Carbon smart farming, climate smart agriculture, employing soil health practices… whatever you want to call it, it’s gaining traction and some farmers are getting paid for it.
Heather Gieseke, head of North American Carbon for Indigo Ag, says everyone’s talking about carbon.
“The carbon buzz is certainly all around us. Everybody’s trying to figure out how they can plug into these carbon markets and how agriculture can play a role in it.”
Gieseke says Indigo Ag has the largest and fastest-growing carbon program in ag today.
“And we actually have the only program with verified credits through the climate action reserve. So what that means is we’re the only company out there that can actually validate that carbon credits are being generated in a farmer’s soil and have the ability to sell them to buyers on the other side, and we’re seeing that demand continue to grow every day.”
With that growing demand comes a growing share of revenue with farmers enrolled in their program as the carbon market matures.
“I always say to growers that when they win, Indigo wins, and our profit sharing of the credit price is a really critical part of our program. So farmers get a 75% share of the credits that we sell, and we just increased a farmer’s minimum payment from $15 to now $20 because the price of credits continues to grow.”
Gieseke says at Indigo Ag, they want to go on this journey of carbon smart farming with growers to help them know how they can qualify for the program and what makes sense for the farmer on that acre. They also want farmers to access their program through other trusted partners.
“Corteva, GROWMARK and Landus are all out in the market and rolling their farmer customers in the Indigo carbon program so that farmers can leverage those trusted relationships. Systems like Granular that Corteva has that can, is already capturing that farm’s data to make the program more accessible, easier to be a part of. We just want to do our best to make sure that every customer that wants to participate can and finding the best way possible for them to get involved.”
Gieseke encourages you to visit indigoag.com. There you’ll find information about their program, but also more information about carbon farming, including their “Carbon College.”
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