Agricultural
Carbon Programs
FROM PROGRAM CHAOS
TO SYSTEMS CHANGE
Sierra View Solutions and American Farmland Trust
ABOUT AMERICAN FARMLAND TRUST
American Farmland Trust (AFT) is the largest national organization dedicated to protecting farmland,
promoting sound farming practices, and keeping farmers on the land. AFT unites farmers and
environmentalists in developing practical solutions that protect farmland and the environment. We work from
“kitchen tables to Congress,” tailoring solutions that are eective for farmers and communities and can be
magnified to have greater impact. Since our founding, AFT has helped to protect more than six and a half
million acres of farmland and led the way for the adoption of conservation practices on millions more. AFT
has a national oce in Washington, D.C., and a network of oces across America where farmland is under
threat. For more information, visit us at farmland.org.
ABOUT SIERRA VIEW SOLUTIONS, LLC
Sierra View Solutions works at the intersection of agriculture, environmental markets, and policy. Our
team has been involved in the development of more than 10 agriculture oset protocols and we work
collaboratively with companies and organizations to implement climate-smart agriculture policies and
programs. To help producers generate revenue through environmental markets, we research and advocate
for practices that reduce methane emissions from dairy farms and the cultivation of rice; reduce nitrous
oxide emissions from crops including corn, almonds, tomatoes, and wine grapes; and promote practices that
sequesters carbon in the soil.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Robert Parkhurst is President of Sierra View Solutions. He has more than 18 years of experience developing
and implementing environmental markets. His knowledge has been sought by the California Air Resources
Board through multiple stakeholder groups, including as co-chair of the Agriculture subcommittee on the
Compliance Oset Protocol Task Force. He has received a Climate Protection Award from the U.S. EPA
for his leadership on climate change and three “CARROT” awards from the Climate Action Reserve for his
work developing credible, accurate, and consistent greenhouse gas reporting standards. His work has been
published in peer-reviewed journals including Climate Policy (on climate policy and carbon management) and
Rangeland Ecology & Management.
CONTACT: rparkhurst@sierraviewsolutions.com
Michelle Perez, PhD is the Water Initiative Director at American Farmland Trust. She has over 19 years of
experience working to improve farm conservation programs and policies, so they improve soil health, protect
water resources, mitigate climate change, and increase farm viability. She conducts research evaluating
voluntary, regulatory, and market-based approaches to reducing agricultural nonpoint source pollution
and advises watershed conservation projects on measuring outcomes. Examples of her work include AFT’s
Soil Health Economic and Environmental Case Study Tool Kit, A Guide to Water Quality, Climate, Social,
and Economic Outcomes Estimation Tools, and Water Quality Targeting Success Stories: How to achieve
measurable cleaner water through U.S. farm conservation watershed projects.
CONTACT: mperez@farmland.org
Lisa Moore, PhD, is a Research Manager at Sierra View Solutions. She has over 17 years of experience working
at the intersection of environmental science and policy, with a focus on understanding and mitigating climate
change impacts and evaluating nature-based climate solutions.
Rebecca Wright is a Research Analyst at Sierra View Solutions. She has conducted analyses including the
calculation of GHG emissions for the dairy industry, quantification of agriculture and forestry-based carbon
credits, and a comparison of temperate forest protocols.
SUGGESTED CITATION
Parkhurst, R., Moore, L.A., Wright, R, and Perez, M. (2023) Agricultural Carbon Programs: From Chaos to
Systems Change [White paper]. Washington, D.C.: American Farmland Trust.
This publication is available to the public in pdf format from: https://farmlandinfo.org/publications/ag-carbon-
programs-chaos-to-systems-change
COVER PHOTO: BY PRESTON KERES/USDA/FPAC
Agricultural Carbon Programs
FROM CHAOS TO SYSTEMS CHANGE
Sierra View Solutions and American Farmland Trust
AUGUST 2023
ii SIERRA VIEW SOLUTIONS AND AMERICAN FARMLAND TRUST
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T
his white paper was produced as a collaborative
eort between American Farmland Trust and
Sierra View Solutions, LLC. The authors would like
to thank the reviewers who provided valuable feedback.
Internal reviewers at AFT included Jean Brokish, Tim
Fink, Emily Liss, and Bonnie McGill. External reviewers
included Max DuBuisson (Indigo Ag), Margaret Henry
(PepsiCo), Nathan Fields (National Corn Growers
Association), Amy Hughes (Environmental Defense
Fund),Adam Kiel (Soil and Water Outcomes Fund),
Bruce Knight (Strategic Conservation Solutions),Chris
Kopman (Newtrient), McKenzie Smith (Climate Action
Reserve), Ryan Smith (Danone North America), Thayer
Tomlinson (Ecosystem Services Market Consortium),
and a representative from a farm commodity trade
association who wished to remain anonymous. Thank
you also to Ryan Anderson (Sierra View Solutions) for
the idea to use the Multi-Level Perspective theory and
for coming up with the title of the report.
All errors of fact or interpretation belong to the authors.
This white paper was made possible by generous support
from the Walton FamilyFoundation.
ABOUT THIS PAPER
In this white paper, we analyze the current state of
agricultural carbon programs, explore four main
reasons why farmer participation may be low,
and recommend 12 strategic changes that would
help these programs, which are mainly focused
on cropland, to succeed. The most critical barriers
that we discuss are the economics of the programs,
concerns about additionality, requirements for
permanence, and data and technology barriers
for agriculture. We hope our analysis will help
farm trade associations, environmental groups,
carbon program developers, and policymakers
better understand some of the specific barriers
to enrollment that agriculture faces and identify
changes that could lead to widespread adoption
of farm conservation practices. If implemented,
we hope the recommendations lead to systemic
change that will transform agriculture from a
source of greenhouse gas emissions to a sink. We
also hope these changes will provide the public and
producers with the assurance that the emerging
agricultural carbon programs are a credible and
cost-eective approach to climate mitigation
andadaptation.
AGRICULTURAL CARBON MARKETS: FROM CHAOS TO SYSTEMS CHANGE iii
Executive Summary
G
lobally, food production will need to increase more than 50% by 2050 to meet the needs of the world’s
projected population of 9.8 billion people. To avoid the worst eects of climate change and to protect
ecosystems, increases in food production must be accompanied by sharp reductions in greenhouse gas
(GHG) emissions from agriculture, increases in soil carbon sequestration on farmland, and no further conversion
of natural ecosystems into agricultural land.
Over the past 28 years in the U.S., more than 20 agricultural carbon programs have been created to incentivize the
adoption of agricultural practices to reduce GHG emissions and sequester carbon in the soil. These programs oer
dierent eligibility criteria, crediting practices, data requirements, contracting obligations, costs, and potential
returns, and they have continued to evolve over time. Fifteen of the programs were created in just the past ve
years. Recently, all the programs have increased outreach to farmers with information and calls to participate.
Despite these marketing eorts, participation remains extremely low.
In this paper we analyze the current state of agricultural carbon programs and recommend strategic changes that
would help these programs succeed, with a focus on cropland. This analysis will help farm trade associations,
environmental groups, carbon program developers, and policymakers better understand some of the barriers to
adoption and identify changes which could lead to widespread adoption of farm conservation practices.
The most critical barriers that we discuss are the economics of the programs, concerns about additionality,
requirements for permanence, and data and technology barriers for agriculture.
AGRICULTURAL CARBON MARKETS: FROM CHAOS TO SYSTEMS CHANGE iii
KEVIN KEENAN
iv SIERRA VIEW SOLUTIONS AND AMERICAN FARMLAND TRUST
We recommend the following changes to attract and retain producers in agricultural carbon programs:
ECONOMICS
• Support policies that increase the price of carbon. We discuss the steps companies, government, and
agricultural carbon programs can take to send price signals and increase trust, condence, and demand, thereby
increasing the price of carbon.
• Create data standards for agricultural carbon programs and associated data. We identify opportunities
for agricultural carbon programs and the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) new Partnerships
for Climate-Smart Commodities program to develop and implement clear data requirements and stabilize
agricultural carbon programs, which is vital for reducing producers’ wariness and confusion as well as
decreasing transaction costs.
• Design and implement insetting programs that eliminate free riding and double counting. We identify
design criteria that corporate insetting programs, which are proliferating rapidly within the agricultural supply
chain, should follow to ensure their integrity and success.
• Pay early adopters to provide peer-to-peer training. We recommend that farmers who have already
adopted climate-smart practices be rewarded and paid to teach other farmers to successfully adopt and
maintain these practices.
ADDITIONALITY CONCERNS
• Improve denitions of “new” practices. We recommend that climate-smart farm practices that were started
and disadopted more than 10 years ago could be considered a new practice if the resumption of that practice
can be shown to decrease net GHG emissions, and it can be determined the disadoption did not happen merely
to join an agricultural carbon program. This will expand the pool of farms that can participate in programs and
generate new GHG reductions.
• Adopt crediting practices that account for the variability in agriculture. We discuss approaches to setting
baselines and issuing credits in ways that encourage long-term adoption of climate-smart practices.
• Eliminate common practice ceilings. We call for agricultural programs to stop capping participation once
adoption of a practice reaches a certain threshold in a given area.
• Create additional opportunities to reward early adopters. In addition to recommending that early adopters
be paid to provide farmer-to-farmer education, we encourage these producers to participate in other programs,
such as the USDA’s Conservation Stewardship Program.
PERMANENCE REQUIREMENTS
• Include buers for intentional reversals in agricultural carbon programs. We recommend that
agricultural carbon programs expand their current buer pools to cover both unintentional and intentional
reversals for agricultural carbon projects.
DATA AND TECHNOLOGY BARRIERS FOR AGRICULTURE
• Expand producers’ broadband access. We support investments in high-speed internet access for producers
in rural and tribal areas, to make it easier for them to participate in agricultural carbon programs.
• Modernize USDA data collection and management systems and create a national model calibration
dataset. We suggest upgrades and safeguards to agricultural data infrastructure that will make it easier for
farmers to participate in carbon programs and for researchers to improve the agronomic, climate, and economic
models that underlie the programs.
• Adopt national agricultural data policies. We call on public, private, and nongovernmental stakeholders
to develop clear guidance, regulations, and standards on the privacy, portability, and interoperability of
agricultural data.
iv SIERRA VIEW SOLUTIONS AND AMERICAN FARMLAND TRUST
Contents
PAGE
1 INTRODUCTION
3 METHODS
5 LANDSCAPE
5 Climate Change
6 Economic Drivers
6 Consumer Food Demand and Environmental Impacts
7 REGIMES
7 USDA
8 Universities
9 Corporations and Investors
9  Corporations
9  Investors
9 Producers
9  No-Till
10  Cover Crops
11 NICHES
11 Oset Markets
12  Compliance Oset Markets
12  Voluntary Oset Markets
14 Insetting Programs
15 Other Carbon Programs
15 USDA Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities
16 ANALYSIS
16 Economics of Programs
19 Additionality Concerns
21 Permanence Requirements
23 Data and Technology Barriers for Agriculture
24 RECOMMENDATIONS
24 Economics of Programs
25 Additionality Concerns
26 Permanence Requirements
27 Data and Technology Barriers for Agriculture
28 CONCLUSION
29 REFERENCES
   APPENDICES
36      Appendix A. USDA Conservation Programs, Reach, and Policies on
     Environmental Markets and Climate Change
36 Federal nancial support for working lands
38      Appendix B. Illustrative Examples of Agricultural Carbon Programs and Tools at Universities
38 Colorado State University
38 Cornell University
39      Appendix C. Illustrative Examples of Corporate SBTi Goals and Agricultural Carbon Programs
39 PepsiCo
39 General Mills
39 Unilever
40 Table 1. Example SBTi Goals from Food and Beverage Companies
41      Appendix D. Illustrative Examples of Venture-Backed Ag Tech Investments
41      Appendix E. Supplementary Information on Compliance Oset Markets
41 California’s Cap-and-Trade Program
41 International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Carbon Osetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation
(CORSIA)
42      Appendix F. Supplementary Information on Voluntary Oset Protocols
    BOXES
1 Box 1. The 22 agricultural carbon programs reviewed for this paper
2 Box 2. U.S. agricultural GHG emissions
4 Box 3. Climate-smart farming practices
13 Box 4. The dierence between osets and insets
20 Box 5. Expansion of the market oerings for reductions in N
2
O and CH
4
may help ameliorate
current additionality bottlenecks
   FIGURES
3 Figure 1. An Example of Multi-level Perspective (MLP) Theory (Geels & Schot, 2007)
10 Figure 2. No-till Adoption in the U.S. 2002–2017 by Commodity Crop (Claassen, 2018)
36 Figure 3. Annual spending for major USDA conservation programs 2014–2022
37 Figure 4. Conservation Acreage as a Percent of Total Agricultural Land (Newton, 2019)
   TABLE
40 Table 1. Example SBTi Goals from Food and Beverage Companies
PAGE
AGRICULTURAL CARBON MARKETS: FROM CHAOS TO SYSTEMS CHANGE 1
Introduction
1. These include Illinois Sustainable Ag Partnership (ISAP, 2023), Farm Foundation (Farm Foundation, 2022), Farm Journal (Farm Journal Editors,
2021) (Farm Journal, 2020), Iowa State University (Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, March 2023), Progressive Farmer (Clayton, 2022),
Purdue University (Thompson, et al., 2021), and the Carbon Tool Box (United Soybean Board, n.d.).
T
he current agricultural system will need to
fundamentally transform within the next decade
to produce food, mitigate and adapt to climate
change, protect water resources, and support producers
in the process. Over the past 28 years, 22 programs have
been created and expanded (see Box 1) to incentivize the
adoption of agricultural practices to reduce greenhouse
gas (GHG) emissions, such as methane (CH
4
) and nitrous
oxide (N
2
O), and to sequester carbon dioxide (C
2
O) from
the air as organic carbon in the soil. Throughout this
paper we will collectively refer to carbon sequestration
and avoided emissions of CH
4
and N
2
O as GHG
reductions. We also use the umbrella term agricultural
carbon programs to describe carbon registries, carbon
oset markets (both compliance and voluntary), carbon
inset programs, and other emerging programs are that
incentivizing or rewarding farmers for implementing
practices that reduce GHG emissions from agriculture.
Though these programs have many motivations and
goals, there is hope they will play a role in transforming
agriculture into a more sustainable sector—one that uses
fewer resources to produce food, ber, and fuel, improves
soil health, protects water resources and biodiversity, and
reduces GHG emissions. These programs have dierent
eligibility criteria, crediting standards and practices,
data requirements, contracting obligations, costs, and
potential returns, and they have continued to evolve over
time. More than half of the programs were created in just
the past ve years. All the programs recently increased
solicitations to farmers with information and calls
toparticipate.
To help cut through the confusion and assist producers
in sorting through a chaotic array of opportunities, many
organizations have created producer-focused guides to
agricultural carbon programs.
1
Despite marketing and
COMPLIANCE OFFSET MARKETS
LAUNCH
YEAR PROGRAM
2009 Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) —
1 agricultural (ag) protocol*
2010 California Air Resources Board’s (CARB) Cap &
Trade Program — 2 ag protocols*
2024 ICAO for CORSIA — ag protocols under ACR, CAR,
& Verra are included
VOLUNTARY OFFSET MARKETS
LAUNCH
YEAR PROGRAM
1995 American Carbon Registry (ACR) — 
3 active ag protocols*
2003 Chicago Climate Exchange (discontinued in 2010)
2006 Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) Program — 
8 active ag protocols*
2007 Climate Action Reserve (CAR) — 6 ag protocols*
AGRICULTURAL CARBON PROGRAMS**
LAUNCH
YEAR PROGRAM TYPE OF PROGRAM
2016 CIBO Both oset & inset
2016 Truterra Both oset & inset
2018 Corteva Oset
2018 Nori Oset
2019 Carbon by Indigo Ag Oset
2019 Indigo Ag: Market + Source Inset
2020 Soil & Water Outcomes Fund
(SWOF)
Inset
2021 Agoro Carbon Oset
2021 Cargill RegenConnect Inset
2021 Locus Ag’s CarbonNOW Oset
2022 ADM re:generations Inset
2022 Bayer Carbon Program Oset
2022 Ecosystem Services Markets
Consortium’s (ESMC) Eco-
Harvest
Inset
2022 Nutrien Oset
2022 PepsiCo-PCM Inset
* See Appendices E and F for more details about active and discontinued agricultural protocols.
**Source: ISAP. (2023). An Overview of Voluntary Carbon Markets for Illinois Farmers. Illinois Sustainable Ag Partnership.
https://ilsustainableag.org/ecomarkets
BOX 1. THE 22 AGRICULTURAL CARBON PROGRAMS REVIEWED FOR THIS PAPER
2 SIERRA VIEW SOLUTIONS AND AMERICAN FARMLAND TRUST
educational outreach eorts, participation remains
extremely low. Of the more than 1.7 billion tonnes
2
of
credits generated in voluntary carbon markets through
the four largest voluntary oset organizations (ACR, VCS,
CAR, and Gold Standard
3
) from 1996 through the end
of 2022, merely 1% came from agricultural projects (So,
Haya, & Elias, 2023). Even when including agricultural
carbon programs that operate outside of the established
compliance and voluntary carbon markets, there is huge
untapped potential in the agricultural carbon space.
While many websites, articles, and webinars have
compared the dierent programs and identied
challenges with implementing and scaling up these
programs, no organization has provided a systematic
review with recommendations to modify existing and
emerging programs to meet the unique challenges
agriculture faces in implementing conservation practices.
In this paper we analyze the current state of agricultural
carbon programs and recommend selected strategic
changes that would help these programs succeed. We
focus this paper on cropland and grassland practices
2. By tonne, we mean metric tons, which is approximately 2,205 pounds.
3. A fourth voluntary oset organization, the Gold Standard, has generated more than 238 MtCO
2
e worth of GHG credits from 2900 projects in over
100 countries (Gold Standard, n.d.). However, only 13,150 tCO
2
e of credits have been issued in the United States and none of them for agricultural
practices (So, Haya, & Elias, 2023).
4. Though there are varying interpretations of additionality, one of the most accepted denitions is that additionality is the implementation of climate-
smart practices that would not have occurred in the absence of the incentive provided by a carbon program. This is because practices that have already
been implemented are already mitigating climate change by reducing GHG emissions or sequestering carbon. What is needed is additional behavior
change, additional practice adoption, and additional overall reductions in total net GHG emissions.
because they have the smallest adoption rate and have
had challenges scaling up. Signicant reductions from the
livestock sector are critical to avoid the worst impacts
of climate change because the livestock sector produces
large amounts of CH
4
, a very powerful GHG (Box 2).
However, the solutions for the livestock sector are
signicantly dierent than for croplands and grasslands
and deserve a separate paper focused on their unique
challenges.
This analysis will help farm trade associations,
environmental groups, carbon program developers, and
policymakers better understand some of the barriers
to adoption and identify changes that could lead to the
widespread adoption of farm conservation practices.
Four of the most critical barriers that we identify and
discuss in this paper are the economics of the programs,
requirements for additionality,
4
requirements for
permanence, and the immaturity of the technology and
associated data protections necessary to quantify and
monitor the GHG uxes from implementing agricultural
conservation practices.
BOX 2. U.S. AGRICULTURAL GHG EMISSIONS
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (USEPA), agriculture is the fifth largest
source of GHG emissions in the U.S., with 9.4%
of the nation’s emissions (598.1 million tonnes
(MtCO
2
e)), behind the residential sector with 17% of
the emissions, commercial with 17%, transportation
with 32%, and industry with 34% of GHG emissions
(USEPA, 2023).
Within the agriculture sector, on a CO
2
-equivalent
basis, 52% of emissions originate from N
2
O, 46.5%
come from CH
4
, and just over 1% are from CO
2
. The
CO
2
-equivalent basis takes into account the very
high global warming potentials of N
2
O and CH
4
;
that is, compared to one tonne of CO
2
over the first
20 years after their release, one tonne of N
2
O has
273 times, and one tonne of CH
4
has 82.5 times, the
impact on warming (Forster, et al., 2021). Hence,
strategies to reduce N
2
O and CH
4
emissions are
among the largest opportunities for the agriculture
sector to make an immediate impact on addressing
climatechange.
Furthermore, among the various types of
agricultural activities that release GHGs, agricultural
soil management and manure management on
farmland emitted the most N
2
O, followed by CH
4
emissions from enteric fermentation, manure
management, and rice cultivation. CO
2
emissions
from urea fertilization and liming activities on
farmland come in last (USEPA, 2023). Thus,
the reduction of N
2
O and CH
4
emissions from
agriculture is critical to reducing overall GHG
emissions in the U.S.
AGRICULTURAL CARBON MARKETS: FROM CHAOS TO SYSTEMS CHANGE 3
Methods
F
or our analytical framework,
we used multi-level perspective
(MLP) theory to analyze
the current state of agricultural
carbon programs and develop
recommendations. MLP theory
was developed by Arie Rip and
René Kemp in 1998 and rened
by Frank Geels and Johan Schot
in the mid-2000s (El Bilali, 2019).
It is a prominent framework used
to describe societal transitions
that include changes in consumer
practices, market behaviors, business
models, and technologies. MLP theory
organizes transitions as interactions
within and between three analytical
levels: landscapes, regimes, and
niches (Figure 1). The transition to
a more sustainable system occurs
within existing regimes as a result
of external pressure at the landscape
level combined with innovations that
occur through niches (Konefal, 2015).
Landscape developments consist of
the overarching market trends and
systemic pressures on the agricultural
supply chain. These include
the impacts of climate change,
macroeconomic drivers, and consumer preferences.
Mitigation activities taken today will help reduce climate
change impacts in the future, but in the short term,
producers will need to continue to adapt to the changing
climate with or without carbon programs while economic
drivers and consumer preferences can provide price
premiums that support carbon programs.
Regimes reect the traditional and established
institutions that comprise the current food and
agriculture supply chain. The current regimes maintain
the status quo and can hinder the transition to new
practices and markets. Existing U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA) programs, such as the Environmental
Quality Incentives Program (EQIP); university research
programs; complex corporate supply chains for feed and
fuel; and current farming practices, such as conventional
tillage, are all examples of existing regimes within the
agriculture sector (Borsellino, Schimmenti, & El Bilali,
2020).
Niches are new technologies, new rules and legislation,
new organizations, and new programs, projects, concepts,
or ideas. Markets are a central part of developing
emerging niches, and carbon programs are a prime
example of a niche supporting regenerative agricultural
practices (Borsellino, Schimmenti, & El Bilali, 2020).
Niches are where innovation and disruption of current
regimes take place and where the traditional rules can be
broken. The more a niche matures and is adopted within
the agricultural regime, the more likely it will scale up and
contribute to regenerative agriculture transitions.
The following sections will use MLP theory to describe
the current state of agricultural carbon programs. After
laying the foundation of the MLP levels, we analyze
the current challenges of carbon programs and provide
selected recommendations on how to transform carbon
programs in ways that will accelerate adoption of climate-
smart practices (Box 3).
FIGURE 1. AN EXAMPLE OF MULTI-LEVEL PERSPECTIVE
(MLP) THEORY (GEELS & SCHOT, 2007)
4 SIERRA VIEW SOLUTIONS AND AMERICAN FARMLAND TRUST
BOX 3. CLIMATE-SMART FARMING PRACTICES
In February 2022, in its National Funding Opportunity
for the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities
(PCSC) program, the USDA provided the following
list of climate-smart agricultural practices that
have been identified by USDA’s Natural Resource
Conservation Service (NRCS) for their ability to
reduce or avoid emissions of GHGs such as CH
4
and
N
2
O and remove CO
2
from the atmosphere through
soil carbon sequestration (USDA, February 2022).
In addition to reducing GHG emissions, the climate-
smart practices oer a variety of co-benefits, which,
depending on the practice can include increasing
soil health, improving water quality, reducing input
costs, increasing resilience to climate change, and
supporting biodiversity. These practices include:
• Cover crops
• Low-till or no-till
• Nutrient management
• Enhanced eciency fertilizers
• Manure management
• Feed management to reduce enteric emissions
• Buers, wetland, grassland management, and tree
planting on working lands
• Agroforestry and aorestation on working lands
• Aorestation/reforestation and sustainable forest
planting for high carbon sequestration rate
• Maintaining and improving forest soil quality
• Increasing on-site carbon storage through Forest
Stand Management
• Alternate wetting and drying on rice fields
• Climate-smart pasture practices, such as
prescribed grazing or legume interceding
• Soil amendments, like biochar
EDWIN REMSBERG/USDA-SARE
RON NICHOLS/USDA
USDA/NRCS
AGRICULTURAL CARBON MARKETS: FROM CHAOS TO SYSTEMS CHANGE 5
Landscape
T
he current landscape has a direct impact on the
design and operation of carbon markets. Three
landscape components are included in our analysis
of agricultural carbon programs: 1) climate change;
2)economic drivers; and 3) consumer food preferences.
CLIMATE CHANGE
Climate change is a driver for the development of
agricultural carbon programs. The anthropogenic increase
in atmospheric CO
2
and other GHGs has resulted in
global warming and increasingly extreme weather events.
It has also increased the daily minimum and maximum
temperatures and altered precipitation frequency
and volume worldwide. Across the globe terrestrial
temperatures have risen by 1.32 ± 0.04 °C compared to
the 1951–1980 average (Malhi, Kaur, & Kaushik, 2021).
July 3 to 5 of 2023 were the hottest on Earth in more
than 150 years (Plummer & Shao, 2023). To meet the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
pathway to limit warming from pre-industrial levels to no
more than 1.5°C, global CO
2
emissions must decline by
about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030 and reach net zero
around 2050 (Masson-Delmotte, 2018).
As the impacts of climate change increase, agriculture
will struggle to meet the needs of a growing population.
The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that
yields of maize, wheat, and soybeans could decrease
between 20 to 45%, 5 to 50%, and 30 to 60%, respectively,
by 2100 (Vos & Cattaneo, 2016). At the same time, the
global population reached 8 billion in November 2022
(United Nations, n.d.), up from 7 billion in 2010 and
6billion in 1998 (Gu, Andreev, & Dupre, 2021). By 2050
production in developing countries needs to rise by
77% and by 24% in developed countries to meet these
increased food and nutritional requirements (Malhi, Kaur,
& Kaushik, 2021). Agricultural practices supported by
carbon markets have the potential to reduce the negative
impacts resulting from an increase in GHG emissions and
promote the resilience necessary to produce food under
more extreme weather events.
EDWIN REMSBERG/USDA-SARE
6 SIERRA VIEW SOLUTIONS AND AMERICAN FARMLAND TRUST
ECONOMIC DRIVERS
Margins for farmers have historically been low. To make
a living, many producers must seek o-farm income. In
2021, the mean income for U.S. producers was $135,281
with $104,460, or 77%, coming from o-farm sources
(USDA Economic Research Service, 2022). The need
to generate additional income from o-farm sources
may increase the interest and attractiveness of carbon
programs. However, growers need economic support to
oset the costs and risks associated with implementing
new practices. These can include large upfront costs
for equipment as well as agronomic (and associated
nancial) risks during the learning phase. Although
the costs often decrease over time, there can be a gap
between the upfront costs and long-term returns from
participating in carbon programs. It is important to oer
innovative nancial mechanisms to help farmers bridge
that gap (Field to Market, 2021).
CONSUMER FOOD DEMAND AND
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS
Over the past decade, the impacts of food production
on climate, water quality, wildlife habitat, and animal
welfare have been of increasing concern for consumers
(Tuorila & Hartmann, 2020). A meta-analysis of
80studies from around the world found that 29.5% of
consumers are willing to pay a premium for sustainably
produced products (Li & Kallas, 2021). In the U.S., 92.8%
of Gen Z consumers (i.e., those born after 1994) consider
the environmental characteristics of their purchasing
decisions (Su, Tsai, Chen, & Lv, 2019).
Meat production is a signicant climate concern given
that nearly half of all direct agriculture GHG emissions
come from livestock and poultry (USEPA, 2023).
Furthermore, approximately 40% of all U.S. corn and
70% of all U.S. soybeans are grown to feed livestock,
annually (USDA Economic Research Service, n.d.; USDA,
2015). Because of this impact, many organizations are
focused on reducing meat consumption through programs
like Meatless Mondays (GRACE Communications
Foundation, n.d.).
However, only about a quarter of consumers are
aware of the impacts or willing to stop or reduce meat
consumption for environmental reasons (Sanchez-
Sabate & Sabate, 2019), and the U.S. is not decreasing
its consumption of animal products. Beef, pork, poultry,
and dairy are all expected to increase through 2032,
according to the latest data from USDA. In particular,
beef production is expected to increase at an average rate
of 1% annually (USDA, 2023), thus making it even more
important for meat producers, and the growers farming
millions of acres to produce feed and fodder crops, to
adopt practices that reduce GHG emissions and increase
resilience to climate change.
Though the scale of the challenge is hard to fathom, food
production globally will need to increase by more than
50% by 2050 to meet the needs of the world’s projected
population of 9.8 billion people. This must be done with
no expansion of agricultural land if we are to protect
natural ecosystems. To put that in perspective, if current
agricultural practices are employed globally, an additional
1.5 billion acres will be converted by 2050. From a GHG
perspective, this trajectory will result in 15 billion tonnes
(GtCO
2
e) of emissions per year in 2050. To meet the Paris
Agreement of holding global warming below to less than
2°C above pre-industrial temperatures, GHG emissions
from agriculture must be reduced by 75% to just 4 GtCO
2
e
per year (Searchinger, Waite, Hanson, & Ranganathan,
2019). To avoid the worst impacts of climate change,
temperature increases need to be limited to no more
than 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures, which will
require reducing emissions well below 4 GtCO
2
e per
year. Agricultural carbon programs could be an important
mechanism to meet this goal.
AGRICULTURAL CARBON MARKETS: FROM CHAOS TO SYSTEMS CHANGE 7
Regimes
5. Expenditures and enrollment are not measures of actual changes in sustainability, which are much harder to quantify.
F
or more than 90 years, there have been eorts to
implement conservation practices on farmland
in the U.S. The resource concerns driving these
eorts initially focused on reducing soil erosion, then
water quality and wildlife habitat improvement, and now
climate change mitigation. USDA and universities have
been the dominant regimes historically leading this work.
More recently, corporations and investors are recognizing
the need to reduce GHG emissions from agriculture.
USDA
The devastation of the Dust Bowl, starting in 1932,
was the primary driver for the development of U.S.
federal farm conservation programs. In response to
the Dust Bowl, Congress enacted Public Law 74-46,
which established the Soil Conservation Service, the
predecessor to USDA’s NRCS (USDA, n.d.). NRCS has
an array of nancial and technical assistance programs
available to producers, which are described in more detail
in Appendix A.
Despite signicant investment in conservation over the
last three decades, only 132 million acres, out of almost
900 million farmland acres reported to the Farm Service
Agency, have participated in the largest and most popular
USDA programs—EQIP, Conservation Reserve Program
(CRP), and Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP).
The majority of U.S. states have had less than 20% of
their agricultural land participating in these conservation
programs (Newton, 2019). Part of the reason for this is
that annual spending for USDA’s conservation programs
remained constant for most of the past decade, at
slightly more than $6 billion per year (Wallander, 2019).
5
Most programs receive more applications than they
have funding to award. For example, USDA received
approximately 125,000 national applications to EQIP
but funded less than 50,000 (Happ, 2021). More details
about the states where USDA programs have the highest
enrollment are located in Appendix A.
Two farm conservation practices that USDA has
supported over the years are getting the largest attention
USDA/NRCS
8 SIERRA VIEW SOLUTIONS AND AMERICAN FARMLAND TRUST
in carbon programs: cover crops and the reduction of
tillage events. These are the go-to practices that have
been promoted by the agency for decades to address
water quality by reducing soil erosion and nutrient loss.
However, between 2006 and 2011, under $335 million, on
average per year, was spent by 40 of USDA’s programs
on nutrient and sediment practices on cropland (Perez,
Reytar, Selman, & Walker, 2014). In 2018 alone, out
of a total budget for EQIP of $1.76 billion (Claassen,
Hellerstein, & Wallander, 2019), USDA committed only
$155 million in planned payments toward cover crops
(Wallender, Smith, Bowman, & Claassen, 2021).
Two recent changes to USDA could dramatically change
the impact of USDA’s programs and put them more in
the category of niches, rather than regimes. The rst
is the creation of the Partnerships for Climate-Smart
Commodities program, which was designed to spend
$3 billion over ve years via 141 projects and over 1,000
partners to create new market opportunities for climate-
smart commodities produced by farmers, ranchers, and
forest owners (USDA, February 2022).
6
The Partnerships
program is one of the niches that has the potential to
transform the agricultural sector. The second change is
the signing of the Ination Reduction Act (IRA), which
6. It should be noted that this program was created using the Secretary’s discretionary authority through the Commodity Credit Corporation and is
not a permanent program.
will provide $19.5 billion for conservation programs over a
ve-year period (Cosby, 2023). The Partnerships program
and the injection of IRA funds could aect conservation
outcomes in profound but as-yet poorly understood ways.
UNIVERSITIES
Universities provide both the science and technical
assistance supporting agricultural conservation practices.
They are the bedrock of the four regimes. Agricultural
conservation practices, such as nutrient management,
cover crops, and reduced tillage, trace their roots to the
1862 Morrill Act (Association of Public & Land Grant
Universities, n.d.), which created land-grant universities
(National Research Council, 1995). Subsequent legislation
expanded the number of land grant universities to include
historically black and tribal institutions as well as the
scope of land-grant universities to conduct research,
fund agricultural experiment stations, and establish
cooperative extensions (National Research Council,
1995). It is this combination of basic research, applied
research at the experiment stations, and local support
through cooperative extensions that has created the
foundational understanding of the science and economics
underpinning current agricultural conservation practices.
KENNETH C. ZIRKEL/CC-BY-SA-3.0/HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY-SA/4.0/DEED.EN
AGRICULTURAL CARBON MARKETS: FROM CHAOS TO SYSTEMS CHANGE 9
Since their founding, the land-grant universities
7
have
evolved and in the past decade, many of these universities
have created departments or initiatives that focus on
improving and expanding carbon markets. Examples
include but are not limited to institutions like the
University of Illinois, the University of New Hampshire,
Michigan State University, Cornell University, and
Colorado State University (CSU). In addition to providing
training, these and other universities have developed
tools for quantifying GHG uxes from agriculture. Details
on two illustrative examples (CSU’s COMET-Farm
tool (Miller, 2013) and Cornell University’s agricultural
carbon-focused programs) are in Appendix B.
CORPORATIONS AND INVESTORS
Corporations and private investors are important regimes
in the food supply chain. Corporations not only send the
demand signal for what crops should be produced but
are increasingly adding climate and other environmental
criteria to their procurement decisions. A recent survey
of 100 senior decision-makers at food and agriculture
companies found that their supply chains will face long-
term challenges in adapting to the impacts of climate
change (WTW, 2023). Investors extend between the
regime and niche levels.
Corporations
U.S.-based food and agriculture companies are under
increasing pressure to set GHG reduction targets. One
example of the pressure corporations face is the Science
Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), a partnership between
the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), United Nations
Global Compact, World Resources Institute (WRI), and
World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which was founded to
dene and promote best practice in emissions reductions
and net-zero targets in line with climate science.
According to the SBTi, 68 food and agriculture companies
in the U.S. have either committed or set science-based
targets, including Cargill, PepsiCo, and General Mills
(Science Based Targets Initiative, 2023). Other companies
have initiated and invested in internal programs that
promote regenerative agriculture and lowering emissions.
Examples of corporate SBTi goals of a variety of food
and agriculture companies as well as descriptions of
illustrative carbon programs can be found in Appendix C.
Companies are responding to more than just social
pressure to set reduction targets; they are also investing
in climate-smart agriculture to ensure security of supply
in the face of climate change. The Covid-19 pandemic
7. The 52 land-grant universities represent almost 11 million acres of Indigenous land once inhabited by approximately 250 tribes, bands, and
communities. Today less than 0.5% of the enrollment at these universities comes from Indigenous people (Lee, et al., n.d.).
was a vivid demonstration of the impact of supply
chain disruption and its costs, so there is more impetus
than ever for food and beverage companies to focus on
ensuring secure supply.
Investors
Investors are strategically investing in agricultural
technology (ag tech) start-ups. In 2022, there were at
least 89 ag tech deals totaling just under $1 billion in
2022, including climate monitoring and carbon trading.
Ag tech has also proven more resilient than the overall
venture market. While the overall funding for startups
decreased by 35% between 2021 and 2022, ag tech funding
only decreased by 13% (Welborn, 2023). Two examples
of venture-backed ag tech investments can be found in
Appendix D.
PRODUCERS
Without the implementation of agricultural conservation
practices by producers, there would be no agricultural
carbon programs. The practices listed in the USDA
Notice of Funding Availability (Box 3) are examples of
climate-smart practices included in many programs.
Two agricultural conservation practices are getting
signicant attention in carbon programs: the reduction
of tillage events and the planting of cover crops. They
are the practices that the majority of agricultural
carbon programs are supporting (ISAP, 2023), and the
two practices that have attracted attention by market
participants because of their ability to sequester carbon
and provide climate resilience (Huang, et al., 2020).
No-Till
A 2020 study found that no-till or strip-till is practiced
on 30% of cropland in the U.S. (Pannell & Claassen,
2020). Specic no-till adoption rates for 2002–2017 by
crop are shown in Figure 2; adoption ranged from as low
as 19% for cotton in 2015 to more than 40% for wheat
in 2017. Additionally, adoption rates can vary widely
based on geography, even with the same crop. These
statistics obscure an important challenge—producers who
implement no-till do not always maintain the practice.
For example, between 2012 and 2017, although the overall
no-till adoption rate increased across the country, no-till
was discontinued on more than 5 million acres (Sawadgo
& Plastina, 2022). One of the key challenges in adopting
no-till is that it disrupts current farming norms, such
as the perception of “clean” elds and the timing of
planting in the spring (Kawa, 2021). A potential factor in
discontinuing no-till may be that funding for participants
10 SIERRA VIEW SOLUTIONS AND AMERICAN FARMLAND TRUST
in cost-share programs can decrease or even disappear
after a certain amount of time in the program (Sawadgo &
Plastina, 2022).
Cover Crops
Cover crop adoption in the U.S. is signicantly lower
than no-till. Cover crops are a key focus of state,
regional, and federal conservation programs. They are
also an important strategy encouraged by the federal-
state Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Task Force to address
poor water quality conditions in the Mississippi River
and Gulf of Mexico associated with agricultural runo
(USEPA, 2023). Despite the importance and support
given to producers to plant cover crops, only 5.1% of
harvested cropland planted cover crops in 2017, totaling
15.4 million acres, a 50% increase over the 10.3 million
acres planted in 2012 (Wallender, Smith, Bowman, &
Claassen, 2021). As with no-till, producers may not
reliably plant cover crops every year, or after every crop
in the rotation.
According to the USDA Agricultural Resource
Management Survey (ARMS) nationwide survey, only
one-third of cover crop acres in the U.S. were planted
with a nancial incentive program, meaning two-thirds
were planted without nancial support (Wallender,
Smith, Bowan & Claassen, 2021). Similarly, the
Sustainable Agricultural Research and Education (SARE)
National Cover Crop Survey found that nearly 50% of
the 1,172 farmers respondents did not receive incentive
payments (SARE, CTIC, & ASTA, 2020). Thus, nancial
support remains important for about half of producers in
providing a safety net support as they start adopting cover
crops (Wiercinski, Yeatman, & Perez, 2023a) as upfront
and agronomic costs can be high in the early stages of
adoption (Field to Market, 2021).
Between 2012 and 2017, although total cover crop
adoption increased overall, almost a million acres stopped
planting cover crops (Sawadgo & Plastina, 2022).
Signicant adoption challenges surround cover crops,
including but not limited to the diculty in timing
the planting and termination of crops, challenges in
implementing more diverse crop rotations, and the
fact that cover crops do not work in the same way for
all cropping systems and all regions (Roesch-McNally,
Basche, Arbuckle, Tyndall, & Miguez, 2017). For
producers who do plant cover crops, payments from
cost-share programs can decrease or disappear after a
certain amount of time in a program (Sawadgo & Plastina,
2022), and state and federal cost-share payments may be
insucient to cover producer costs, according to research
on adoption in Iowa (Plastina, Liu, Sawadgo, Miguez, &
Carlson, 2018).
For conservation practices such as no-till and cover crops
to be more broadly adopted, the challenges of cost and
yield impacts need to be overcome. Agricultural carbon
programs can play a pivotal role in the expansion of
thesepractices.
FIGURE 2. NO-TILL ADOPTION IN THE U.S. 2002–2017 BY COMMODITY CROP
(CLAASSEN, 2018)
Note: No-till is based on the absence of tillage operations reported in the Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS).
Source: USDA Agricultural Resource Management Survey data for 2002–2017.
Percent of planted acres
50
40
30
20
10
0
2000 2002 2004
2006 2008
2010
2012 2014 2016
2018
••
••
••
••
••
••
••
••
••
••
••
Wheat
Corn
Soybeans
Cotton
••
AGRICULTURAL CARBON MARKETS: FROM CHAOS TO SYSTEMS CHANGE 11
Niches
M
ore than 90 years after the founding of NRCS and
implementation of the voluntary federal nancial
and technical assistance programs, 28 states
have less than 20% of agricultural land participating in
EQIP, CRP, and CSP, the three largest NRCS programs, by
expenditures (Newton, 2019). More information on each
of these programs is provided in Appendix A. Clearly, the
status quo has not been enough to scale up conservation
practices. Agricultural carbon programs are starting—and,
with strategic modications, have even greater potential—
to disrupt the existing regimes by oering new incentives
and support for the adoption of conservation practices.
There are four categories of programs pioneering new
approaches to reducing GHG emissions from agriculture.
They are the oset markets, inset programs, corporate
programs, and the USDA Partnerships for Climate
SmartCommodities.
OFFSET MARKETS
Carbon oset markets were rst developed in the late-
1990s as an opportunity for companies wanting to balance
out their GHG emissions by paying entities, mainly
in developing countries, to reduce GHG emissions or
maintain carbon in native forests. This has evolved into
two primary markets—the compliance oset market
and the voluntary oset market. Since 1996, more than
1.7billion credits (GtCO
2
e) have been generated through
approximately 70 dierent standards including energy
eciency, refrigerant destruction, and cookstoves. The
annual volume of credits has substantially increased
since 2016—growing from about 52 million to almost
300million in 2022 (So, Haya, & Elias, 2023).
Unfortunately, carbon osets from agriculture remain
elusive. At the Agri-Pulse Communications annual Ag &
Food Policy Summit in March 2021, USDA Secretary Tom
Vilsack said that the “carbon market is not designed and
set up for farmers” (Tomson, 2021). Through the end of
2022, only 21.7 million oset market credits, or 1.3%, came
from agricultural projects. Of those agricultural projects,
77% of those credits came from manure management
systems (So, Haya, & Elias, 2023), which is important
because CH
4
emissions from livestock account for 44% of
the GHG emissions from the agriculture sector (Box2).
One of the signicant barriers faced by agricultural
carbon projects is high transaction costs, particularly
the independent verication and sampling required by
many carbon programs. There are two types of markets
for agricultural oset projects: compliance markets and
voluntary markets.
BRANDON O’CONNORUSDA-NRCS
12 SIERRA VIEW SOLUTIONS AND AMERICAN FARMLAND TRUST
Compliance Oset Markets
The three compliance markets that operate in the U.S.
are California’s Cap-and-Trade program, the Regional
Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) in the northeast, and
the International Civil Aviation Organization’s Carbon
Oset Reduction Scheme for International Aviation. Each
of these markets is discussed briey below.
California’s Cap-and-Trade program has generated 9.6
MtCO
2
e of osets from agriculture. California’s market
will allow the use of 107 MtCO
2
e of osets between 2023
and 2030 (California Code of Regulations, n.d.). This
means that carbon-emitters in the state of California,
such as food processors and electric utilities, can choose
to buy a limited number of carbon osets from producers
nationwide to oset their emissions rather than reduce
their own emissions, use existing allowances, or
purchase allowances. The oset credits approved by
the California Air Resources Board (CARB) for use in
California have been generated under the livestock CH
4
digester protocol by paying dairy producers to install
equipment that traps CH
4
from leaving manure lagoons.
The captured CH
4
can be ared, with no additional
energy value, or it can be used to generate electricity or
as compressed natural gas for transportation. The other
agricultural carbon protocol, the rice protocol, adopted
in 2015, has not generated any credits (So, Haya, & Elias,
2023). More background on California’s Cap-and-Trade
program is in Appendix E.
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is
a market-based cap-and-trade program for the power
sector in the Northeast U.S. The program started in
2009 and by 2021, eleven states were participating in
the program: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland,
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York,
Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia
(RGGI, n.d.). RGGI allows for ve types of oset projects
and only one, avoided agricultural CH
4
, applies to
agriculture (RGGI, n.d.). Furthermore, since its start in
2009, RGGI has only generated about 50,000 tCO
2
e of
credits, none from agricultural standards, and there does
not appear to be any interest by the program to expand
to include additional agricultural carbon oset protocols
(RGGI, n.d.). Part of the reason for the lack of interest
in the development of osets under RGGI is that the
price of allowances in the program was below $10 per
MtCO
2
e through the rst half of 2021 (U.S. EIA, 2022)
and was $12.73 per MtCO
2
e at the June 2023 auction
(RGGI, 2023). In comparison, California’s Cap-and-Trade
8. A fourth voluntary oset organization, the Gold Standard, has generated more than 238 MtCO
2
e worth of GHG credits from 2900 projects in over
100 countries (Gold Standard, n.d.). However, only 13,150 tCO
2
e of credits have been issued in the U.S. and none of them for agricultural practices (So,
Haya, & Elias, 2023). Therefore, they are not included in our analysis.
9. Where possible, we refer to the documents to credit GHG reductions as protocols. However, dierent organizations refer to them as protocols,
standards, and methodologies. The dierences between these designations are insignicant.
program started at $10 per MtCO
2
e in 2013 and was
$30.33 per MtCO
2
e after the May 2023 auction (CARB,
2023).
The International Civil Aviation Organization
(ICAO) Carbon Osetting and Reduction Scheme
for International Aviation (CORSIA) has approved
eight registries to supply credits to the program. In the
U.S., they include the American Carbon Registry, Climate
Action Reserve, and Verra (ICAO Environment, n.d.).
The CORSIA program is being implemented with a pilot
phase from 2021 to 2023, the rst phase from 2024 to
2026, and a second phase from 2027 through 2035 (ICAO
Environment, n.d.).
The airline industry estimates that without CORSIA,
the GHG emissions from international aviation would
increase from 600 MtCO
2
e in 2020 to nearly 900 MtCO
2
e
by 2035 (IATA, n.d.). The program has approved the use
of all the agriculture focused protocols from the above
registries for use under the program. Demand for credits
is expected to increase as the program enters its rst
phase in 2024 (UNDP, 2022). For details on the protocols,
see their descriptions in the following section. Additional
background information on the CORSIA program is in
Appendix E.
Voluntary Oset Markets
There are three voluntary oset organizations, also
called carbon oset registries, that issue the majority
of carbon credits in the U.S. They are the American
Carbon Registry (ACR), Climate Action Reserve (CAR),
andVerra.
8
ACR was founded in 1995 and was the rst private
voluntary GHG registry in the world. Today, ACR has 18
approved standards. It has an additional 17 protocols
9
that have been discontinued due to lack of use. There are
currently three active and eight inactive protocols that
reward agricultural practices. A list of the protocols can
be found in Appendix F. The active and inactive protocols
have generated 269,472 tCO
2
e since 2014 and involve
practices such as reducing CH
4
releases from manure
storage, reducing CH
4
emissions from rice cultivation and
wetlands by using water more precisely, and decreasing
N
2
O emissions via precision fertilizer applications (So,
Haya, & Elias, 2023).
CAR began as the California Climate Action Registry
(CCAR) in 2001, which was set up by the State of
AGRICULTURAL CARBON MARKETS: FROM CHAOS TO SYSTEMS CHANGE 13
California for the voluntary reporting of emissions from
California companies. In 2007, CCAR was rebranded
as CAR and refocused on the development of osets
throughout North America and Central America. It is in
the process of expanding globally. Today, CAR oversees
22 protocols spanning the region. Of the 22approved
protocols, six are applicable to agricultural practices in
the U.S.—Grassland, Nitrogen Management, Organic
Waste Digestion, Rice Cultivation, Soil Enrichment,
and U.S. Livestock (CAR, n.d.). CAR is also developing
a protocol for the production and use of biochar. Since
2014, CAR has generated slightly over 1 MtCO
2
e of
agriculture-related credits for the voluntary market
with 98% of the credits generated by reducing CH
4
emissions through the building of anaerobic digesters
under the U.S. Livestock Protocol (So, Haya, &
Elias, 2023). The Soil Enrichment Protocol (SEP),
which was adopted in 2020, is starting to generate a
signicant volume of credits. As of June 2023, Indigo
Agriculture has created 133,614 tCO
2
e from nearly 430
producers across 22 U.S. states under the SEP (Indigo
Agriculture,2023).
Verra runs the Veried Carbon Standard (VCS)
Program, with over 1,600 certied projects and more
than 1 GtCO
2
e generated worldwide. The VCS program
was launched in 2006 and has 47 approved protocols and
four inactive protocols. Eight of the approved protocols
and two of the inactive protocols are applicable to
U.S. agricultural practices. A list of the protocols is in
Appendix F. Verra has issued more than 250,000 tCO
2
e
oset credits from these protocols since 2014 with more
than 200,000 coming from anaerobic digester projects
(So, Haya, & Elias, 2023).
BOX 4. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN OFFSETS AND INSETS
In the most basic sense, the dierence between an
oset and an inset is that an oset is a reduction
in GHG emissions that occurs outside of the direct
supply chain of a company, and an inset is an
emissions reduction within a company’s supply
chain. There are three primary dierences between
osets and insets.
The first main dierence is that osets are
reductions in GHG emissions not directly related
to the business of the company purchasing them.
They are typically used to oset direct, or Scope 1,
emissions from the companies. The purchases are
often from dierent sectors than the business of
the company. For example, Microsoft’s purchase of
carbon credits from Land O’Lakes is an example of
a company purchasing reductions from a dierent
sector than their business (Ellis, 2021). Insets are
reductions of the indirect GHG emissions that are
outside the company’s direct control but are part of
a company’s supply chain and customer emissions,
also known as their Scope 3 emissions. Insetting
is an important part of companies’ commitment
to address the emissions in their supply sheds,
which customers, consumers, shareholders, and
environmental groups view as their responsibility.
The second dierence is that, because the inset
reductions are part of a company’s supply chain
and there may be a relationship between the supply
chain company and the company creating the
inset project, these projects are inherently more
collaborative than oset projects.
The third dierence is that the rules for insets are
still being defined. Many inset programs are being
designed with more flexible and less rigorous
measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification
(MMRV) requirements (Tipper, Coad, & Burnett,
2009).
An example of a potential insetting project is
Mondelēz, the makers of Triscuit crackers, paying
wheat producers in its supply chain to reduce
fertilizer use. In contrast, an example of a potential
osetting project is Delta Air Lines purchasing
credits for the use of ecient cookstoves in
Kenya, which reduce the amount of fuel needed
for cooking. While the wheat is part of Mondelēz’s
supply chain, Delta is not responsible for the
emissions from rural cooking in Kenya.
CARLY WHITMORE/USDA-NRCS
14 SIERRA VIEW SOLUTIONS AND AMERICAN FARMLAND TRUST
INSETTING PROGRAMS
Carbon insetting has recently become attractive to food,
beverage, and apparel companies interested in reducing
the emissions associated with the goods and services
they purchase, which is typically one of the largest
sources of a company’s Scope 3 GHG emissions.
10
By
developing deeper relationships with the entities in
their supply chain, both corporations and their suppliers
have a mutual interest in the security of production
and the success of farmers who are at the heart of their
business. One of the benets of insetting is that because
there is a relationship between the farmers and the food
companies, the approach has the opportunity to be more
collaborative.
In some cases, independent third-party verication may
not be pursued since the entities have a relationship
built on trust (Tipper, Coad, & Burnett, 2009). The
organizations designing insetting programs may also
reduce the stringency of the requirements for the
measurement, monitoring, and reporting of the GHG
reductions implemented by the producer compared to
those used in oset markets, which is the approach of
the Value Change Initiative (VCI) (Tunio, Bloch, &
Streicher, 2021). It is still too early to determine if the
reduction in MMRV requirements will signicantly
reduce the transaction costs of implementing agricultural
conservation practices or if it will translate into larger
payments to producers.
The views on and understanding of insetting programs
are in ux because these programs were launched in
2016 or later and most are still in their pilot phase. At the
publication date of this white paper, we are observing that
the terms “insetting” is evolving as an umbrella term that
covers two dierent activities:
• Some companies are paying farmers who have already
implemented practices, such as no-till and cover
crops, to reward the producers for doing so and to
help the food company minimize their Scope 3 GHG
emissions baseline. This approach is referred to as the
inventory method to GHG accounting under the draft
Land Sector and Removals Guidance from the GHG
Protocol
11
(WRI & WBCSD, 2022b). According to GHG
Protocol denitions, this method does not need to
achieve additionality.
12
10. Scope 3 emissions are the indirect emissions that occur in a company’s value chain. These are dierent than the direct (Scope 1) emissions that are
emitted by the company’s own facilities under their direct control, and the GHG emissions associated with the purchase of electricity for use in their
operations (Scope 2 emissions). Examples of Scope 3 emissions other than purchased goods and services include business travel, transportation and
distribution of products, and use of sold products.
11. The GHG Protocol was jointly developed in 1998 by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and the World Resources
Institute (WRI) and is seen as the authoritative guidance on GHG accounting.
12. Additionality is the implementation of a practice that would not have happened without the incentive provided by a program (WRI & WBCSD,
2004). See the “Additionality Concerns” sections below for more detail.
• In contrast, accounting for credited emissions
reductions and removals requires companies to credit
new practices. This guidance is used when a company
has established its Scope 3 GHG emissions baseline
and set a Scope 3 GHG emissions reduction target (e.g.,
net-zero targets by 2050 or percent reduction goals).
To make progress towards that emissions reductions
goal, these companies can incentivize farmers to begin
adoption of new climate-smart practices and claim
those reductions through the crediting method because
they are additional, as called for by Section 13 of the
draft Land Sector and Removals Guidance (WRI &
WBCSD, 2022b).
An advantage of both variants of insetting programs is
that they keep emissions reductions by farmers within
the agricultural sector and they can be claimed by
multiple companies that use or process the agricultural
commodity. In that way, Scope 3 emissions are associated
with a product throughout the supply chain. For example,
if a producer implements nutrient management on a
corn eld that is in the geography purchased by a food
company (also called the company’s supply shed), those
GHG reductions travel with the corn to the mills it uses,
the food processing plants, storage warehouses, and
retailstores.
Any downstream company that can demonstrate a
relationship with the climate-smart management
practices can claim reductions within its supply shed.
This can be done without tracking the exact bushel of
corn where those benets were generated. Separate
guidance from the GHG Protocol acknowledges and
allows for this approach (WRI & WBCSD, 2022a).
Several corporations are piloting the draft Land Sector
and Removals Guidance, published by the GHG Protocol
in September 2022, as they develop and implement their
insetting programs (WRI & WBCSD, 2022b).
One of the challenges with insetting, however, is that,
even with the draft guidance from the GHG Protocol,
there are few standards for such programs. A 2022 report
by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization
and the European Bank found that “Several initiatives
have attempted to develop standards for insetting, but
resulting standards diverge in recommended approaches
and denitions” (Santos, di Sitizano, Pedersen, &
AGRICULTURAL CARBON MARKETS: FROM CHAOS TO SYSTEMS CHANGE 15
Borgomeo, 2022). Without independent and consistent
standards, companies may develop weak programs that
do not reduce GHG emissions or credit practices that are
not new.
There are signicant challenges in developing these
programs, which is demonstrated by there being no
publicly available information on the volume of GHG
reductions the programs have generated to date. Three
organizations are adding their perspective to the design
and implementation of insetting programs: SBTi, the
Value Change Initiative (VCI), and the International
Platform for Insetting. These organizations will have
a signicant impact on the development of insetting
programs, but it is too early to analyze their impact as
many are still developing or piloting their standards
andrequirements.
OTHER CARBON PROGRAMS
Recognizing the limited production and high cost of
generating agricultural carbon credits over the last 28
years in the compliance and voluntary oset markets,
some companies and nonprot organizations are working
to disrupt the oset and inset markets by developing
their own programs. These programs combine aspects
of compliance and voluntary oset markets as well as
insetting programs. Some programs have expanded their
scope to credit co-benets such as water quality and
biodiversity. Because of the evolution in this space, it
is hard to dierentiate between inset and other carbon
programs. Since 2016, 15 agriculture-focused carbon
programs have been developed by companies and
nonprots (Box 1); and are marketing themselves as
oset or inset programs, or as providing both options
(ISAP,2023).
While many of these eorts were launched as standalone
programs, an increasing trend for these programs is
to align themselves with the more traditional carbon
oset organizations. This alignment allows programs
to have an independent body assessing the rigor of the
credits and providing services such as developing and
updating protocols, managing verication body approval,
and issuing and retiring credits. These agricultural
carbon programs can then spend their time on producer
enrollment and technical assistance.
One goal of many of these programs is to spur innovation
faster than through the traditional oset or emerging
inset programs. Like the inset programs, most of these
other programs are still in their infancy and are piloting
the initial protocols or projects. The next several years
will be pivotal in the development of these programs.
USDA PARTNERSHIPS FOR CLIMATE
SMART COMMODITIES
The most recent development in the niches is the
launch of the USDA Partnerships for Climate-Smart
Commodities (Partnerships program), which was
announced in February 2022. The program will nance
up to 141 pilot projects with more than $3.1 billion of
taxpayer support to produce, sell, and promote climate-
smart commodities over the next ve years.
This program is expected to reach more than 60,000
farms operating more than 25 million acres and generate
more than 60 MtCO
2
e of GHG reductions over the ve
years of the program (USDA, n.d.). The pilot projects will
investigate a variety of approaches to create climate-
smart commodity markets, including the development
of oset and inset programs. One of the key components
of the Partnerships program is the quarterly collection
and analysis of data from the projects (USDA, n.d.). This
has the potential to bridge gaps between traditional
USDA conservation programs and agricultural carbon
programs. In addition, the Partnerships program’s focus
on MMRV could help reduce one of the largest costs to
the development of agricultural carbon projects.
16 SIERRA VIEW SOLUTIONS AND AMERICAN FARMLAND TRUST
Analysis
M
LP theory helps frame the challenges underlying
and inuencing the agricultural carbon markets.
The theory recognizes that regime change,
and social and technical transitions require changes in
practices, policies, infrastructure, and business models,
which can be tested at smaller scales in the technological
niches (Geels & Schot, 2007; El Bilali, 2019). Incredible
amounts of change throughout all levels of society are
needed to keep global warming to 1.5°C or less and will
require reducing GHG emissions 45% from 2010 levels by
2030 (United Nations, n.d.).
In 2020, U.S. agriculture generated about 598 MtCO
2
e of
emissions or about 9.4% of total national GHG emissions
(USEPA, 2023). Climate change is forecast to decrease
crop yields between 20 to 60% by 2100 (Vos & Cattaneo,
2016). In 2022 alone, citrus growers in Florida lost
50–90% of their crop to high winds and rain, and in the
Plains and Midwest, drought reduced the winter wheat
harvest by 25% and caused growers to abandon 43%
of cotton acres in New Mexico (Sorensen, Murphy, &
Nogeire-McRae, 2023).
At the same time, improved cropland and grassland
management practices has the potential to store
more than 250 MtCO
2
e annually in the U.S. alone;
equal to about 4% of total annual U.S. GHG emissions
(Chambers, Lal, & Paustian, 2016). In addition, the Biden
Administration has a plan to reduce agricultural CH4
emissions by more than 150 MtCO
2
e by 2035, which stem
from manure and enteric fermentation and account for
37% of all CH4 emissions in the U.S. (White House Oce
of Domestic Climate Policy, 2021). Because the adoption
of many climate-smart practices, including reduced
tillage and cover crops, is low in more than half of U.S.
states, there is a signicant potential to expand practices
through agricultural carbon programs.
We have identied four primary reasons that help
explain limited producer participation in agricultural
carbon programs for croplands: economics of programs,
additionality concerns, permanence requirements, and
data and technology barriers.
ECONOMICS OF PROGRAMS
The success of voluntary conservation programs in the
U.S. has been limited by available funding, which is in
part why 28 states have 20% or less of their agricultural
land participating, at some point, in federal conservation
programs (Newton, 2019), including the top 10
LANCE CHEUNG/USDA
AGRICULTURAL CARBON MARKETS: FROM CHAOS TO SYSTEMS CHANGE 17
agricultural states as measured by gross receipts (USDA
Economic Research Service, 2023).
One of the signicant challenges in adopting climate-
smart practices, including participation in agricultural
carbon programs, is that when nancial assistance is not
available or the program payments do not cover the full
cost of adoption, the producers cannot fully recover their
investments and may experience reduced yields in the
early years after adoption, further enlarging the economic
impact (West & Post, 2002; Saak, et al., 2021; Deines,
Wang, & Lobell, 2019). In some cases, farmers attribute
increases in yield to their use of no-till, cover crops, and
nutrient management or net income improvements due
to reductions in input costs, though results are not always
positive (Wiercinski, Yeatman, & Perez, 2023b).
Farmers do receive several economic benets which may
go unquantied (e.g., resilience to weather extremes,
pest and disease control, and improved nutrient cycling),
and society also benets from resulting soil carbon
sequestration and reduced impacts on water quality
and biodiversity (Rejesus, et al., 2021). Some programs
recognize and reward holistic environmental benets
from new practices; for example, the Soil and Water
Outcomes Fund makes joint carbon and water payments.
Producer payments are insucient to gain
participation. A recent study by McKinsey & Company
found that approximately 50% of producers are not
participating in carbon markets because the return on
investment is not high enough (McKinsey & Company,
2022). One of the reasons producers may not see the
nancial benets is that 59% have never calculated the
economic benets of adopting conservation practices
(Slattery D., 2022). Another possible deterrent is that it
can take years for carbon benets to accrue with practices
such as cover crops and reduced tillage (White, Brennan,
Cavigelli, & Smith, 2020; West & Post, 2002).
Some of the highest paying carbon programs and pilots
(such as Indigo Ag, Soil and Water Outcomes Fund, and
the Corteva pilot) have paid producers up to $30 per acre
for implementing practices, although average payments
are lower (ISAP, 2023). This is in contrast to typical EQIP
payments for cover crops averaging $50 to $54 per acre
and state programs, such as those in Maryland seeking
to improve water quality the Chesapeake Bay, that pay
as much as $55 to $95 per acre for cover crops (Myers,
Weber, & Tellatin, 2019; Keppler, Maryland’s 2022–2023
Cover Crop Program, 2022). If producers grow cover
crops, in between commodity crop rotations, on the same
eld for three consecutive years, they can earn as much as
$160 per acre (Keppler, Cover Crop Plus, n.d.).
A choice experiment involving hundreds of corn and
soybean producers in Indiana concluded that farmers who
have never tried any form of reduced tillage would require
nearly $40 per acre of additional revenue to implement
no-till, compared to about $11 per acre for producers
who have implemented conservation tillage (Gramig &
Widmar, 2018). This makes sense as farmers are more
likely to reduce tillage in stages rather than change
immediately from conventional to no-till. Furthermore,
producers indicated that they preferred exibility: on
average, they wanted an additional $10.57per acre to
enter into a multi-year contract to maintain conservation
tillage. Finally, the farmers preferred government
payments over agricultural carbon programs (Gramig &
Widmar, 2018).
A carbon program payment of $30 per acre is a fraction
of the revenue a corn producer receives for growing corn.
Assuming the average 2022 yield of 172 bushels of corn
per acre (Schnitkey, Paulson, Baltz, & Zulauf, Weekly
Farm Economics: Corn and Soybean Yields in 2022,
2022) and an average price of $6.86 per bushel (Schnitkey,
Paulson, Baltz, & Zulauf, 2022 Harvest Prices: Payments
for 2022 and Indications for 2023 Projected Prices,
2022), the gross revenue per acre for a corn producer is
approximately $1,180. A carbon payment of $30 per acre
is only an additional 2.5% of gross revenue per acre. If
implementing the practices reduces yield by more than
4bushels per acre, producers lose revenue.
Depending on GHG, per acre outcome generation
and payment opportunity can be small. The amount
of GHG emissions that can be reduced per acre for some
conservation practices is low. The rst project to generate
GHG reductions from nutrient management practices
was veried in 2014 and resulted in 2 tCO
2
e on a 40-acre
eld (ACR, n.d.). At a price of $40 per tCO
2
e, that only
generates $2 per acre gross revenue for the producer. This
is one of the reasons why protocols such as Changes in
Fertilizer Management, Compost Additional to Grazed
Grasslands, and Rice Management Systems were moved
to inactive status by ACR (ACR, n.d.). Since 2010, eight
projects have been listed for CH
4
and N
2
O reductions
from croplands. Of these projects, ve generated a modest
672 tCO
2
e and three did not generate any credits at all
(So, Haya, & Elias, 2023).
More recently developed programs, such as CAR’s Soil
Enrichment Protocol (SEP) and ForGround by Bayer
and VCI, credit the soil carbon sequestration practices of
no-till and cover crops. This is because these practices
generate more GHG reductions per acre under the
current protocols than nitrogen management practices.
This is evident when looking at the volume of credits
generated by the projects. Three projects using improved
nitrogen management protocols generated only 75 tCO
2
e
between 2011 and 2023, whereas two projects under the
CAR SEP generated 111,677 tCO
2
e between 2018 and
18 SIERRA VIEW SOLUTIONS AND AMERICAN FARMLAND TRUST
2023 (So, Haya, & Elias, 2023). However, programs that
include no-till and cover crops are only cost-eective for
developers when they enroll a large number of producers.
For example, one of the CAR SEP projects has issued
111,645 tCO
2
e to a project developed by Indigo Ag that
includes 430 producers in 22 states. Producers were paid
up to $30 per tCO
2
e per year for their involvement in the
project (Indigo Agriculture, 2023).
Agricultural soil carbon sequestration prices are
forecast to increase. In 2021, the global voluntary
carbon market was valued at more than $2 billion and
generated almost 300 MtCO
2
e of reductions, meaning
that the average credit sold for about $6.66 per tCO
2
e
(Research and Markets, 2022). Based on average
emissions reductions generated in Indigo Ag projects,
which pay producers up to $30 per tCO
2
e (DuBuisson,
2023), most producers could not generate enough
credits to reach the $40 per acre threshold that Gramig
& Widmar (2018) found that Indiana corn-soybean
producers wanted to receive in order to adopt reduced
tillage. Thus, these producers are not likely to be
interested in carbon programs at current prices.
A recent Bloomberg New Energy Finance forecast that
the price for high-quality credits from nature-based
solutions will reach $38 per tCO
2
e by 2039. The forecast
also included an unlikely scenario where prices would
increase above $250 per tCO
2
e if the market were limited
to carbon removals (such as soil carbon) and prohibited
avoidance credits (such as avoided deforestation) and
clean energy projects. This scenario could run the risk
of driving companies away from setting sustainability
goals at all, due to the cost (BloombergNEF, 2023).
However, a six-fold increase in average credit price
could improve the attractiveness of carbon markets to
agriculturalproducers.
Transaction costs minimize value for market
providers and payment to producers. Even if prices
rise dramatically, the transaction costs associated with
MMRV requirements are limiting the development of
projects. According to conversations with carbon credit
developers, the cost of verication alone can be as high
as $40,000 per project, 50% of the total development
cost (Parkhurst, 2023). One of the primary drivers of this
cost is the number of sites that oset protocols require
veriers to visit. The good news is that verication
costs do not necessarily scale with the size of a project
(DuBuisson, 2023).
An additional signicant development cost is soil carbon
sampling. If a project is doing extensive sampling,
sampling costs can equal or even exceed the costs of
verication (Parkhurst, 2023). This is because soil
carbon content varies widely between and within elds
and it changes very slowly, requiring a lot of sampling
to statistically detect a change over time. It is important
for agricultural carbon programs to nd ways to reduce
such costs while maintaining the quality and rigor of their
credits; one should not come at the expense of theother.
The inset market was designed to address these
transaction costs. As one example, the VCI developed
guidance for the verication of Scope 3 GHG impacts.
ESMC completed VCI validation and verication for a
subset of their enrolled producers, laying a foundation
for scaling verication across their broader portfolio
of projects in future cycles. The rst ve producers
participating in ESMC’s program farm more than
550 acres and have implemented practices including
conservation tillage, nutrient management, cover crops,
and/or irrigation management. The results of this pilot
will provide an important early indication of whether and
how this insetting approach can reduce MMRV costs.
If insetting programs can signicantly reduce the MMRV
costs, producers could be paid more for implementing
practices because less is spent on activities such as
measurement and verication. The goal of some programs
is to ensure that at least 75% of the money goes directly
to farmers, with the remainder spent on MMRV and
technical assistance (Henry, 2023). A possible drawback
of insetting is that these less rigorous approaches could
be viewed as producing lower quality emission reductions
with higher degrees of uncertainty in the reductions,
which could potentially hurt the value to growers in
the long term. As with all carbon programs, insetting
programs must continuously seek to balance quality
andrigor.
Insetting rules may allow free rides by companies
along the supply chain. As described in the niche
section, insetting programs allow each company in the
supply chain of a food ingredient to claim the reduction
implemented by the producer (WRI & WBCSD, 2022a).
The challenge with this approach is that if a company
pays for an insetting credit and publicly reports this
information, for instance in their annual corporate social
responsibility report, then other companies in the supply
chain could also claim that reduction without paying for
any of the credit. This double claiming, while allowed
in all insetting programs, could lead to a volunteer’s
dilemma where one company pays for the benets and
other companies upstream and downstream of that
company can make the same claim for no cost (Campos-
Mercade, 2021). It is important for companies to develop
transparent approaches that allow double claiming, the
assertion of Scope 3 emission reductions throughout the
supply chain, while avoiding multiple companies counting
the same reductions, also known as double counting. In
addition, these programs should be designed to avoid
AGRICULTURAL CARBON MARKETS: FROM CHAOS TO SYSTEMS CHANGE 19
free rides of companies that do not contribute to the
reductions in the supply chain.
Program instability and uncertainty undermine
participation interest. A persistent challenge with
carbon markets is their lack of stability. One of the
earliest agricultural carbon programs was the Chicago
Climate Exchange. Between 2003 and 2010, the program
generated approximately 84 MtCO
2
e of carbon credits
(Lavelle, 2010). When the program ended in 2010, many
producers were left with credits they could not sell
(Gronewold, 2011). This closure came at a great cost to
producers who invested time and money in the program
in anticipation of generating carbon credits (Swette
Center for Sustainable Food Systems, 2020).
Our analysis considered 22 programs in various stages
of development (Box 1). Nine of these programs were
launched after 2020. In that short period of time, there
have already been signicant changes. For example,
Farmers Business Network’s Gradable Carbon program
launched its program in 2021 and discontinued it in 2022;
the pilot program by Corteva and ESMC was dissolved;
and new partnerships were launched between Nori and
Bayer, and between Corteva and Indigo Ag (Iowa State
University Extension and Outreach, March 2023). The
uncertainty caused by the frequent changes in programs
exacerbates producer reluctance to commit to the
requirements of a program.
ADDITIONALITY CONCERNS
One of the most important, controversial, and dicult
characteristics of any environmental program, not just
an agricultural carbon program, is additionality. In the
simplest of terms, additionality is the implementation
of a practice that would not have happened without the
incentive provided by a program (WRI & WBCSD, 2004).
The complexities of additionality are reected in the
diering rules employed by dierent agricultural carbon
programs, and in some cases these approaches could lead
to perverse outcomes.
Changing practices or habits is dicult for people and
industries. Signicant research has been conducted
in this space to identify helpful “nudges” to encourage
behavior change, especially when the future is at
stake (Thaler & Sunstein, 2021). Social factors matter
in farming and barriers to widespread change can
include not just nancial considerations but also social
norms, peer pressure, and farmer identity (Field to
Market, 2021; Lequin, Grolleau, & Mzoughi, 2019; Liu,
Bruins, & Heberling, 2018). As a result, accelerating
adoption of climate-smart practices is likely to require
a comprehensive approach that provides producers not
just nancial incentives but also social and technical
support. Some carbon programs attempt to address these
multiplebarriers.
We focus our analysis and recommendations primarily
on economic incentives, but we also identify some
opportunities for carbon programs to provide valuable
social support and nudges to producers. We acknowledge
the complex nature of farmer decision making and the
importance of a holistic approach to driving change.
Early adopters are not included in most agricultural
carbon programs. Though there are many dierences
between the voluntary and compliance oset markets,
insetting programs, and other agricultural carbon
programs, the majority of 22 programs listed in Box
1 uphold additionality and exclude early adopters
(individuals who are already using a climate-smart
practice). The objective of additionality is that a buyer
is paying for an outcome where the payment was the
incentive for the producer to implement the practice
and track its outcome. Because the buyer is paying for a
behavior change and the new outcome associated with
that change, anyone who began implementation of the
practice historically (an early adopter) is typically not
allowed to participate in these programs. These early
adopters—e.g., the producers using no-till on 30% and
cover crops on 5% of cultivated acres—are excluded from
most programs focused on no-till and cover crops. As long
as they continue to use no-till and cover crops, they will
continue to enjoy the soil health, economic, water quality,
and climate resilience benets of their ongoing practice
use, and society is better o because of their ongoing
investment in soilhealth.
As mentioned earlier, some corporations are rewarding
these early adopters by including them in their
Scope 3 GHG emissions inventories, which allows
the corporations to minimize the emissions they are
associating with their baseline. Government programs
such as the USDA’s CSP also reward producers for their
existing use of conservation practices and attainment
of stewardship management thresholds for resource
concerns (e.g., water quality-nitrogen, water quality-
sediments, etc.) but do so in exchange for new, additional
practice adoption that is also nancially supported
(USDA NRCS, 2021).
Careful design of agricultural carbon programs must
evaluate whether and how to incorporate early adopters
and whether they should get paid for continuing existing
behavior. See Box 5 for a discussion of how current
additionality bottlenecks could be alleviated by programs
shifting their focus towards other priority climate-smart
practices.
20 SIERRA VIEW SOLUTIONS AND AMERICAN FARMLAND TRUST
Carbon programs do not adequately dene what
constitutes a new practice. Carbon oset protocols
and most carbon programs dene additionality as the
implementation of practices for the rst time. For
example, the CAR SEP requires “one or more changes
in pre-existing agricultural management practices”
(CAR, 2022). This limits the potential involvement of a
producer’s elds to those where a carbon-sequestering or
GHG emissions-reducing conservation practice has not
yet been implemented.
The challenge with this otherwise good denition of
additionality is that there is no time limit associated
with it. A strict reading of the protocols would only allow
“brand new” practices to be credited. The conundrum is
“what does new mean?” For example, consider a producer
who tried a climate-smart practice in the past, stopped
using it prior to the historic baseline of a carbon project
(typically three to ve years), has since been using
practices that do not reduce GHG emissions, but is now
interested in trying the climate-smart practice again.
Would that producer be allowed to participate in a carbon
program because the climate-smart practice would be
“new-ish”? The language in most programs is unclear.
Annual crop producers such as corn and soybean
farmers only have 40 to 50 harvests in their careers, and
agronomic decisions are often made to minimize risk
and maximize yield (Peterson & Tomel, 2001). This may
be why producers with nearly 1 million acres in cover
crops and more than 5 million acres of no-till stopped
implementing those practices between 2012 and 2017
(Sawadgo & Plastina, 2022). At the same time, the logic
of additionality is to pay for practices that would not
have otherwise occurred, rather than practices that
have already been adopted, even if those practices were
stopped for a signicant period of time.
However, scenarios are possible where implementation
of these disadopted practices should qualify as additional.
For example, if a practice was stopped and signicant
time has passed so that less carbon is sequestered in the
soil, the resumption of practices could be credited. Or, if
a producer planted cover crops more than 10 years ago
and has not used them since that time, the soil carbon
sequestered by cover crop usage should have decreased.
Thus, in both cases, there could be a net increase in soil
carbon sequestration from starting no-till and/or cover
crops again. The critical consideration is avoid creating
perverse incentives, e.g., for the producer to till up their
elds only to implement no-till a few years later. The time
between conservation practices needs to be long enough,
such as 10 years, to prevent these adverse outcomes.
When used as a oor by osetting markets to
reward early adopters, “common practice baselines”
violate additionality. Some protocols, such as the
archived ACR Rice Management Systems (ACR, n.d.),
use a common practice baseline to pay early adopters
in order to promote the program to others who have not
yet adopted the practice. That is, if most producers in a
region have not implemented a practice, a producer that
BOX 5. EXPANSION OF THE MARKET OFFERINGS FOR REDUCTIONS IN N
2
O AND CH
4
MAY HELP AMELIORATE CURRENT ADDITIONALITY BOTTLENECKS
One current challenge with additionality stems from
the fact that most of the emerging programs for
cropland management are focused on soil carbon
sequestration and limit payment to two practices:
cover crops and no-till (ISAP, 2023). Though all but
two of the 15 programs reviewed by ISAP do oer a
third or a fourth eligible practice (mostly some form
of nitrogen management), the bulk of the focus and
the net GHG emissions reductions are expected
to come from just cover crops or some form of
reduced tillage (ISAP, 2023). And these important
practices oer a plethora of climate resilience, water
quality, and soil health-building benefits as well.
However, focusing primarily on cover crops and
no-till rather than practices that generate large-
scale reductions in N
2
O and CH
4
emissions, which
have higher global warming potentials than CO
2
,
delays generation of critical reductions from
the agriculture sector. Though compliance and
voluntary oset markets for the livestock sector
have focused on CH
4
largely via manure digesters,
which have yielded climate and water quality
benefits, they have paid less attention to the large
emissions reduction opportunities available via
non-digester manure management practices and
feed additives for enteric fermentation. Attention
to CH
4
and N
2
O will require the development of
additional agricultural carbon program oerings
inviting more (and more types of) producers to
participate, thereby lowering the problems of
additionality caused by focusing primarily on just
two croplandpractices.
AGRICULTURAL CARBON MARKETS: FROM CHAOS TO SYSTEMS CHANGE 21
has historically implemented the practice can generate
carbon osets under the protocol, such as ACR’s Rice
Management Systems. For example, if a protocol sets a
common practice baseline as 5% adoption in a county,
any producer in that county with less than 5% adoption
can generate oset credits for the practice that they
initiated decades ago and are continuing currently. The
objective of this approach is to encourage the adoption of
practices by rewarding early adopters who implemented
practices, paying them, and promoting their participation
to encourage other producers who have not adopted
to participate in the program. This approach rewards
producers who already implemented practices, which is
inconsistent with established denitions of additionality.
When used as a ceiling to exclude late adopters,
common practice baselines prevent progress towards
climate goals. On the opposite end of the spectrum, some
programs cap participation once adoption of a practice
reaches a certain threshold. In the CAR SEP protocol,
once the adoption of no-till, reduced-till, cover crop
adoption, rotational grazing, and intensive grazing reach
an “uptake rate of more than 50% of either total cropland
area, or total pasture operations,” they are considered
ineligible for crediting under the protocol (CAR, 2022).
This approach is problematic because there are often
agronomic, technological, or nancial reasons why a
producer has not implemented a practice when many of
their neighbors have, such as specic soil types or slope
conditions, access to equipment, or inability to aord
upfront costs such as new equipment. This approach to
additionality prohibits the full uptake of practices that
are critical to stabilizing global temperatures at less
than1.5°C.
The nature of agriculture makes the determination
of additionality challenging. Additionality is more
straightforward in carbon credit programs outside of
agriculture, where the options are more black-and-
white—e.g., are the trees still standing, were they planted,
were the solar panels installed, were the refrigerants
destroyed, or was the CH
4
captured and destroyed from
the mine. Unlike those carbon credit programs and
practices, the challenges associated with agricultural
practices are unique. Every year, producers decide what
to plant, when to plant it, how much fertilizer to apply,
and make many other choices. This is because producers
are operating in shifting conditions that change over time
and space, such as temperature, rainfall, and soil type. All
these variables complicate decisions for the producer; as a
result, determining additionality for agriculture practices
has been a particularly complex challenge in designing
carbon programs.
Additionality denitions are becoming standardized,
but they do not adequately address agricultural
challenges. Many organizations are working to
standardize the denition of additionality. Overall, this is
a good thing, but the organizations are not considering the
challenges associated with agriculture. Regardless of the
organization or approach taken to develop additionality
rules, the challenges associated with the implementation
and maintenance of agricultural conservation practices
must be considered.
Examples of organizations setting market-wide
additionality rules for carbon programs are:
• The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon
Market. Their Core Carbon Principles dene
additionality to be when the practices “would not have
occurred in the absence of the incentive created by
carbon credit revenues” (ICVCM, n.d.).
• Voluntary Carbon Markets Initiative. VCMI’s
Provisional Claims Code of Practice states that
practices are “additional to those that would occur in
the absence of demand for carbon credits” (Voluntary
Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative, 2022).
• Carbon Credit Quality Initiative. This eort
was founded by the Environmental Defense Fund,
World Wildlife Fund, and Oeko-Institut provides a
transparent score on the quality of carbon protocols.
Their methodology includes criteria on additionality
related to the time period without revenues from
carbon credits (EDF, WWF, Oeko-Institut, 2022).
While the Carbon Credit Quality Initiative considers
a time limit for program eligibility, none of the
organizations considers the unique situations in
agriculture where a producer stopped a practice but
is interested in trying to make it work again. This
underscores one of the core challenges with the current
market approach. This problem will persist until the
unique aspects of agriculture are incorporated into
additionality denitions.
PERMANENCE REQUIREMENTS
Soil carbon sequestration is easy to reverse, so it is
essential that conservation management practices
be maintained. For example, in one study, a single
application of inversion tillage eliminated the soil organic
matter that had accumulated over 20 years of minimal
tillage (Stocksch, Forstreuter, & Ehlers, 1999); a more
recent global meta-analysis concluded that occasional
tillage within otherwise no-till systems reduces soil
carbon over time (Peixoto, et al., 2020).
Despite the importance of permanence, its denition,
interpretation, and associated rules are controversial
and dicult characteristics of carbon programs. The
22 SIERRA VIEW SOLUTIONS AND AMERICAN FARMLAND TRUST
most basic denition of permanence is the prevention of
emission reductions or removals from being re-released
into the atmosphere over 100 years (Goodward & Kelly,
2010). This denition creates a signicant contracting
challenge for producers. For example, the common
law concept of the “rule against perpetuities” prevents
people from using legal instruments, such as a deed or
a will, to control the ownership of property indenitely
(Waggoner, 1986). To address this contracting problem,
carbon programs have adopted specic timeframes
forpermanence.
The requirement to maintain sequestered carbon
for 40 to 100 years is problematic for producers.
A common approach to permanence (as used in many
of the protocols by CAR, Verra, and ACR) is the
requirement for carbon sequestration to be maintained
for up to 100years. A signicant challenge with this
approach is that approximately 39% of farmland in the
U.S. is rented (USDA Economic Research Service) and
many producers have one-year, “handshake” agreements
with landowners. Some non-operating landowners are
beginning to modify lease terms for producers who
want to invest in soil health, for example by adopting
climate-smart practices like no-till, cover crops,
nutrient management, and conservation crop rotations
in order to build in exibility for equitable sharing of
risks and rewards (Ranjan, et al., 2019). Most producers
who do not have access to such favorable lease terms
are reluctant to enter into multi-year contracts; in
one study, farmers indicated that they would want
an additional $10.57 per acre to enter into such
contracts (Gramig & Widmar, 2018). Finally, 100-year
permanence spans multiple lifespans, which requires
creative legal instruments to pass the requirements
between generations.
Tonne-year accounting eliminates permanence
requirements. The tonne-year accounting approach
calculates the quantity of GHG emission reductions that
are physically equivalent to avoiding the emissions over
a single year (CarbonCredits.Com, 2022). This approach
was originally developed by the IPCC and published in
their Special Report on Land Use, Land-Use Change,
and Forestry. This report states that “projects must
be maintained until they counteract the eect of an
equivalent amount of GHGs emitted to the atmosphere”
(Watson, et al., 2000). The tonne-year accounting
approach allows producers to participate in carbon
programs without having to sign long-term agreements
binding them to the practices. However, it signicantly
reduces the number of credits generated, and no projects
have been developed using this approach.
Project developers are considering the creation of
private buer pools for intentional reversals. Loss
RON NICHOLS/USDA-NRCS
AGRICULTURAL CARBON MARKETS: FROM CHAOS TO SYSTEMS CHANGE 23
of permanence happens in two ways—unintentional
and intentional releases of stored carbon, referred to
as “reversals.” An unintentional reversal results from
something out of the control of the producer, such as a
drought, ood, or re, also called a “force majeure” event.
Carbon oset registries administer and collect credits into
a buer pool for such unavoidable reversals. The other
type of reversal is an intentional reversal. This is when
the producer stops or reverses a conservation practice,
such as tilling a no-till eld. To address the issue of
intentional reversals, some agricultural carbon programs
have considered holding onto additional credits to insure
against intentional reversals. These private buer pools
allow producers who need to temporarily stop a practice
to still participate in the program. The problem with these
intentional buer pools is that there is no transparency in
the number of credits they include.
DATA AND TECHNOLOGY BARRIERS
FOR AGRICULTURE
The ability to quantify the changes in agricultural GHG
emissions associated with the carbon and nitrogen cycles
through the interaction of soil, weather, crop growth
cycles, and human activities requires the collection of
signicant amounts of data from producers, which can
pose several challenges. To determine the baseline level of
GHG emissions for a eld, most carbon programs require
three to ve years of cropping history, including planting
and harvesting dates, fertilizer type, application dates and
rates, tillage practices, and irrigation dates and amounts.
Lack of broadband hinders the adoption of farm
management systems. The signicant amount of data
necessary to participate in agricultural carbon programs
is an obstacle for the 79% of producers who collect
information using non-structured data management
systems (which can be as simple as paper logbooks or as
advanced as macro-enabled Excel spreadsheets) rather
than farm-management software (Fiocco, Ganesan,
Lozano, & Shari, 2023). Lack of rural internet is one
of the signicant reasons why producers may not have
adopted farm-management software. The Federal
Communications Commission estimates that 17% of
Americans in rural areas and 21% of Americans living on
tribal lands lack access to broadband. Some studies have
found that up to 50% of rural Americans lack broadband
in some areas (Lee, Seddon, Tanner, & Lai, 2022).
Agricultural data policies are unclear and
discourage producer participation in agricultural
carbon programs. Some producers may be able to
get the necessary historic data from their agricultural
retailer (Skernivitz, 2022). Agricultural retailers are
companies that supply producers with products and
services. Products include seed, nutrients, equipment,
and technology. Services include eld mapping, custom
planting and application, and the development of nutrient
management plans and conservation plans (Ag Retailers
Association, n.d.). Several of these companies, such as
Wineld and GROWMARK, are developing systems
that can collect this information and allow producers to
participate in carbon programs.
Even if an agricultural retailer or input company has
a digital data collection system, many producers are
reluctant to adopt technology because there is a lack of
clarity about how the data will be used and managed.
These concerns include data ownership, privacy,
portability, and liability. The crux of the problem is a lack
of trust by producers about the companies that collect,
manage, aggregate, and share their data (Wiseman,
Sanderson, Zhang, & Jakku, 2019). Data ownership and
privacy are important, and unfortunately the current
approach to data collection in the U.S. has no standards,
best practices, legal frameworks, or regulations (Kaur,
Fard, Amiri-Zarandi, & Dara, 2022).
The privacy concerns extend to carbon programs. At
a 2021 U.S. House Committee on Agriculture hearing,
producers raised concerns about data privacy in carbon
market programs (Joiner, 2021). A recent study found
that while producers are willing to share their data with
private organizations, they are reluctant to share their
data with government entities (Niles & Han, 2022).
Data portability is critical to agricultural carbon
market expansion. Because carbon programs are rapidly
changing and because producers may be interested in
participating in dierent carbon markets over time, data
portability is an important concern when producers
decide to share their data with a third party. Data
portability avoids the lock-in problems required by
some technologies or companies. A good example of the
impacts of lock-in challenges are the trade-os required
in selecting an iPhone or Android phone. The most
robust form of portability allows the transfer or waiving
of portability rights. It also species if the portability
is of just the raw data or if it includes any derived data
(Atik, 2022). The inability to transfer data between
platforms inhibits some producers from participating in
carbonprograms.
Lack of data standards creates uncertainty. One of
the largest challenges with data management in the U.S.
is that there are limited regulations protecting producers.
This is not the case worldwide. The European Union
(EU) is exploring data standards for agriculture. In 2021,
the EU held a workshop to develop a common European
agricultural data space (European Commission, 2021).
24 SIERRA VIEW SOLUTIONS AND AMERICAN FARMLAND TRUST
Recommendations
T
ransforming agriculture into a more climate-
resilient and environmentally sustainable sector
by reducing GHG emissions is a multi-faceted
challenge. Multi-level perspective (MLP) theory provided
the framework to facilitate a discussion of the complex
societal transitions to identify the barriers and obstacles
to implementing agricultural carbon programs. Using
MLP we analyzed the current state of agricultural
carbon programs and key reasons why producers are
not participating in those programs at scale in order to
develop recommendations to support the expansion and
scale-up of these programs. This approach facilitated the
structured review of the transitions amongst stakeholders
in the regimes and niche levels necessary to accelerate
farmer adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices.
The analysis and recommendations in this paper
include important changes in program rules, stakeholder
behaviors, business models, and technologies.
To prevent global emissions from increasing by more
than 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures, GHG
emissions must be reduced by more than 75% compared
to projected 2050 levels (Searchinger, Waite, Hanson, &
Ranganathan, 2019). Agricultural carbon programs could
play a critical role in making progress towards that target,
but agricultural carbon reductions currently represent
just 1% of the global carbon market (So, Haya, & Elias,
2023). Below are recommendations to address each of
the four barriers to producer participation in agricultural
carbon programs.
A. ECONOMICS OF PROGRAMS
1. Support policies that increase the price of carbon.
The most signicant change to attract and retain
producers is to increase the price of carbon. This could
be achieved through increasing the demand for GHG
reductions from agriculture. Internationally, over 500
food and agriculture companies have set or committed
to setting science-based targets through SBTi. As
these companies develop and implement their goals,
there will be increased demand for GHG reductions
from agricultural producers, which will send a strong
price signal.
Governments could also set a price signal for reductions.
In November 2022, the USEPA proposed to set the social
cost of carbon at $190 per tCO
2
e. While the social cost of
carbon is helpful, it may only have an indirect impact on
agricultural carbon programs because it is used primarily
as a policy tool to weigh dierent regulatory proposals
(Asdourian & Wessel, 2023). Even if the social cost of
carbon is limited to policy decisions, it could still be
used as a target or benchmark for agricultural carbon
programs.
Finally, strengthening the integrity of the voluntary
carbon market could increase trust, condence, and
demand, thereby increasing the price of carbon. At least
two eorts are underway to do this (Voluntary Carbon
Markets Integrity Initiative, 2023; The Integrity Council
for the Voluntary Carbon Market, 2022).
RON NICHOLS/USDA-NRCS
AGRICULTURAL CARBON MARKETS: FROM CHAOS TO SYSTEMS CHANGE 25
2. Create data standards for agricultural carbon
programs and associated data. Having a stable number
of programs with clear data requirements is vital for
attracting and retaining producers and creating the
business models to decrease the transaction costs to
develop projects and pay producers. The 15 agricultural
carbon programs that have been created since 2016
with diering rules and standards, with many of those
programs being merged or discontinued soon after launch,
have created uncertainty and wariness among producers.
Each of these programs requires dierent types of data
collected for dierent time periods. While some resources
provide guidance and criteria for quantifying GHG uxes
from agriculture (e.g., the recently released Greenhouse
Gas Protocol’s Land Sector and Removals Guidance
(WRI & WBCSD, 2022b) and the SBTi Forest, Land
and Agriculture Guidance (SBTi)), they do not provide
clear or consistent guidance or criteria for what data
elements should be collected from farmers and over what
timeframe they should be collected.
While it is still too early to tell, the USDA Partnerships
program could create stability in the market and develop
more standardized MMRV approaches, including more
cost-eective soil testing standards. A supplement to the
Partnership contracts is a data dictionary that details
the type and frequency of the data that must be reported
by funded projects. The 84-page data criteria document
species what data must be collected (such as the GHG
reductions that will be generated; the method, approach,
or equipment involved in MMRV and the cost of
MMRV; and how the climate-smart commodities will be
promoted), how often it must be reported, the format and
units for the data, and the allowed values for the report.
There are more than 1,000 organizations participating
in the Partnerships program. Creating this uniform
reporting approach could become the standard format
for agriculture carbon program reporting with consistent
data elements, values, units, and format making it easier
to move data from dierent data collection systems
into GHG quantication and crediting systems. As an
additional benet, the analysis of this data by USDA could
result in the identication of opportunities to reduce
or streamline MMRV approaches thereby reducing
transaction costs. Finally, the data collected through this
program will help USDA and the researchers who have
access to the dataset identify the practices that generate
the largest volume of reductions at the lowest cost.
This will allow USDA and agricultural carbon programs
to further target the commodities, practices, and
geographies that generate the largest GHG benets in the
most cost-eective way possible and provide producers
with higher payments for implementing climate-smart
practices.
3. Design and implement insetting programs that
eliminate free riding. Insetting programs are still
nascent—there is no publicly available information of
inset projects generating GHG benets. However, ESMC
has 16 pilot projects in development that are expected
to generate credits in the future (ESMC, n.d.). As these
programs are rened and as more join the pipeline, it
is important that the role of each step in the supply
chain is considered. If programs are not designed so
that companies at each step of the supply chain are
encouraged or incentivized to participate, the program
will not scale up and will suer from a free rider problem.
For example, each node of the supply chain, the grain
mills, transporters, food manufacturers, warehouses, food
brands, and retail stores all need to be considered in the
design and implementation of inset programs. Each of
these entities benets from the reduced GHG footprint
of the climate-smart agricultural commodity and they
should be encouraged to pay for that benet. If only one
node in the supply chain participates, insetting programs
will be no dierent than oset programs—one company
paying a producer for GHG benets. If the entire supply
chain invests in generating reductions, every company
can claim the reductions and pay a smaller per-tonne
price, while producers get larger per-acre payments due
to the number of participants in the supply chain. These
concepts are currently being piloted by PepsiCo and
ESMC, and other organizations should be encouraged to
follow their lead (Henry, 2023; Tomlinson, 2023).
4. Pay early adopters to provide peer-to-peer
training. Farmer-to-farmer education provides a
way to overcome many adoption barriers by having a
fellow producer with rsthand experience share both
the benets and challenges of practice adoption. In so
doing, those fellow producers can address the perceived
risks to yield, labor costs, and product quality concerns
that can prevent farmers from trying a new practice.
Farmer-to-farmer learning is also a crucial part of a
comprehensive approach to providing culturally tailored
technical assistance for historically underrepresented and
marginalized communities (AFT, 2023). Whether they
participate in a federal conservation program or a private
agricultural carbon program, farmers who have already
adopted climate-smart practices should be encouraged
and could be paid to teach other farmers to successfully
adopt and maintain these practices.
B. ADDITIONALITY CONCERNS
Traditional additionality approaches need to be tweaked
if agricultural carbon programs are to succeed. No-
till is only practiced on about 30% of croplands and
producers have planted cover crops on about 5% of U.S.
cropland acres. Agricultural carbon programs have the
26 SIERRA VIEW SOLUTIONS AND AMERICAN FARMLAND TRUST
opportunity to increase that practice uptake. It is also
important to reward farmers who have already adopted
climate-smart practices and incentivize them to adopt
additionalpractices.
1. Improve denitions of “new” practices. Agricultural
carbon programs focus their denition of additionality
on new practices, but not all programs dene what a new
practice is. Producers who once implemented practices
but stopped them for long enough that the GHG benets
have since dwindled—i.e., the past and disadopted
practices are in fact “old”—should be allowed to
participate in carbon programs. Allowing these producers
to participate in programs if the practices have not been
in place for a signicant time, such as 10 or more years,
will yield net new GHG reductions and expand the pool
of farms that can participate in programs. This time
period is also long enough to discourage any perverse
and unintended outcome wherein farmers stop using a
practice simply to join a carbon program.
2. Adopt crediting practices that account for the
variability in agriculture. Agricultural production
consistently involves yield uctuations in response
to swings in temperature and precipitation (Malhi,
Kaur, & Kaushik, 2021). This makes generating credits
challenging as there can be years when a eld is a net
GHG emissions source, rather than a sink, even if
implementing climate-smart practices increases carbon
sequestration and/or reduces GHG emissions over the
long term. For most cropland management protocols,
a dynamic baseline that is updated annually using
weather information from the project period is the most
appropriate approach. This is the approach used by CAR’s
SEP and Verra’s Methodology for Improved Agricultural
Land Management.
Alternatively, allowing programs to reward projects
over longer periods of time will encourage longer-
term adoption of practices. For example, credits could
be calculated and issued in 5-year increments, which
would allow for the annual variability of farming to be
considered. Some protocols use a version of this approach
in the development of a project’s baseline. While most
programs consider the baseline over a multiple-year
period, such as a complete crop rotation, they issue
credits on an annual basis. A multi-year crediting
approach could be implemented for both the crediting
period as well as the baseline period. This would allow
more elds to generate credits because many practices,
such as no-till and cover crops, can best be measured over
longer periods of time (Bolinder, et al., 2020).
3. Eliminate common practice ceilings. Some
programs consider practices to no longer be additional
once adoption within a given region reaches a certain
level. It should not matter if the adoption of a practice
exceeds an arbitrary practice cap. Because we need to
reduce GHG emissions and increase carbon sequestration
as much as possible as quickly as possible, we need
to incentivize as many producers as possible to adopt
climate-smart practices. If that means 100% of producers
in a county get paid for implementing a practice, then
they are generating greater regional climate and soil
health benets than before and if these interventions are
less costly than other interventions, overall, they are still
cost-eective climatesolutions.
Furthermore, widespread adoption of climate-smart
practices could have numerous local and even state
or regional water quality benets because practices
such as no-till, cover crops, and nitrogen management
reduce nitrogen and sediment losses to waterways.
Thus, the additional benet to eliminating common
practice ceilings for climate-smart practices is that
it could achieve suciently dense practice adoption
within watersheds that the impaired streams or lakes
within those watersheds could become clean enough to
be removed from the EPA List of Impaired Waterbodies
(Perez, Water Quality Targeting Success Stories: How to
Achieve Measurably Cleaner Water Through U.S. Farm
Conservation Watershed Projects, 2017).
4. Create additional opportunities to reward early
adopters. Producers who have historically implemented
practices and maintained them, and who want to get
paid for their continued use of those practices, should
participate in programs such as the USDA’s CSP. This
program rewards producers who have adopted multiple
conservation practices and have achieved stewardship
levels of management addressing at least two resource
concerns. The program further incentivizes adoption of
additional practices or more advanced versions of the
same practices on the same acres or on new acres in the
operation to achieve at least one more resource concern
stewardship threshold (Conservation Stewardship
Program, n.d.). As discussed above, early adopters should
also be encouraged or paid to provide peer-to-peer
learning.
C. PERMANENCE REQUIREMENTS
The current permanence requirements were designed
for forest carbon markets. Forest owners are focused on
long-term decisions to maximize the timber on their land.
It makes sense, therefore, to incentivize and require them
to preserve their trees as long as possible. In contrast,
most agricultural decisions are made throughout the
year, every year—when to plant with which kind of tillage
method, when to plant which cover crop after which
cash crop, when and how to terminate a cover crop,
how much fertilizer to apply, when to irrigate, when to
harvest, how to handle post-harvest biomass, etc. There
AGRICULTURAL CARBON MARKETS: FROM CHAOS TO SYSTEMS CHANGE 27
may be rational and important reasons for producers to
discontinue conservation practices they implemented on
a one-time or one-o basis.
1. Include buers for intentional reversals in
agricultural carbon programs. Private companies
are creating intentional reversal buer pools to address
the risks of producers stopping or reversing practices.
Expanding current buer pools managed by agricultural
carbon programs to include contributions to cover both
unintentional and intentional reversals will create a
standardized approach to this risk and create greater
transparency to market participants. Maintaining private
buer pools creates standardization and transparency
issues and creates a smaller buer pool than one managed
by a program with multiple projects developed by
multiple private companies. If a large enough buer pool
is created, it would be possible to sign shorter contracts.
Fields would still need to be monitored to ensure a net
reduction in GHG emissions, but the consequences of
producers stopping practices would be minimal because
they would be insured through the buer pool.
D. DATA AND TECHNOLOGY BARRIERS
FOR AGRICULTURE
There is a signicant amount of data necessary to
participate in agricultural carbon programs. Reducing
barriers to data collection is critical to the success and
expansion of these programs.
1. Expand producers’ broadband access. Unfortunately,
less than a quarter of producers have digitized their data.
One of the primary reasons is the lack of broadband
access. Somewhere between 17 and 50% of producers lack
high speed internet access. USDA recently announced
that it is investing $401 million to provide access to high-
speed internet for 31,000 rural residents and businesses
in 11 states (USDA, July 28, 2022). This investment could
expand the ability of producers to adopt data technology
systems that will allow them to participate in agriculture
carbon programs. The progress of this program should
be monitored and adapted to rapidly expand access to
producers in rural and tribal areas.
2. Modernize USDA data collection and management
systems and create national data networks. The
inux of funding from the IRA and the data, lessons, and
best practices emerging from the USDA Partnerships
program provide exciting opportunities to improve
the collection, management, and use of agricultural
conservation practice data. On July 12, 2023, USDA
announced that IRA investments would be used to
improve MMRV of GHG emissions including the
development of a Soil Carbon Monitoring and Research
Network and a Greenhouse Gas Research Network
(USDA, 2023).
If set up properly, these Networks could serve many uses
including as a national calibration dataset for computer
modelers who could use the data to calibrate, validate, and
improve their models and other tools for estimating the
many agronomic, environmental, and economic outcomes
of climate-smart practices, including: soil carbon
sequestration, GHG emissions, nitrogen, phosphorus, and
sediment loss changes, and economics. Such a calibration
dataset could lead to improving the accuracy of modeled
outcomes of farm conservation practice adoption and
expand the geographic, production, and conservation
practice scope of analysis of various outcomes estimation
modeling tools. Modernizing national data infrastructure
through this announcement should include making it
easier for farmers to authorize third parties, including
researchers, to access the data collected about their
elds. As these Networks and additional use cases are
developed, it will be critical to build in privacy protections
at every step.
3. Adopt national agricultural data policies. Without
clear guidance, regulations, and standards on the privacy,
portability, and interoperability of agricultural data,
adoption of climate-smart practices will remain low.
Producers should be able to transition their data between
an oset and inset program over time if they want to
do so. Locking them into a single system or approach
will discourage widespread participation. Eorts are
underway to create open technology approaches through
initiatives such as OpenTEAM (OpenTEAM, n.d.), but
they have yet to scale up.
Through its Learning Network, the USDA Partnerships
program could bring together the players and create
data standards that will allow producers to seamlessly
move their data across platforms and programs. In
addition, USDA should modernize its data management
and computing capabilities to make it easier for farmers
to access and/or authorize third parties to access any
data the government has collected about their elds.
While legislation or regulations are unlikely in the U.S.,
the EU is exploring the development of data standards
for agriculture. These standards could become best
practices internationally. Even if they are not, they could
be required for participation in agricultural carbon
programs, which could signal to producers that adopting
climate-smart practices and sharing their data is
warranted, safe, and worth their time and eorts.
28 SIERRA VIEW SOLUTIONS AND AMERICAN FARMLAND TRUST
Conclusion
I
n this white paper we analyzed the current state of
agricultural carbon programs and some of the reasons
why producer participation remains low. The most
critical barriers to success are the economics of the
programs, concerns about additionality, requirements
for permanence, and data and technology barriers
for agriculture. We identied strategic changes that
would help overcome these challenges and increase
producer enrollment in carbon programs. Our analysis
will also help carbon programs, policymakers, farm
trade associations, and environmental groups better
understand some of the barriers to adoption and the
roles they can play in enacting changes which could
lead to widespread adoption of climate-smart practices.
If improvements were made, the agricultural carbon
programs have the potential to lead to systemic change
that could transform agriculture from a source of
greenhouse gas emissions to a sink. In so doing, these
changes may provide the public and producers with
the assurance that the emerging agricultural carbon
programs are a credible and cost-eective approach to
climate mitigation and adaptation.
KEVIN KEENAN
AGRICULTURAL CARBON MARKETS: FROM CHAOS TO SYSTEMS CHANGE 29
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36 SIERRA VIEW SOLUTIONS AND AMERICAN FARMLAND TRUST
APPENDIX A
USDA Conservation Programs, Reach, and Policies
on Environmental Markets and Climate Change
FEDERAL FINANCIAL SUPPORT FOR
WORKING LANDS
USDA provides multiple programs to promote and
incentivize agricultural conservation practices on
pasture, cropland and woodlands. One of the largest
federal nancial assistance programs for agriculture,
the NRCS Environmental Quality Incentives Program
(EQIP) provides technical and nancial assistance to
producers to deliver environmental benets (). EQIP
oers approximately 200 unique conservation practices
designed specically for farms, ranches, and forests.
Another large program is the NRCS Conservation
Stewardship Program (CSP) where the NRCS helps
producers design custom conservation plans that improve
grazing conditions, increase crop resiliency, or develop
wildlife habitat (USDA, Conservation Stewardship
Program, n.d.).
In addition to EQIP, USDA also oers the Regional
Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP), the
Agricultural Management Assistance program (AMA),
and the Agricultural Water Enhancement Program
(AWEP). Since 2014, USDA has spent between $1.5 and
$2.1 billion annually on these ve conservation programs
(Figure 3). The largest increases in spending have been
the EQIP and AMA programs, which increased more than
150% between 2014 and 2022 (USDA, October 1, 2022).
REACH OF THE FEDERAL
CONSERVATION PROGRAMS FOR
WORKING LANDS AND RETIRED
AGLANDS
Despite these signicant annual investments in
conservation programs, a small percent of applicable
land is has participated in NRCS working lands or retired
lands program. As shown in Figure 4, 20 states had
more than 20% of their agricultural land participating
in federal conservation programs. That means that
28 states have less than 20% of their agricultural land
FIGURE 3. ANNUAL SPENDING FOR MAJOR USDA CONSERVATION PROGRAMS 2014–2022
(USDA, OCTOBER 1, 2022)
Millions
$2,500
$2,000
$1,500
$1,000
$500
$0
2014 2015 2016
2017 2018
2019
2020 2021 2022
AMA
AWEP CSP CSP-GCI EQIP RCPP-CSP RCPP-EQIP
AGRICULTURAL CARBON MARKETS: FROM CHAOS TO SYSTEMS CHANGE 37
FIGURE 4. CONSERVATION ACREAGE AS A PERCENT OF TOTAL AGRICULTURAL LAND
(NEWTON, 2019)
engaged in the three conservation programs. The key
commodity states of Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana all had
12% or less participation in EQIP, Conservation Reserve
Program (CRP) and Conservation Stewardship Program
(CSP). California, the largest dairy and specialty crop
state, as well as the fourth largest rice growing state,
only had 10% of its acres in enrolled in federal programs
(Newton,2019).
USDA POLICIES ON ENVIRONMENTAL
MARKETS AND CLIMATE CHANGE
USDA’s focus on environmental markets dates to the
Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008, also known
as the 2008 Farm Bill. Section 2709 of the Conservation
Title requires the Secretary of Agriculture to:
Establish technical guidelines that outline science-
based methods to measure the environmental services
benets from conservation and land management
activities in order to facilitate the participation of
farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners in emerging
environmental services markets. The Secretary shall
give priority to the establishment of guidelines related
to farmer, rancher, and forest landowner participation
in carbon markets. (USDA, n.d.)
One of those technical guidelines is “Quantifying
Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Agriculture and Forestry,”
published in July 2014, which is the most authoritative
guidance on the quantication of GHG emissions
from agriculture and forestry (Eve, et al., 2014). It was
written by scientists with expertise in agricultural GHG
quantication from institutions including Colorado
State University, University of California at Davis, and
Michigan State University.
In March 2022, USDA published its Strategic Plan for
scal years 2022 to 2026. The rst strategic goal in the
plan is to “Combat Climate Change to Support America’s
Working Lands, Natural Resources and Communities.”
The objectives of the plan include “developing and
implementing a comprehensive strategy to incentivize
climate-smart decision-making by all agricultural and
forest producers, landowners, and communities” (USDA,
March 2022).
22%
26%
10%
13%
13%
8%
8%
17%
11%
17%
22%
18%
18%
14%
18%
11%
26%
20%
12%
11%
29%
29%
30%
12%
11%
8%
8%
8%
6%
6%
5%
9%
4%
7%
20%
16%
19%
7%
7%
33%
9%
7%
16%
42%
14%
8%
11%
Source: Farm Bureau calculations from USDA NRCS, USDA FSA, USDA NASS Census of Agriculture and Farm Bureau calculations
Less than or equal to 10%
11% to 20%
21% to 30%
Greater than 30%
38 SIERRA VIEW SOLUTIONS AND AMERICAN FARMLAND TRUST
APPENDIX B
Illustrative Examples of Agricultural Carbon Programs
and Tools at Universities
Universities conduct much of the research that is used
to identify, quantify, pilot, and nance the practices
that reduce the most GHG emissions. Just two of
many examples of universities leading work studying
agricultural conservation practices and designing
markets are Colorado State University (CSU) and
CornellUniversity.
COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY
CSU was established in 1870 through the Morrill Act.
CSU has been a leader in the quantication of soil
carbon and research on soil biodiversity. In 1994, CSU
developed the DAYCENT biogeochemical model (Parton,
Ojima, Cole, & Schimel, 1994). The model was expanded
to include uxes of carbon and nitrogen between the
atmosphere, vegetation, and soil between 1998 and 2001
(Del Grosso, et al., 2001; Parton, Stewart, & Cole, 1988).
Under funding from USDA, a producer-friendly version of
the DAYCENT model, called COMET-Farm was launched
in 2013 (Miller, 2013). Since its inception, COMET-Farm
has become one of the leading tools for quantifying the
GHG uxes from agriculture.
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
Cornell was founded in 1865 and is one of the few private
land-grant universities. The university has two programs
focused on agricultural carbon markets: Climate Smart
Farming and Transition Finance for Regenerative
Agriculture Systems. The Climate Smart Farming
program was established in 2015 to help producers
reduce GHG emissions and adapt to climate change in
the Northeastern U.S. The program has three pillars,
which are derived from the three pillars of climate-smart
agriculture, as dened by the UN Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO, n.d.) and the USDA’s Climate-Smart
Agriculture and Forestry Initiative (USDA, n.d.). The
pillars of the Cornell Climate Smart Program are:
• Increase agricultural productivity and farming
incomes sustainably;
• Reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural
production through adoption of best management
practices, increased energy eciency and use of
renewable energy; and
• Increase farm resiliency to extreme weather
and climate variability through adoption of best
management practices for climate change adaptation
(Cornell Institute for Climate Smart Solutions, 2016).
The Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability hosts the
University’s Regenerative Agriculture Systems program,
which has three objectives—assess innovations, co-create,
and invest in growth. Cornell faculty partner with leaders
in the nancial industry to assess and identify innovative
nancial mechanisms that support producers in adopting
regenerative practices. The Regenerative Agriculture
program also collaborates with producers to design and
implement impact-oriented regenerative agriculture
projects. Finally, the program has developed the New
York Outcomes Fund, which pays New York producers
for the ecosystem services they provide, including clean
water, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity (Cornell
University, n.d.).
AGRICULTURAL CARBON MARKETS: FROM CHAOS TO SYSTEMS CHANGE 39
APPENDIX C
Illustrative Examples of Corporate SBTi Goals
and Agricultural Carbon Programs
Food and agricultural corporations are increasingly
setting goals and targets for GHG reductions in their
supply chain. These goals are driven, in part, by
participation in SBTi. Examples of corporate food and
agriculture goals are listed in Table 1. Three notable
corporate programs are those developed by PepsiCo,
General Mills, and Unilever.
PEPSICO
PepsiCo Positive (pep+) is PepsiCo’s program designed
to have a positive impact on people and the planet. As
part of the program, a series of goals were set in 2021,
some of which relate to agriculture. By 2030, the company
aims to spread the adoption of regenerative agriculture
practices across 7 million acres worldwide. To meet that
goal, PepsiCo has partnered with Precision Conservation
Management (PCM), an Illinois-based company, to
oer the Soil Health Incentive to PCM farmers, an
inset program which began in 2022. PepsiCo funds
payments for new and existing acres where cover crops,
no-till, strip-till, and/or nitrogen reduction are being
implemented. Up to three years of historic practices are
eligible for the program. Payments range from $5 to $25
per acre, depending on the number and type of practices
implemented. There are approximately 250 thousand
acres enrolled in Illinois, as of 2023 (ISAP, 2023).
GENERAL MILLS
General Mills has a series of GHG reduction goals, set
in 2019, with benchmarks in 2025, 2030, and 2050.
To decrease their emissions from agriculture, they
have committed to advancing regenerative agriculture
on 1 million acres by 2030. They dene regenerative
agriculture by highlighting ve core principles to
implement: minimize soil disturbance (chemical and
physical), maximize crop and animal diversity, keep the
soil covered year-round, maintain a living root year-
round, and integrate livestock.
General Mills promotes regenerative agriculture through
several dierent partnerships. They are a founding
member of the Ecosystem Services Market Consortium
(ESMC), a non-prot that incentivizes farmers and
ranchers to decrease GHG emissions, improve water
quality, and increase ecosystem services. Additionally,
General Mills has partnered with the Soil Health
Academy and Understanding Ag to create programs
that help farmers implement regenerative agricultural
practices, by providing technical assistance and economic
assessments. They also have a partnership with the
National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), whereby
a regenerative agriculture focus is added to existing
regional conservation programs (General Mills, n.d.). The
General Mills Regenerative Agriculture Self-Assessment
tool is available to help farmers assess what regenerative
practices are suitable for their operations (General
Mills, n.d.).
UNILEVER
In 2010, Unilever developed the Unilever Sustainable
Agriculture Code (SAC) to outline best practices for
farmers in their supply chain. Revised in 2017, the SAC
includes an Implementation Guide. To enhance the
SAC, Unilever released a set of Regenerative Agriculture
Principles in 2021, which highlight four over-arching
guidelines: positively impact soil health, water and air
quality, carbon capture, and biodiversity; enable local
communities to improve and protect their environment
and wellbeing; produce enough quality crops to meet
existing and future needs, with the least resource inputs;
and minimize the use of non-renewable resources while
optimizing the use of renewable resources (Unilever, n.d.).
Unilever has founded and partnered with various
organizations to advance sustainable agriculture.
They are a founding member of the Round Table on
Responsible Soy (RTRS) and helped develop standards
and verication systems like the Rainforest Alliance,
trustea, and the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil
(RSPO) (Unilever, n.d.).
40 SIERRA VIEW SOLUTIONS AND AMERICAN FARMLAND TRUST
TABLE 1. EXAMPLE SBTI GOALS FROM FOOD AND BEVERAGE COMPANIES
COMPANY SBTI GOAL
AB InBev Global Brewer AB InBev, a Belgian multinational drink and brewing company, commits to reduce
absolute Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions 35% by 2025 from a 2017 base year. AB InBev commits
to increase annual sourcing of renewable electricity from 7% in 2016 to 100% by 2025. AB InBev
also commits to reduce emissions across the value chain (Scopes 1, 2 and 3) by 25% per beverage
by 2025, from a 2017 base year. These commitments reinforce AB InBev’s commitment towards
mitigating the impacts of climate change.
Ben & Jerry’s Ben & Jerry’s, an American ice cream company, commits to reduce Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions
100% by 2025 from a 2015 base-year. The company also commits to reduce value chain GHG
emissions (Scope 1, 2 and 3) 40% per pint of product sold by 2025 from a 2015 base-year.
Bunge Limited Bunge, an American agribusiness and food company, commits to reduce absolute Scope 1 and
2 GHG emissions 25% by 2030 from a 2020 base year. Bunge also commits to reduce absolute
Scope 3 GHG emissions from purchased goods and services, upstream transportation and
distribution, and fuel and energy related activities 12.3% over the same timeframe.
Chiquita
Brands
International
Chiquita, a producer and distributor of bananas and other produce, commits to reduce absolute
Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions 30% by 2030 from a 2019 base year. Chiquita also commits that
90% of its suppliers (covering purchased goods and services and upstream transportation and
distribution) will have science-based targets by 2025.
Coca-Cola Coca-Cola, a drink industry company, commits to reduce absolute Scope 1, 2 and 3 GHG emissions
25% by 2030 from a 2015 base year.
Danone Multi-national food company, Danone commits to reduce absolute Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions
47.2% by FY2030 from a FY2020 base year. Danone further commits to reduce absolute Scope
1 and 3 Forest, Land, and Agriculture (FLAG) GHG emissions 30.3% by FY2030 from a FY2020
base year. Finally, Danone commits to no deforestation across its primary deforestation-linked
commodities with a target date of FY2025.
General Mills Multinational manufacturer and marketer of branded consumer foods General Mills commits to
reduce absolute Scope 1, 2, and 3 GHG emissions 30% by FY2030 from a FY2020 base year.
Within that target, General Mills commits to reduce absolute Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions 42% by
FY2030 from a F2020 base year and reduce absolute Scope 3 GHG emissions 30% over the same
timeframe.
Nestlé Nestlé, a Swiss multinational food and drink processing conglomerate, commits to reduce absolute
Scope 1, 2 and 3 GHG emissions 20% by 2025 and 50% by 2030 from a 2018 base year. Nestlé also
commits to increase annual sourcing of renewable electricity from 40% in 2019 to 100% by 2025.
AGRICULTURAL CARBON MARKETS: FROM CHAOS TO SYSTEMS CHANGE 41
APPENDIX D
Illustrative Examples of Venture-Backed
Ag Tech Investments
Two examples of venture backed ag tech investments
are S2G Ventures and Agreena. On April 6, 2023, S2G
Ventures, a multi-stage venture fund focusing on
investments in food and agriculture industries, announced
a $300 million Special Opportunities fund to nance social
and environmental impact startups focusing on land,
infrastructure, and credit markets (Martson, Brief: S2G
Ventures launches new fund to oer ‘exible’ nancing
for cap-intensive climate-tech startups, 2023). Agreena, a
software company that has developed a platform to help
producers implement practices that store soil carbon,
recently raised $50 million in Series B funding (Martson,
Soil carbon startup Agreena lands $50m to tear down the
nancial barriers to regen ag, 2023).
APPENDIX E
Supplementary Information on
Compliance Oset Markets
CALIFORNIA’S CAP-AND-TRADE
PROGRAM
California’s Cap-and-Trade Program was established
through Assembly Bill 32, the California Global Warming
Solutions Act of 2006. AB 32 requires a reduction in
GHG emissions through a suite of programs, including
Cap-and-Trade. The Cap-and-Trade Program establishes
a declining limit on major sources of GHG emissions
throughout California. The program applies to companies
that generate more than 25,000 metric tons (tCO2e)
emissions per year, covering approximately 80 percent of
the State’s GHG emissions. The California Air Resources
Board (CARB) creates emission permits (allowances)
equal to the total amount of permissible emissions
(CARB, n.d.). CARB allows companies to meet a portion
of their compliance obligation using one of six approved
oset protocols, two of which are for agricultural projects:
livestock digesters and rice cultivation (CARB, n.d.).
INTERNATIONAL CIVIL AVIATION
ORGANIZATION (ICAO) CARBON
OFFSETTING AND REDUCTION SCHEME
FOR INTERNATIONAL AVIATION
(CORSIA)
At its 39th triennial Assembly in 2016, ICAO adopted
Assembly Resolutions A39-2 and A39-3, which set the
goal for the aviation sector to achieve 2% annual fuel
eciency improvement through 2050 and capped GHG
emissions from international aviation at 2020 levels. To
achieve these goals, ICAO developed a series of measures
to reduce emissions including aircraft technology
improvements, operational improvements, sustainable
aviation fuels, and market-based measures. The primary
market-based measure of the program is CORSIA
(ICAO, 2019).
42 SIERRA VIEW SOLUTIONS AND AMERICAN FARMLAND TRUST
APPENDIX F
Supplementary Information on
Voluntary Oset Protocols
ACR has three approved/active and eight discontinued/
inactive protocols that reward agricultural practices.
The active ACR protocols are: (1) Avoided Conversion
of Grasslands and Shrublands to Crop Production,
(2)Restoration of California Deltaic and Coastal
Wetlands, and (3) Restoration of Pocosin Wetlands
(ACR, n.d.). The inactive ACR protocols are: (1) Biochar,
(2) Changes in Fertilizer Management, (3) Compost
Addition to Grazed Grasslands, (4) Reduced Use of
Nitrogen Fertilizer on Agricultural Crops, (5) Restoration
of Degraded Wetlands in the Mississippi Delta, (6) Rice
Management Systems, (7) Grazing Land and Livestock
Management, and (8) Methane Recovery in Animal
Manure Management Systems (ACR, n.d.).
The VCS program has adopted eight protocols which
are applicable to U.S. agricultural practices: (1) Adoption
of Sustainable Grasslands through Adjustment of
Fire and Grazing, (2) Avoided Ecosystem Conversion,
(3)Biochar Utilization in Soil and Non-Soil Applications,
(4)Improved Agricultural Land Management,
(5)Reduction of Enteric Methane Emissions from
Ruminants through the Use of 100% Natural Feed
Supplement, (6) Sustainable Grassland Management
(SGM), (7) Quantifying N2O Emissions Reductions in
Agricultural Crops through Nitrogen Fertilizer Rate
Reduction, and (8) Revisions to the CDM methodology
AMS-III.Y to Include Use of Organic Bedding Material
(Verra, n.d.).
VCS has two inactive protocols applicable to agricultural
practices: (1) Adoption of Sustainable Agricultural
Land Management and (2) Soil Carbon Quantication
Methodology (Verra, n.d.).
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