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Enabling food security by verifying agricultural carbon

Nature Climate Change volume 4, pages 309–311 (2014)Cite this article

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Rewarding smallholders for sequestering carbon in agricultural land can improve food security while mitigating climate change. Verification of carbon offsets in food-insecure regions is possible and achievable through rigorously controlled monitoring.

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Figure 1: Measuring soil carbon stocks enables payments from emitters in the north to food producers in the south for balancing the global carbon budget and food security.

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Acknowledgements

J.E.O., P.S. and D.M. acknowledge support from the SmartSOIL EU FP7 project (grant number 289694), D.M. also from the Climate and Development Knowledge Network and H.K. from the SOILMAN (decision number 270106) and AlterCLIMA (decision number 127405) projects of the Academy of Finland.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. MTT Agrifood Research Finland, Lönnrotinkatu 5, FI-50100, Mikkeli, Finland

    H. Kahiluoto

  2. Scottish Food Security Alliance-Crops & Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Aberdeen, 23 St Machar Drive, Aberdeen, AB24 3UU, UK

    P. Smith

  3. Scotland's Rural College, Kings Buildings, West Mains Road, Edinburgh, EH9 3JG, UK

    D. Moran

  4. Department of Agroecology, Aarhus University, Blichers Allé 20, DK-8830, Tjele, Denmark

    J. E. Olesen

Authors
  1. H. Kahiluoto
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  2. P. Smith
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  3. D. Moran
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  4. J. E. Olesen
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Correspondence to H. Kahiluoto.

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Kahiluoto, H., Smith, P., Moran, D. et al. Enabling food security by verifying agricultural carbon. Nature Clim Change 4, 309–311 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2209

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