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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Clim.

Sec. Carbon Dioxide Removal

Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fclim.2025.1627432

What regional agricultural actors want to know about carbon dioxide removal in Northern Germany

Provisionally accepted
Juliane  El ZohbiJuliane El Zohbi1*Lea  GriesingLea Griesing1Gabriele  TormaGabriele Torma2Diana  RechidDiana Rechid1
  • 1Climate Service Center Germany (GERICS) Helmholtz-Zentrum hereon GmbH, Hamburg, Germany
  • 2Aarhus University, Department of Agroecology, Aarhus, Denmark, Aarhus, Denmark

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Many countries, including Germany, have made their climate targets dependent on the implementation of methods forto removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Actors in the agricultural sector can contribute to this implementation. However, there is a knowledge gap regarding carbon dioxide removal (CDR) among agricultural actors. In this study, we interviewed 34 agricultural actors at the micro, meso, and macro levels to identify the factors hindering the implementation of CDR practices, namely soil carbon sequestration, biochar, and agroforestry. We identified 22 information needs related to the dimensions of Climate Change Mitigation, Technological Conditions, Environmental Impacts, Economics, Policy & Government, and Social Aspects from the interviews. Farmers expressed more information needs compared with representatives from farming associations or local and regional administrations. Across all interviews, recommendations for action were most requested, with a high preference for information in digital online formats. Our findings provide a checklist for future research in the form of codeveloped actionable knowledge between researchers and agricultural actors to increase the knowledge but especially the use of agricultural practices to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Keywords: Carbon-dioxide removal, Agriculture, soil carbon sequestration, biochar, agroforestry, Knowledge creation

Received: 12 May 2025; Accepted: 31 Jul 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 El Zohbi, Griesing, Torma and Rechid. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Juliane El Zohbi, Climate Service Center Germany (GERICS) Helmholtz-Zentrum hereon GmbH, Hamburg, Germany

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