Reports
Soil Carbon Sequestration and Greenhouse Gas Mitigation: A Role for American Agriculture
By: Dr. Charles W. Rice and Debbie Reed,
MSc.
Mar 23, 2007
Download
the full report here
An excerpt from
the executive summary:
Agriculture is
beginning to play an important role in reducing
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and in doing so
is generating new sources of income for
producers. However, U.S. agriculture faces its
own challenges in today’s economy. Among the
challenges facing agricultural producers are
profitability, high energy costs, soil erosion
and soil quality, water quality, and water use
efficiency. It is possible for agricultural
producers to earn money as they reduce
emissions of greenhouse gases and sequester
carbon from the atmosphere; however, the most
effective policy to allow U.S. farmers to
provide maximum GHG mitigation and earn the
greatest value is through a mandatory
nationwide cap on greenhouse gas emissions. A
mandatory nationwide cap creates a larger and
more profitable market for agricultural carbon
credits by creating demand and value for
emission reductions. The U.S. policy should be
designed to ensure that soil and crop
management systems that can mitigate greenhouse
gas emissions simultaneously enhance
agricultural sustainability and increase
profits.
Policies have recently been
enacted that are proving beneficial to
agricultural producers by increasing the demand
for ethanol and other renewable fuels.
Enactment of the Renewable Fuels Standard in
the 2005 Energy Policy Act has boosted the
demand for renewable fuels from biomass, such
as ethanol from corn and other agricultural
crops. In much the same way that these policies
or incentives can help drive production of
renewable fuels, and thus the demand for
agricultural crops, a national policy or
regulation that establishes a mandatory limit
on greenhouse gas emissions can further drive
demand for agricultural products. A nationwide
cap on U.S. GHG emissions will provide
certainty and predictability to businesses,
including agriculture, of the value of carbon
well into the future. This market certainty
will encourage investments by producers in
biofuel feedstocks, methane digesters, and
no-till equipment, since such practices will be
rewarded by the new carbon credit market.
Markets for soil carbon credits are in
the very early stages of development in the
U.S., hampered mostly by the lack of a market
signal or a mandatory nationwide cap on GHG
emissions. In the absence of such a signal,
various instruments for reducing GHG emissions
have emerged, including voluntary markets,
regional and state mandatory reduction
programs, and voluntary, private agreements
between buyers and sellers of carbon reduction
credits. The uncertainty regarding future
federal legislative approaches to deal with the
problem of climate change has created multiple
and diverse approaches. The patchwork of
approaches has many businesses worried about
the need to comply with varied regulations in
different states or regions, and about whether
emissions reduction activities undertaken now
will be recognized or rewarded in future
federal policies. A nationwide mandatory cap
should build on the successes of these efforts,
and help establish a single, consistent
approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Specific policies to reward agriculture
for emissions reductions must be included in
any federal legislation or regulations to
address global climate change. The European
Union, in setting up its rules for crediting
emissions reductions activities under its
mandatory climate change program, excluded
agricultural and forestry emissions reductions
from receiving credit. The U.S. should not
repeat this mistake, and should instead award
top value for agriculture’s highly-beneficial
“charismatic carbon credits.”