ARTICLE SUMMARY: Interested in switching from one carbon program to Carbon by Indigo? It’s possible as long as your fields meet two important requirements.
The agricultural carbon market has exploded in recent years - and so has the number of programs trying to work with growers to produce credits. As the industry’s only option producing registry-verified credits at scale, Carbon by Indigo farmers can rest assured that they’re participating in a quality, sustainable program that will demand premium price for offsets.
But what if you’ve enrolled your fields in another carbon program and are less than thrilled with the experience? Switching over to Carbon by Indigo is definitely possible, provided your fields meet the following requirements.
Carbon by Indigo qualifies fields and credits based on “additionality”. This means that growers must adopt a new carbon farming practice(s) that will lead to increased carbon sequestration and emissions reduction. This ensures that the credits being produced are leading to real environmental impact through change in net carbon emissions. The resulting level of quality supports a robust credit buyer’s market, program sustainability, and high credit prices…all key and proven components of the Carbon by Indigo program.
If a grower adopts new practices after making the switch to Carbon by Indigo, those fields will qualify and be credited, even if they were part of another program previously.
If approved practices were adopted before switching to Carbon by Indigo, those fields may qualify if practices were adopted less than two years before enrolling in the former program. For example, if a grower adopted practice changes in 2018 and entered another program in 2020, their fields would still qualify for Indigo in 2021 and beyond based on the initial year of practice change (2018) and carbon program entry (2020).
The key is enrolling in the previous carbon program within the registry-approved two-year practice change eligibility window. This is a must in order to generate verified carbon credits, even if the previous program provided for a “lookback” beyond two years.
Another important parameter to consider is around the idea of double counting (i.e. fields that are enrolled in and paid by multiple carbon programs in the same season). Growers can certainly enroll separate fields in multiple programs at the same time - but any sort of overlap will lead to disqualification.
Note that this also applies to forward payments. If a prior program has “pre-paid” farmers for upcoming years, those fields would not be eligible or creditable under the double-counting criteria.
Transitioning fields over to Carbon by Indigo is very doable, provided the aforementioned criteria are considered and met. The Indigo team believes that all growers should be able to take advantage of the burgeoning carbon market and have the opportunity to work with a program that puts growers first, regardless of the carbon program they may have initially enrolled in.