CAR1459 - Indigo Ag U.S. Project No 1

Project Overview

This project is bringing together thousands of farmers all over the U.S. and over 6 million acres of improved sustainable agricultural land management practices. Indigo Ag helps farmers to implement climate-smart practices through an integrated system of extension and outreach, modeling, agronomy support, and digital data collection tools. This project is the first of its kind and is incentivizing farmers to change their methods to sustainable agricultural management practices. Regenerative agriculture practices will increase soil organic carbon (SOC) storage and reduce net emissions of CO2, CH4, and N2O while improving soil health and crop yields.

The regenerative agricultural practices will make cropland more resilient over time to natural disturbances, helping to limit the economic risks to rural communities. Farmers can create a new revenue stream while increasing soil productivity by producing high-quality, registry-issued carbon credits. As carbon revenues and crop yield increase over time, the land will provide higher income for families in rural communities.

Outside of economic benefits, regenerative agriculture and reduced synthetic inputs (such as fertilizer) in farming operations can directly benefit local health outcomes through cleaner air and water and more nutritional food. Reduced synthetic inputs to cropland reduces contamination of groundwater and surface water which benefits the human population as well as the aquatic ecosystems.

Benefits

• Potential for scalability will have global impact
• Reduced soil erosion
• Increase in crop yields over time
• Improved farm resilience to extreme weather
• Improved water quality
• Enhancement of wildlife habitat
  

Additionality: Farmers are required to adopt a new change in management practices that must also pass the additionality tests in the Soil Enrichment Protocol. Even as awareness of regenerative practices increases, farmers are risk-averse. They perceive significant risks of adopting new practice changes, with very uncertain rewards, given the perception that the business as usual management "just works."  If you only get 40 growing seasons in your life, it's a tough call to mess with your farm's formula for multiple years in order to realize the benefits of more sustainable practices. Without the additional funding from carbon credits, farmers will not switch to regenerative agriculture practices that can improve yields and reduce carbon emissions, because of the upfront cost and risk.

Permanence: Permanence is ensured by use of a 14.5% buffer pool in case of natural disasters, as well as ongoing monitoring by Indigo, who manages permanence across the entire project, rather than the individual field level. Fields are monitored remotely after they are done with the project.

Quantification: Indigo deploys a hybrid, measurement and model-based approach, collecting soil samples that are used to initialize the rigorously-validated DayCent-CR model. Model outputs are combined with additional equations from the SEP to quantify soil carbon and GHG impacts for each cultivation cycle. Quantification of uncertainty accounts for sample error, measurement error, and model prediction error. Leakage is monitored in relation to yield declines and displacement of livestock, with conservative deductions if it occurs.

Verification: CAR requires ex-post verification by an independent, ISO-accredited verification body. To date, Indigo has contracted with Aster Global Environmental Solutions due to their deep carbon verification experience and in-house expertise with soil science and agricultural management. Verification reports are available in the CAR registry.

Challenges: Most risks are mitigated by the project design – farming on privately owned land decreases leakage and illegal activities. One risk, of farmers dropping out is mitigated by the expansiveness and continued recruitment efforts of the program, as well as the compounding of agronomic benefits over time.

Download project documents

Project registration

CAR1459 is registered with the Climate Action Reserve, using the Soil Enrichment Protocol v1.1. Founded in 2001, CAR is the premier offset project registry and standards organization in the world, and is either endorsed or approved by the ICVCM, ICROA, and CORSIA.