Vermont Vox Populi
A Conversation With Farmer Abe Collins

John Ford and Jim Hogue interviewed Abe Collins on Jim's radio program on WGDR radio in Plainfield.

CAT: Tell us about your farm operation in St. Albans.

I farm with my family here in St. Albans. We share-milk on Teddy Yandow's farm. We are an all-grass, organic dairy – one of a growing handful of dairies in the United States doing no-grain dairying. We have created a new company, Carbon Farmers of America, to advance the idea that soil building can reverse climate change, and that the planned grazing of livestock on perennial grasslands is the single most-effective way to rapidly create new topsoil. On our dairy farm, we are using a number of methods in addition to planned grazing that allow us to build topsoil even faster by pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and putting it back into the soil as various forms of organic matter.

CAT. How does this connect to global warming?

The quickest way to explain what we are proposing is this: If society chooses to pay farmers $25 dollars per ton of carbon dioxide transformed into soil organic matter, then we humans can reduce atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases to pre-industrial levels within a decade. We will also eliminate most water-quality problems and biosecurity issues, we will restore economic prosperity to our rural communities, and we will not have a farm- viability crisis on our hands any more.

Since Al Gore's film has come out, the literacy rate on climate change has gone up a few clicks. We have too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – the number-one greenhouse gas. People tend to assume that the problem of global warming began when we started burning fossil fuels, and there is no doubt that the burning of fossilized carbon and putting it into the atmosphere is a tremendous contributor to increasing the greenhouse effect to dangerous levels.

In addition, we have to remember that photosynthesis by plants and the decay of biomass into soil organic matter is the primary link in the functioning of the global carbon cycle. To the extent that land is desertified, or agricultural lands have bare soil not covered by living and decaying plants, then the carbon cycle is broken, and annual emissions of carbon dioxide from decaying biomass and burning of fossil fuels can't help but be in excess of the normal fixing of carbon in soils through photosynthesis and decay.

So climate change must be understood primarily as a symptom of biodiversity loss and desertification – the carbon cycle is broken, and climate change can't be truly addressed until we cover bare ground with plants and “fix” the carbon cycle. Again, the planned grazing of livestock on grasslands is the single most effective way to do this, and without the massive inputs of machinery, fuels, and chemicals.

The carbon cycle, which is really the cycle of life, describes the conversion of carbon dioxide through photosynthesis into plants and then on through the food web, into the soil or geological storage, and back into the atmosphere. The question that comes up is: had the carbon cycle been disrupted even before the industrial revolution?

If we look at the work of Allan Savory, the African scientist who developed Holistic Management, he has shown very clearly that the carbon cycle was disrupted many thousands of years ago when the large herds of hoofed animals that roamed the world's grasslands were killed off or reduced, and their role in cycling carbon was replaced by burning. These large herds of animals played a crucial role in maintaining the carbon cycle through these grasslands, which comprise about two-thirds of the earth's land area. At that point, the carbon cycle ceased to function and global warming began.

In sum, the problem of Global Warming needs to be looked at in a larger ecological context. That bigger picture relates to what is going on with the carbon cycle and the ecological cycles and flows of energy on earth. And these are all tied together: The water cycle, and the mineral cycle which includes the carbon cycle, biological community dynamics, and the flow of sunlight and energy through photosynthesis into the rest of the food chain. In a nutshell, climate change, biodiversity loss and desertification are all one issue, and need to be addressed as such to realize success in any area. The planned grazing of livestock on perennial grasslands is the single most powerful tool we have to restore ecosystem health and functioning to our agricultural lands.

CAT: So you are talking about this idea of Gaia and this very complex web of life and the relationships that compose this bigger picture.

I am a big fan of James Lovelock's work and the Gaia theory that says the earth is a single homeostatic self-regulating organism where life essentially manufactures, on a daily basis, the atmosphere….the marriage of earth and sky. Interestingly, Lovelock doesn't seem to understand yet this critical issue of soil building. There is this prevailing idea that soil can only form very slowly, taking a thousand years to build an inch of topsoil. Through Keyline soil building, developed by P.A. Yeomans in Australia, and other methods that we are currently using, we can build topsoil very quickly. And soil fertility is the key to everything. Essentially, human agriculture has destroyed an enormous quantity of organic matter over the last thousands of years and especially industrialized agriculture in the last 50 years at an accelerated rate. The soil organic matter lost and its conversion into carbon dioxide is perhaps an equal contributor to the burning of fossil fuels to climate change.

Jim Hogue: What can the average citizen do to effect the kind of soil building that you are talking about?

Everyday people can have can have a tremendous impact on carbon emissions and carbon sequestration in soil. The key to doing this on any sort of meaningful scale is the planned grazing of livestock on perennial grasslands. So the first thing that we can do is to start eating the food grown by grass farmers. We can support these farmers by buying their products, which in turn stimulates the local economies. We can support them through our purchase of “Carbon Sinks,” the Carbon Farmers of America-version of carbon credits, to offset our personal, family, or business carbon dioxide emissions.

John Ford: Your organization is also developing a new food label to certify foods produced by Carbon Farmers of America.

We are offering our farmers an opportunity to market their product through the Carbon Farmers of America website and in our publications. When people buy a food product that is affixed with a label indicating Carbon Farmers of America Certified, this ensures people that the food they are eating is not only perfectly nutritious, but is also reversing global warming by fixing carbon dioxide in stable soil organic matter.

JF: Tell us about carbon offsets and Carbon Sinks and how what you are proposing to do is different from what people may have heard about these.

The global carbon trading market and carbon credits began with the Kyoto treaty. The U.S. and Australia are the only large rich countries that are not signatories. So when that treaty was signed a number of countries agreed to start imposing regulations that would incrementally cap carbon emissions at lower and lower levels. And if a certain company emits more than that, they are forced to buy carbon credits from another entity that has emitted less than the new cap – that, or they purchase offsets from a renewable energy project, or some form of land management that captures carbon in biomass.

The challenge with carbon credits, as they stand now is that the caps set under the Kyoto treaty bear little relevance in terms of the ecological imperatives in front of us. Right now we are at 390 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We really should be at around 275 ppm to be safe. Under Kyoto, aiming for reductions in emissions of 10 percent below 1990 levels and variations on that, has nothing to do with real ecology. So in a sense, polluting entities are given a very slight disincentive, or are financially rewarded for polluting slightly less. This amounts to a permit to pollute.

It is likely that carbon tax schemes will be much more effective than carbon credits. That is, all fossil fuels, industrial emissions and land management that results in emissions of greenhouse gases are taxed. These taxes would disincentivize fossil fuel use. The revenue stream would be used to replace taxes on selected income, property and sales taxes, and also to reward land management that captures carbon in topsoil and biomass.

A “Carbon Sink” is our version of a carbon offset that represents one ton of carbon dioxide that has been converted into just over half a ton of organic matter in the soil by a farmer. What we are talking about with Carbon Sinks is that we need to look at the whole picture. What would be the best fulcrum we could choose that will have the largest effect, not just in terms of climate, but in terms of the overall health of the earth and ecological cycles? Well, that is topsoil. And topsoil is defined by organic matter. Sub soil is pretty much biologically inert mineral matter. As soon as you add life and resulting organic matter to subsoil, then subsoil becomes topsoil and everything falls into place. Your water cycle starts functioning because organic matter, and especially humus in the soil, cleans and purifies the water where it falls, and holds it. So the water cycle falls into place. Food security falls into place because humus-rich soil produces incredibly nutritious food with all the micronutrients available. And economic prosperity falls into place because economics has to be understood, in my view, as entirely based on photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is where all the energy comes from that fuels everything.

Creating new topsoil means that where there used to be bare land, eroding farmland or deserts, now there is topsoil, and green grass grows, streams and rivers flow, and biodiversity in general is doing its work of cycling minerals and water and harvesting solar energy. I believe that biodiversity is the foundation for prosperity and security in human society. When we talk about biodiversity, we are talking about diversity between species, within species, in age structure, and total biomass present. That biodiversity is really what captures sunlight and puts it into the food chain. We are talking about creating true biological capital here. The Carbon Sinks that we are marketing represent not just offsetting carbon emissions, but realigning our lives, our agriculture and our economics in a holistic way that fits into the economy of nature.

JF: When someone goes to your web site and they purchase soil carbon futures, tell us where the money from that purchase is going.

We are marketing Carbon Sinks to businesses and to the public, priced at $25 per ton. For every ton of carbon dioxide that a farmer transforms into just over half a ton of organic matter, which can be measured accurately in their fields, the farmer will be paid $19. One dollar is going to go for administration for the company. The other $5 will go toward equipping and training new carbon farmers. A priority for us is to create what in effect will be both a training program and a bank for new young grass farmers to get started. We want to build an army of young graziers who are going to create this topsoil we need so desperately. This will give an enormous opportunity for young people to get into a really meaningful livelihood and do a lot of good, and be able to make money doing it.

We are offering soil carbon future packages, the size of which will depend on the amount of carbon dioxide emissions from an individual or a company. The average American is responsible every year for almost 24 tons of carbon dioxide emission. Your car can emit from three to 10 tons, and even more from an SUV. So any environmentally awake person or business can look at their greenhouse gas emissions, figure out how to absolutely minimize those emissions through conservation and so on, and offset the balance by paying Carbon Farmers to build new topsoil.

We have to remove the extra carbon dioxide we have already loaded into the atmosphere, and topsoil formation represents the only viable, fast way to do that.
We think of soil-building as the ultimate environmentalism. Purchasing carbon sinks ties you into our company, and keep you updated on our work and accomplishments. If you are a business, you will be able to point out to your customers that you are acting to reverse global warming by investing in soilbuilding Carbon Farmers. However, purchasing carbon sink is not going to actually put a few tons of topsoil in the bed of your pickup truck. Instead, it represents an investment in the topsoil which is the source of all human wealth, as well long-term climatic stability.

We will also be doing research that has not been done by the universities, because most university soil scientists are operating from outdated assumptions. Most (not all!) researchers at land grant universities will tell you it takes 500 or 1,000 years to build an inch of top soil. We are saying that the holistic planned grazing of livestock on perennial grasslands is enabling ranchers and farmers to turn deserts and degraded land into very healthy land. Keyline is an incredible innovation that allows us to build topsoil very quickly by aerating grasslands and systematically designing farm landscapes according to the water shapes of the land.
So this is a research project. We will be compiling all the data from all the farmers gathered each year and publishing the research and results of our work, which we feel will result in some of the most important research in the world… how everyday farmers, everywhere, can rapidly recreate the soil fertility humanity has been destroying for thousands of years.

JF: You have spoken before about making farms the center of our communities again, and I think that part of the idea with this is to get people out on the farms.

If we start thinking about food as sort of a doorway back to living in a more cooperative way on earth, we need to think about getting involved with our food and knowing where it came from – probably even helping out on the farms every now and then that we are buying our food from. Another example of people getting involved is the raw milk movement. Food buying clubs are another way that people in towns and cities organize themselves into 10 or 20 or more families, and make very large purchases from farms. It frees the farmers up from doing so much marketing and really builds on this relationship. That can tie people back to the food and the land and give farmers a sense of community and self-worth, which is pretty important these days when they are such a small and even forgotten portion of the population. For the most part, farmers tend to be not very well off these days. It can be lonely too, because there is not a lot of gratitude for farmers because people think the economy floats on air, and dot.com bubbles are what make the world go round.

So I think there are a lot of positive developments in these areas that are happening to make a sane and secure food system. Carbon Farming opens a door to environmental and climatic renewal, where every meal becomes a sacrament and our primary environmental activism.

For further information go to our web site: www.carbonfarmersofamerica.com. Or call CFA at 802- 524-0707.