September 3, 2000
 
Des Moines Register
 
Farmers can help fight global warming
Compensation is crux of carbon reduction
They can "tie up" carbon and reduce emissions. 

The question is how to pay them for their efforts.
 
By JERRY PERKINS
Des Moines Register Farm Editor
 
Farmers can play a role in curbing global warming, but how they will be
rewarded for their efforts remains to be seen.
 
A three-day conference in Des Moines last week focused on ways agriculture
can contribute to cutting the release of greenhouse gases such as carbon
dioxide. The gases rise into the atmosphere, where they trap heat like
panes of glass in a greenhouse.
 
Some experts blame the buildup of greenhouse gases for rising temperatures
in recent years and say that if the emissions aren't curtailed, the Earth's
environment will suffer.
 
Carbon dioxide - one of the greenhouse gases cited as a culprit in global
warming - is released when carbon stored in the soil reacts with oxygen.
Plowing and other tillage methods can speed the release of carbon dioxide.
 
"Evidence continues to mount that climate change is real and the effects
might be quite profound, complex, hard to anticipate and hard to manage,"
said Craig Cox of the Soil and Water Conservation Service in Ankeny.
 
Paying farmers to tie up carbon in their soil - a process known as carbon
sequestration - is "a major part of the solution to global climate change,"
Cox said.
 
How farmers are compensated for performing this service will be critical,
he said.
 
Farmer Jim Kinsella of Lexington, Ill., said decades of research on his
farm show that reducing tillage is the key to storing carbon. Over the
years, Kinsella has documented the buildup of carbon in the soil on his farms.
 
Kinsella said the value of that carbon is $100 a ton.
 
"We should be paid for sequestering carbon," Kinsella said. "The minimum
wage we should be paid is $100 a ton."
 
Those payments, he said, should come from the government.
 
"The public is willing in this regard to help us save our soil," Kinsella
said.
 
David Dukes, a farmer from Bedford, agreed.
 
Like Kinsella, Dukes is a proponent of reduced tillage of the soil.
 
Crops take carbon dioxide out of the air and put it into the soil through
their root system, he said. Studies show that a plume of carbon dioxide
rises into the atmosphere within hours of plowing as the carbon in the soil
reacts with oxygen.
 
"This is aerobic erosion taking place," Dukes said.
 
Dukes agreed with Kinsella that the public ought to pay farmers for carbon
sequestration.
 
"The public is already committed to preserving public resources," he said.
"We need to show them that carbon is a public resource."
 
Another proposal for rewarding farmers to tie up carbon in their soil is
called carbon credit trading.
 
Michael Walsh, senior vice president of Environmental Financial Products in
Chicago, said farmers could earn money by selling carbon credits to
businesses that emit carbon dioxide.
 
The businesses could claim the credits as if they had cut the carbon
emissions themselves.
 
A system exists for trading sulfur dioxide emissions, Walsh said, and a
similar system can be put in place for carbon dioxide.
 
Businesses could purchase carbon credits from farmers who practice reduced
tillage and plant permanent vegetation such as trees, he said.
 
Kinsella and Dukes are opposed to carbon credits.
 
Trading credits won't work, Kinsella said, because there can be no
retribution by the credit buyers if farmer-sellers don't continue their
carbon sequestration practices.
 
As a result, Dukes said farmers won't be paid enough.
 
"I think they're a travesty," said Dukes. "People want to steal them, not
buy them."
 
Jerry Skees, professor of agricultural economics at the University of
Kentucky, said there is a role for government and a role for a market-based
system of carbon trading in curbing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.
 
"There's going to have to be some blend of the two," he said.
 
Government always has to set the rules of the marketplace, but too much
government involvement may damage the carbon trading market, Skees warned.
 
Direct government payments to farmers for performing
environmentally-friendly farming practices is not new.
 
Called "green payments," the government has been paying farmers to put
erodible farmland into pasture or trees as part of the Conservation Reserve
Program. More recently, the Wetlands Reserve Program has rewarded farmers
for letting low-lying portions of their fields revert to marshland.
 
Using a carbon trading market to pay farmers for carbon sequestration and
adding some government incentives to make the transaction less risky might
be the most lucrative way to reward farmers for aiding the environment,
Skees said.
 
Government can provide assistance in monitoring and measuring compliance
with carbon sequestration contracts. It also can provide technical
assistance to farmers on how best to sequester carbon or provide "green"
insurance that would take some of the risk out of the transaction.
 
It's too soon to know what the carbon-trading market will be or what the
government's role will be, Skees said, but it might be best to look at how
the two can work together to help farmers protect the environment.