Climate protection through humus formation

Since January 2021, the Ebenrain Centre for Agriculture, Nature and Food (Ebenrain) has been implementing the project "Climate protection through humus build-up" in cooperation with Bio-Nordwestschweiz and the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL) in Frick. Together, the partners are pursuing two major goals:

1. to make agricultural soils more adaptable to drought and thus more resistant to climate extremes by building up humus.
2. to store CO2 from the atmosphere in agricultural soils.

On 55 farms with a total project area of 1120 ha in the cantons of Basel-Landschaft and Basel-Stadt, the humus content will be increased over a period of 6 years.

The farms are coordinated and advised by the Ebenrain Centre for Agriculture, Nature and Nutrition. FiBL is providing scientific support for the project. An advisory group with representatives from the Basel Farmers' Association (BVBB), farmers and Ebenrain experts is supporting the project.

The BLKB is offering farmers in both Basel the opportunity to support their efforts to achieve the above objectives through a regional compensation project. In this way, BLKB would like to compensate for its 1000 tonnes of climate gas emissions in regional agriculture each year.

The core points of the project are:

1. three farm-specific consultations during the project period;
2. analytical measurements of the humus content in the first, third and sixth year;
3. an impact-oriented compensation of the humus content.

• Further programmes

• Steffens Markus (Department of Soil Sciences)

• Bautze Lin (Department of Soil Sciences)
• Wassermann Thomas (Department of Soil Sciences)

• Soil fertility & Climate (Department of Soil Sciences, FiBL Switzerland)