The market for carbon credits in U.K. agriculture is growing at a steadfast rate, and soil carbon certification company Agreena says it is experiencing increased interest among farmers taking the green transition into their own hands. Farmers who want to reap the extra benefits regenerative agriculture practices must sign up this month to participate in this year’s harvest through the private sector incentive scheme.
According to European-wide soil carbon certification company Agreena, farmers interested in picking up extra profits for climate-friendly practices must register fields to participate prior to the company’s June 30 cutoff. Their marketplace for farmers to generate carbon certificates follows the same annual harvest cycle that agriculture already knows from arable farming.
“Farmers are used to sowing a large part of their crops in the spring and harvesting them in the autumn. Now you must remember another crop in your fields: CO2”, says Oliver Clarke, UK manager at Agreena. “Although the transition to regenerative agricultural practices can be costly, farmers now can make a profit on it through private sector investment. Payments just went out for the first year of the programme, which has drawn up additional interest.”
Farmer-centric certification
The company’s incentive scheme, AgreenaCarbon, quantifies carbon emission reduction and removals for farmers at the field-level through their transition of regenerative agriculture processes and issues certificates for each annual cycle. The certificates can be kept by the farmer for their own offset purposes or be sold onto the voluntary carbon market to companies that are looking to offset their own practices.
With farmers now participating in the programme from 12 countries across Europe, the company says that its farmer-centric approach in honouring the entrepreneurial decision making of each farmer what to do with their certificates has been paramount to its success.
