Comparing Carbon Programs

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

Are carbon credits a viable source of income for farmers shifting to more regenerative practices? Dr. Alejandro Plastina, associate professor at Iowa State University examined this exact question. He and his colleagues published a report detailing the parameters of multiple active carbon programs.

Plastina… “There are many programs out there that offer very different ways to participate in these voluntary carbon markets and it’s really hard to decide which one suits a particular farm, and they’re so different across programs. Anything from how they measure carbon, how they pay for carbon, the length of the contract, the requirements to participate in the program, and so on, that it’s really really hard to compare carbon programs before getting a full contract from each of your potential carbon initiatives. And that’s why we came up with this report, how to grow and sell carbon credits where we collected data from 13 carbon programs and compared them across 24, 25 different attributes to help people, you know, select a small set of carbon programs that they might be interested in.”

With these vast differences, Plastina highly encourages farmers to do their homework before committing.