In addition, agencies provide subsidies for adopting sustainable practices. ![]() Traditionally, the USDA-NRCS, FSA and other organizations have provided growers support to successfully adopt new practices. It is unfair and unrealistic to place the burden of climate change mitigation on the backs of the farmers while not offering them support to limit risk. Provide Technical Assistance for GrowersĪn additional market staller is cost and varied results of carbon-positive practices. It is important to swiftly capitalize on the hope of the markets today and establish guidelines. ![]() The Growing Climate Solutions Act offers guidance, assuming the USDA can act quickly and pragmatically. From farmers to offsetters, eyes are on the USDA to provide guidance on what is “good enough” for quantification and verification. With accelerated demand for high reliability soil carbon measurement, academia and industry are developing guidelines. Weather, climate, management and other factors make it more complex. Carbon in the soil is hard to measure precisely under the best conditions with unlimited resources. One is forcing production cropping systems to meet the same standards and accounting applied to carbon capture machinery, renewable energy, or even forests. Using a living, breathing, working farm to drawdown and sequester soil carbon as means to offset a corporation’s carbon emissions poses several challenges. Bring Clarity to Standards of Quantification & Verification Legacy climate and carbon programs were created with other industries – like energy, oil and gas – in mind.īy bringing either pragmatic clarity or slow and inefficient action, government intervention can help or hinder these nascent, unrealized markets. Farmers often rent some or all of their fields. Debates on methodology, protocol, avoidance and additionality are spirited. Everyone seems to be jumping onto the soil carbon bandwagon, and a plethora of NGOs, public-private consortia, academic working groups and private companies are rushing in to define and deliver on the promise of soil carbon sequestration.Īlong with all the buzz comes a healthy amount of skepticism and confusion, including the still emerging role of government. It’s no wonder that regenerative agriculture and carbon markets have become the biggest story in ag. ![]() They also provide an additional revenue stream to growers, compensating and incentivizing them for adapting best practices. Regenerative practices-such as cover crops, no-till and reduced nutrient application-have the potential to reduce the GHG footprint of farming and mitigate climate change through the sequestration of atmospheric carbon. Regenerative agriculture and the voluntary soil carbon markets emerging around it represent a significant solution to a modern, resilient, and secure food system. The proclamations are impressive, but how will corporations attain their goals? More than 50 major corporations have announced their intent to be carbon-neutral by 2040 and over 900 US companies have gone public with one kind of climate or carbon project commitment. ![]() Today, more than 100 voluntary carbon markets and over 60 different pricing solutions are jockeying for buyers and investors. Its promise masks agricultural and environmental realities resulting in an agtech gold rush. The nature-based carbon market is confusing and controversial. Read the byline in AgriPulse by Vice President of Product Management at CIBO Jenette Ashtekar.
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