Page 34 - C:\Users\sandi\OneDrive\Documents\Flip PDF Professional\Ebook-AgriculturesSustainableFuture-Final\

on a special study committee for the UN’s Inter- analysis, says Reed. She says its soil carbon
governmental Panel on Climate Change. prices have topped out at about $20 a ton and
Indigo Ag has a range of companies wanting to are “trending towards $15/ton” but range
buy carbon offsets, such as Boston Consulting widely.
Group, Dogfish Head Craft Brewery Inc., and ESMC, supported so far with over $23 million
Shopify Inc., says Kari Hernandez, Indigo’s from corporate members and USDA’s Founda-
director of carbon operations. Those firms tion for Food and Agricultural Research, has
“want to mitigate their own emissions at the research proceeding at several sites in the South-
same time they’re investing in farmers” to help ern Plains and Corn Belt, with much of the
them succeed, she said. research headed by the Oklahoma-based Noble
Research Institute.
Its acreage contracted so far is across 21 states,
mostly in the Midwest and Central Plains. The Reed says ESMC’s lineup of eager corporate
contracts are largely corn and beans areas but customers has “grown tremendously even
includes a lot of crops in other rotations. from a year ago. General Mills is a perfect
example. Their food sales have gone up so
Indigo is signing contracts at $20 a ton, $15 of much during COVID that they had to … do
which would go to farmers. So contracts provide more because they have a larger footprint
a farmer with up to $45 per acre if three tons coming from agriculture.”
per acre of new carbon storage can be verified
during the 10 year period. Significantly helping new players in a carbon
market is the arrival of faster, cheaper, more
The $5 a ton that goes to Indigo Ag provides the precise technology for measuring soil carbon,
company’s margin and covers costs of carbon monitoring emissions, and otherwise helping
verification by a second company, Verra Verified make a complex market manageable.
Carbon Standard.
ESMC invested in a phone app that can show a
Nori’s pricing is similar. Still in its pilot stage, grower where on-farm soil samples are needed.
the project keeps a transaction fee of 10% to Without the app, a farmer has to pay $2,000 or
15% and gives the farmer the rest, which is more for an expert to complete such a soil sam-
$15 a ton, from which the farmer pays a verifi- pling plan, she said.
cation fee, says Aldyen Donnelly, Nori carbon
economics director. The actual carbon price that a farmer gets will
align with actual amounts of soil carbon and
Donnelly says Nori had just two landowners as emissions reductions farmers and ranchers can
carbon credit sellers by October 2019, selling to verify and offer, but that can’t happen until the
about 760 buyers. But the firm has been deter- private markets include open price discovery and
mined to first set up a true retail system allow- transparency, which she says are lacking now.
ing any consumer with a valid credit card to
buy GHG offsets. That done,
she says, the firm now has “a
greater focus on aggregating
supply for and securing large The .profitability .equation .
corporate buyer demand.” is .changing .

Meanwhile, ESMC’s trial —Kari Hernandez, .Indigo
prices for all types of emission
mitigation are based on market

34 www.Agri-Pulse.com