John Wick is the co-owner of the Nicasio Native Grass Ranch and co-founder of the Marin Carbon Project

The Marin Carbon Project aims to improve carbon sequestration

The Marin Carbon Project began at the West Marin Nicasio Native Grass Ranch under the management of John Wick and Peggy Rathmann. Originally an experiment designed to measure the carbon benefits of good grazing, a comprehensive soil survey of grazed grassland in Marin found that the biggest soil carbon stocks occurred in lands that had manure applied to them historically. This finding lead to the theory that adding carbon to the top of the soil could create an ongoing carbon sink in grasslands.

Based on their scientific findings, the partner organizations of the Marin Carbon Project with leadership from the local Resource Conservation District created a suite of processes, projects, and policies designed to support carbon capture and storage on ranches and farms. They modified a long-used tool for landscape restoration provided by the US Department of Agriculture called conservation planning and refocused it on managing carbon, calling it Carbon Farm Planning.

Working with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service they created the COMET-Planner, an online calculator that allows landowners to estimate soil carbon benefits from over thirty USDA-approved conservation practices. Working with the local dairies, fiber producers, and non-profit partners they also began to build the regional rangeland producers’ ability to increase the value of their products through community and corporate investments in on-farm and regional agricultural processing and manufacturing infrastructure centered around climate beneficial products.

As of 2018 there are sixteen individual Carbon Farm Plans in place in Marin County, and over thirty Resource Conservation Districts in California offer Carbon Farm Planning, providing technical assistance and financial support to farmers and ranchers for over two dozen conservation practices known to enhance soil and biomass carbon capture on the farm. Over a dozen California counties have included agriculture and soil carbon sequestration in their Climate Action Plans and many more plan to do so.

John explains the sequence of events. “Around 2008, we were able to create the Marin Carbon Project, which brought together scientists, policymakers, practitioners, advisers, and explored the question of the role of carbon in managed natural systems upon which we rely for food, fuel, fiber, and flora. Over the next 10 years, we developed new insight into these managed systems. It’s a very exciting time for us.”

“We now know that through managing for carbon, we can actually increase the system capacity to hold even more carbon, and once you do it, the system on its own starts to do it on its own.”

“We first experimented with compost. By putting this beautiful, biologically stable molecule—carbon, nitrogen, and life—on the soil, the soil knew exactly what to do with it. By applying a thin dusting of compost, once, on our grazed rangeland system, it was like putting medicine on this poor soil. It quickly became healthy and, on its own, started to promote more plant growth, which sequestered more carbon, which held more water, which promoted more plant growth. And it goes on and on.”

“We’ve measured this ongoing self-feeding carbon sequestration phenomenon for five years. Our computer modeling shows that, per hectare, a single application of compost, one time, will result in a ton of carbon from the atmosphere ending up in a stable form in the soil for 30 to 100 years. This is incredibly exciting.”

Ten years after the original test of a one-time light compost application on a holistically grazed 540 acres of California coastal prairie, the Nicasio Native Grass Ranch continues to flourish. Wildlife is abundant and many unique wildflower species are on riotous display in the spring. Areas treated with compost continue to produce above-average forage and remain greener longer in the drier season. Mr. Wick manages his ranch with the purpose of developing and demonstrating management methodologies that are known to be climate beneficial.

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