Carbon offsets

[Hamloc]

Article in Manitoba Cooperator:” Carbon offset program made for regenerative individuality.”

Monitoring of soil carbon on a farm by farm basis. Simple question if you get payed based on your soil carbon increasing what if continued monitoring shows it is starting to decrease again? Do you pay the money back? Is the land once enrolled locked into a certain management strategy forever? This would be giving the government way too much control in my opinion.

[shtferbrains]

How much pay?

[Hamloc]

How much pay?

There were no numbers in the article as far as payment, they did talk about soil sequestration numbers though.

[SASKFARMER]

If its not in the $60.00 an acre area its a waste of time.

They are paying farmers in the USA these numbers already.

If it is lower look for a liberal to be taking his share 54 and you get 6.

Its a game.

Read the fine print because you will be responsible.

[bucket]

I am wondering if the carbon price of sequestering shouldn't be correlated to the carbon tax?

As it goes up so does the value of sequestering?

I also think farmers should be able to use existing records on farming practices reported to Crop insurance to help give benchmarks for farmers payments.

[TASFarms]

Must be money in pumping carbon into the ground. Whitecap is planning on pumping 1 million tonnes a year from coop into the ground

[DaneG]

Carbon credits about as tangible and elusive as cripto currency!

[shtferbrains]

I am wondering if the carbon price of sequestering shouldn't be correlated to the carbon tax?

As it goes up so does the value of sequestering?

I also think farmers should be able to use existing records on farming practices reported to Crop insurance to help give benchmarks for farmers payments.

Isn't that the price of carbon? You buy offsets to reduce your tax?

Isn't that what Amazonis doing buying all the solar power at premium rates? Zero carbon company if you can buy enough offsets.

Look for the fertilizer companies to get involved as accumulator's as they are going to need the offsets.
Whole new buisness opprtunity for ag suppliers.

[jamesb]

From what I understand some of the vari rate outfits are going to acting as a facilitator with their customers farm data to access the dollars. Supposedly a individual farmer should be able to do the paper work themselves . https://radiclebalance.com/
these guys one of the outfits involved.
We use Decisive for our vari rate prescription. They are supposedly setting something up with Radicle to handle the carbon credit paper work. As we are already with them it should be seamless if things come together . From Decisive's website
Radicle

Carbon
Radicle and Decisive Farming are providing you with an easier way to manage your carbon and CCP credits. Instead of long paper applications Radicle has connected to My Farm Managerâ„¢ to help you sell your credits easier.

Radicle is recognized as a world leader in the field of carbon credit/offset and the largest independent offsets aggregator in Canada. Since their inception in 2008, Radicle (formerly Carbon Credit Solutions Inc.) has aggregated and sold over 1.7 million tonnes of verified carbon credits in the Alberta Offset Market.

[Sheepwheat]

Is no till the only factor? What about cat work and sc****r work? Tilling it black with the new fandangled tillage tools?

Perennial forages count for anything? Woodlots? Sloughs and marshes?

Or just no till?

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Is no till the only factor? What about cat work and sc****r work? Tilling it black with the new fandangled tillage tools?

Perennial forages count for anything? Woodlots? Sloughs and marshes?

Or just no till?

Realistically, perennial no-till reaches a new plateau after so many years, and is no longer a carbon sink. Same with an existing forest or Marsh, if you were to measure the percent organic matter in the soil, it isn't increasing, having long since reached its natural balance. Although the quantity of topsoil would be gaining in the absence of natural fires
Does anyone have access to any studies which indicate that perennial hay is gaining organic matter? Because my experience in our local soils indicates the exact opposite. Removing all of the top growth multiple times per year year after year has horrendous consequences to the organic matter. No if the removal is accompanied by replacing with livestock on the same property, that is a different story, but that rarely is the case in reality.
The same with perennial pastor land, perhaps with very intensive management, and portable windbreaks and shelters and no trees anywhere, you can improve badly degraded ground up to a certain point, but just like in notill, the law of diminishing returns applies, it will reach a new plateau long-term.

All of which misses the bigger point, which is that we as farmers should be doing everything we can to increase CO2 in the atmosphere not decrease free fertilizer.
The good news is that none of these measures are having, or will have any measurable effect.

[shtferbrains]

From what I understand some of the vari rate outfits are going to acting as a facilitator with their customers farm data to access the dollars. Supposedly a individual farmer should be able to do the paper work themselves . https://radiclebalance.com/
these guys one of the outfits involved.
We use Decisive for our vari rate prescription. They are supposedly setting something up with Radicle to handle the carbon credit paper work. As we are already with them it should be seamless if things come together . From Decisive's website
Radicle

Carbon
Radicle and Decisive Farming are providing you with an easier way to manage your carbon and CCP credits. Instead of long paper applications Radicle has connected to My Farm Managerâ„¢ to help you sell your credits easier.

Radicle is recognized as a world leader in the field of carbon credit/offset and the largest independent offsets aggregator in Canada. Since their inception in 2008, Radicle (formerly Carbon Credit Solutions Inc.) has aggregated and sold over 1.7 million tonnes of verified carbon credits in the Alberta Offset Market.

Be better if you could just accumulate them till the value is better established?

[jamesb]

Be better if you could just accumulate them till the value is better established?

The last time something like this came up as some outfit and the Chicago Climate exhange. We used crop insurance records for our past practices. At that time I got enough out of it the one year to buy a decent auto steer unit for a tractor. If i remember correctly the outfit paying was belly up in a couple years. I will be honest, in my mind its good that we are rewarded for our good practices but the idea that the polluters buy the credits so they can carry on business as usual doesn't solve anything. What the plan long term?

[Sheepwheat]

Realistically, perennial no-till reaches a new plateau after so many years, and is no longer a carbon sink. Same with an existing forest or Marsh, if you were to measure the percent organic matter in the soil, it isn't increasing, having long since reached its natural balance. Although the quantity of topsoil would be gaining in the absence of natural fires
Does anyone have access to any studies which indicate that perennial hay is gaining organic matter? Because my experience in our local soils indicates the exact opposite. Removing all of the top growth multiple times per year year after year has horrendous consequences to the organic matter. No if the removal is accompanied by replacing with livestock on the same property, that is a different story, but that rarely is the case in reality.
The same with perennial pastor land, perhaps with very intensive management, and portable windbreaks and shelters and no trees anywhere, you can improve badly degraded ground up to a certain point, but just like in notill, the law of diminishing returns applies, it will reach a new plateau long-term.

All of which misses the bigger point, which is that we as farmers should be doing everything we can to increase CO2 in the atmosphere not decrease free fertilizer.
The good news is that none of these measures are having, or will have any measurable effect.

I agree you hit a brick wall without animals. I just find it amusing that some farmers seem to feel like they are such great environmental stewards, and deserve cash for being so great, while the hoe, the sc****rs, the cat are out clearing land, and the fancy, latest ultra tillage machines pulverize any soil structure that remains. Society won’t buy it.

Regenerative ag is not grandpas ag, or even daddy’s. Comparing it to old 1970’s style grazing and haying is also not accurate in my view.

But no till is the bomb!

[flea beetle]

Is no till the only factor? What about cat work and sc****r work? Tilling it black with the new fandangled tillage tools?

Perennial forages count for anything? Woodlots? Sloughs and marshes?

Or just no till?

I had that discussion with a carbon credit buyer when they first started the scam.

Said no payment on anything that wasn’t being grain farmed. I told them that forests and hay land/pasture sequester more carbon than any grain land ever will.

Their answer was simply, they aren’t recognized under this program.