Benefit to farmers from 'carbon trapping' up in the air Carbon sequestration

Omaha World Herald, 23 August 2003 - Though still in their infancy, markets are forming in the United States and Europe that will pay farmers for cropland management practices that trap and store carbon, known as carbon sequestration.

The trouble is determining the value of the practices and whether the farmers would benefit financially by working on such management practices.

"The story has yet to be written on whether it can be profitable and economical," said Kenneth Cassman, chairman of the University of Nebraska department of agronomy and horticulture. "Where we would hope to fit in is we could be one of the suppliers of research and methodology."

The Bush administration has focused more attention on carbon sequestration with a push for voluntary reduction of greenhouse gases over the next decade.

The Environmental Quality Incentive Program under last year's farm bill pays farmers a nominal fee such as $ 10 an acre for converting to no-tillage.

Farmers interested in carbon trapping will have to look at practices such as reducing tillage and better managing the nitrogen they put on their crops for fertilizer. Along with carbon and methane, nitrogen is a greenhouse gas that has lasting effects. Tillage also churns up carbon, forcing gases back into the air.

"As soon as you start plowing, you burn it up as fast as you put it in the ground," said Dan Walters, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln agronomist.

An average acre of cropland already traps a projected 74 tons of carbon. Under the right farm husbandry, an acre could trap anywhere from 200 pounds to 1,000 pounds more carbon every year.

In one of the first price agreements, a carbon market in Europe within the past month set a price of $ 8.90 a ton in U.S. dollars for farmers contracted to generate 9,000 tons of carbon every year. A private consortium known as the Chicago Climate Exchange is working on a similar market in the United States.

But not everyone agrees that carbon sequestration is practical or economical. In a report to be released next week, the Heartland Institute - a Chicago think tank - and the American Farm Bureau state that carbon trapping won't benefit farmers. The report maintains that proposals to control greenhouse gases pose a threat to farmers because other gas-reduction policies would regulate farm activities.

Overall, the report says, carbon sequestered in agricultural land amounted to less than 1 percent in 2001. Even tripling no-tillage practices would offset only about 3 percent of greenhouse emissions - not enough to make a big dent nationally, according to the report.

Cassman disputes the report, noting that not enough research has been done on carbon trapping to draw such conclusions.

"It really depends so much on your basic assumptions," Cassman said.

Working with commercial-sized farm test plots near Mead, University of Nebraska researchers are accumulating some of the most extensive data in the country on carbon in cropland, Cassman said. Nebraska also is the only research facility testing differences in carbon trapping on irrigated crops, which affects a large portion of the state's farmers.

"The research they are doing here is tremendous," said Keith Olsen, president of the Nebraska Farm Bureau. "But trying to determine a fair market, that's going to be the tough part."

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Author Chris Clayton Publication Date 23.08.2003 Document Type News articles Issue/Topic Energy & Climate Region North America Country United States Source Omaha World Herald