Farmers sell carbon credits

Farmers who use no-till practices or plant grasses on fallow land tie up carbon in the soil, preventing it from creating greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Now farmers are earning money for tying up carbon  under a system of carbon emission credits for sale on the Chicago Climate Exchange.
    The Iowa Farm Bureau has been working with large-scale crop farmers to sell their carbon credits. So far, the group has sold 500,000 tons of carbon credits, equal to a month’s output from a 1,000-megawatt coal plant.
    The Los Angeles Times reports that since the Chicago Climate Exchange opened in 2003, almost 200 companies — including the Ford Motor Co., Du Pont, IBM Corp., Amtrak and American Electric Power Co. — have volunteered to buy and sell the right to emit tons of carbon dioxide and five other key greenhouse gases. The Iowa Farm Bureau is just one of 23 carbon “aggregators” that sell carbon credits on the Exchange.
    The LA Times said: “The theory of the market is straightforward. For the right price, a farmer  will agree to cultivate his fields without plowing, so the soil retains carbon dioxide that would otherwise seep into the air. That “carbon credit” can then be purchased by exchange members and applied against their own emissions. Should the price of carbon credits climb high enough, the theory goes, company executives one day will find it cheaper to reduce their own industrial emissions.
    “It’s a new form of environmental bookkeeping that theoretically reduces emissions of carbon dioxide and the other trace gases responsible for gradually rising global temperatures.”
    The price on the exchange has ranged form $4 to $8 per ton of carbon sequestered. No-till farming is worth half a ton of carbon per acre; planting grasses is worth three-fourths of a ton.
    Some environmental groups have urged a boycott of the Chicago Climate Exchange, in part because of the failure of carbon trading in Europe to reduce greenhouse gases.