Description of problemClimate-smart use of soils for arable crop production encompasses all efforts leading to adaptation to climate change and to mitigation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from soils and land use.Increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) using agricultural measures, as reviewed by Merante et al. (2017) and Wiesmeier et al. (2020), is regarded as a negative emission technology (Lal, 2019;Smith, 2016; 4 per Mille, 2020).It is also relevant for ensuring sustainable soil fertility and for saving mineral N-fertilisers and related emissions.Thus, upcoming benchmarking systems, such as 'C-footprint' and 'C-neutral production', of arable products (Stoessel et al., 2012), for farms and businesses are gaining interest as part of agro-ecological concepts (Saj and Torquebiau, 2018).A number of ini tiatives were developed world-wide in recent years (CarboCert, 2020; Carbon Farmers of Australia, 2020; ÖkoregionKaindorf, 2020; Zero Foodprint, 2020; Wesseler, 2020) acting as agencies for private and, so far, regional trade in SOC-certificates sold on the private market for offsetting individual or business GHG-emissions.However, questions remain about their consideration in country-level GHG-accounting in relation to mitigation targets.Governments are obliged to report SOC-changes within the sector 'Land Use and Land Use Change' (LULUCF) under the United Nations Framework Conven tion on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the European Union (EU) climate change mitigation policy (European Parliament and the Council of the European Union, 2018 5 ).Moreover, all emissions (CO 2 -C losses from C-sinks) and removals (increases in C-sinks) in arable land, grassland and forestry count towards the 'no-debit' target of the LULUCF-Regulation from 2021 onwards (i.e.no increase in GHG-net-emissions, including C-removals in the LULUCF sector).In their national reporting duties, many countries claim that the SOC-stock in arable soils is stable.National soil monitoring programmes, e.g.'National Soil Inventory' (Thünen Institute 2020a, 2020b) in Germany, are improving current methodologies by replacing stable SOC-stocks as sumptions with values measured at regular intervals and/or estimat ed by dynamic modelling.Farmers play an important part in reducing GHG-emissions from the agriculture and LULUCF sectors.Recently, in a German publication, Wiesmeier et al. (2020) proposed minimum sampling schemes and analytical standards to evaluate long term SOC changes and discussed op por tu nities and challenges arising from possible measures to increase SOC.Further, the authors elaborated 5The so called ' LULUCF-Regulation' 2018/841
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Jacobs et al. (2020) studied this question.