Carbon market: Agoro sets ambitious goal for 2022

GIFFORD, Ill. — Representatives of a carbon market company that launched a pilot project two years ago and now has a goal of signing up 1 million acres of U.S. farmland in 2022 were among the Midwest Ag Expo exhibitors Jan. 26-27.

Agoro Carbon Alliance is a carbon credit aggregate company that works directly with farmers and ranchers to sequester carbon through conservation practices and provides additional income to those producers.

Steve Hasselman, Agoro carbon cropping agronomist, is based in Freeport and works with producers throughout Illinois.

“Farmers can reach out to us on our website — agorocarbonalliances.com — where there’s an online form to fill out and an agronomist such as me will reach out to them and follow through with the next steps,” Hasselman said.

“We’ll contract them to do things like reduced tillage, cover crops and manage nitrogen differently. We have some range and pastureland methodologies, as well. We generate a credit based off those practices, we measure it with soil samples and then we’re able to pay farmers for those carbon credits.

“There is one component to the deal with additionality. We have to introduce a new practice in order to gain eligibility to the program.

“The conservation practices are anything to reduce tillage or incorporate cover crops, keeping organic material on the soil without stirring it up and oxidizing everything, that’s going to hold carbon in the soil better. The more practices you do, obviously, the more carbon you’ll sequester and the higher the payments will be.”

Verification-Based

Per-acre payments for introducing new conservation practices vary.

“It’s kind of shooting from the hip. I’ve run models where it can be as low as $8 to $10 per acre or as high as $20 to $25. It depends on what you do. We’re a verification-based system, so it’s largely based on soil tests. We do some modeling for forward payments, but it all just depends on how the soil tests come out in the end,” Hasselman said.

A baseline soil test will be conducted at the beginning of the program, followed by soil tests in years five and 10.

“One thing to keep in mind with it is we’re running off of a price structure today. With ours we do have flexibility to incorporate upward movement into the future if the market takes off like we expect it to,” Hasselman said.

“We have two different payment options. We have one where we implement a combination of annual payments for the first four years of the contract and then after that it’s based on the verification payments in years five and 10. Our other program is just solely based on verification and with a payment in year five and 10.”

Zero Emissions

Agoro was initiated by Norway-based Yara International. Funding for farmers enrolling in the program is provided by numerous national and international companies with zero emissions pledges in the voluntary market.

“They need to buy these credits to offset the emissions that they can’t control through other means and we’re filling in that gap for them and they incentivize it,” Hasselman said.

He added the carbon program is gaining traction across the United States.

“We’re getting over that hump of education and just letting people know what it’s about. We’re still doing quite a bit of that just because there is so much confusion in the marketplace,” he said.

“We’re working with companies all across the United States and in the world. We’re a global company, but we have strong focus in the United States. It’s a main focus of the company, working with American farmers and ranchers,” said Ashley Bruner, Agoro growth marketing manager.

“It’s a global network of people that we’re drawing from and local support like Steve on the ground here in Illinois.

“We operate in Europe and India and Brazil, as well. We don’t sell anything else. I think a really key component is we’re not selling any other inputs. We just operate in the carbon market because farmers don’t always want to have other things that they’re asked to do as a result of it.”