Arguments
Startups aim to pay farmers to bury carbon pollution in soil
Posted on 3 February 2020 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Sarah Wesseler
As one result of modern farming practices that strip organic matter from the ground, between 20 and 60% of the carbon once stored in the world’s agricultural soils has been lost. Putting it back – a process known as carbon farming or regenerative agriculture – has been hailed as a promising climate mitigation solution.
According to Rattan Lal, PhD, a leading expert on soil carbon, agricultural land could capture the equivalent of around 20% of annual global emissions. But Lal stresses that the benefits of carbon-rich soil go beyond climate – it’s also vital for food security, water quality, and biodiversity. Failure to replenish soil carbon is not an option, he said. “It’s not either/or. It’s a must.”
He believes that paying farmers to sequester carbon – specifically, about $16 per acre per year – is an important part of the solution. Some payment programs have been tried in the past, he said, but they haven’t been effective enough. “I do not think there is a real payment-of-ecosystem-services program anywhere in the world.”
Soil as a bank
Lal uses a personal finance analogy to explain soil carbon management. “In your bank account, you want your total asset to increase,” he said. “Soil carbon is exactly the same way. If you put more carbon in soil than you take out, the soil carbon stock will go up and help give you more interest and more other benefits. But if you take out more than you put in, it will go down.”
“Right now, the way the farmers are doing things, we are taking out more than what we put in.”
The causes of carbon loss are well understood, according to Lal. One is erosion from wind and rain. Another is the starvation of soil microorganisms, resulting from a lack of food sources like crop residue and root biomass. Soil disturbance (through tilling or bulldozing, for example) is problematic, as is leaching (in humid climates).
These losses can be minimized through a set of practices known as conservation agriculture, which emphasizes minimizing soil disturbance, keeping the soil covered, and rotating crops. But only about 8% of cropland is farmed this way, Lal said.
The problem isn’t that farmers don’t understand soil carbon, he believes. “Farmers are not stupid. I think they are very wise. They are wiser than the scientists, because they have to make their living out of this system.”
Instead, the issue is money. If farmers can earn more by selling their crop residue for hay or other uses than by leaving it on their fields, many will, he said. “And simply by me or you going in and telling them ‘Don’t you dare do that!’ will just make them laugh and tell you, ‘Get lost,'” he said. “And that is exactly what we are doing.”
Carbon storage payments
Proposals to make carbon sequestration financially attractive to farmers are becoming more common. Over the past few months, Democratic presidential hopefuls including Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders have pledged to pay for carbon farming if elected. Former candidate Cory Booker introduced a Senate climate change bill that would increase funding for a U.S. Department of Agriculture program that provides financial assistance to growers who adopt sustainable practices.
At the state level, California’s Healthy Soils Program Incentives Program currently offers grants to help producers store carbon. In Montana, conservation-focused nonprofit Western Sustainability Exchange runs a carbon payment program for ranchers.
Startups are also getting into the game, betting that private-sector companies can help pay farmers by selling carbon offsets.
One trillion tons?
Last summer, Boston-based Indigo Agriculture made headlines in business media with the announcement of its Terraton Initiative, which aims to pay growers to sequester one trillion tons of carbon dioxide.
Although Indigo is involved in a range of farm-related activities, from microbial seed treatments to agronomy (expert farm consulting, essentially) and crop transportation, soil carbon is a major focus. The company has promised that farmers who signed up for its carbon program before the end of 2019 will receive at least $15 per metric ton sequestered. Payments will be financed partly through the sale of offsets, which go for $20 per ton. As of late January, growers had committed more than 17 million acres to the program, according to Indigo’s website.
Ed Smith, who leads the company’s carbon program, says that recent technological advances and increased public demand for climate solutions will help the Terraton Initiative succeed where others have failed. “We think now is the moment. We think now is different,” he said. Improvements in satellite technology allow Indigo to monitor farming practices like cover crop usage and tillage from afar, while distributed ledger technology enables secure public information-sharing for carbon credits.
Technology is also helping Indigo reduce the high cost of soil carbon measurement. “Measurement has basically killed the economics of projects in the past,” Smith said. To avoid the need for resource-intensive testing at every site, Indigo is gathering data from selected fields, then using it to calibrate a digital model that helps predict carbon sequestration rates in other locations.
To help bolster the accuracy and credibility of soil carbon measurement, Indigo has also formed partnerships with two carbon standards bodies, Verra and Climate Action Reserve.
Incentives and barriers
Another startup that wants to pay growers for carbon farming is Seattle-based Nori. Its recently launched online marketplace connects people who want to fund sequestration to those who can provide the service – farmers, for example. According to the company, a recent pre-sale moved enough carbon credits to pay Maryland farmer Trey Hill more than $80,000, enough to capture 5,340 metric tons.
While individuals can use the marketplace to offset their own emissions, large companies that work with growers have also expressed interest in Nori’s model, said Chief Development Officer Christophe Jospe. “They have frustration internally. They say, ‘We know what needs to be done. We know the best practices and we know how to help our farmers. We just need a system that they can plug into so that we can reward the farmers for the best practices.'”
But Jospe cautioned that the agricultural sector is complex, and that ecosystem service payments are only one piece of the solution. Powerful economic, political, and social forces steer many U.S. farmers toward practices that emit carbon rather than capture it. Crop insurance is weighted toward large-scale commodity production, and trusted salespeople tout the benefits of business-as-usual seeds, fertilizers, and equipment. Consolidation destroys midsize farms. Social pressures can discourage “doing weird farming,” as Jospe put it.
Many farmers are also justifiably wary of outsiders, Jospe said, having been hurt in the past by policy and business decisions over which they had little say. “I think there’s a lack of trust that farmers have that is well deserved, because they’ve been found on the short end of the stick time and time again,” he said.
But regenerative agriculture is still a niche practice. To help as many growers as possible understand how soil carbon sequestration can help them, Nori works with groups that have strong relationships within the agricultural community: The Nature Conservancy and farm software Granular, for instance, as well as agronomists.
“Farming moves at the speed of trust,” Jospe said. “So we’re not necessarily trying to get this right by being a group that sits down at every individual table – rather, let’s just plug into the networks where the relationships already exist.”
AUTHOR
Sarah Wesseler is a Brooklyn-based writer focusing on cities, culture, and climate change.
This is all very good - soil regeneration is a win-win for us all. However it can be an even bigger win if you include biochar into the mix and burial into the soil - unlike compost it stays in the soil for 100s of years: ON BIOCHAR - A MUST READ – Burn; using fire to cool the Earth by Albert Bate and Kathleen Draper. Encourage your libraries and local bookstores to buy it.
Lal's calculations as to how much C an be sequestered are regarded as very much at the low end of the spread of predictions. The results of Dr David Johnson of NMU suggest a surprisingly larger capacity is available. Red Baron?
Capacity is plenty to cover both mens estimates and some. The kicker is and always was rate.
5-20 tonnes CO2e /ha/yr has been repeated multiple times around the world in the field by land managers.
Dr David Johnsons results are higher, but these are research plot numbers, not results from commercial land managers/farmers/ranchers attempting to use Dr Johnson's methods. I only know of one or two examples of anyone obtaining results comparable, so this could be an outlier, or it could be yet another big breakthough comparable to the LCP.
I don't doubt what Dr Johnson has done is possible, but how easily it is repeatable is an unknown for me right now. I will however attempt to repeat his numbers myself in my own research plots. That is if I can manage to round up enough money for a series of 16S and 18S analyses and some equipment. My attempts to raise money for my research has not gone particularly well so far. I know I don't have the funds for the more expensive detailed tests. My attempt to gain funding from the Indigo challenge was also unsuccessful, although I certainly applied.
Considering how he claims he got those results, I am a bit surprised though. Till now I never thought I'd see numbers like that on that side of the system. Although it may be that somehow while he may think this is saprophytic carbon being sequestered it is in the end really mostly mycorrhizal carbon from the LCP that has somehow trapped additional decaying organic material from the saprophytic organisms. That's just a hypothesis of mine though. I obviously have not tested it yet. I am basing it on this: Glomalin, the Unsung Hero of Carbon Storage
Notice that while glomalin itself is a carbon compound, it actually binds other organic compounds and traps them, preventing their oxidation and release back as CO2. It is possible that is what Dr Johnson is managing to optimize, since compost is clearly the saprophytic side (Labile fraction of soil carbon) and usually decays back to CO2 almost entirely. That leaves an interesting level of complexity to investigate. I have been following Dr Johnsons results for a while now.
RedBaron, pardon me if I'm telling you what you already know but there are a few specialist crowdfunding sites to help with scientific experimentation.
https://experiment.com/ is one I've used (as a funder)
Possibly you might have better results with a crowd particularly interested in funding science.
For a great take on regenerative agriculture, it would be hard to find a better book than Growing a Revolution by David R Montgomery. He also wrote a previous book, Dirt, in which he described the fate of civilizations that treated their soil like dirt and a sequel, The Hidding Half of Nature in which he describes the inner working of rich organic (carbon rich) soil. Rumors are that he is now working on a book on the food value of crops grown in rich organic soil vs crops grown in depleated soil.
So Indigo agriculture subsidises farmers to use regnerative farming. Does anyone know who funds indigo agriculture?
20% of yearly emissions sequestered sounds good.
Indigo's goal is to sequester all the legacy carbon in the atmosphere in a matter of a few decades. They have gone through serval fundraising rounds and last I heard the two biggest investors were the Dubai sovereign fund and the Alaska permanent fund, both are outlets for oil money.
@4 doug,
As it turns out, no I had never tried them. And as it turns out moments after seeing your post I did go there and begin their process.
Turns out their peer review and verification process can be tough at times. However, for the last two months I have been hammering it out with their reviewers and did eventually get approved. The project goes live on the 16th.
Thanks very much for directing me to them. It was frustrating at times, but in the end I feel it was a very good way to proceed. I even managed to get an endorsement by none other than Joel Salatin! While I have been in touch with him before by email and phone, this is the first direct endorsement I ever got of that caliber and he probably would not have done so without it being such a reputable site.
Thanks very much for the link. I owe you. Feel free to come by this summer for a free box of tomatoes ;)
What is the rate a new regenerative agricultural method sequesters carbon in the soil?
Update:
Unfortunately I got this message today in my email from Experiment dot Com
So sadly it looks like I won't be able to do it after all. 2 months of hard work down the tubes just 3 days before launch. :(
I will try to find another platform though.
Red Baron,
I am sorry that your project has been delayed for the time being. It is always disappointing when you hit a bump in the road. Unfortunately, this is a typical problem for any scientific venture. Try to find others who might help you out. Press on with what you have and you may find that another door opens.
Good luck.
By all means do not get discouraged, it looks interesting and promising.
Experiment dot com closes down indefinitly
As some of you know, today was the day my fundraiser at experiment dot com was going to launch. Go there and check it out please.
What is the rate a new regenerative agricultural method sequesters carbon in the soil?
All went well at first. After 2 months of hard work, endorsements and peer reviews by other scientists, I was finally ready, approved and just waiting their 7 day waiting period to launch. I had even started the project as best I could without funds just to be ready and already started my lab notes and updates.
Then sadly I got this email:
So after 2 months of hard work setting this all up, they close down. They wouldn’t say directly why, but the timing is apparently somehow indirectly related to the covid 19 pandemic and/or the financial crisis resulting. I have been told I can still run the project from there, posting results, and if it ever opens up funding in the future, I maybe can try again in their new format. But I can not raise money there now. So if you think the project is worthy please go here instead:
Click here to support Sustainable Ag Research by Scott Strough
This was an earlier ongoing fundraiser I have been using to mitigate some of the costs for the original development of the methods I am developing. That place isn't a science based platform, but it will allow me to try and fund my project.
And if you can't donate, please share this page wherever you can, facebook, twitter, your colleagues, anywhere you can think. Sharing actually might be more beneficial than actually donating.
Thanks so much.
Scott
RedBaron @12 ,
Happy to donate anonymously, but the fundraiser organisation is mandating the supplying of my email address. Is there a convenient way to get around that "privacy issue" roadblock?
Eclectic,
My personal email is teamred33064@yahoo.com. You are welcome to email me there and I will give you different contact information as needed. But as far as I know, gofundme does have an anonomous capability, and while they may ask for an email, they do not publish it, nor your name.
[DB] Personal contact information snipped for your protection.
Thank you, RedBaron, but I really do try to keep an ultra-low profile in cyberspace. Even from the good guys such as you. And even from SkS ~ where I would like to contribute anonymously (but even there, email address is mandated within the credit-card payment system). Same goes for several other worthy causes I would like to support anonymously ~ I will submit my named credit-card details to the automated payments systems, but not if they mandate email details as part of the deal.
For "local" charities (such as Red Cross, MSF, and similar) I simply post a personal check via snail-mail. But they never get my email address into their records.
RedBaron, unthinkable for you to publicly supply bank account details for IMT, of course. And apart from the hassle for you, you would find my (modest) personal check becomes severely depleted by banking & conversion fees.
So for you and for SkS , I recognize the efficiency of electronic fund-raising, but I am left wondering why oh why the mandatory email biz. High time surely, there was an alternative system, without the "added risk". [ Am I failing to comprehend an obvious monetary reason for email details ~ other than spam/big-data ?]
Moderators, is SkS considering adding an email-free donations system?
A curmudgeonly correction : my memory is at fault ~ SkS actually has a PayPal donation system. Years ago, I parted company with PayPal, after identification hassles. My various on-line payments, these days, go through automated third-party systems.
Eclectic,
You may snail mail me at:
Scott Strough
6010 1/2 Post Rd
OKC, OK 73150
phone (405) 430-2277
Or just drive by and I'll show you the soils and methods for a short tour. Or do that this summer when I can load your car up with tomatoes and cucumbers! Call first so I can be sure to be there and ready.
[DB] Personal contact information snipped for your protection.
Very kind of you, RedBaron. I like your ideas . . . but rolling out your very reddest carpet for me, would rather oblige me to contribute a four figure sum (which is somewhat more than I had in mind initially!)
Best of luck in persevering with your project !
From my own standpoint, two exceedingly long flights plus a couple of two-week isolation periods (not to mention the visa hassles and the caprices of your Glorious Leader) . . . all conspire to discourage me.
I presume it's unattractive currently, for you to go YouTube style.
@eclectic, I have a youtube account, but I have yet to quite master the editing part of making youtube vids. My first attempts are fairly limited to say the least.
https://www.youtube.com/user/redddbaron
However, I have a large collection of other peoples vids on the subject and I am attempting to gradually learn how to youtube.
Yes, RedBaron, it's not quite the thing, fund-raising-wise.
I am not really familiar with the efficacy of the Patreon system, either.
My impression is that many of those who make serious money from "Patreon" are spending most of their time aiming at being controversial and/or right wingnut. And are not spending much time doing anything useful in a practical sense. Not your style, I'm thinking.
Still, your ideas may find fertile soil (so to speak) in 2021 with a New Administration. 'Course, that depends on which way the cat jumps in November 2020.
Good luck in persevering. You know the old saying about inspiration & perspiration.
As Eclectic @20 mentions Patreon:
You might want to take a look at our blog post listing various climate-related crowdsourcing and -funding projects. Several of the funding projects incidentally make use of Patreon like ClimateAdam, JustHaveAThink or RealSkeptic. You'd have to check what types of projects are suitable for it as I think it's mostly for "creators" of e.g. videos and the like.
@4 doug_bostrom and all others who supported my efforts,
I have great news! It took a 6 month delay due to covid, and months in peer review by their science team, but I finally was able to launch the science fundraiser project! It went live yesterday.
What is the rate a new regenerative agricultural method sequesters carbon in the soil?
I would appreciate very much help from any of you that understand better than me how to share this, Advertising is unfortunately not one of my skills. It was hard enough for me to develop the methods and design the scientific tials!
Oh and BTW one of the first questions everyone asks me when they see this is why the grass between the crop rows? In this case a picture is worth a thousand words.
Glad to hear you could launch RB, contribution sent.
What harrowing rollercoaster ride, RedBaron. But here you are, on the other side, or at least successfully and solidly at the next stage.
I'd not revisited this thread since my original comment (thanks for the pointer, Baerbel). I have to say I was extremely dejected during the period of your narrative where it seemed experiment.com had ceased operations. It's a great outfit— I've "participated" in several projects there, always with a satisfactory outcome.
We'd be interested in publishing a guest blog post about this. Not only is your project quite interesting but the story of how you've persisted is pretty inspirational.
As well, for others it might be helpful to learn about how the process at experiment.com works, from a hardened veteran. In particular it would be fascinating to hear about the peer review process.
If you're interested and have the time, please contact us via the contact form.
For the rest of us: if you've got a few ducats to spare, head over and progress RedBaron's experiment. It takes only a few minutes of your time taken from tapping and swiping dismal headlines and the sacrifice of a deluxe but fattening pizza's worth of money to make the world better.
That is a worthwhile question. Good for you on persistance. Adding my ducats.
Am wishing to donate, but running into trouble with Experiment.com
(and am not wishing to use facebook)
Attempt No.1 produced the Rotating Colorwheel of Death (or Capture?)
Attempt No.2 produced a Whoops Connection Problem.
For a klutz like me, one strike produces suspicion - and the second strike produces paranoia. Can friendly experts advise? Is there a Plan C (without Paypal) ?
Thanks everyone! And yes Doug I did send a note from your contact form. Still waiting a reply. And Eclectic, I really don't have any idea why you are having difficulties.