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A farm in Mexico is growing a solution to climate change

Over 200 food companies, non-government organizations, and scientists have endorsed the technique to counter rapidly warming temperatures around the world.

Ricardo Romero inherited a former cattle ranch in Veracruz, Mexico, from his father decades ago. Since then, he’s turned the land into the Las Cañadas Farm Cooperative, a place that’s at the forefront of a new agriculture technique called carbon farming.

When plants grow, they draw carbon from the air and deposit it in the soil. Carbon farming is a simple way to grow crops and manage soil that encourages the buildup of carbon in the ground. Over 200 food companies, nongovernmental organizations, and scientists have endorsed the technique for countering rapidly warming temperatures around the world due to greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.

According to researchers at Ohio State University, if farmers worldwide did what Romero does, they could take up to 1.2 billion tons of carbon out of the atmosphere each year, which in 100 years would bring carbon levels down to where they were in pre-industrial times.

This segment originally aired April 18, 2017, on VICE News Tonight on HBO.