The clock is ticking – you have until the end of the year to claim a payment for carbon sequestered in your soil through zero tillage since 2002.
You may qualify for carbon-offset payments of around $10 an acre if you’re in the black or grey wooded soil zones, or irrigate, and can also prove you’ve been direct seeding for 10 years or more. The payment is half that amount for dryland in the brown or dark brown soil zones. High-disturbance direct seeding does not qualify.
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To claim a payment, you need to show the seeded acreage and that you have farmed with a maximum of two passes a year with 34 per cent or less soil disturbance or one pass a year with a maximum of 46-per-cent disturbance.
That may sound like an onerous process, but it’s not. Proof of ownership of a qualifying seeder or some other documentation has generally been considered adequate evidence of your practices.
Carbon credits will still be available for adopting practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions from farming, including increasing organic matter through zero tillage. But historic credits won’t qualify and the standards of assurance will be somewhat higher to be in line with newer protocols. The provincial auditor-general wasn’t satisfied with the level of assurance in the original zero-tillage protocol, said Tom Goddard, policy advisor for Alberta Agriculture’s Environmental Stewardship Division.
The province’s zero-till protocol was the first one developed, in 2006. Historic credits were included “to honour and recognize the efforts of early adopters of zero till, who put blood, sweat and tears as well as dollars into developing the technology,” said Tanya Maynes of Climate Change Central. Now it’s being brought up to the same standards as the newer protocols for cattle feeding, hog farming, dairy operations and reduction of nitrous oxide releases from fertilizer. The new protocols require some records of current practices, a plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions and records of the new practices.
Payments for carbon offsets aren’t huge, but Goddard expects they will rise over time. “Australia is in the process of bringing in carbon-offset legislation, and California is looking to buy offsets,” he said. “And if neighbouring provinces bring in a program like Alberta’s, maybe with a higher maximum, prices for offsets will probably improve. I very much doubt historic credits will be recognized again.”
Goddard joked that typical carbon-offset payments are “not enough for a new truck, but enough to take the family out in the truck,” but also said there are other benefits.
“If you keep the records to qualify for offsets, you’ll see profit gains several times bigger than the value of the offsets,” he said. “All the protocols involve incrementally better management that makes economic sense as well as cutting our greenhouse gas emissions.”
Under Alberta’s carbon offset program, the biggest greenhouse gas emitters – coal-fired power plants, cement works, oil and gas facilities and others must reduce their emissions, contribute to a research and development fund or buy carbon offsets from Alberta sources for up to $15 a tonne. Farmers can get only a small portion of those funds because aggregators and verifiers take their share first.
Everybody involved in the process is becoming more efficient over the five years of developing North America’s first regulated carbon offset market, said Goddard.
“It’s been a learning-by-doing process,” he said. “The aggregators and verifiers have streamlined their processes and improved their data management.”
The government has also ensured that offset credits are very high quality. The estimates of carbon storage are quite conservative, 0.8 tonnes per acre of CO2 stored as organic matter each year in higher moisture areas, and 0.4 tonnes in drier regions. The process of ensuring offsets are real and verified through a paper trail that includes a unique number for every tonne of carbon equivalent stored ensures Alberta carbon offsets will be highly valued as offset markets develop.
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“Ifneighbouringprovinces bringinaprogramlike Alberta’s…Iverymuch doubthistoriccreditswill berecognizedagain.”
Tom Goddard
