According to the quantities of plant and animal products placed on the world market in 2022, agriculture and forestry captured 20.1 ± 1.5 billion tonnes (Gt or Pg) of CO2, with a weighted mean duration of the corresponding storage of 10.9 ± 3.3 years. These figures are supplemented here by the unharvested above-ground and below-ground parts of plants that are left in place and increase the soil organic carbon pool. This brings the capture by cultivated whole plants to 41.0 ± 0.6 GtCO2, and the storage duration weighted mean to 26.3 ± 2.0 years in 2022. This was the largest global contribution to the reduction of atmospheric CO2 by amplitude and duration, which bio-remediated the global anthropogenic emissions totally, cancelling their influence on climate. The enrichment of the atmosphere with CO2 comes probably from the ocean, which could be a source and not a sink. Complementary approaches, freed from doctrinal preconceptions, should make it possible to clarify further the compensations of CO2 emissions by plants and their environmental consequences.
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