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to counter the effects of climate change
has become more prominent. Companies
like Bayer, Indigo Ag, Corteva and the
Land O’ Lakes subsidiary Truterra, have
launched their own carbon programs to
pay producers for carbon sequestration
practices.

Truterra’s 2021 program, launched in
February, paid farmers $20 per ton of
carbon they have sequestered by adding
management practices like reduced tillage,
no-till or cover crops, which they mea-
sured through crop modeling and in-field
sampling. The program has distributed
more than $4 million in cash payments
and, on average, participating farmers
received $20,000 in the program.

“The carbon program is based on a mea-
sured and a model approach where we
use actual soil samples to calibrate [our
model],” Anthony Robertson, a supply
chain manager at Truterra, told Agri-Pulse.

The 2022 iteration of the program will
also feature a second approach that will
pay farmers looking to implement prac-
tices like cover crops for the first time
by providing them with one-time pay-
ments of up to $2 per acre and offering
them support services to help with the
transition.

“It’s going to be a market access program
where we’re working with growers to, one,
help them find the financial assistance and
support that they need [and] two, we’re
trying to make sure that they have the
right conservation agronomy support,”
Robertson said.

Nick Smith, who farms with his dad and
brother in Epworth, Iowa, told Agri-Pulse
that their farm is enrolled in the Truterra
program. Through the program they are
getting a total of $5,000.

www.Agri-Pulse.com 33