Response rates
Out of thirteen solicitations for interviews for farmers from both Nori and Indigo, we received nine positive responses, a response rate of 69%. These farmers were all farming in the United States: six in the Midwest and three in the Southeast. Of the farmers we interviewed, four were growing only field crops (including corn, soybeans, cotton and winter wheat), and four were growing field crops and raising livestock in mixed operations. Six of the individuals we interviewed had successfully received payments from carbon credits from Nori or Indigo, while three were farmers working with Indigo and Nori, but had not directly received payments yet. Two farmers identified as female and seven as male. The potential population of eligible farmers to interview was limited by the low number of total farmers actively participating in these programs at the time the interviews were conducted. While exact figures have not been published, 23 farmers were listed on the two company’s websites and in other available documentation, however we were not able to find contact information for them. Thus, our thirteen solicitations represented 57% of the population of farmers whom we could identify. For the organic farmer pool, out of twenty requests for interviews sent, we received nine positive responses, a response rate of 45%. Of the farmers we interviewed, three were growing only vegetables and six were growing vegetables and raising livestock in mixed operations. These farmers were all farming in New York State: three in Western New York, one in Central New York, three in the North Country, and two in the Hudson Valley. None of them were participating in active carbon markets. Four farmers identified as female and five identified as male.
Motivations for practice adoption
Across both groups of farmers – those participating in carbon markets and those not – the primary motivations to adopt beneficial farming practices were the same: (1) overall economic profitability and (2) intergenerational resilience due to maintaining healthy soils. As a whole, all farmers were motivated to adopt practices that sequestered carbon because of interests in long-term sustainability, crop health, and farm profitability.
Farmers who were actively participating in carbon markets for soil carbon sequestration or who had attempted to utilize such carbon markets adopted practices for a number of reasons, but the ability to participate in a carbon market was not the primary reason. As one farmer said of the practice changes encouraged by carbon markets, which he had implemented years before being approached by carbon markets:
We made all those changes to cover crops, no till, and all the things that they want you to do. We did that just for our own profitability and survival, you know? It’s a better way to farm.
Roughly a third of large-scale commodity crop farmers interviewed expressed that more conventional practices had brought them into situations of economic hardship that made alternative practices that enhance soil health more appealing, because soil health practices made farmers more resilient. While participating farmers were aware that these practices made them eligible to receive carbon credit payments, participating farmers’ decision to adopt these practices were universally driven by on-farm concerns. Most (seven of nine) were multi-generation farmers who expressed explicit concerns with maintaining long-term profitability for many years into the future. As one participating farmer said:
Our goal is that we’re constantly looking at the future of our operation, and how we can make sure that we’re maintaining the soils and the land that we have, so that they’re in very high fertility rates, as well as we’re building the organic matter on the farm. So as we start to continue to see, and we have in our area, our weather patterns change, that we can combat by, with hopefully, you know, really, really fertile, healthy soil.
Organic farmers also discussed soil and crop health, economic productivity, and adapting to extreme weather events for future generations. While some of these practices were required for organic certification, most organic farmers had gone beyond the bare minimum requirements for cover cropping and crop rotation because of some other motivator. In general, they were concerned with maintaining the health of microbiotic communities and the whole farm ecosystem, and the corresponding impact on plant health and productivity. One farmer noted the benefits of these practices:
Obviously sequestration is great for [climate mitigation],[but it’s] even better for the soil.
A few farmers were also concerned about improving their resiliency in the face of increasingly severe flooding and drought, and thus were interested in building their soil’s erosion resistance and water-holding capacity. The majority of organic farmers believed that these practices were chosen out of enlightened self-interest, meaning that they were better for plant health and overall system sustainability, as well as farm income (self interest). Farmers participating in carbon markets shared this perspective. As one carbon markets farmer described:
Well, you’re looking at the wrong way, you should put your cover crop out, because it was the right thing for you to do for your operation…Stack the carbon program on top of that.
Non-participating and participating farmers shared very similar views on carbon market payments for beneficial activities. Collectively they viewed the payments as helpful, especially for those who were already doing the on-farm activities. In terms of their perspectives on receiving payments for ‘what they were going to do anyway’, farmers participating in carbon markets expressed positive sentiment about being paid for their practices. The view was summed up by one farmer:
Why not take the money while it’s there?
Another reiterated that carbon payments were a clear benefit to their operation:
If I’ve gotten an installment today, that’s something I can make a difference to my family and my business today.
Non-participating farmers also acknowledged the benefits of providing farmers with another source of income. For these farmers who were not participating in the carbon market but who were already farming in a way that sequestered carbon, having the potential to receive payments seemed like a clear benefit generally. They also seemed optimistic about the long-term success of a program that compensated farmers, over one that relied simply on education or shifting ideologies.
Additionally, a few organic farmers reported that a financial incentive might be a good way to convince conventional farmers, who they saw as less ideologically driven than they are, to adopt beneficial practices. Farmers from both groups agreed that farmers tend to be underpaid and overworked, and were appreciative of any incentive that gave them additional income, especially one that supported soil management practices that provide other co-benefits to their operations. One organic farmer spoke positively of carbon markets:
[A]nything that has any sort of monetary value attached to it, I think is gonna be what works in the long run.
All farmers who were participating saw carbon market programs as an avenue to get compensated for practices they were already looking to adopt, and which they saw as benefits to their farm operations. One farmer reflected:
The carbon credit thing is just sort of gravy on top of what we already do, and what we think is the right thing to do.
One farmer reflected on the carbon credit payment:
I think it’s sort of an added bonus.
And another farmer encapsulated this same view:
Like, we don’t (want to) farm differently to sequester carbon. We are farming differently because it’s the better thing to do. So whatever system whatever carbon credit market or system lets us, y’know, pays us to do what we were already going to do anyway.
Of course, when farmers are paid for doing what they are already doing, low compensation may still be viewed generally positively. One farmer said:
I didn’t change anything to do it, you know what I mean? … You’re doing this, you’re doing a really good job. Here’s almost a half a million dollars. Is that okay? I go, Yeah, that’s fine.
Four participating farmers were also open about the fact that they were choosing carbon markets based on which quantification systems would compensate them for practices they were already using.
Concerns about soil carbon markets
Farmers from both subject pools expressed numerous concerns about and frustration with existing carbon markets. These concerns included (a) compensation being too low, (b) substantial burdens of paperwork, (c) a lack of predictability and the ‘black box’ of credit calculations, (d) frustration that the markets were skewed to benefit larger-scale agriculture, and (e) concerns about both greenwashing and additionality. We present evidence for each of these concerns below.
The most consistent complaint that participating farmers raised about carbon markets was that the payment was simply too low. While the universal view was that money for ‘doing nothing new’ was great to receive, farmers viewed the payments as too low to incentivize new activities that a farmer was otherwise not inclined to adopt. There was complete agreement from every participating farmer we interviewed that the carbon credit payments available currently are too low to drive substantial practice changes on their own farms that they were not planning to adopt for other reasons, and are too low to drive practice changes for non-participating farmers. They expect that carbon credit programs will not be appealing enough to farmers who are not already interested in practice changes until the value of credits increases substantially. One farmer said of the roughly $15 per acre payment that most farmers receive:
No, that’s not going to change anybody, nobody’s gonna quit doing the way they’ve always done it, try over something new for that.
Non-participating farmers felt that carbon markets were built for large, conventional farmers who were not using many beneficial practices already, and they felt that carbon markets would result in little profit for them. One interviewee said:
From what I have seen in carbon markets that have been established, um, cap and trade has not paid enough to fund those so that a smaller scale would get enough to even pay for the time they have to spend applying.
Despite the ease of getting paid for doing ‘nothing new’, both groups of farmers saw the paperwork associated with tracking on-farm activities as a frustrating component of carbon markets. Participating farmers expressed concern that carbon market payments were made more difficult to access because of the hardship of gathering all of the required records and inputting their data into the carbon market system. They complained of the complexity of digitizing older paper-based records, getting records to mesh over the years as fields changed, and converting their data into a precisely specified format. One farmer said of this process:
The data, the data part was, is ridiculous. I mean, everything that you do on every acre for the last 10 years, is what you have to do…you get back to 2010 – one, I wasn’t even here, and records were mostly like little scribbly notes on notebook paper. So…maybe you weren’t even farming the same fields then or you called them something different, or it used to be six fields, and now you made it one.
Farmers who were participating in carbon credit markets generally felt that their own records were better than most, and that this was part of what allowed them to succeed, but they were concerned that the older or smaller-scale farmers would not be prepared for the level of detail that was required to participate in these programs. They expressed worry that this would limit the adoption of carbon credit programs. One farmer suggested that other farmers may be unprepared for the paperwork burden:
It is a ton of paperwork and a ton of like, proving what you had to do. Yeah, it’s pretty extensive…I think the farmers that are looking into these programs are prepared. I think the farmers that maybe are a few steps behind the curve are not prepared.
The main things that participating farmers said helped them overcome the record-keeping and data entry hurdle was having spare time to keep records or having someone on staff whose job was predominantly to keep records, using a digital record-keeping system that was compatible with their carbon market’s software and having someone at their carbon market helping them through the data entry process to clarify what was required. The farmers who had the easiest time submitting records to carbon markets were those who were using digital record-keeping systems administered by Indigo or by Truterra, which has partnered with Nori.
Farmers participating in carbon markets also expressed frustration that the eventual payouts from these markets were difficult to predict. The uncertainty of the payment made the work of changing practices and inputting data seem far less worth it. One farmer suggested that other farmers would be unwilling to take the step to participate in the market (and the associated paperwork burden) just for an uncertain payment:
So nobody’s gonna do that – they’re not going to do all that work on the chance they might not get paid.
Farmers felt that it was risky to put effort into substantially changing practices solely to participate in a carbon credit program because of the chance that they would not receive any money. The cost of changing practices, they felt, should be compensated no matter what, or else farmers would be hesitant to take a ‘leap of faith’ on a carbon market.
I mean, it’s gotta be something that’s a for sure thing if they make the changes. That’s the other thing that’s always frustrated me. You might make all the changes and then not get paid? That’s crazy.
Farmers’ perception that carbon markets were unreliable was heightened by the fact that payouts were calculated differently from program to program, generally totally out of the view of the farmer. This uncertainty put farmers in the situation of inputting data into a ‘black box’ and hoping that it would result in a payout, a risk that they recognize others might not be willing to take, hindering wider adoption of carbon market programs.
One farmer summarized other farmers’ worry about how opaque carbon markets are:
It makes people a little nervous, because it’s not a tangible thing. And then, like the model that they’re using is very complicated. It’s kind of a black box. So you don’t know what’s actually happening. So there’s some distrust going on.
In order to avoid the distrust and confusion bred by the unpredictability of payouts, the majority of farmers participating in carbon markets voiced support for a more standardized system, with clearer and more consistent rules. One farmer said simply:
I would like to see one standardized set of rules. So it wasn’t such a wild wild west.
Beyond the barriers of predictability and paperwork, all farmers expressed some concerns that existing voluntary carbon markets contain biases and are poorly structured to try to incentivize non-optimal activities or for the benefit of other actors. They viewed market operators skeptically and thus these concerns about bias can represent a form of barrier to participation. Some of these concerns focused on concerns that markets would incentivize activities that required heavy chemical inputs, which a farmer would have to purchase from a chemical company. Chemical companies tend to emphasize the role of no-till in sequestering carbon above other practices like cover cropping and nutrient management, because no-till often requires heavy pesticide and herbicide inputs to replace the disruption of weed root systems and pest life cycles that normally occurs through tillage22. Participating farmers expressed concern that these companies could be involved in setting national government standards for carbon markets, which would then skew all carbon markets toward a specific style of farming and ignore other beneficial practices for carbon sequestration.
One farmer spoke negatively about other programs that were closely associated with chemical companies:
If a large chemical dealer wants to sell you a chemical that if you use, they promise you’ll sequester more carbon, and then they’re going to pay you for that carbon, but you can only get that payment if you buy their chemical…like it’s pretty obvious what’s happening there. And you know, it’s just another way for farmers to be taken advantage of by input dealer you’re basically sequestering carbon with the intent that this company is going to buy your credit to offset the cost of producing the chemical that they sold you to sequester the carbon that’s dumb. I’m not interested in that at all.
Organic farmers were especially concerned about carbon markets privileging a specific style of large-scale monocrop farming. They worry that many currently active carbon markets are rooted in models based on pilot phase testing on large-scale commodity crop farms. An industrial-scale model would put small-scale, diversified organic farms at the disadvantage of entering an incentive structure that was not built to adequately capture or account for the way their farms operate and the practices that they’re using. Organic farmers were even more concerned than participating farmers that carbon markets would narrowly support only a subset of valuable farming practices, but both groups of farmers frequently raised concerns that carbon markets would inadequately support a full range of beneficial soil management practices. Farmers from both groups expressed that it was a priority that carbon markets be protected from unfair industry bias.
I can see already that…there’s already the major ag players that are kind of trying to write the rules for the programs and design the standards…around…no till and that approach to farming is where it will get tilted towards…because their incentive is to sell…seed and chemicals and fertilizers.
Non-participating farmers also felt it was unfair that carbon markets were built on an industrial monocrop model that would not be easily applied to their small, diversified farms. One participant said of carbon markets:
[S]o maybe eventually they do approach, you know, a 30 acre diversified vegetable operation, but if their data and their models are based on a corn and soy operation in Iowa, is that going to make sense?
Farmers were left with the perception that some carbon markets were set up just for the purpose of enriching the companies that run them. This led to a distrust of carbon markets in general, and participating farmers worry that this distrust will hinder wider adoption of these programs by other farmers. Farmers were also concerned about the involvement of large chemical companies when they look forward toward more potential government regulation of carbon markets. One farmer expressed this anxiety:
A few farmers in both groups raised concerns that companies using carbon credits from the voluntary market would use them for marketing and mislead consumers about their practices. They worried that carbon credits would be used in greenwashing campaigns by industries seeking to paint themselves as more environmentally sustainable than they are, producing more revenue for these companies without producing substantive change to address greenhouse gas emissions. One farmer participating in carbon markets offered this detailed critique of the problem of greenwashing that carbon credits facilitate:
[T]he general public, I mean, they, they see these companies buying carbon credits, and they think it’s great…but I think they also don’t fully understand the whole scope of everything. Because…well take like a Delta Airlines…you buy a flight with Delta, they say we can fly, you know, carbon neutral for an additional $40, you know, and, I mean, I’ve seen it, there’s people getting out their phones, and they’re paying those 40 bucks. And they’re like, Wow, this is great, you know, I flew carbon neutral. Okay, but you really didn’t. Because, you know, Delta Airlines still burned the same amount of fuel, they still put the same amount of emissions out into the air…these big companies…they’re using it to their advantage for marketing.
Organic farmers were concerned more broadly with the way that companies, particularly food producers, greenwash themselves as ‘sustainable,’ ‘climate friendly,’ or ‘carbon neutral’ and avoid accountability for their harmful practices. One interviewee worried that companies would simply use carbon credits and other market-based climate change approaches as a cover to dodge deeper changes to their practices.
We’re not going to shop our way out of industrial agriculture being bad for the climate, because these companies are uniquely gifted at greenwashing themselves.
Both groups of farmers raised concerns about the extent to which market-based solutions can truly and transparently drive climate change mitigation efforts. At the same time that they want recognition of their own climate beneficial practices, farmers worry that the flip-side of that recognition in carbon markets is the obscuring of continuing harmful practices in the industries that purchase their carbon credits. Looking at the fuller picture of carbon markets, farmers seemed concerned that their own positive practice changes might be misappropriated, making those practices a less effective climate solution.
Overall, concerns about additionality are central to an evaluation of any functioning voluntary offset program. Yet, for the participants in the program, concerns about additionality requirements centered not on concerns that sequestered carbon was non-additional and that such credits would be used to allow sources of emissions to continue. Rather, for both groups of farmers, concerns about additionality centered on the perverse incentive these requirements created to reward those who more recently adopted beneficial practices or, in some cases, to incentivize farmers to switch back to conventional tillage practices in order to enhance their eligibility for payments in the future.
Farmers participating in carbon markets generally had negative views about existing additionality requirements. They saw them as an unfair burden which prevented farmers using beneficial practices from consistently being compensated and which penalized early adopters of these practices. They generally felt that they should be paid for their beneficial practices, regardless of when they started or whether the practice was additional. One farmer said of their beneficial practices:
I’m still doing it. So if you’re gonna pay people for doing that, what difference does it make when they started?
A few participating farmers were only able to enroll a portion of their acres in carbon market programs, because fields they had been farming for a long time did not meet additionality requirements. Others were entirely excluded from carbon markets whose additionality protocols would allow them to look back only a few years. Participating farmers voiced concerns that prioritizing recent practice conversion created a perverse incentive against maintaining beneficial practices over the long term, which would be most beneficial from a climate perspective. One participating farmer said of the additionality requirement:
It kind of is a disincentive. To me, I could see people hopping out of some of these good practices for a year or two just so they can get re-enrolled in them in the future.
While such an action would not be permitted under these protocols, it is clear that some farmers have a clear perception about the possibility for such perverse incentives. Another farmer recalled a conversation with a carbon market representative in which they realized farmers could see the most money by pausing their beneficial practices and then starting over again:
But one of our initial conversations we were kind of joking with him was like, okay, so you’re telling me, we’d be better off to go back to tilling for two years? And then go back to how we were doing things? He’s like well be better if you didn’t. Well I know, but like this is the way this works? Like, that’s kind of how it’s set up.
Farmers participating in carbon markets felt that additionality requirements “punish the early adopters” and prevent them from seeing as much money as farmers who adopt practices later. Being paid less than farmers who had implemented the same practices that they were using later, most farmers felt that additionality requirements set up an unfair penalty for farmers who had been innovative and forward-thinking enough to adopt beneficial practices years before.
Organic farmers were similarly concerned about additionality, especially because they were almost always early adopters who would be ineligible for payments because they had been using beneficial practices for so long. Some expressed the perspective that a carbon market would function more as an incentive to conversion to beneficial practices for conventional farmers, rather than providing a continuation incentive for farmers already using beneficial carbon sequestration practices. Organic farmers felt that farmers should be supported for using beneficial practices regardless of when they began, in order to incentivize long-term use of good soil health practices and climate change mitigation.