UK and USA happenings…
courtesy of Regen Farming News and the Sierra Club.
In a recent article for Sierra, Jenny Splitter takes a look at regenerative agriculture and carbon farming through the eyes of Maryland farmer Trey Hill. In 2018, he was approached by Seattle-based carbon-trading company Nori. After some calculations, they gauged his farm's carbon-sequestration potential and came up with an offer.
That first year, Hill made $115,000 for storing an estimated 8,000 metric tons of carbon. That's not a huge amount considering the extra work involved—it's less than he gets from the state for cover cropping. But it's enough of an incentive that Hill has been enrolling more acreage in Nori to increase the payout.
However, Splitter's article remains balanced and reminds us that cover cropping, crop rotation, and reduced tillage do store some carbon. According to another interviewee - Chad Frischmann, Project Drawdown's head of research - it's important not to overhype it. "We should be constructively critical of these solutions," he says. "Always. Because some of these solutions may not be solutions tomorrow, right? And there may be new solutions that come along that we find that are even better."