EXTRA CREDIT
Area farmer helping others get paid for capturing carbon
By Kevin O’Brien
In the cash-strapped world of agriculture, farmers are always looking for new ways to squeeze every last penny out of the soil they tend.
Ryan Stockwell, who grew up just north of Dorchester and continues to work the fields of his family farm on the south end of Taylor County, may have an answer coming soon for farmers looking for some extra income.
In addition to being a farmer, Stockwell is the agronomy strategy manager at Indigo Ag, a Boston-based company that promotes sustainable agriculture by incentivizing farmers to adopt more earth-friendly practices.
One leg of the company’s operations is called Indigo Carbon, which pays farmers to implement no-till and cover cropping in order to keep more carbon dioxide in the ground. To generate that money, so-called “carbon credits” are sold to a variety of companies looking for ways to reduce the greenhouse gases contributing to global warming.
Indigo Carbon is not yet available in Wisconsin, but Stockwell said his company is working to get it started in America’s Dairyland as early as this year. This growing season actually represents the first year the program has been in place, with farmers in 21 states — including Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois — benefitting from changes they made in 2020.
The program requires farmers to adopt carbon sequestration practices for a minimum of five years, which earns them payments based on how many tons of carbon dioxide they keep out of the atmosphere.
Indio Ag does random soil sampling at some of the participants’ farms in order to develop a mathematical model used to show buyers how much carbon is being captured. As more soil data is collected, the model becomes more accurate — making the credits more valuable.
Stockwell said the minimum payment is $10 per ton of carbon, but Indigo’s goal is to get that price up to $15 or more as the market grows.
At a seminar in March, put on by the Eau Pleine Partnership for Integrated Conservation, he told a group of farmers that carbon credit payments may not rescue a farm from bankruptcy, but they do offer a new revenue stream.
“We’re talking about $10 to $20 per acre,” he said. “This is just the gravy. This is not the potatoes. But, if it helps,
See INDIGO/ Page 7
FAMILY FARMER - Ryan Stockwell, a farmer north of Dorchester, is at home behind the wheel of his tractor, but he also works with a company called Indigo Ag, which is helping farmers across the country earn extra income by sequestering carbon in their soil, generating credits sold to large companies. Indigo
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that’s great.”
Stockwell said the main question farmers have to ask themselves is how well will carbon capture practices work in their operations — regardless of whether they can earn credits or not.
“If we generate carbon credits, and it doesn’t work for the farm, then forget about it; it’s not going to last long,” he said.
However, Stockwell said he sees a lot of potential for farmers in Central Wisconsin who want to adopt these practices.
Switching to no-till farming, for example, offers a lot of advantages on its own, he said, especially in this area. He said research has shown that soils stay warmer in the springtime under a no-till system, and ground temperatures will be more stable over time.
“They don’t yo-yo back and forth from daytime highs to nighttime lows, especially with rain,” he said. “That’s where it’s a big problem for a lot of tillage ground — that temperature really falls and stays low for a number of days.”
In a no-till system, Stockwell said rain infiltration is much better, with the moisture sinking deeper and away from the planted seeds.
“That time period of really cold and really damp isn’t nearly as long in notill,” he said.
Stockwell said the carbon credit payments can actually be used to pay for the transition to no-till farming or planting cover crops.
In this area, Stockwell estimated that converting to no-till would remove over a half-ton of carbon per acre, and planting cover crops will remove another third to a half-ton of carbon.
“That’s an income stream that just keeps on going,” he said. “We start with a five-year contract, and thereafter, it just keeps renewing automatically as long as you want to keep using the practices.”
As he tries to sell farmers on a relatively new idea, it helps that Stockwell comes from a farming background and continues to work his family’s land.
Like many farming families, the Stockwells have been involved in a variety of agricultural pursuits overs the years, starting with dairy farming in the mid-1980s, before moving to raising sheep, contract grazing, beef cattle, and for the last 20 years, cash cropping.
After graduating from Medford Area High School in 1997, he earned degrees in history and social change from UWGreen Bay. Studying what makes people change their behaviors over time has informed his work at Indigo Ag, where his role is to motivate farmers and companies to enact changes that are beneficial to themselves and the environment.
The list of companies that buys carbon credits from Indigo Ag represents a diverse cross-section of the world economy. They include everyone from Colorado-based New Belgium Brewing, outdoor outfitters The North Face, banking giants Barclays and JP Morgan and Chase and Shopify, an e-commerce company based in Ottawa, Canada.
Stockwell said these companies’ customers and investors are demanding that they take climate change seriously, so buying carbon credits with a proven track record of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is a means of staying viable in today’s world.
“For our carbon credit buyers, this isn’t just simply ‘Hey, this is nice to have,’” he said. “No, this is, ‘If you want to remain competitive in your industry, you need to do this.’”
IN THE DISCUSSION - Ryan Stockwell, second from the right, joined a group of other farmers at a regenerative ag workshop in Curtiss in March. Other farmers involved in the discussion include, from left to right, were Cedric Lechleitner, Kelby Lechleitner, Peter Graff and Bill Kolodziej