There’s a change happening in agriculture.
Farmers are considering and adopting farming practices like cover crops, reduced tillage, and diverse crop rotations that are not only better for their soil, but also effective mechanisms for drawing down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Higher soil carbon content means better nutrient and water retention for crops, less plant and seedling disease, and improved overall soil structure. Farmers who switch to carbon farming practices often benefit from greater yield stability and long-term productivity.
And now, large companies looking to take action on their environmental and carbon reduction goals are paying farmers for this drawdown in the form of carbon credits.
If you are a landowner, how can you – and the farmers you work with – start benefiting from these carbon farming practices and the emerging credit markets around them?
The short answer: Encourage your farmers to enroll in a carbon program.
Through the right carbon farming program, you can:
- Manage your land investment in keeping with your stewardship values
- Improve land productivity and value over the long-term
Carbon by Indigo is the right program for a variety of operations and management styles. Through the Carbon by Indigo program, farmers generate the highest quality, most scientifically rigorous carbon credits for purchase by organizations like The North Face, JP Morgan Chase, and Shopify. Growers who enroll fields, both owned and rented, in Indigo’s program receive a host of digital and in-person advice and tools to maximize their success with carbon farming.
The quality of our program starts with the agronomic support we provide. Whether it’s a soil health-focused agronomist scouting your fields; Carbon College, our educational video series breaking down carbon farming case studies; or webinars, like the Carbon Farming Connection, featuring in-depth discussions of different carbon farming topics, our carbon program offers a variety of services for farmers to make a lasting and successful change to new land management practices.
All savvy farmers assess the potential costs and benefits of a change to their farming practices before making that change. That's why Indigo provides digital tools to help farmers understand their carbon farming potential when setting up a Carbon by Indigo account. This includes a tillage cost estimator, which shows the potential for equipment cost savings from reduced tillage practices, and cover crop blend recommendations for bringing the greatest nitrogen to your cash crops while reducing input costs. Carbon by Indigo is committed to iterating on these digital tools (and releasing new ones) to service farmers who want to learn how to optimize carbon farming practices on their own time.
Finally, when it comes time to sell the credits generated from this more beneficial land stewardship, Indigo connects farmers with its network of partners. Companies looking to take action on their environmental and carbon reduction goals are turning to Carbon by Indigo to buy carbon credits mainly for the credits’ quality.
Simply put, not all carbon credits are created equal: various voluntary carbon markets have risen to meet the opportunity that agriculture, and nature-based climate solutions, provide, which means that farmers have an overwhelming number of programs to consider when getting started. The varying levels of quality and scientific rigor for credits traded in those different programs also means that the decision to start with one program over another is significant; there’s a risk in choosing a program that’s not as enduring or as valuable as it could be for the same level of work in a different program.
Carbon credit buyers are interested in credits with registry certification and third-party validation to prove permanent, additional, and real drawdown and abatement of carbon. That is the only kind of credit that Indigo helps farmers generate. To date, 16 companies – in industries such as finance and e-commerce, retail and food and beverage – have committed to buying carbon credits from growers enrolled in Carbon by Indigo.
*Individual agronomic and financial outcomes will vary by operation. Independently consider all of the potential risks and benefits before adopting any agronomic practices. Terms, conditions and limitations apply.