Carbon Markets — How Do You Measure Success?

Nov 01, 2021

There’s a lot of talk these days about soil carbon markets and conservation practices. Companies that have made commitments to investors and Wall Street are ready to pay farmers for carbon credits to reduce greenhouse gases and mitigate climate change.

But do you understand how this all works and how to take advantage of these new programs? Farmers in a Farm Journal survey say they just don’t have enough information, and they are having trouble finding details in their area on how to apply for these programs. In fact, only 3% of farmers are taking advantage of the opportunity, and 55% say they plan to participate in the soil carbon market within three years. That leaves 45% of farmers saying no to the opportunity.

“The scariest part for farmers is we have big, lofty goals about carbon without having a reliable way to repeatedly measure the same sample and get the same answer each time,” says Meagan Kaiser, soy checkoff farmer-leader and soil scientist in Missouri.

Jack Cornell, the soy checkoff’s director of sustainable supply, sees this uncertainty as an opportunity: farmers can set themselves up for success in the years to come in areas that extend beyond carbon markets.

“Farmers are always improving their farms,” says Cornell. “They want to increase profitability, productivity and sustainability. They are stewards of the land, always working to care for what they have for the next generation.”

That’s why he believes this is the perfect time for farmers to renew their focus on improving their land by using conservation practices such as no-till and cover crops.

“While we are figuring out what the carbon market looks like, this is a great opportunity for farmers to start doing some investigations on their own ground on how to put carbon-smart practices to work,” he says. “We want farmers to be in a position to be flexible enough to adapt to the next round of changes or the next opportunity to make on-farm profit.”

Nevertheless, there is always cost and risk associated with starting anything new. Farmers are the ones putting it on the line while companies may reap the benefits without taking the same risks.

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Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.