Farming practices that help save carbon in the soil don’t necessarily boost crop yields and sometimes make them worse, researchers said in a new study.
Researchers at Cornell University said plowing fields less and planting cover crops can actually sacrifice yields even as they offer climate benefits, adding a wrinkle to debates about how federal policies should promote the practices.
“Context matters,” said one of the lead researchers, Shelby McClelland, a postdoctoral researcher at New York University who participated in the study while working at Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
The bottom line, McClelland said: The “win-win” scenario some groups promote for regenerative agriculture is more elusive than some might admit and highly dependent on location and other factors. Benefits for climate and crop yields “are not a universal outcome,” McClelland told POLITICO’s E&E News.
