Sep 23, 2021

AgriCapture’s 51K-acre carbon capture project listed with Climate Action Reserve

AgriCapture recently listed a greenhouse gas reduction project comprising more than 50,000 acres with Climate Action Reserve’s Soil Enrichment Protocol.

The Soil Enrichment Protocol, also known as SEP, provides guidance on how to quantify, monitor, report, and verify agricultural practices that enhance carbon storage in soils.

Founded “by landowners for landowners,” AgriCapture works to increase the profitability and value of land through sustainable land management practices, according to a news release from the company. At the same time, The Nashville, Tennessee-based company seeks to advance agriculture in becoming a natural solution to climate change.

AgriCapture teamed up with several large landowners and farmers, with holdings in Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Mississippi along the Mississippi River Valley, to launch the project, according to the news release. It collected robust data from 2018 through 2021 on 888 tracts of farmland. The initial project will quantify, monitor, report, and verify climate-friendly agricultural practices on 51,691 row-crop acres. AgriCapture will also continue to add additional acres to the project.

“The only way to do a carbon credit project in the agricultural space is to do it thoughtfully,” said AgriCapture Founder and CEO John Farris said in a news release. “This means you must spend the time with farmers and landowners examining past practices and discussing the potential of new climate-friendly practices that can increase yields, decrease input costs and generate high-valued carbon credits. It must be a win-win-win. Everything else in the agriculture carbon credit space is just noise.”

With AgriCapture’s assistance, landowners and farmers are transitioning to practices that will improve soil health and sequester carbon ­– while simultaneously pursuing the new revenue opportunities, said in the news release. Possible benefits include improved premiums for sustainably-grown crops, carbon credit generation and marketing rights.

“The alignment between landowners and farmers is the only way to ensure permanence of regenerative practices, which generate a high-quality credit,” Farris said in the release. “That, in turn, will lead to premium payments to participating farmers.”

AgriCapture client McKaskle Family Farm is the largest domestic producer of organic aromatic and long grain varieties of rice, securing relationships with notable companies such as Whole Foods, Chipotle and Sprouts Farmers Market.

“AgriCapture is making my farming operation more profitable by offering a turnkey solution to quantify and monetize my carbon offsets,” Steve McKaskle, owner of McKaskle Family Farm, said in a news release. “Their team is also working with me to obtain a better price for my climate-friendly, sustainable rice and popcorn.”

Above, Steve McKaskle, a leading organic rice farmer, is participating in AgriCapture’s new 50,000-acre greenhouse gas emission reduction project. Photo: PR Newswire