Carbon balance is all about how much carbon a plant adds to soil and how much is lost to harvest and erosion. Add more than you take off the field, and you build soil carbon.

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Unlike many crops, corn, a C4 plant, can be easily bred for key traits. With the rise of improved breeding and plant genetics came bigger corn crops and higher yields of overall biomass on a given amount of land. That has lead available corn stover residue to more than quadruple. That means more carbon from the atmosphere can be delivered to the soil.

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