Industry-wide carbon standards move beyond organic agriculture

A group known as the Agricultural Carbon Sequestration Standard Committee met for the second time in late October—hosted by Monsanto—to further develop a protocol to document carbon sequestration in agriculture for purposes of carbon crediting.

 A commodity corn leadership group convened the effort in August to create an industry-wide standard for validating agricultural carbon offsets. Participating are more than 40 members and observers from leading agricultural businesses, USDA soil scientists and representatives from the emerging “carbon industry,” including aggregators, verifiers and exchange traders and others interested in carbon measurements.

The group invites others to join the process and review its draft proposal, which it expects will become agriculture’s carbon sequestration standard.

At its first session, the group agreed it wanted to create, “A soil-based standard that addresses the net change in greenhouse gas in the soil and the soil interface, including fuel used directly for production, and the changes that occur because of agricultural production practices and nutrient management plans.” First meeting report: http://www.agprofessional.com/show_story.php?id=54024

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