Cultivating a greener future – toward sustainable use of biomass for carbon sequestration

The GFFA expert panel “Cultivating a greener future – toward sustainable use of biomass for carbon sequestration” on 16th January 2025 has been organized as part of the project “Alliance for the Climate – Dialogue on Climate and Agriculture between New Zealand and Germany (Agri-DENZ)”. It focused on best practices to boost and retain carbon (C) sequestered in soils and biomass in Europe, West Africa, New Zealand and Uruguay.
All speakers pointed out that there is potential to contribute to climate change mitigation through C accrual in soils and agricultural biomass in their regions, e.g. in Europe in the magnitude of 20% of the actual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture. However, C loss mitigation needs to be considered as a precondition for C sequestration, especially in Europe, New Zealand and Uruguay.
Regarding best practices, Prof. Dr. Axel Don (Thünen Institute, Germany) highlighted the importance of measures in Europe that have multiple synergies with C sequestration, such as more roots for main crops, biochar, hedges and agroforestry. In the case of West Africa, Prof. Dr. Vincent Logah (Kwame Nkrumah University of Science & Technology, Ghana) presented on the African Dark Earth phenomenon and indigenous practices, and highlighted no till and cover cropping. Dr. Sam McNally (Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research, New Zealand) and Dr. Virginia Pravia (National Agricultural Research Institute, Uruguay) focused on practices for grassland soils in New Zealand and Uruguay, respectively. In New Zealand full inversion tillage shows a high potential but currently the integration of trees is more favorable. In Uruguay, important measures are no tillage and integrated livestock-agricultural systems to prevent soil C losses from grassland converted to cropland, and the governmental policy of soil use and management plans.
All speakers agreed that options to boost the uptake of measures that increase soil C accrual are (1) to communicate the related co-benefits on improved soil fertility and yields, (2) a stronger cooperation between policy makers, researchers and farmers, (3) more data to improve scientific models for evidence-based policy advise to be better able to account for C and GHG effects of different agricultural measures and finally to design effective policy frameworks.