Carbon comes in many forms. It’s in the air above your crops as carbon dioxide. There’s also carbon content in the soil that plant roots use as both energy and cellular building blocks. The importance of carbon and the carbon cycle for crop yield can’t be overstated.
Why Does the Carbon Content in Soil Matter?
Carbon is one of the most abundant elements on Earth. The role of carbon in soil is to feed both plants and soil microorganisms. It also improves soil structure, increases water retention, and enhances all ecosystem functions.
At the cellular level, plants determine where to allocate carbon molecules based on all the factors involved in their growth. The amount of rain, temperature, soil pH, biodiversity of the soil food web, and many other factors determine if a plant will use carbon for growth or defense.
Having a wide diversity of soil microorganisms that use carbon as an energy source creates an environment leading to greater crop resilience. Plants and microorganisms have evolved together and support the well-being of each other. When soil is deficient in carbon the biodiverse microbiota is diminished. That means the soil allies of plants are less able to help a plant through adverse weather conditions.
Carbon and the Carbon Cycle
Your crops are an important part of the carbon cycle. Through photosynthesis, plants convert sunlight and carbon dioxide in the air into carbon molecules that plants use for growth and to share with soil microorganisms.
Plants, algae, and cyanobacteria are the only organisms on Earth that can convert carbon dioxide into carbon, with water and sunlight. Most of the carbon (up to 40 percent) created by plant photosynthesis feeds microorganisms in the soil.
The root exudates from plants are an important part of the carbon cycle. These nanodroplets are compounds that include carbohydrates, amino acids, phytohormones, proteins, and mucilage. These compounds are most prevalent in the plant root zone, or rhizosphere. That’s where the action is for optimum plant growth.
Historically, soil organic carbon (SOC) has made up over 50 percent of the soil organic matter (SOM); about 6 percent of the soil composite. But with the use of intensive tilling, herbicides, and fungicides, the SOM and SOC have decreased dramatically. Most cultivated fields have less than 1 percent SOM. That decrease has left fields devoid of the organic matter and carbon necessary for optimum plant growth. Synthetic fertilizers are a short-term fix but aren’t sustainable enough for the land to still support your children and grandchildren.
How to Increase the Carbon Content in Your Soil
Fortunately, there’s a sustainable fix for increasing soil health.
When you decrease tilling and synthetic fertilizers, you give nature a chance to heal and optimize plant health. A good yield starts with healthy soil full of beneficial microorganisms.
Cover crops and multi-crop rotations are your passports to disrupt disease and pest life cycles. A two-year rotation of corn and soybean, for example, isn’t diverse enough to affect pest populations. But add a small grain and a year of pasture or hay and you’ve taken away the habitat pests and diseases need.
Have you been tilling in your crop residue? When you do that you incorporate extra oxygen into the soil which speeds up the microorganisms. They decompose that organic matter too fast. Are you drilling spring seed into the residue of last year’s crops? This no-till technique, a regenerative ag practice, helps maintain a balance of carbon, organic matter, micronutrients, and microorganisms in your soil. And that balanced biodiversity is greatest in the plant root zone. What better way to grow resilient crops than in an optimum environment?
Are you interested in learning more about future-proofing your farm and creating more profits? Contact our team at STBiologicals.com and we’ll go over what practices you can implement this fall for better germination in the spring and optimum growth in 2025. We’re here to help you succeed. When soil speaks, we listen.
