Kansas farmers paid soil credits

Thanks to Coalition Member Dennis Hilder for picking this story up on the Kansas State U. website:

Kansas farmers are being paid to sequester carbon in their soils. Not a lot, but still they're being paid. Lat year 72 producers were paid credits for carbon locked up in more than 75,000 acres. They were mainly primarily no-till producers in the eastern half of the state. The carbon credit pilot project was offered by the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) and administered by the Iowa Farm Bureau. This year there are 330,000 acres under contract.


Eligibility requirements for the new phase of the program are established by the CCX. "In the eastern half of Kansas, land in continuous no-till (or strip-till or ridge-till) and new grass plantings is eligible... In western Kansas (except for a few counties in southern areas), only land in new grass plantings is eligible at this time," says the report.

The Iowa Farm Bureau aggregates the credits from individual producers into a large pool of credits and sells the credits on a commodity exchange operated by the Chicago Climate Exchange. So far, buyers have been mainly CCX members, such as Ford Motor Company, DuPont, International Paper, the University of Oklahoma, and the City of Chicago.

"When the aggregator (Iowa Farm Bureau) who has the credits under contract believes the bid price is high enough, the credits are sold. The buyers pay the aggregator, and the money is then dispersed to the producers who enrolled in the project by signing a contract. The aggregator keeps 10 percent of the proceeds for administrative costs" says the report.

In December 2005, 15 percent of the carbon credits were sold for about $2 per ton (about $1 per acre for land in no-till, and $1.50 per acre for land in new grass plantings).

"Soil carbon sequestration is basically the process of storing carbon in the soil, usually through increased levels of soil organic matter. There are several recognized management practices producers can use to sequester carbon, including no-till, grass plantings, increased cropping intensity, tree plantings, erosion control and others," said Kansas State University professor of agronomy Chuck Rice.