Dr. Jane Zelikova is Carbon180's Chief Scientist, and she is one of the contributors of their latest report, "Leading with Soil: Scaling Soil Carbon Storage in Agriculture". Which sorts of policy changes may be necessary to make carbon farming the dominant paradigm of agriculture? Jane shares her expertise on the topic.
"Leading with Soil: Scaling Soil Carbon Storage in Agriculture", a report by Cabron180
"Why is soil carbon measurement so tricky?—w/ Dr. Jane Zelikova of Carbon180", Jane's appearance on Reversing Climate Change
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: [Nori promotion cut from the transcript. It’s still in the audio, but it no longer applies.]
Hello and welcome to Carbon Removal Newsroom. I’m Ross Kenyon. I am the lead strategist with the Nori Carbon Removal Marketplace. Today I have with me Dr. Jane Zelikova, Chief Scientist at Carbon 180. Thank you for being here, Jane.
Jane Zelikova: Thanks for inviting me back.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, you were on reversing climate change not long ago and you keep putting out stuff that is worthy of coming back on. So thanks for all your hard work.
Jane Zelikova: Yeah, and I guess now I have another reason to keep putting out more stuff. So I keep getting invited back. This is good. It’s good reward structure.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, that’s totally designed and my intention. Yeah, well, I saw this report come out that Carbon 180 did called Leading with Soil, Scaling Soil Carbon Storage in Agriculture. So you had to know that was going to catch our eye, right?
Jane Zelikova: Yeah, we had a feeling.
Ross Kenyon: You had a feeling. Yeah, it’s a great, I think it’s a very well-organized document. If you’re coming in fresh into the space and you’re wondering what exists and what should exist for policy for soil carbon, I think it’s a very nice way to start wrapping your head around it. I was thinking maybe we could just work through this and try to figure out where you think the opportunities are on the policy level. Does that sound good?
Jane Zelikova: That sounds great. Happy to do that.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, well, I guess this makes it easy for us. At the very beginning, there’s an executive summary section. So maybe we should just sum up what’s happening here and what’s the goal of the document?
Jane Zelikova: Yeah, I love executive summaries. And to be very honest, rarely do I make it through a whole report, but I did make it through this one, which is probably good because I wrote a lot of it. But in the executive summary... Essentially, we lay out the reason why it’s important to lead with soil. So we kind of start by framing the problem, which is agricultural practices that build healthy carbon-rich soils are, we know what they are, but they’re not being implemented at a large scale in the U. S. And we know that there’s some opportunity.
There have been studies in National Academy of Sciences also published a report that shows that soil carbon storage can offset up to 10% And so the great thing about that is a lot of that can happen at a pretty low cost. And so it’s a really amazing opportunity to both build more resilient, more productive agricultural systems and at the same time deliver a climate benefit. So the report, the Leading with Solar Report is actually just a report from a broader initiative that Carbon 180 launched three years ago with the goal of helping accelerate the adoption of practices Agricultural practices like no-till and cover crops and crop rotations and things like that.
Practices that both help farmers and ranchers build more resilience in their operations and also help store carbon. And just really quickly, the reason that the report sort of exists is that we did a lot of on-the-ground work across the Western U. S. , specifically focusing on the Rocky Mountain states. And we learned a lot through that kind of on-the-ground engagement with Local organizations and with farmers and ranchers. And we wanted to take those lessons and translate them to some federal policy recommendations, things that could be implemented in the next kind of opportunities for us to implement policy, be that the next farm bill or other sort of policy levers that we can pull in the next coming couple of years to essentially help overcome some of the barriers that we encountered as we were working.
In Montana and Wyoming and Colorado and New Mexico, trying to understand why soil health practices are not widely adopted.
Ross Kenyon: That makes sense to me. And correct me if this is an incorrect perception, but I know I’ve seen, what is the right way to say this, Jane? Carbon 180 is not so optimistic about soil. I know there are parts of your organization that tend to be conservative, that want to make sure that we get this right. So one, is that even correct? And then two, what motivated you guys to focus on soil?
Jane Zelikova: That’s a really good question. I think I think your assessment that we want to get things right is really correct. I think that applies across all the carbon removal solutions we work on, be it in the technology space in developing some sort of an engineered solution or working on solutions that are more grounded in plants and soil. We really want to make sure the science backs up the recommendations that we make or the advocacy decisions that we make. In terms of how we approach soil, it’s the same as we approach anything else.
We want to get it right. We want to make sure we understand the science. We want to make sure we understand where the knowledge gaps are and that in our work, we’re both addressing knowledge gaps and pushing a whole portfolio of solutions forward. So I think you’re right. We want to get it right. We want the science to back up any work that we do. But relative to sort of other solutions, I think The reason there’s been some skepticism, and I would say I’m very enthusiastic about soil. So in terms of carbon 180 staff, I think a lot of folks on the staff are very enthusiastic and excited about the opportunities that working in agriculture and working on soils brings beyond just carbon sequestration even.
But I think the big challenges are that for 10% emission reductions or removal of carbon, how much do we really know Do we have the necessary tools to measure soil carbon consistently across sort of all locations? And are we able to scale it today? Like what’s keeping us from doing it? Is it just that we don’t know how to measure soil? Or is it that the really complicated systems, agricultural systems are complicated, producers make decisions based on a lot of different factors, and carbon sequestration and science are certainly not the leading factors for producers.
So How do we sort of tackle a system where the decisions are being made in a way that make it hard to come up with one single sort of silver bullet solution? Does that help answer your question?
Ross Kenyon: I think it does. I’m happy with that. And you also just the structure of this report lends itself to that too. You have policy recommendations for education, for science and for incentives, each of which has various subsections that deal with what you perceive Steve is one of the gaps and a proposed solution. So it seems like this isn’t just a silver bullet. It seems like there’s a bunch of different things that might need to change. And I’m sure there are some that didn’t even make it to the final report that maybe we could deal with.
They’re not the lowest of hanging fruit. So maybe they’re the medium hanging fruit. But yeah, why don’t we dive into this, Jane? What are some of these things? How about we begin with education? What are some policy recommendations you would make in there?
Jane Zelikova: Yeah, thanks for asking. So in terms of education, the big kind of gaps that we identified include a lack of demonstration projects. So for a lot of farmers and ranchers, seeing is believing. And you need to be able to sort of show how things work. And that both means like the actual practices and how they’re implemented, but also some of the like financial implications, how do the finances work? How does one apply for some of these programs, government programs? How does one track their soil health over time? So having demonstration projects in a lot of different locations and a lot of different agricultural operations is really helpful because farmers and ranchers really need to kind of see how things work and have experience with it and have some trust of the people that are doing it in order to start experimenting with it in their own operations.
So a recommendation that we made is that we need to fund more demonstration projects across more different kinds of agricultural contexts or operation types, and then across a wide range of geographies. A lot of demonstration projects in the Midwest sort of don’t translate to what someone in New Mexico would need to know and understand in order to try to do the same thing.
Ross Kenyon: These demonstrations like this, they exist for various different reasons. Maybe they just don’t focus on these particular practices to the extent that we need.
Jane Zelikova: Yeah, there are definitely demonstration projects and the last farm bill essentially funded more demonstration projects. So we’re moving in the right direction. But I think a lot about sort of where I’m from, which is in Georgia and working in places like Montana or New Mexico, you may have farmers that are implementing very similar practices like cover crops, but the type of cover crops that you’re using How you’re adding them into your rotation, at what time, like what the financial implications are, how much it costs, all of that varies. And it’s very different in Georgia than it is in Montana.
And the outcomes in terms of soil carbon sequestration and building soil health, they also kind of materialize slightly differently. And in Georgia, you might see outcomes very quickly. It may take much longer in a place like Montana. So just understanding the nuances of why geographic variation matters and making sure that there are demonstration projects that span a full suite of geographies that are relevant to producers and not just having demonstration projects concentrated in somewhere like the Midwest, which is really important, very important agriculturally, but isn’t necessarily An example of what someone who is working in Arizona would find useful.
Does that make sense?
Ross Kenyon: It does. And there’s also talk of what is happening at NRCS offices, which, by the way, what is that? And what do they do currently? What could they be doing differently, et cetera?
Jane Zelikova: Yeah. So the NRCS is the National Resource Conservation Service. It was started after the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, essentially as a soil conservation service in an effort to combat some of the major impacts of soil erosion. And has grown since then to provide a lot of different services, including technical assistance. When I say technical assistance, what that actually means is folks have, NRCS has offices locally. Different regional offices and also local offices where they have staff that are trained in providing assistance to farmers and ranchers. So when I say technical assistance, I mean the NRCS staff can go out and talk to a farmer and rancher, hear about their resources of concern.
So be that some folks are very concerned about soil erosion, other folks are concerned about water quality. So understanding what the resources of concern are and then providing some guidance and technical assistance. Kind of assistance to combat those issues and provide both like technical expertise, but also assistance in applying for federal funding to provide new infrastructure or to invest in new irrigation systems or windbreaks or new fences, etc. Things like that. So the NRCS plays a really critical role both as a funding agency and as an agency that has a long history of providing technical assistance to farmers and ranchers.
So one of the big recommendations that we make is that we have to bolster and increase the technical capacity of local NRCS offices because those are the folks that are on the ground that are going out and talking to farmers and ranchers and providing actual assistance and also folks that help them through the funding process and deliver the funds back out to their local farmers and ranchers. And as interest in soil carbon and soil health grows, and we know that lots more farmers and ranchers are really interested in learning more, the technical assistance capacity just isn’t keeping up.
So the NRCS funding has been relatively flat over the last decade and interest has been growing. So there’s just kind of this growing gap that needs to be filled.
Ross Kenyon: It sounds related to the third recommendation under this section, which is increased support for peer networks. Farmers, they want to learn from their peers and network and hang out. And that does some of the work that maybe isn’t taken up with the NRCS and what you just described.
Jane Zelikova: Yeah, I think, well, I mean, just like I am more likely to hear advice from people that I know and trust and people that have experience similar to mine, I think farmers and ranchers are similar. So providing support to increase peer networks. So connecting people that are implementing practices and trying stuff out with people who are interested. So they can sort of share lessons learned in a very sort of like low stakes, low pressures way, I think is really important. And a lot of folks have shown that peer networks are really effective at spreading information and spreading sort of technical assistance and support in places, especially to fill gaps where NRCS or local extension services are not as readily available.
So peer networks are really important. Farmers and ranchers are some of the most innovative people I know, and they already are learning a lot of the stuff, a lot of times from the internet, from watching YouTube videos, from following really innovative farmers and ranchers and social media. So people are really thirsty for this stuff and are already trying it out. So just connecting people that are kind of on the front lines, the early adopters with people that are really interested in learning from them, I think has a lot of value.
And we make that a specific Recommendation because there are federal funds that can support peer networks.
Ross Kenyon: All right. That sounds good. And we can wrap the education section. We have science.
Jane Zelikova: Totally. Science is important. Let’s do more science.
Ross Kenyon: Let’s dive into the science.
Jane Zelikova: Not just for the sake of science, but because we need to understand how things work. We need to develop better tools that are more like effective at measuring soil carbon sort of accrual over time, but also That are cheap enough that folks can afford them and accessible so anyone can use them. That’s a really big need and we make a recommendation to develop those tools. We also recommend again demonstration projects as I’ve mentioned earlier and developing sort of the soil carbon metrics that are measurable across lots of different geographies. One of the things that I think stands out for me in this particular section is Really funding economic research.
So while a lot of emphasis has been placed on how we measure carbon in the soil, one of the things that I think is really important, especially for farmers and ranchers, is understanding the economics of how these practices benefit them and how implementing practices like, you know, where the costs versus the benefits play out. So funding more economic research is a really important area that we emphasize.
Ross Kenyon: One of the ones here that caught my eye is build a national carbon observatory.
Jane Zelikova: Yeah.
Ross Kenyon: What is that?
Jane Zelikova: So that is something that we don’t currently have. So imagine if we had a system where the same kinds of measurements were getting taken across a lot of different locations across the U. S. where we were tracking carbon, be it in the atmosphere in plants or in soil. In this case, we’re really advocating for a soil carbon observatory. And we were collecting all of that data into the same repository and making those data available in a very transparent and open way. Then all of a sudden people would have the tools to be able to ask questions like, do cover crops build soil carbon more quickly in Georgia than they do in Montana?
Or what sorts of cover crops work well where? So just having a network of observations that are being done exactly the same way. So you’re comparing apples to apples across a lot of different locations across the U. S. , which the U. S. is like a really large country with lots of ecosystems and very different landscapes for agriculture. So just being able to measure things the same way across a lot of locations provides a lot of power. And we already do a little bit of that with the National Ecological Observatory Network.
Which has a system of 60 sites across the U. S. that are measuring a lot of different things the same way, but they’re not being done in agricultural context. So this is expanding that into agricultural context. So we’re also measuring changes in agricultural context, all kind of with the background of climate change also changing, right? So like as climate changes that we’re tracking everything across a lot of different places.
Ross Kenyon: Mm-hmm. A lot of these policy recommendations in this section are about the challenges of measuring and quantifying soil carbon. We did an entire episode of reversing climate change on this, but maybe for listeners who don’t know, why is this necessary at the policy level? Why is it so hard to figure out how much carbon is in soil?
Jane Zelikova: Really good question. And I think it’s hard from a science perspective and from a policy perspective. From the science perspective, what makes it hard is that As folks say, soils are tricky. Soils are really variable. So you can walk 20 feet and find yourself on a very different soil type where because the way that soil was formed and the way that the land was used essentially makes it either more challenging or less challenging to sequester carbon or hold on to water or hold on to nutrients. So soil type matters and we have a lot of different soil types across the US.
So that soil type variation makes it hard. The other thing that’s hard is we don’t know how land has been used. We don’t always have complete records of how land has been managed and it has a large role to play in how soil carbon can be sequestered. So because soils are variable, It makes it necessary to collect a lot of samples. And it’s not that we don’t know how to measure carbon, because we do. We’ve measured carbon and soil for a long time and lots of different forms of carbon. What makes it hard is that it requires us to dig a lot of holes, collect a lot of physical samples, bring them in the lab, and then process them and physically run them on machines.
And that’s people time, that’s equipment, that’s a lot of effort. And because soils are so variable, we have to, in order for us to have some trust and know that our measurements are reliable and the predictions we make in the future are reliable, we have to take a lot of samples. So that’s the big challenge. It’s not that we don’t know how to measure soil carbon. It’s that we have to measure it in so many places to build confidence in being able to predict it in the future.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, that is a tough problem to solve. And then even if you were able to figure that out, you still have this problem of how do you get farmers to participate and to change these practices. And then so you have a section here on incentives. So what’s going on in there?
Jane Zelikova: Yeah, and I think incentives is a really broad term we use that includes both just like markets and also policies that make it easy. And Part of what we really want to do, I mean, I think we all kind of relate to this. It’s really hard to get humans to do things unless it’s easy and accessible. So we want soil health practices and soil carbon sequestration to be easy and accessible. And the way that we can do that is by providing the right combination of incentives and eliminating some of the disincentives that are kind of on the books today that make it hard.
So part of this is that we just need infrastructure. In order to measure soil carbon storage. So that could be imagining sort of like the NRCS provides technical assistance, but also has regional labs where soil sample analysis is highly subsidized. So if you are a farmer that wants to get your soils analyzed, you sort of collect the soils, you get some guidance about how to do that. And then you send them into a government lab that is using the same exact sort of methodologies to do the analysis and give you data in a very accessible way.
And that labs in the Midwest would be doing the analyses the same way as labs in California or Oregon or Georgia, just making sure that things are consistent. And that would be amazing. It would kind of help overcome some of that like soil carbon testing is expensive part. The other things that we think a lot about is that Current existing incentive programs and government programs, they often give funding for one to two years, and that isn’t enough to account for how long it takes for soil carbon to accrue in agricultural soils under certain management practices.
So just making sure that those incentive programs are adjustable and they can actually match the How long it takes for soil carbon to accrue and for folks to actually see the benefits. Because we know like eventually when we have really carbon rich healthy soils, it doesn’t require like it sort of starts to bring benefits on its own and doesn’t require additional incentives. So we just need to get folks there. And some of the issues are that incentive programs are really hard to access. The application process is very complicated. It’s very It takes a long time to apply.
There are a lot of steps and that dissuades lots of folks from actually accessing these incentives. So even if we grow the incentive programs and put a lot more money into them, that doesn’t necessarily mean people are going to be able to access the incentives. So simplifying the application process. And for example, if you’re applying for multiple USDA programs, kind of creating one general application that can be used for lots of different programs would already save people a lot of time. And farmers and ranchers are often short on time. That’s like one of the big things.
And of course, like fully funding soil health programs would be really helpful, making sure that people can access those programs and needing to kind of revisit and revamp the federal crop insurance program. Because right now the program doesn’t really address the impacts of climate change and it doesn’t incentivize non-traditional or non-conventional practices. So in some cases, a farmer might want to do no-till or cover crops, but if they do that, then they can’t get federal crop insurance. So it actually dissuades people from engaging with soil health practices. So I think the federal crop insurance program is one that’s really important for us to revamp.
And finally, just helping develop markets, I think is really important. I mean, I think in the end, farmers and ranchers don’t want charity. This is not a charity situation. I think folks are doing a lot to produce really amazing food, fuel, fiber for us. And we need to find a way to, through market mechanisms, pay them for the products that they’re developing and producing, but also for the sort of ecosystem and climate benefits that they deliver. And there are currently very few market mechanisms to do that. So part of this is just creating more durable market incentives that are very stable, so that farmers and ranchers can feel like they can engage in that market without a lot of risk.
Ross Kenyon: What do you think is the relationship between something like Nori or other carbon removal marketplaces or soil health marketplaces that are getting going and policy? Is what you just described something that might supplant some private or nonprofit efforts in favor of policy or do they work together somehow? How do you see this playing out?
Jane Zelikova: Yeah, I think my view is that in the end, it all has to work together. So I’m, you know, I believe policy is really important and too rarely do we like get into the weeds of how policy is created and how it actually affects people. And so I think getting smart on like the policy implications of what Nori is doing or the kinds of policies that are on the books today that make it difficult for Nori to get traction Those are important considerations and important conversations to have as you’re developing your business, which is a full-profit business.
But NGOs like Carbon 180, where I work, our role is to really be thinking about this as a whole system. So while we think markets are really important, developing the right market mechanisms might not actually change the whole system. We see this as a whole, a lot of interacting pieces like The market incentives don’t address the education piece. The market incentives don’t address some of the science stuff. It all kind of has to work together. So we see every recommendation that we make in this report, even though we try to match every recommendation to a specific challenge that we’ve seen, we see every recommendation as reinforcing all the others and all of this working together to create a system of change.
A system under which companies like Nori and others that are trying to help Create the market side can actually thrive and it makes it easier.
Ross Kenyon: Oh yeah, I think many of these rule changes are necessary for whether Nori’s in business or it’s someone else or what exactly plays out. I think many of these things would probably need to change in order to get farmers to feel comfortable switching. The crop insurance one in particular, we have heard so many times, that’s a big risk. If you have to take that risk on yourself rather than having something insured for you, how many farmers are actually gonna do that? How many farmers do you think stop, maybe everything else is okay and they’re ready to go and that stops them?
I think probably a lot, right?
Jane Zelikova: I think a lot. And I think in general, like what we haven’t talked about much in this report is like this is part of a global commodity market. A lot of farmers are growing commodities like corn or soybean and are really kind of at the whim of what global markets are doing. And even with the most like wonderful intentions to do soil health practices, oftentimes farmers are in debt to large industrial ag companies and just like don’t have a lot of freedom to make the changes that they want to make.
Phil Taylor from Madag, I think you’ve had him on the podcast before, talks a lot about sort of how farmers are innovating in the pivot corner. So like they might be growing corn or soybean in the pivots, but the corners are where you see like really innovative stuff happening where they’re trying out different combinations of crops, sort of outside of like the eye of the main commodity. And I think it’s just really hard and we have to recognize that even if we like make all of these changes, the sort of global commodity market still exists and it still exerts a really large pressure.
Ross Kenyon: That makes sense. I think that’s a fair point to make. Well, obviously, if you are curious to read this report, it is in the show notes. You definitely should. If this interests you, you’ve made it through this whole episode, so clearly it does. There’s a lot of nice information. It’s called Leading with Soil, Scaling Soil Carbon Storage in Agriculture. And Jane, I imagine there’s many other things that you would like to plug, all of which will also be in the show notes. So where should you direct people?
Jane Zelikova: I think come check out carbon1a.org. I think we have one of the loveliest websites around and it showcases all of the different work that we do, including the work that we do on soil carbon science, this leading with soil report and other sort of partnerships that we do around scaling agricultural soil carbon storage, our awesome policy work. We have a new Entrepreneur in Residence Fellowship where folks are starting up businesses to remove carbon from the atmosphere. So we do a lot of really cool stuff. So come check us out. [Twitter plug cut from the transcript. It’s still in the audio.]
I will just say this. We have maybe one of the best weekly newsletters around. So if you want to learn more about carbon removal and also get to laugh every week because our newsletter is funny, you should subscribe because it’s the best.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, it is pretty funny. Your Twitter is pretty good too. I think organizations as a brand don’t often do much with their Twitters, except for like the sassy Wendy’s, whoever does their Twitter. Yours is pretty funny though. I got to say.
Jane Zelikova: Thank you. We really lean into the comedy and we like spend a lot of time thinking about clever ways to make carbon removal fun.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I think you’re succeeding at it. I don’t know anyone else who’s really doing it in that kind of way.
Jane Zelikova: And also like when you read the report, I just want to say it’s beyond like the content in it. It’s also very beautiful.
Ross Kenyon: That is definitely true. And it’s well organized as I said at the beginning. And you’re also on Twitter too?
Jane Zelikova: I am on Twitter. My personal Twitter is a little bit about climate change and soil and a lot about sort of feminist rage. So come for the combo. And I think it’s at J underscore Zelikova.
Ross Kenyon: Uh, yeah. Come for the feminist rage. Stay for the soil. Jane Zellick. Or the other way around.
Jane Zelikova: It’s hard to know what’s going to draw people in, but you’re going to get a healthy dose of both.
Ross Kenyon: Uh, well, thanks for coming back in and being on this show.
Jane Zelikova: Yeah. Thank you so much. This was really fun.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. It was my pleasure. And if you like the show, please rate and review us on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, tell your friends, and thank you so much for listening. Well, thank you so much for listening. If you like the show, please rate and review it in Apple Podcasts and or Stitcher. It really helps us a lot to get this content to a wider audience. If you think what we’re doing is useful, interesting, fun, hopefully all three, we’d certainly appreciate your rating and review. You can keep up with Nori at nori.
[Nori promotion cut from the transcript. It’s still in the audio, but it no longer applies.] And thank you so much for your support.
