The New Plan to Remove a Trillion Tons of Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere: Bury It.

by Laura Reiley (Washington Post) It sounds like an idea plucked from science fiction, but the reality is that trees and plants already do it. -- ... Boston-based Indigo AG, now wants to transform farming practices so that agriculture becomes quite the opposite of what it is today — a major source of greenhouse gas emissions.

By promoting techniques that increase the potential of agricultural land to suck in carbon, the backers of Indigo AG believe they can set the foundation for a major effort to stem climate change. On Wednesday, the company announced a new initiative with the ambitious goal of removing 1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by paying farmers to modify their practices.

Called the Terraton Initiative (a “teraton” is a trillion tons), the company forecasts that the initiative will sign up 3,000 farmers globally with more than 1 million acres in 2019.

David Perry, the company’s chief executive, says he has lined up a group of buyers who will buy carbon credits — nonprofit groups as well as consumer-focused food companies that could claim their products are not merely carbon neutral, but carbon negative. Farmers will be given training and tools to institute what are known as “regenerative” practices. Indigo scientists will test soil samples for carbon content and farmers will be paid accordingly.

“It’s completely outcome-based,” Perry said. “We don’t really care how you get there. There’s no requirement to be big or small, organic or conventional.”

At the core is the idea that plants breathe, and through the process of photosynthesis turn carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into sugars that become leaves, stems and roots. When a plant dies, decay brings organic material, a component of which is large carbon-based molecules called humic acids, into the soil and binds them to the soil’s molecules. Thus the carbon is “captured” underground. The healthier and more fertile the soil, the more carbon it can store.

The Rodale Institute, a major agricultural think tank, predicts that more than 100 percent of current annual global carbon emissions could be captured with a switch to widely available and inexpensive farming practices — such as not turning the soil over through tilling or plowing; replanting with cover crops after a main crop has been harvested; and rotating through different crops to put a variety of nutrients back in the ground.

The goal is to find out which crops, practices and geographic locations have the ability to drive more carbon into the soil.

To start, Indigo will pay farmers $15 per ton of carbon, using venture capital raised by the company.

(Farmer Russell) Hedrick says that in 2018, an American farmer on average lost about $60 per acre before subsidies, and made just $20 per acre after federal subsidies. So, if a farmer can put a ton and a half of carbon in each acre of soil and get paid by Indigo, they could double their profits.

“In soil science, there are all these initiatives to rebuild carbon in soil. The problem is measurement and verification — how do we make this economically and logistically feasible?” he (Mark Bradford, an expert in soil and ecosystem science at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies) said. “What I’m impressed by is [Indigo] has data science PhDs and they’re trying to do peer-reviewable, credible science.”

Other scientists worry that a focus on carbon in soil will redirect attention away from minimizing greenhouse gas emissions. And still others think that building up carbon could produce more nitrous oxide gas, which is even more warming than carbon dioxide.

“No one has the models or the data to determine who is right yet,” Bradford said. “We have a lack of measurements. [Indigo is] doing the work on the ground to ask if this is feasible.” READ MORE

“This is an exciting, potentially game-changing initiative,” Renee Vassilos, an agricultural economist, tells AFN. “There are two areas that will be interesting to watch. The first is the willingness to pay for these carbon credits: of the food companies looking to offer a carbon neutral product and the businesses looking to be carbon neutral. This is the critical, other half of the market Indigo is creating. To date, this has been a constraint in driving change at scale. The second is around the measuring of carbon sequestration over time. The Indigo team highlights the production practices that are required for a regenerative farming system. It is, in fact, this whole system shift that is needed to deliver the significant positive impact they are targeting. That said, there is no other agriculture company as audacious as the Indigo team. I hope they can start to move this vitally important needle at scale!”

An early customer of the initiative is AB InBev, the alcoholic drinks maker, which inked a deal with Indigo earlier this year to purchase 2.2 million bushels of sustainable rice, at a premium cost. In this instance, the carbon credit is baked into the cost of the product.

Dr. Richard Teague, a professor & associate resident director of research in the department of ecosystem science and management at Texas A&M also highlighted the importance of a full systems approach to make this initiative a success:

“The key here is the adoption of all of those practices together, but current ag doesn’t promote practices that are regenerative, and if you mix up practices and only do some of them, for instance, continue to apply chemicals, it will fail,” he tells AFN.

The approach taken to convert to those practices will also be key — Teague suggested following in the footsteps of trailblazers like Gabe Brown who told AFN last year that there’s “no silver bullet” when going regenerative. It could also take several years before farmers feel the benefits.

“Some of these practices are quite easy, such as introducing cover crops or diversified crop rotations, but fully transitioning the farm to a more diversified operation: that’s going to take many years,” says Benedikt Bösel, chair of Soil Alliance and managing director of Schlossgut Alt Madlitz, an ecological farm and forestry in East Germany where he’s implementing different forms of regenerative agriculture, transitioning the farm from previously conventional farming methods.

“It’s also worth bearing in mind that farmers might experience a dip in yield and revenues in the first few years as they adjust their practices. So motivation is key: am I willing to start a new journey towards turning the farm operation more regenerative? And if yes, am I willing to bear that risk and at the same time essentially re-learn everything?”

There are also question marks around applicability for farm subsidies that are baked into farmers’ business models. READ MORE