Humus stores climate-damaging carbon and water and promotes biodiversity. With a project, the Black Forest Central/North Nature Park wants to support farmers in switching to regenerative agriculture. The state government is interested.
Ottersweier (dpa/lsw) - The Black Forest Central/North Nature Park has launched the "Humus Project" so that farmers can preserve humus in their fields and ideally even increase it. The idea behind it: companies, municipalities and institutions can offset their unavoidable greenhouse gas emissions by purchasing so-called humus premiums. With the money they support farmers from the nature park region in converting their farms to humus-friendly, regenerative farming and thus improving the quality of their soils in the long term. The Minister for Rural Areas, Peter Hauk (CDU), wants to find out more about this today (12.30 p.m.) in Ottersweier (Rastatt district).
By increasing the humus content by just one percent, around 50 tons of CO2 per hectare would be stored in the soil, explains the nature park. At the same time, humus-promoting cultivation would make the soil more fertile, more resistant to the forces of nature and able to store more water, so that plants can survive longer periods of drought. "In addition, humus promotes biodiversity, since more life develops in humus-rich soil," says the project. "The build-up of humus is therefore an effective contribution to climate protection and adaptation to climate change and thus helps to secure the nutritional basis of future generations."
In addition to the financial issues, the nature park and supporters want to offer farmers further training opportunities, for example on techniques for building up humus. The interest in it is high, it said. In addition, the nature park wants to better network experts on the subject.
