MKC Brings You Truterra's 2023 Sustainability Tools

Feb 15, 2023
If you are interested in pursuing a carbon payment, February is the month to enroll in Truterra’s offerings. The process starts with completing the seven-question survey which can be found at https://www.truterraag.com/SurveyTool?Path=/Carbon. The survey closes Tuesday, February 28.

An overview of Truterra’s programs can be found here, but the offerings that fit our geography best are the Carbon Standard program, the Market Access program, and the Sustainability Tool Score. The Soil Health Assessment is not available MKC’s footprint this year, but will have widespread availability in 2024.   

$15.00/ton Carbon Program:  To qualify, growers must have made a practice change starting in 2019 or later to a lesser form of tillage, like going from conventional till to strip till or vertical till, or the best case, going to 100% No-till.  This would potentially make it worth the data intensive process of providing the proper documentation of each field’s historical practices to prove the practice change.  It says you can qualify for implanting cover crops, but if you have planted wheat or double cropped after wheat in in recent years, then cover crops won’t qualify due to these crops being planted at the same time of year as a true cover crop.  The benefits of working with Truterra for your carbon program is that after going through the process, you are presented with your final offer at which time you can either except or deny it so you know exactly what the terms are before committing.  You are also only selling your carbon from previous years with no forward contract, so you can take advantage of whatever the current market is the following year.  The MKC Ag Tech team will assist you throughout the data collection process.  Expected payment is around $2-$5/ac for each year that qualifies.

$2.00 Market Access Program. If someone wants to convert to no-till or to a lesser form of tillage in 2023, then they can get paid $2.00/ac this year with documenting the previous field history and then they can enroll in the 2024 carbon program next year.  

Sustainability Tool: Start recording field data in the tool to establish clear metrics and a common language for sustainability that is meaningful for farmers and the ultimate customers of their farms: downstream partners and end consumers.  Each field receives a score that allows them to track their progress over time and quantify the results.  It’s a tool that provides profitability, stewardship and cost share opportunities on a field-by-field basis.  It is also great for identifying which NRCS revenue opportunities are available.  This allows the farmer to start benchmarking their field’s soil health while building a database of data that will be rewarded easily when the right opportunity comes. Truterra 2023 Sustainability Tool.pdf    

To learn more about Truterra’s sustainability mission, go to https://www.truterraag.com.