What is it about?
Can soil organic carbon (SOC) be accurately assessed on a diverse, mixed cropping organic farm? And at what level of certainty? How many cores, how many composited samples for analysis? Lifelong soil scientist Will Brinton examined Al Gores organic farm with 4 ecosystems to determine the statistical certainty of carbon measurements at 4 different labs all using a similar SOP.
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Why is it important?
The significance of carbon gains are well known but the actuality of claims compared to statistics required for validity leave a gap. This we explored.
Perspectives
Attesting to carbon sequestration over short periods of time is a tall order. An undulating farm with mixed ecosystems management and variable inputs plus the uncertainty of selection if soil sample points makes it truly a major challenge when only a fraction of 1% makes a difference of thousands of kilograms per hectare in organic matter accumulation.
William Brinton
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This page is a summary of: An inter‐laboratory comparison of soil organic carbon analysis on a farm with four agricultural management systems, Agronomy Journal, January 2025, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1002/agj2.70018.
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