You’ve probably heard of carbon credits, an idea many environmentalist have promulgated for controlling CO2 emissions by industry and transportation. The concept is simple; if your factory is going to produce a million tons of CO2, you buy carbon credits to offset this emission. Using a combination of regulation and market forces, the idea is to encourage reduction in CO2 emissions by making it more expensive to output carbon, as well as to give the environmentally-minded a way to make a contribution to the carbon problem’s solution by offsetting their own carbon output. The credits themselves are derived from things like carbon sequestration projects or tree-planting operations. Start a factory, plant a forest – the idea is that it balances out.

One of the hindrances to this whole scheme is that there are no objective standards for what defines a carbon credit. Some scam artists have already made small fortunes selling bogus credits to well-meaning greens, credits that don’t go to any projects at all, only to a bank account somewhere in the Cayman Islands. But legitimate credit programs exist, and they need some baselines by which their operations can be judged. Novecta, a joint venture between the Iowa and Illinois Corn Growers Associations, is attempting to create such a standard, and recently held the first meeting of their Carbon Sequestration Standard Committee in Des Moines, Iowa.

The purpose of the committee is to create an industry-wide standard for validating carbon offsets resulting from soil carbon sequestration or greenhouse gas emission reductions at the soil interface. The committee was selected by Novecta from leading agriculture businesses and members of the carbon industry including aggregators, verifiers, exchange traders, soil scientists and others interested in carbon measurements. Novecta Managing Director says that the group “is developing a standard to validate soil-based carbon offset methodologies and systems that will be broadly accepted. This standard is a key step toward rewarding farmers who use environmentally sound farming practices.”

In the first meeting, the committee agreed that their set of standards would include a soil-based standard that addressed net changes in greenhouse gas emissions, including fuel used directly for production on the land, and that encompasses agricultural practices and nutrient management. The committee has completed its first draft, and will be having a second draft review in a meeting in mid-October.

As these standards develop, it will become more straightforward for farmers to apply to have their land registered as a carbon sequestration zone, and to receive payments for good land management practices – a win for the environmentalists, and a win for farmers as well.