Carbon Farming in the Digital Era: Soil Carbon Sequestration, Permanence, Measurement, Reporting and Verification

Abstract

Carbon farming is increasingly promoted as a way to rebuild soil organic carbon while creating verifiable climate benefits and new farm income streams. Its credibility, however, depends on a chain of conditions that extends well beyond whether a practice can increase soil carbon at an experimental site. This critical narrative review evaluates the biophysical basis of agricultural soil carbon sequestration, the distinction between molecular persistence and project-level permanence, the measurement of stock change, and the rapidly developing role of digital technologies in measurement, reporting and verification (MRV). Literature published from 2000 to 6 July 2026 was examined, with earlier conceptual material considered only where necessary. Evidence was prioritised from peer-reviewed field studies, meta-analyses, methodological studies and authoritative technical frameworks. The evidence supports the capacity of cover crops, organic amendments, diversified rotations and some biochar applications to raise soil carbon under appropriate conditions, but effect sizes are strongly conditioned by baseline stocks, climate, texture, depth, carbon inputs, management history and system boundaries. Apparent gains can also arise from altered depth distribution or transferred organic matter rather than additional atmospheric carbon removal. Permanence is therefore a management and accounting property, not simply a property of chemically resistant carbon. Direct remeasurement remains the evidentiary anchor for stock-change assessment, yet high spatial variability and slow accumulation make short project periods statistically difficult. Fixed-depth accounting can bias comparisons when bulk density changes; equivalent-soil-mass approaches and explicit uncertainty analysis are more defensible. Remote sensing, digital soil mapping, spectroscopy, machine learning and process-based models can reduce transaction costs and improve stratification, activity monitoring and extrapolation, but they do not remove the need for field calibration, independent validation and periodic soil remeasurement. High-integrity carbon farming consequently requires hybrid MRV, conservative uncertainty treatment, transparent counterfactual baselines, reversal provisions, leakage and non-carbon greenhouse-gas accounting, auditable data lineage and safeguards for equitable participation. Digitalisation can make carbon farming more scalable, but only if it strengthens rather than substitutes for biophysical and governance integrity.