Washington State University’s six-year-long Climate Friendly Farming Project has come to a conclusion with a special report highlighting promising technological innovations available to growers.

“The project identified promising management strategies and technologies that could reduce the relative greenhouse gas contribution of agriculture,” says Chad Kruger, WSU’s Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources.

High among the list of promising innovations and limitations listed in the report are the following:

Research highlights outlined in the report label anaerobic digestion as the “best available technology” for capturing and recovery of methane from organic wastes, generation of renewable energy and recovery of carbon and nutrients that can be substituted for other greenhouse gas intensive agricultural inputs.

The technology and management options for conservation tillage need to be encouraged and strategically applied to address site-specific barriers, the researchers recommend.

Expected rates of soil C sequestration slows over time, the report notes, and mitigation projects need to account for time horizon in assessing total carbon sequestered.

Precision agriculture in nitrogen management can improve nitrogen use efficiency in dry land grain-based cropping systems, reducing N-related greenhouse gas emissions and saving farmers money.

The project findings “clearly illustrate opportunities for agriculture to reduce its carbon footprint,  says Kruger.

To view the just-released report, go to http://csanr.wsu.edu/publications/researchreports/cffreport.html.

For questions about the study, Kruger may be contacted at (509) 663-8181, extension 242, or by e-mail at [email protected].

For more on this story, see the June issue of Western Farmer-Stockman.