USDA to Help Farmers Navigate the Murky World of Soil Carbon Offsets

by Emily Pontecorvo (Grist) When Congress passed an omnibus spending bill in December, it included a bit of bipartisan climate legislation that had been languishing on the Hill since its introduction in 2020. The Growing Climate Solutions Act, supported by climate advocates and farmers alike, was devised to get the nation’s growers to adopt climate-friendly practices by encouraging their participation in the carbon market.

The bill’s backers hope the law will make it easier for farmers and landowners to get paid for storing carbon in their fields and forests. Farmers have struggled to navigate the complex web of companies offering to help them sell carbon credits, and have been confused by the number of different standards that exist for measuring carbon. They’re also worried about being fairly compensated.

But it’s unclear how the law will address farmers’ biggest concerns. A U.S. Department of Agriculture program created by the legislation may help by disseminating information and bringing some federal scrutiny to the unregulated credit market. Yet it does nothing to address key questions about the underlying science of soil carbon sequestration, and whether carbon offsets are even an effective way to incentivize it.

Some of the methods analyzed included planting crops in the off season to pull more carbon into the soil, a practice called cover copping; reducing tillage, which can limit the carbon-releasing decay of organic matter in the soil; and converting cropland to grasses or other perennials.

Farmers are increasingly interested in these techniques, which also help retain nutrients, reduce erosion, improve water filtration, and prevent nitrogen from running off into streams and watersheds. But absent financial incentives, the risk of embracing such changes can seem too high, the rewards too uncertain.

Eventually, the agency is expected to create an online resource where farmers and landowners can learn about how to generate credits and browse a directory of companies offering technical assistance and carbon storage verification services.

That’s not exactly what Indiana farmer Brent Bible had in mind when he testified in favor of the legislation before the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry in 2020.

When Bible testified, the Growing Climate Solutions Act was pitched as a certification program in which the U.S. Department of Agriculture would vet companies providing technical assistance and verification. He told Grist he hoped the legislation would help farmers identify reputable partners and bring standardization to a market with more than a dozen protocols, each with different requirements and approaches to measuring how much carbon is sequestered. “I know that a bushel of corn weighs 56 pounds, that’s the standard,” he said. “There needs to be that same type of standardization in the carbon space. That’s how you build confidence around a market.”

But the bill Biden signed on December 29 permits any company to sign up for inclusion on the USDA’s site. And although it directs the agency to publish “widely accepted protocols” for generating carbon credits, it doesn’t otherwise regulate these guidelines or create a clear path to the kind of standardization that would give farmers, and those buying their credits, confidence.