Today is Thursday, February 22, 2024.
This was the title of an article in Jornal da USP, published on November 27, 2023.
In fact, the article begins by citing another article published in the magazine Green and Low-Carbon Economy by the Center for Research and Innovation in Greenhouse Gases (RCGI), based at the Polytechnic School (Poli) of the University of São Paulo (USP). This is the article "Carbon Farming: Nature-Based Solutions in Brazil".
On the topic of hydrogen, we have already posted several times about RCGI, an Engineering Research Center constituted by the São Paulo State Research Support Foundation (Fapesp) and Shell. Toyota joined more recently.
But today the RCGI's theme is agriculture, a joint effort with the Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture (Esalq), at USP, in Piracicaba, within the Nature Based Solutions (NBS) program.
Danielle Mendes Thame Denny, researcher at the Department of Soil Science at Esalq, and first author of the article, comments that together with RCGI researchers spread across Brazil “we carried out participatory research with NBS members to find out from them the results they had to date and the perspectives regarding these results".
The general conclusion is that “it would be necessary to move from conventional systems based on monoculture to integrated systems, which involve more than one component (annual crops, animals and/or trees) in the same area, which provide various ecological services, including sequestration of carbon". And thus avoid the more than 600 million tons of GHGs in Brazil that come from fermentation, rice cultivation, animal waste management, the burning of agricultural waste and inappropriately managed soils.
Integrated systems between crops, livestock and forestry; direct planting; cover crops, use of organic waste; biological pest control; and fertigation are some of the proposed sustainable techniques that could lead farms to sell, in addition to their agricultural production, “carbon credits”.
The researchers also cite examples of how to create economic value for sustainable agriculture, basically through financial instruments.
Click at the image below for the full article written by the RCGI Communications Office, edited by Júlio Bernardes and art by Simone Gomes.
