Carbon credits from sustainable agriculture projects

What are Agricultural Land Management (ALM) projects?

An agriculture project involves removing carbon from the atmosphere and sequestering it in the soil. Plants and crops make up part of the carbon cycle as they use CO₂ from the air during photosynthesis. When the plants and crops decompose, some of the CO₂ is stored in the ground and some is released back into the atmosphere. By creating agricultural land management activities such as no-till farming and planting cover crops, these projects can slow the rate of soil carbon loss and become better carbon sinks.

What is sustainable agriculture?

Sustainable agriculture embodies a holistic approach that aims to balance economic viability, environmental protection and social equity in agricultural practices. It is based on the principle of meeting current food needs while preserving natural resources for future generations, by adopting a circular model in which the resources used have time to regenerate. Unlike production-based agriculture, which relies heavily on chemical products and contributes to the degradation of ecosystems, sustainable agriculture seeks to improve and preserve soil, water and biodiversity, while maintaining sufficient and affordable production. Sustainable agriculture is thus a viable, liveable, responsible and transferable form of agriculture, guaranteeing the sustainability of agricultural systems while responding to contemporary challenges in an equitable and sustainable manner.

Carbon sinks

Health and resilience

Biodiversity conservation

Livestock management

Better livestock management offers great opportunities to increase carbon sequestration. With good grazing management, and a corresponding improvement in pasture yield, livestock producers have the potential to draw CO₂ out of the atmosphere and into their soils.

When livestock grazing is correctly rotated in the field, pastures are not overgrazed, giving room for grass and crops to recover and restock their soil carbon without needing to add fertilizer. The grass and crops are then encouraged to grow more roots and therefore sequester more CO₂.

Regenerative agriculture

With soils losing more and more of their CO₂ storing potential due to intensive monoculture farming practices, regenerative agriculture projects offer a chance to reverse this. Regenerative agriculture projects focus on building healthy soil by moving away from synthetic fertilizers, chemicals and tilling practices, while encouraging cover crops and crop rotations to diversify revenue for the farmers.

These projects enhance the fertility of the soil, its health, its water holding capacity to mitigate flooding, and its biodiversity percentage. They provide both ecological and economic benefits to the farmers and local communities.

Grasslands

Increasing the biodiversity in soils, particularly in grasslands can greatly increase their ability to store and capture carbon, which is why these projects can tie in elements from regenerative agriculture and livestock management. Compared to forestry projects, grassland projects can normally avoid problems with fire. When grasslands burn, their root systems are left largely unscathed and regrow quickly, making recovery time weeks to months rather than years. However, the biggest threat to grasslands is tilling agriculture.

Preservation of these lands is what most projects focus on by awarding landowners who keep the land as it is and do not convert it to monocrop fields.