In Short : Can carbon be farmed? This is the question explored by a Nuffield scholar in the quest for solutions. The inquiry likely delves into sustainable practices and innovative approaches to capture and manage carbon in agriculture, addressing environmental concerns and promoting carbon farming strategies.
In Detail : Can you farm carbon? If so, how do we incentivise it? As farmers face increasing challenges, could “carbon farming” be the solution? These were the questions addressed in agronomist Ben Hunt’s Nuffield Farming Scholarship.
Speaking at this year’s winter conference in Exeter Devon, Ben – who works as a catchment source manager for Wessex Water – challenged the audience to find a commodity with better credentials than carbon.
“Carbon could well be the ultimate commodity. It is invisible, it doesn’t take up space in your shed, there’s no transport, no loading, no packaging or waste.”
‘Greenwash’ fears
However, emerging soil carbon markets in the UK have generated a cause for concern within the agricultural industry, particularly surrounding fears of “greenwash” as companies look to offset emissions by purchasing carbon credits from landowners.
One of Ben’s key findings that a shift to carbon insetting rather than offsetting to ensure carbon credits remain in the original supply chains could be a potential solution to overcome the greenwash challenge.
“On the one hand soil carbon markets seem like a win-win,” he continued.
“Agriculture is faced with the triple challenge of rising input costs, the growing threat of environmental regulation and changes in climate.
“As well as neutralising emissions for third-party offsetters, increasing soil carbon (carbon farming) could help farmers cope with future challenges by reducing reliance on inputs, improving weather resilience and environmental performance.”
“On the other hand, it seems fraught with challenges around greenwash, with people often calling it the Wild West.
“Companies are paying farmers to offset their emissions by gaining credit for farmers’ existing actions – a form of greenwashing that farmers risk getting embroiled in.”
Incentivising change
With little market activity in the UK, Ben travelled across Europe and North America as part of his scholarship to discover how to address these challenges and find out whether soil carbon markets held the key to unlocking wide-scale adoption of carbon farming, with its associated benefits.
One of the main issues surrounding carbon markets is the idea of “additionality”, noted Ben.
“For offsets to be genuine, they must have additionality – the sale of carbon credits must be pivotal to a new activity happening. They must incentivise a change,” he said.
“However, I mostly found early adopting regenerative farmers selling carbon credits from practices that had already been adopted.”
This raised early concerns for Ben. Were soil carbon markets merely rewarding existing behaviours without driving change? If so, what was the point of them?
“How can companies offset emissions with practices that were already happening? They had not incentivised anything new,” he said.
The revenue that carbon farmers were earning from the soil carbon market seemed to be relatively small in comparison to the cost that farmers had to incur to implement these farming practices.
This relatively small incentive would therefore mainly be attractive to those farmers already doing those practices, not to those farmers that weren’t – hence the lack of additionality.
“As a result, I identified more risks than opportunities for farmers selling soil carbon credits into the voluntary carbon offset market as farmers were getting embroiled in greenwash.
“In order for carbon markets to drive additional change, the carbon price needs to increase significantly,” he explained.