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Farmers enroll 10 million acres in Terraton Initiative

Farmers have submitted more than 10 million acres of cropland into the Terraton Initiative by Boston-based Indigo Agriculture.

The Terraton Initiative is a global effort to remove one trillion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and use it to enrich soils.  

Indigo Carbon Vice President Edward Smith says it helps measure soil carbon and incentivize growers to adopt practices that will help combat climate change.

“What we’re developing is an effective, accurate, scalable, cost-efficient process for measuring that carbon in the soil and quantifying it and selling them as carbon offsets,” he says. “The sale of those becomes the economic incentive that pays growers for sequestering carbon in the soil. And so that becomes the catalyst for furthering the adoption of regenerative practices.”

Regenerative farming practices include cover crops, crop rotation, reduced pesticide and fertilizer use, integrated livestock management, and more.  

Smith says the initiative, which launched in June, will help improve the economic and environmental resiliency of farming.

“Growers are excited about alternative revenue streams, diversifying their revenue streams, and they’re also excited about regenerative agriculture and having someone help them understand how to adopt it,” he says.

Growers who sign up for the Terraton Initiative by the end of 2019 are eligible to receive a minimum of $15 per metric ton of carbon dioxide sequestered in their soils.  

Visit Indigoag.com and Terraton.org for more information.

Audio: Edward Smith, Indigo Carbon