Carbon farmers

[PureCountry]

Had a discussion about this last night at our family meeting. I still feel like keeping my feet in the mud, and saying that no matter what the offenders have to pay, it doesn't change the fact that they are still polluting.

I agree with you Randy that it will entice more landowners to manage land properly, but define proper management. From what I've read, there are no payment plans yet for grasslands here in Canada, which is absolutely ridiculous. Grasslands will sequester far more carbon than no-tilled farmland. A friend of mine spoke with a credit broker earlier in the fall, and it looked like he'd be eligible until he mentioned that he uses sweeps on his cultivator to control weeds, instead of spraying more chemical. They told him that makes him ineligible. So he's doing good on one hand by using less chemical, but he's ruining his chances of getting paid for his carbon credits. I'm not an expert on sequesteration enough to know if the one pass he does actually releases what carbon his soils have sequestered, so I won't dispute that. The whole system seems to have a lot of holes in it is all.

My Dad made a good point last night I must admit. He said, "If they pay $45/acre, I'd take the money for 4-5 years until the land is paid for. Then scrap it. They can buy them from someone else."

Basically he's saying use it, but use it wisely. Don't become dependant on it. As I said, he's got a point.

[PureCountry]

Forgot to ask - if Encana or Anadarko or CNRL or whomever buys carbon credits from John Q. Landowner, what is the benefit for them? Do they get tax breaks from the government? I've heard rumors but never anything concrete.

[Burbert]

Forgot to mention in my last post. Bet the administrators are just rubbing their hands together on this. It's better than CAIS or Crop Insurance, or whatever new plan comes out. This can be administered/audited/checked/rechecked/
double checked, triple checked forever. This is a make work, fake work project where tired/fired/retired framers can work forever, not to mention burnt out politicos, that will jump on boards to fix policy and consult with leading framers in the field. This is a stupid, stupid, stupid concept!

[silverback]

Please name us one thing in this whole wide world that you do like Burbert.

As far as I can tell there is only one thing and that is the Canadian Wheat Board.

You curse at everything else.

What would it be?

[wilagro]

Silverback: I agree with Burbert. It is undoubtedly a stupid, stupid scheme and I have said so from day one. This whole carbon cycle thingy where one exploits another to obtain a so-called benefit is total BULL.

My gawd, we studied the carbon cycle in high school and college where it was just that...a process...not some evil thing which mankind had to manage to save the planet.

Politicians should stick to what they know best (which probably isn't much), and leave science to someone who has at least studied it.

[per]

My wife and I have this conversation often. The following is her take on the subject....

Here we are trading the very thing that is essential to every life form, carbon dioxide. Warm-blooded animals exhale it and plants inhale it, it is all part of the natural design of life on earth so that everything exists symbiotically. Why do we want governments and big businesses to quantify it and place a value on the very essence of life, as we know it on this planet?

We farmers are sometimes lulled into believing that governments are helping us. But you would think that we would remember from history what they have done for us. They have taken away our freedom to sell our products freely. Big business has taken the very essence of plant life – the seed – away from farmers to trade and sell to fellow farmers with the blessing of the government who granted them the right. They have the patent on the seeds that we grow for food. They also control our water, which the government sells to them for pittance then they sell it in plastic bottles. Why do we want to give them, the government and big business, the ability to further control our environment? Selling carbon credits is the first step of many that may lead to the taxation of any activity that creates carbon dioxide, such as breathing, taking a vacation, or driving to town to get parts.

Every time we give up our ability to control our environment we move closer to the old system of serfdom where big business controls and we farmers do the work for nothing. Do we want to be known as the generation that sold out our ability to be entrepreneurs and became peasants? Trading carbon tax credits is the beginning to this absurdity of quantifying and value placing on the things that occur naturally. Maybe we should be more concerned about real pollutants.

[silverback]

Oh I agree also Wil, but I cannot for the life of me figure one thing that Burb is happy about on this planet.

[rkaiser]

I see your points about government involvement folks, but what of the potential for environmental change? Shall we simply become better stewards of the land and only have our pride as payment? The evidence of healthy soils through management is obvious and I even think that it carries a certain amount of economic gain over a long period of time, but incentive would speed up that process, would it not?

If not a carbon credit program - what else? Just seems like a capitalist approach vs. standing with our hands out, or paying on our own.

I guess we simply fight the conventional system our entire lives and hope that that effort puts a few bucks in our pockets from the increasingly aware consumer. Would be nice if it did not take a lifetime of effort.....

[per]

I hear you Randy and when push comes to shove I am completely ready to participate in a program that lets market forces incent people to be good stewards. That is why we have been researching what is available for carbon trading and how it will work. I think you are wrong if you think good stewardship has only long term gain though. Especially those that haven't been good stewards all along will see a noticable gain in production and cost per unit of production tends downward in a healthy ecosystem.

That being said it is still enabling poluting industries to keep poluting. It is all about money transfer and not cleaning up our act. An area where none of us are completey inocent.

per