Ghana : Measuring soil organic carbon on smallholder farms

This 10-minute video illustrates how to measure soil carbon measure in smallholder systems. CCAFS and IRD developed the video with cooperation from research partners at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana.

In 2016, Gustavo Saiz and Alain Albrecht, co-authored a chapter on reliable and affordable methods used to quantify the measurement of soil carbon stocks in smallholder agricultural systems. This chapter serves as a guide for national agricultural research centers, compilers of national greenhouse gas inventories, policy makers, agricultural development practitioners, universities and the private sector for reporting.

This chapter is available in an open access book (springer.com) called Methods for Measuring Greenhouse Gas Balances and Evaluating Mitigation Options in Smallholder Agriculture, written as part of the Standard assessment of agricultural mitigation potential and livelihoods (SAMPLES) program, a collaboration facilitated by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) and carried out with support from CGIAR Fund Donors and through bilateral funding agreements. SAMPLES is a global research program that supports tropical countries to measure greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and identify mitigation options compatible with food security.