MCP spokesman Andrew Fynn at Lunny cattle ranch in West Marin

SOIL IS MORE THAN just what covers the Earth; it is what the "earth" is named for, appropriately, for without it we wouldn't exist. Taking the obvious an esoteric step further, Marin Organic's executive director, Helge Hellberg, suggests not only that soil is the source and substance of life, but that the continuum of life and death involves us intimately in its protection: "Our memories, the blood-drenched soils of our ancestors — we are of the soil."

It turns out that life-giving, life-affirming soil may also play a key role in helping us to offset our carbon overload if we learn how to coax the process correctly, which is why Marin Organic is a participant — along with Marin and Sonoma ranchers, the Marin Resource Conservation District (RCD), Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT), UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Cooperative Extension, Marin's agricultural commissioner, and the Environmental Defense Fund — in the Marin Carbon Project (MCP).

MCP is focused on doing the Earth a huge favor by encouraging the county's rangeland to take in and store in its depths what the atmosphere doesn't need in excess, but what in fact produces healthy soil and thriving plant life: carbon dioxide.

Plants need sunlight and carbon dioxide to grow; in the process of photosynthesis, plants use carbon from the atmosphere and water in the soil to build themselves, and ultimately to create organic matter and microbe-rich soil, which is less prone to erosion. That's a boon for agriculture, in and of itself, and it's a process that can be enhanced in a variety of ways, from plowing methods to composting.

But in the eyes of MCP organizers, healthy rangeland could serve up more than fertile fields to feed happy cows: It could enhance what that rangeland already is, a natural carbon sink — sink used here as a term for where carbon dioxide is stored, or sequestered. Next to the oceans, soil is the planet's second-largest potential carbon-storage facility. Plants not only take in carbon as part of photosynthesis, but their roots deliver it into the soil.

The trick is to ensure that the conditions are in place to aid and abet the natural carbon-storing cycle, which is what MCP is aiming to do, first by determining just how much carbon could be captured in a county boasting 160,000 acres of rangeland.

If what MCP hopes to realize bears fruit, then Marin's crop and pastureland could help offset the county's carbon footprint as a whole — and productive land, which carbon helps create, is what ranchers crave.

Getting Down and Dirty

Soil as a carbon solution is why more than 100 ranchers from Marin and Sonoma, filling and spilling out the doors of the Dance Palace in Point Reyes Station, sat rapt for two hours in early June to hear soil experts from UC Davis and UC Berkeley extol the Earth-saving virtues of rethinking and restructuring our present-day land-management practices.

As one rancher whispered to a friend as the event began, "We're going to learn a lot tonight. We might even learn how to make some money."

The financial side of the soil-sink project is twofold, the first representing the increased value of having healthy, productive land. Second, creating carbon sinks could result in revenue through the trading of carbon credits and, in the near future, through legislated carbon "cap and trade," both of which basically support the growth of proven carbon-sequestering projects, such as the one MCP hopes to realize, with revenue paid by carbon polluters.

One attribute of West Marin that gives the Marin Carbon Project a boost: If soil sinks prove to be a revenue stream, their attraction to the carbon-trading market is heightened because of MALT: Its 40,000 acres of "in perpetuity" ranchland ensures long-term value — no development means permanent open spaces for carbon sinking.

"New and emerging CO2 markets have the potential to fund ecosystem regeneration and sustainable agriculture on a remarkable scale," notes MCP spokesman Andrew Fynn.

MCP's Beginnings

Launched in January, the project is an outgrowth of a conversation between Nicasio rancher John Wick and Jeff Creque, an agroecologist working with MCP, who had heard a talk on how plowing methods could increase carbon and other life-supporting organic matter in soils.

"The Marin Carbon Project's short-term goals are to quantify the carbon sequestration capacity of Marin's rangeland soils and identify strategies to maximize that capacity," Creque says, noting that with just a 1 percent increase in organic matter in the top eight inches of earth, "We are talking about a sequestration potential of almost a million tons of carbon in Marin's agricultural soils."

With a $50,000 grant, research began in February on what will continue for a year or more, since the work is dependent on the growing season: measuring the current carbon levels in soil on 30 ranches in Marin and Sonoma. With this baseline in hand, research and studies can begin on ways to encourage carbon soil sequestration using various elements of rangeland management.

Taking Root

"We have the solution, and it's by way of the very thing that gives us life: plants, soil, and sunlight," says MCP's Fynn, noting the logic behind the project's goals. "Nature knows no bare soil."

At the heart of all this sequestering jargon is a simple truth: The natural symbiosis between plant, carbon, and soil needs very little from us — we simply serve to ensure that the conditions are there for nature to take its course, like encouraging perennial grasses, with Fynn opting for those that are native to the area. Perennial grasses have long roots, and it is through roots that carbon is delivered to the soil: Deep roots take carbon deeper in the soil, which, for carbon sequestering purposes, greatly increases storage time.

Aboveground decomposition is another way that carbon becomes part of the soil ecosystem: As a plant rots, bacteria and fungi in the ground reach up to pull the carbon into the soil. The thin white, stringlike material in a handful of rich soil is in fact carbon-grabbing fungi.

Then there's the handshake between plant and animal. What studies have found, says Fynn, is that allowing ungulates — animals with hooves — to roam free and unimpeded across rangeland encourages grasses to adapt and thrive. "Grass knows the elephant, elephant knows the trees, trees know the birds — there is a perfection there, an adaptation that we can evoke, an evolutionary partnership."

Also important: composting. "One of the fastest ways to increase soil organic matter is to simply add it in the form of compost," notes Jeff Creque, which is why MCP supports RCD's proposed West Marin Co-Composting project, which Creque says will help move up to 12,000 tons of organic matter to Marin's agricultural lands each year.

"The Earth is sending us a message," says Marin Organic's Hellberg. What he hears it say echoes what organic farmers have long championed: knowing the natural lay of the land, as opposed to following the agriculture-industry norm, which, among other practices, includes planting one crop per season, then allowing the field to lie fallow the rest of the year.

Without a cover crop, the soil is left open to degrade. "Dead" soil does not capture carbon. Dead soil is of no value to anyone. "Soil is the answer to all we are," Hellberg reiterates. "It may even be a key to offsetting global warming."