Latimer, Iowa (north central) | Dri's initial description of how carbon credits work is accurate but their is still money for the farmer to make, even if it is not what we think a "fair" share of the carbon market is. We have no-tilled and covered cropped for 8 years now. had some fields that were added in the past few years, some that were tiled and worked, and some that have been switched to a 3 way rotation and these get paid much more per acre then long term cover cropped. I have not changed any practices based on getting paid for carbon credits. This crop off season fall 22-spring 23 we have been paid and deposited an average of $5 an acre on all our acres as an initial payment and will get paid another $5 after satellite verifies that field practices were followed.
We no-till, 3-way rotation, and cover crop for the economic benefits and see it as the best $ per acre of profit on our operation over the long-term. After looking at a few of the "scam" companies we went with Cargill this year. I do not trust Cargill either but is only a 1 year program with option to extend further. Their program uses satellite images for documentation. They have these images of everyone's fields already whether we like that or not. It does not seem like fair value to me to be paid a small percentage of what carbon credits sell for on the open market but I am also doing very little of the sales and follow through necessary to make those sales from company A to company B. Not any different then selling grain and getting 7 cents of every dollar of the final food product. For spring of 23 we are content cashing a check for $40,000 from Cargill for something I would be doing anyway and eating a "free", hypocritical non carbon smart, steak dinner at their informational meeting****. |
Why a carbon pipeline if we are going electric?
