News Rabobank
First US carbon farmers start working for Carbon Bank
Rabo Carbon Bank is launching a pilot in the United States with carbon farming. It is the bank's first major carbon project in North America. In the pilot phase, Rabo AgriFinance customers can participate and sell the carbon stored in the soil.
The Rabo Carbon Bank was established in March of this year. Director Barbara Baarsma told in the studio van Boerenbusiness about the plans. In the pilot that has now been announced, Rabo AgriFinance is collaborating with Continuum Ag, a company that specializes in soil health-oriented agronomic advice and baseline measurements for carbon sequestration. Together with the participating farmer, a tailor-made set of measures is put together that ultimately results in a healthier soil and the capture of carbon. Measures that Continuum Ag recommends are, for example: less or no tillage, sowing green manure and using a robust crop rotation. Participants receive compensation based on the amount of carbon that is stored in the soil.
Search for improvement
The first phase of the pilot is aimed at learning which measures work for which crops and soil type under different conditions. The participants in the pilot are spread in 3 states in the US and grow a large number of different crops. “Feeding the world in a more sustainable way is about constantly looking for improvement,” Cristian Barcan, director of sustainability at Rabo AgriFinance, said in a statement. "We help our customers monetize a property that is naturally present on a farm, which is the ability of plants to extract carbon from the air."
The Rabo Carbon Bank is not the only initiative in the field of carbon farmers. The major bottleneck with many of these plans is that it earning model for the farmer missing or insufficient. Out research from Purdue University earlier this year found that to be a reason for many farmers not to actively engage with carbon farmers.
Jurphaas Lugtenburg
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