you to "sequester" 10.7 Gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere, you would have to "take" 10.7 Gt x 3.66 = 39 Gt of CO2 from the atmosphere.
Result: Increasing the organic matter content of the soil in 10% of the terrestrial areas of the world by 0.1% means removing nearly 40 Gt of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. 40 Gt corresponds to approximately 120% of the annual carbon dioxide emissions of all humanity as of 2015.
Regenerative Agriculture, and especially Holistic Management, is the “magic wand” in question; it is also possible to carry out this “carbon sequestration” process every year and at higher rates. According to the results of the official soil analysis, which Anatolian Grasslands took from the Application Land and had the Çanakkale Provincial Directorate of Agriculture commissioned, we have ensured that approximately 10 tons of carbon dioxide per decare is “sequestered” in the soil as organic matter in just 12 months, without any additional work such as irrigation, seeding or composting. . We increased the organic matter in 90 cm of the soil by 0.4% on average.
With this result on our 200-decare Application Land, we removed 2000 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in total, that is, we "zeroed" the annual greenhouse gas emissions of 330 individuals in Turkey.