Small Farmers Help to Slow Global Warming

Can Small Farmers Help to Slow Global Warming?

Carbon Sequestration in the Developing World

Objectives:

Ø Gain knowledge of where carbon is stored in tropical ecosystems and the cycle through which it flows,

Øข่าว Carbon Credit Become familiar with the idea of the ‘Carbon Credit’ system between developing and developed countries, and

Ø Develop Ambio’s plan for a program that will use carbon credit money to pay small farmers for their soil conservation.

Stage one

Farming in Mexico: A Struggle for Survival

Juan Morales is a poor farmer from the impoverished state of Chiapas, Mexico, the poorest state in the country. Most farmers in Chiapas, produce corn and beans to eat on plots less than 1 hectare in size, and many have small coffee plots from which sale of the berries brings income to buy clothes, medicines and other food products. Juan plants his corn and beans by hand by first preparing the soil, and then making small holes in which to plant the seeds using a pole called a ‘dibble stick’ while his children follow behind and cover up the seeds. Despite the majority of the population living in poverty like Juan Morales, Mexico is one of the top 10 countries for CO₂ emissions in the world. However in contrast to the United States, this is not due to the burning of fossil fuel for industry, but to another reason having to do with the small-scale poor farmers that live in the most undeveloped parts of the country.

1. Why would rural Mexico be one of the top ten producers of CO2 in the world if they have no large industry to speak of? What do small-scale poor farmers and tropical forests have to do with CO2 emissions?
2. Where is most of the carbon in tropical forested ecosystems?
3. If Juan Morales is carrying out slash and burn practices, is he contributing to global warming, or just trying to produce a crop of corn and beans to feed his family?

Like the last case, we would like you to please brainstorm your 'Learning Issues' with your team. Learning Issues are aspects of the problem that you do not understand and need to understand to work out the problem. After you have brainstormed your Learning Issues, rank them below in order of most important to least. Now decide which of these Learning Issues that the whole group can research, and which should be assigned to individual group members to research and then teach the group.

Stage two

The Role of Ambio in Environmental Protection

Ambio is a small environmental non-profit organization located in Chiapas. The purpose of Ambio is to promote the importance of natural areas as providers of ecological services both locally and globally. Its staff includes researchers and rural development specialists dedicated to promoting the sustainable management of natural resources in Chiapas. In 1994 Ambio initiated a ‘participatory’ (involving farmers) pilot study to identify alternative farming methods that could be used by small-scale farmers for both crop and timber production, sequestration of carbon from the atmosphere, and generation of income through the ‘sale’ of carbon credits to high-emissions industries in the developed world. The study continues today, and now includes over 250 families who are generating additional income by planting carbon-sequestering agroforestry systems such as shaded coffee and long-term growth timber trees used for construction, and then selling the carbon they are storing to developed countries. Ambio’s program currently only includes only above ground sequestration in the form of live vegetation; farmers are not paid when they carry out soil conservation practices. In this case your base group is an environmental consultant for Ambio.

1. Why would carbon be sequestered if farmers initiated soil conservation practices over using slash and burn agriculture? What are examples of such practices?
2. Have there been any scientific studies showing that any of your ideas actually do conserve carbon in soil?
3. Farming in Chiapas is tricky business, as farmers have little access to stores or money to buy farming equipment, nor have many roads on which to easily travel to obtain such resources. Given that these are very small-scale, poor farmers who do not use farm equipment that we might see in Minnesota such as tractors, tillers and manure spreaders (or even a cow for manure!), how feasible might your ideas for soil conservation be for these farmers?

Please brainstorm your Learning Issues with your team. After you have brainstormed your Learning Issues, rank them below in order of most important to least. Now decide which of these Learning Issues can be researched by the whole group, and which should be assigned to individual group members to research and then teach the group.

Stage 3

Ambio and Carbon Sequestration: The Details

Ambio’s current carbon credit program requires that farmer’s land remain in the same land-use for at least 25 years and that they have a given density of trees per hectare of land. By requiring that farmers have a given density of trees per unit area, Ambio’s staff can estimate the tons of carbon that a typical farmer using a given agroforestry system is capturing per hectare. For example, in an average coffee field of 1 hectare containing coffee shrubs shaded by larger trees, this is estimated to be about 64.7 tons of carbon per hectare. The money to pay the farmers comes from high-emission industries in the developed world. Currently, because the United States has not yet signed on to the Kyoto Protocol (a 1993 international agreement on how to address climate change), companies experimenting with this system are all European. These companies pay $10 per excess ton of carbon they emit into the atmosphere over their country’s limit. Of this $10, $2 will go to Ambio to manage the carbon-credit program, and $8 will go to the farmer for each ton of carbon sequestered in his or her agroforestry system. For example for a farmer with one hectare of shaded coffee, they will receive (64.7 tons of carbon) * ($8 for each ton) = $518. While this may not seem like much money, for farmers in the developing world it is quite a lot. So that farmers don’t plant trees, receive immediate payment, and then cut down the trees, the payment schedule is as follows:

Age of Agroforestry System	Percent of Total Payment Given to Farmer Each Year
1	20%
2	20%
3	20%
5	20%
10	20%

Ambio would like to pay farmers for their efforts in conserving not only above ground carbon in the form of trees and shrubs, but also for soil carbon conserved in their soils as organic matter. However, they are lacking staff members like you who are skilled in the development of programs to measure soil carbon and its change over time under different soil management systems. In this study, your base group is exactly the kind of expertise that Ambio needs, and they have hired you as a consulting group to develop a Soil Carbon Credit program. There are a number of questions that Ambio must answer before it can develop a viable program to measure soil carbon in farmer’s systems. These questions include:

1. What would you estimate to be the baseline amount of carbon contained in soils of different tropical agroforestry systems and how do you predict that the different soil management techniques suggested in the previous stage might change this amount?

2. How will you measure the baseline carbon and the change in carbon over time? What are some sample amounts of carbon that you might find in these farmer’s soils?

3. How much carbon are farmers helping sequester if they increase the organic matter content of their soils over a period of years? How do you suggest that Ambio will monitor this carbon flux, and pay farmers using the carbon credits paid by industries in the developed world?

Teacher Resources:

1. Biology and Fertility of Soils: Mitigation of atmospheric C02 concentrations by increased carbon sequestration in the soil (1998)
2. Interciencia: Community forest management and carbon sequestration: a feasibility study from Chiapas México (1995)
3. Biology and Fertility of Soils: C02 mitigation by agriculture: An Overview (1998)