Carbon

This blog post previews the content of Jonah Kolb’s presentation during the Carbon Track at ISA’s 2022 Soybean Summit on February 1st at the I Hotel and Conference Center in Champaign. […]

Contributed by Bradford Warner Vice President of Sustainability & Business Development, Farmobile The increasingly frenetic and frequent conversations around carbon markets, water quality, regenerative ag, and sustainability have spawned more questions than answers. What Farmobile can definitively say is that carbon credit and environmental, social and governance (ESG) markets are not going away. A new market is popping up every week, every month. At the grower level, however, there are a lot of questions. Is this for me? What hoops will I have to jump through? What will I have to do to participate? Perhaps most importantly, is this [...]

This article was originally published in the July issue of the Illinois Field & Bean magazine. Read the full article here. It seems as if we're hearing about new carbon market programs left and right these days. The myriad viewpoints can be confusing, so much so that farmers can become bewildered with unanswered questions as to which opportunity is the best option for their operation. Last year, the need for clarity for these carbon programs was recognized by several organizations, including the Illinois Sustainable Ag Partnership (ISAP), who stepped up to help answer lingering questions. ISAP, a partnership between [...]

The American Soybean Association provided a snapshot for crop producers of the carbon market landscape as of April 2021. Most of the current opportunities are for pilot projects and are not operating fully as a market at this point. Payment amounts vary and can be practice-based (with a fixed amount paid for adoption of certain conservation practices) or outcome-based (providing an amount based on the quantity of carbon sequestered as estimated through models or measured in soil tests). Nori suggests using 0.2 to 1.5 tonnes of annual carbon dioxide sequestration per acre as a rule of thumb for recently [...]

Since joining ISA as the Director of Conservation Agriculture in January, one area in particular of my responsibilities has been extremely active. The carbon market space that is currently under development changes weekly with new companies entering this space, and at first glance, it can be quite confusing. In this blog I hope to outline a series of questions that farmers can ask as they consider entering this market. The basic structure of the marketplace is comprised of entities known as intermediate-credit-purchasers (ICP), by which farmers sell their credits. These entities are either non-profit organizations or agricultural corporations and [...]

Every day, more and more articles pop up in my news feed highlighting carbon as a potential revenue source for farmers. I admit, as a soil scientist my feed may be a bit biased, but news about farming practices that store soil carbon are no longer limited to scientists or conservation-minded farmers, soil carbon has infiltrated the mainstream. In fact, over the last few months, multiple articles have been published in the popular press discussing various aspects of carbon farming ranging from proposed policies to marketplace creation to corporate, regional and national pay for performance approaches. With all this buzz, navigating through the various [...]