Paying for Carbon: Measuring Climate Solutions in Agriculture

An in-depth discussion on carbon farming and accurately measuring greenhouse gases stored in agricultural soils

25 May, 2021

Carbon farming is not just carbon and CO2!

Nitrous oxideMethane

Introduction by Peter Woodbury, Cornell University

Storing more carbon in soils is very important to improve soil health and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions

Perennial wheatgrass

Annual wheat

Legume cover cropErosion

Better nutrient management is very important to improve water and air quality and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions

Images: NASA

Eutrophication and toxic algal blooms Hypoxia: Gulf Coast Dead ZoneAverage size: 5,408 square miles

Motivating Improved Agricultural ManagementPayment for practices – Challenging to quantify benefits

• Estimate benefits based on long-term research studies.• Estimate benefit averaged over many farms.• Proven feasible for implementation.

Payment for outcomes – Challenging to verify benefits• Flexible for farmers/ranchers to combine practices.• On-farm monitoring can be too costly compared to farmer payments.• Modeling requires trained experts and sufficient on-farm data.

Why are monitoring, reporting, and verification important?

FarmerRancher

Society Buyer

Monitoring,Reporting,Verification

How can we measure greenhouse gas benefits?

$$$$$$

$$$

$$

$$

How can we measure greenhouse gas benefits?

$$$

<<$?

$

$$

Can we combine multiple approaches to improve accuracy and reduce costs?

Some Challenges

GHG accounting: permanence, verification, leakage.

Deployment: cost vs. accuracy, scaling up

Need continuing R&D to reduce costs and improve techniques

Today’s Participants

Executive Director,Ecosystem Service Market Consortium