TFF promoting carbon capture rip off

[Highland Mule]

accountancy is consistent

if a farm takes responsibility for its suppliers c footprint then consists our customers should take responsibility for ours


are you seriously suggesting that Yara (Europe’s biggest user of gas) are carbon neutral ……….. because they sell their product

I’m suggesting that the end user is the carbon consumer and deserves to know exactly what carbon is generated/ used in the production of said product.

 

[Clive]

I’m suggesting that the end user is the carbon consumer and deserves to know exactly what carbon is generated/ used in the production of said product.

the end user is the ultimate C consumer …….. that’s not the farm though - its the dinner plate owner

so instead of passing the buck you can instead take responsibility for your own businesses emissions and reduce or fund offset by others

ultimately the consumer will pay for this extra cost though of course

 

[puppet]

accountancy is consistent

if a farm takes responsibility for its suppliers c footprint then to remain consists our customers should take responsibility for ours - they then pass to their customers and ultimately everything lands on the end consumers lap


are you seriously suggesting that Yara (Europe’s biggest user of gas) are carbon neutral ……….. simply because they sell their product rather than use it themselves

As I have said above my carbon audits penalises me for straw, feed and fertiliser inputs so it looks like it is being passed on to me. It then adds on another 80% for burping cows and sheep and gives me 10% back for having some trees. So livestock, whatever the calculator is a massive GHG emitter. No credit for growing grass.

 

[Clive]

As I have said above my carbon audits penalises me for straw, feed and fertiliser inputs so it looks like it is being passed on to me. It then adds on another 80% for burping cows and sheep and gives me 10% back for having some trees. So livestock, whatever the calculator is a massive GHG emitter. No credit for growing grass.

are you sure it audits the manufacturing C or just the application and emissions footprint caused by use ?

 

[ajd132]

But the land had to be ‘available ‘ for for production.

That use seems to have been superseded by rewilding, trees and …..

As I’ve said repeatedly what is on offer here is the best option for farmers as it involves growing crowing crops AND carbon. It’s a way farmers and tenants can deliver both and stop land from being re wilded or covered in trees by big companies.

 

[Highland Mule]

the end user is the ultimate C consumer …….. that’s not the farm though - its the dinner plate owner

so instead of passing the buck you can instead take responsibility for your own businesses emissions and reduce or fund offset by others

ultimately the consumer will pay for this extra cost though of course

The dinner plate owner is indeed the ultimate consumer, and the only way they know the cost is if you take your inputs and charge them on. Focussing on the increment will discriminate you from other farmers, but only by considering the bigger picture will the end user get full “costs”. The bucks need passed on, but perhaps then you’ll see that your grain carries a heavy footprint of diesel, natural gas etc.

 

[DaveGrohl]

Certainly not arable ones, regardless of how they plant seeds. Maybe yes for very extensive livestock, but only just.

And therein lies the problem for this generation of unicorn worshippers, sorry vegans.

 

[DaveGrohl]

As I have said above my carbon audits penalises me for straw, feed and fertiliser inputs so it looks like it is being passed on to me. It then adds on another 80% for burping cows and sheep and gives me 10% back for having some trees. So livestock, whatever the calculator is a massive GHG emitter. No credit for growing grass.

Your calculator is broken. Well, it isn’t actually, it’s just based on anti-science. That's the problem. Who is the genius/authority that is setting the fomulae and providing tragic results? They obv don’t have a fekking clue. ISO my arrse.

There is supposedly a carbon calculator that uses GWP*, someone posted it the other day on another thread. I’d love someone to tell me why they don’t ALL use it.

 

[DaveGrohl]

The dinner plate owner is indeed the ultimate consumer, and the only way they know the cost is if you take your inputs and charge them on. Focussing on the increment will discriminate you from other farmers, but only by considering the bigger picture will the end user get full “costs”. The bucks need passed on, but perhaps then you’ll see that your grain carries a heavy footprint of diesel, natural gas etc.

Every link in the chain should have a carbon tax applied to it rather than this sham of credits being purchased. Then the consumer ultimately pays which is exactly how it should work. All else is pathetic.

 

[DaveGrohl]

Of course its of no environmental benefit (assuming you think reducing carbon emissions is a good thing, but thats a different argument). You are selling carbon credits that allows Company X to emit CO2 from its activities, but offset against what you have sequestered. The CO2 they emit is a permanent addition to the CO2 levels in the atmosphere, yet after 5 years you are free to not only stop sequestering carbon on your land, you are also free to release everything you have sequestered by a change in farming policy, or you might sell up and the new owner releases the lot. Thus its entirely possible, nay probable that all the CO2 you have sequestered will end up back in the atmosphere a mere few years after you took it out. And all the CO2 emitted by the buyer of your carbon credits is also out there. Result - an increase in net global CO2.

Thus its a scam. A scam on the public who think something is being done about the problem, and who will be paying for all this via higher prices of everything, as the global corporations will just pass on the cost of carbon offsetting to their customers. They get to go on polluting (if you call it polluting) and you get a nice bung to hide their 'sins'. Its the modern equivalent of the Medieval Church's system of indulgences. And remember what happened to the Medieval Church - it got abolished and its assets seized and its buildings razed to the ground.

Given the opportunities this scheme offers I would like someone to counter this post with a reasoned argument but it looks extremely accurate to me. If we can see this right away it should only take a few years before a politician cottons on to it and the long term conditions could change.
Look at the feed in tariffs that were promised a few years ago for turbines and solar panels, they were soon cut back when it was costing too much.

You won’t be able to find anyone to counter it. Everyone on here understands this. It’s ludicrous. I do however understand where some are coming from, but they’re not actually arguing against this, more just saying hey ho, take the money whilst smiling sweetly and basically laughing at the "system". I could respect that, I’d just like to hear them say it.

 

[Highland Mule]

Every link in the chain should have a carbon tax applied to it rather than this sham of credits being purchased. Then the consumer ultimately pays which is exactly how it should work. All else is pathetic.

Agreed - but the only way to get that cost to the consumer is to increment them through the chain. That way Clive’s carbon heavy inputs would be accurately reflected in his outputs too. Those of us who farm without chemicals or excess AN will have lower cost outputs. Trouble is that if carbon cost is take seriously, poor people will starve, sadly.

 

[Vader]

Half? I don't recall many warnings above 1% with 0.1% being more widely forecast. What scientific models did you hear about?

It was not being precise...
Nobs like Neil Ferguson were predicting massive loss of live. Was wrong.
His modeling on other stuff been wrong as well.
As said above scientists are saying cows cause climate change.
So dont exact trust and modeling they will do on carbon..
Just another think made up to trade.

 

[Vader]

i did edit almost immediately after posting as it didn’t read back quite as i ment - you must have replied / quoted very quickly !

i agree the earlier claim made by another member that half the population would die of covid was ridiculous

I was not serious saying half the population...

 

[Highland Mule]

Nobs like Neil Ferguson were predicting massive loss of live.

Pretty certain he was modelling unmitigated scenarios, which are very different from predictions.

 

[DaveGrohl]

Agreed - but the only way to get that cost to the consumer is to increment them through the chain. That way Clive’s carbon heavy inputs would be accurately reflected in his outputs too. Those of us who farm without chemicals or excess AN will have lower cost outputs. Trouble is that if carbon cost is take seriously, poor people will starve, sadly.

But using the carbon credit system the costs are being passed down anyway. The difference being that these companies now get to laughably call themselves carbon neutral…..

So, the answer is? Don’t take carbon seriously?

 

[Hindsight]

But using the carbon credit system the costs are being passed down anyway. The difference being that these companies now get to laughably call themselves carbon neutral…..

So, the answer is? Don’t take carbon seriously?

Tracey will end up paying for whatever happens before she goes shopping. As to who benefits from her pennies, well that will depend on who has most strength or guile beforehand.

 

[Clive]

International Organization for Standardization - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

I think these guys may be more knowledgeable and robust in their questions than most of us farmers really

 

[Soil Capital]

Hello all,

Apologies for only getting around to replying now, I can see some strongly held views here and fully respect them; I just want to clarify a few points and respond to a few questions. I'll work my way through the whole thread as I get a chance to so apologies if I've missed your question!

Firstly addressing the thread opener/title, as Clive & Chris have stated, we aren't endorsed by TFF or anything to that effect - we simply choose to advertise through TFF and we have taken part in discussions here before even advertising with them. It's a great platform for some open discussion.

So you sequester some carbon in 2021 and sell the carbon credits. Does that mean you are legally bound to make sure that carbon stays in the soil in perpetuity? If so that means when you sell the land you have to tie the new owner in to not ever doing anything to allow that carbon back into the atmosphere.

The term imposed to hold the carbon in the soil is 10 years. So if you sequester in 2021, you will receive full payment for continuing good soil carbon practice until 2031.

The 'full payment' part is where the buffer comes in, as @ajd132 mentions several times and explains well. Whenever carbon certificates are produced and sold, we have to hold 20% of those carbon certificates in a buffer (essentially collateral) for 10 years, where they can then be sold and the rest of the payment given to the farmer.

In practice:

1. A farm sequesters 100 tons of carbon in 2021, generating 100 certificates.
2. This farm can sell 80 certificates, and no matter what happens, the farmer will have the money for those certificates, if the farmer leaves the programme in year two or decides to change his farming practice for the worse, they still keep the revenue from those 80 certificates.
3. The remaining 20 certificates are held for 10 years, and if there are no substantial 'loss events' (e.g. ploughing, housing development etc) then the certificates remaining can be paid in year 10.

Just to note, these buffer certificates are entirely financially useless to us at Soil Capital, we don't benefit from it at all. Its effectively the same as putting them in a vault for 10 years and not being allowed to touch them.

Who monitors it all? Who comes out and says you have sequestered x amount of carbons?

The monitoring is done through our platform, which is driven by the Cool Farm Tool behind the scenes.

Essentially a farmer encodes all of his stubble to stubble inputs into our platform (chemicals, fert, operations), then we can produce an accurate carbon result. This is done to an auditable standard, and like any programme, a certain amount of farmers will be audited each year. The audit will entail checking invoices, application records etc - nothing out of the ordinary.

Why would a company buy carbon credits when they cannot use them to offset emissions? And why is gas-guzzling, fertiliser-using arable so good when it disturbs soil every year compared to a 50 year old grazing field

On why would companies buy credits; for marketing or ethical purposes. Companies that want to support carbon conscious agriculture are the main buyers. A company in your supply chain e.g. grain processor or buyer can demonstrate that their supply chain emissions have been reduced by buying these certficiates. The likes of an airline or oil company cannot buy these certificates and make that claim - you will not be offsetting their emissions with Soil Capital - I can't speak for the other companies on this.

There isn't a reason why we have picked arable as 'being better' or anything like that - its just the only one that the calculators were behind that we were happy with. I have no doubt other types of farming will be added in the future.

Environmental Credits User Guide  - Townsend Chartered Surveyors

townsendcharteredsurveyors.co.uk

The above gives a good description of soil carbon credits scheme. From reading it , you may be better off starting from a full plough based cultivation method and moving to DD for maximum credits.

We try to avoid that by rewarding the early adopters of DD, cover cropping etc. If a farmer comes into the Soil Capital programme and is already sequestering, they will be paid against a regional baseline which is an average of emissions for farms in their area. Really negating the need to go and plough everything up in year 1!

I have seen a figure of roughly £22ish unit. but no idea how this equates to an acre. I guess its what you do or don't do

Yes the floor price we impose (minimum sell price) is £23 per certificate. How much you earn is all dependent on how many certificates you produce. We trade on the voluntary carbon market, its a growing marketing and the price is rising; so if we can get more for the carbon, it benefits everyone (except the buyer!).

I've seen a few posts related to us 'taking 25%' - and as ajd and a few others have pointed out; this 25% is including the 20% buffer, which a farmer will receive in year 10. The remaining comes from selling fees of the certificate.

For transparency, our pricing structure has two options:

• £980 per year - access to the platform, full support etc - the same as paying for any subscription software.
• £0 upfront, but a 30% cut of whatever certificates are sold - for those that don't want to take a financial risk, or don't see themselves producing many certificates more than £980.

And again, I'll be making my way through the questions so apologies if I haven't answered them this time around!

 

[MikeNeaverson]

Interesting stuff and we are massively reducing cultivations to the point where a lot of land is direct drilled 2 years in 3. However we struggle with slumped land on this silty loam and it can massively affect crop yields and seem to have to rotationally subsoil with a low disturbance tool, perhaps 1 year in 3. Would this situation be covered in the 20% 'buffer'?

If we do any 'deep' 12inch non inversion low disturbance cultivation does that mean we're unable to register that field in that year, or invalidate a previous year's certificate? Sorry if this has already been asked, I can't seem to find the answer of any of the platform websites.

 

[DrWazzock]

The way is see it, it’s a bit like businesses and VAT. We claim it and we pay it back. Really a waste of effort. The end consumer is the one who can’t reclaim it but he just asks for or needs higher wages to cover it.
So we might feel virtuous that we are sequestering carbon and we conveniently don’t include the carbon footprint of the fertiliser we use or the tractor we buy. However the tractor manufacturer and fertiliser manufacturer will just stick the cost of the carbon credits he buys onto the cost of the tractor or fertiliser so no real gain for anybody. We were sequestering carbon before they invented the scheme, we will be sequestering carbon after they have invented the scheme but there will be an additional layer of admin to contend with.
It might provide a tiny incentive for some to change their practices. The only problem is for those who can’t change their practices because we grow roots or something, we will be lumbered with higher tractor or fertiliser prices because of the cost of carbon credits the manufacturers buy from those who can sell them purely because they happen to grow crops that lend themselves to sequestration.
Can see a time in the U.K. when carbon heavy industries just say feck it, why bother and the imports get sucked in from places less bothered.