To implement sound policy and pursue effective legal strategies, decisionmakers and advocates must become familiar with the climate-friendly agricultural practices that constitute carbon farming.1

To that end, this chapter briefly reviews the tools and technologies available to reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and to sequester carbon.² The chapter begins by summarizing the practices and technologies applicable to cropland, before considering those available for grazing lands, animal feeding operations (AFOs), and on-farm fuel combustion and electricity.³ It concludes by discussing several factors that make it difficult to achieve maximum decarbonization in the sector, including scientific uncertainties, the need to balance climate benefits against other environmental concerns, and the practical challenges of implementing carbon farming on a national scale.

As can be seen in Table 1, there are many practices and systems that have great potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase carbon sequestration. Similarly, Figure 1 on page 65, reflecting an independent analysis that also quantified the adaptation or resilience benefit of a range of practices, comes to largely the same conclusion. That the climate-mitigation potential of these practices is so robustly demonstrated underscores the value of the policy changes we discuss in Chapters V-IX.

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