Carbon Farming: Implications on Food Systems and Agriculture in Asia

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• June 11, 2026 Create Date
• June 16, 2026 Last Updated

The urgency of addressing the climate crisis is unquestionably the main justification for
the global push for technological fixes to reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases
(GHG) in the atmosphere and to explore carbon sinks to serve as permanent storage
for these gases that cause global warming. Serious concerns on the costs, safety,
stability and permanence of using geological formations such as depleted oil wells, gas
reservoirs and coal mines as storage of carbon dioxide (CO₂) captured in carbon capture
and storage (CCS) systems – discussed in another Fact Sheet that we are producing as
part of this series - have led attention to natural or biological sinks, namely oceans,
forests and soils. A wide array of approaches, technologies and techniques have been
promoted to store CO₂ in these natural reservoirs over the past decades. Reforestation,
afforestation, agroforestry and many forest management approaches to revive and
make trees, plants, soil and organic matters in forests as carbon storage. Mangrove
restoration, marine conservation and even geoengineering technologies to enhance
ocean alkalinity are being proposed to improve the biological sequestration capacity
of oceans, considered as the largest carbon sink absorbing up to 30% of global GHG
emissions. Soil has the highest long-term capacity to store CO₂ and approaches under
the banner of carbon farming are proposed to enhance the natural capacity of soil to
absorb and store carbon.