Why does it take time to repair soil to store carbon

As a grower continues with their traditional farming practices, they are unintentionally changing soil structure and composition, reducing the ability to store carbon. This results in challenges such as soil compaction, nitrogen deficiency and erosion. In order to generate agricultural carbon credits, farms must transition from traditional farming practices to carbon farming — farm practices focused on storing carbon in soil, while also solving agronomic challenges. Carbon farming practices include reducing tillage, planting cover crops, optimizing nitrogen and diversifying crop rotation. This transition from traditional farming to carbon farming takes time, patience, and investment into learning how to prepare soil to sequester (i.e. store) carbon from the atmosphere. 

Core to our program is an investment in science and understanding what makes our soil healthier and easier to store carbon, helping farmers make real changes that can be modeled, verified and registry-approved to produce high quality carbon credits. What we've learned from our science team as well as outside research is that traditional farming practices, especially tillage, degrade the soil to such a degree that our analysis shows that it takes time to repair soil to then make it a vessel that can store carbon. Science shows that carbon credit generation can take a few years to restore soil and generate larger carbon credit payments. Carbon farming takes commitment to reap major rewards. Planning for the future leads to the biggest success. No better way to plan than to log into your account and access the Soil Health Optimizer.

Orient yourself in the estimates from the carbon calculator, because storing carbon in the soil is not linear, payments are also not the same every year. In the carbon calculator, we utilize an average over a ten year period to show how vesting works and what you can expect to earn. Payments, especially for tillage, are likely to be smaller at the onset and increase after three years as the soil structure slowly rebuilds. That means they’ll likely fall into the lower range of sequestration possibility to start. Whereas cover crops provide more immediate carbon credit earnings since they promptly increase the amount of photosynthesis and generally begin toward the mid or higher potential. If covers and tillage are stacked, it’s key to the highest earning potential and thus highest end of the sequestration range. 

Besides for baseline farming practices, there are multiple other factors that come into play when looking at a payment estimate: 

• Type of practice change
• Starting soil organic carbon (SOC) level 
• Cash crop
• Precipitation 

The Carbon by Indigo program has a 5-year vesting schedule for carbon credit payments that consists of 50% of the credit paid in the year of sale, then 20%, 10%, 10%, 10% in subsequent years. For a payment to vest, the grower must be a continued participant in good standing in the program. A grower can earn additional credits each year as a practice change continues and your soil’s ability to sequester carbon improves. In the Advanced Carbon Calculator you can see an example vesting schedule, rooted with an average sequestration payment over time. As you enter information in the Carbon program, your actual results can vary from the Advanced Carbon Calculator depending on the details of your specific situation.

Because our program is rooted in science, carbon credit buyers know our credits provide real impact in the path to carbon removal and pay premium prices for that certainty or confidence in impact. Indigo’s continuous focus on diving deep into science and sharing learnings with the market helps guide growers on the best way to make the most money from carbon farming. 

Implementing carbon farming practices now allows you to adjust soil to be able to store more carbon within the next few years, so that by the time carbon credit prices rise to estimated levels, you’re set up to earn the most possible. You want your soil to be maximizing carbon credit generation as prices reach estimated levels; waiting until prices hit higher levels before starting means you will be leaving money on the table. Indigo has most recently sold its premium registry-issued credits to buyers at $40/credit — a 100% price increase over the first two years of the program. Participating growers can expect to receive at least 75% of the average sale credit price for each carbon crop and reap the benefits as demand continues its expected climb. 

Choose a program rooted in real science that sets you up with the agronomic support that lets you take advantage of where the agricultural market is headed. Tap into the $50B voluntary carbon credit market. Start optimizing your soil today so you can maximize opportunity as carbon credit prices increase (create your account or login to start planning). 

Your team at Carbon by Indigo is here to support you during this transition, providing agronomic expertise at every step of the way. Navigate relevant resources and tools in the Learn Library, and chat with us using the chat box in the bottom right corner of your screen. A carbon farming expert is on standby to discuss your operation and provide practice change advice.

By Johanna Cohen - Product Marketer for Sustainability Products at Indigo