Reuters – On South Africa’s Lancewood dairy farm, a GPS-guided tractor spreads cow manure across defined areas where tilling is banned and fertilizer used at a minimum, if at all.
Some 2,500 Jersey cows graze on a selection of plants, from chicory to alfalfa, that have been planted for feed variety while helping preserve the soil’s nutrients.
Lancewood is among 40 dairy farms where South Africa’s first internationally certified carbon program for the agricultural sector — known as AgriCarbon — is being piloted by Climate Neutral Group (CNG) to help curb greenhouse gas emissions.
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Dairy farms have borne the brunt of criticism from environmentalists in the agriculture sector for releasing large quantities of methane and nitrogen that drive climate change.
“That’s how we’ve worked — doing minimal till and reducing our nitrogen on the soil for many, many years and that’s how we’ve reduced our costs on the farm to make the dairy very profitable,” Lancewood owner Mark Rubin told Reuters on his farm in the Sedgefield area of South Africa’s southern Cape region.
