“Not About The Cow, But The How” Carbon Program Pays Ranchers $200k
Grassroots Carbon has provided payment to 10 Texas ranchers for their adoption of reversative grazing pastures which have resulted in nature-based, measured, verified and certified carbon credits.
Lauren Miller, VP Carbon Footprint Solutions at Grassroots Carbon, says the goal was to provide their buyers with 36,000 tons of carbon, and in 2022 the goal is 200,000.
Grassroots Carbon is a public benefit LLC based in Texas. Its model is based on a profit-sharing structure, which covers the costs of the soil sampling and measurements. One-meter deep soil cores are taken at a pattern based on soil types and topography.
“The amount varies by ranch because of our profit-sharing model,” Miller says. “Depending on the measurement costs, the payment was either fairly low to up to six figure payments.”
So while the company’s first tranche of payments totaled $200,000 to those 10 ranchers, they expect the amounts to be greater in coming years due to the lower sampling expenses. The 2021 cohort had total acreage enrolled ranging from 750 acres to 26,000 acres.
Miller says all of the 2021 participants are re-enrolled for 2022, and Grassroots Carbon is looking to expand its footprint in Nebraska and Kansas.
“We are looking to sign up as many ranchers as we can,” she says.
Loy Sneary, a rancher who participated in 2021 program said, “For ranchers who are considering the type of regenerative grazing management we are doing, this payment could very well give them the impetus to move into this type of grazing management.”
Miller says the ranchers seeing the great carbon drawdown are using adaptive multi-paddock grazing.
Grassroots Carbon uses the bCarbon standard created by the Baker Institute at Rice University. The certification is based on increase in carbon storage. The team at Grassroots Carbon supports the enrolled acres with a team of soil samplers and testing procedures. A baseline measurement is taken in the first year, and then measurements are taken again in 5 years, on average.
“We have the demand for this, and we’ve proven this process works,” Miller says. “We are actively looking to sign up more ranchers. At the end of the day, everything we do is to help folks use more renewable practices,” Miller says.
