Carbon Farming - scale up locally Carbon Farming in West-Vlaanderen

The whole world is looking for new ways to sequester carbon - and thus fight global warming - but often forgets the power of local agricultural soils. Farmers can literally take CO2 from the atmosphere and bind it in the form of carbon in the soil, which is also beneficial for soil quality. More and more organisations are looking for local solutions to offset (part of) their unavoidable CO2 emissions. In short, a local CO2 offsetting from them through the agriculture and horticulture sector can thus be a win-win situation for both parties.

Within West Flanders, seeds have already been sown for a number of collaborations between farmers and compensators (including Province of West Flanders, Municipality of Beernem, Vlaams Hoeverund, Lokaal Brood and Claire). Within this PDPO project, together with Inagro, The Soil Service of Belgium and Boerennatuur Vlaanderen, we want to make these cases mature and sustainable on the long term. We also want to combine the lessons and experiences from those pilot projects into local recommendations and practical points of interest, to spread further and form a basis for future initiatives. In this way, we wish to focus on farmer and society working together towards more carbon storage, fuelling engagement within both the agricultural sector and society.