Cashing in on carbon
The Terraton Initiative aims to pay growers to offset one trillion tons of carbon dioxide.
In the face of a climate crisis, the world's 12 billion acres of farmland and pastureland offer a scalable opportunity to remove this excess carbon dioxide. The Terraton Initiative is incentivizing the adoption of regenerative farming practices that can sequester carbon. These include things like not disturbing the soil, planting cover crops, so the ground is always covered by plants, reducing the use of chemicals and fertilizers, rotating different crops, and integrating livestock. These methods have been practiced by a small number of farmers for decades but have not yet been taken up as a standard practice. The Initiative pays farmers to adopt regenerative farming practices. Terraton plans to eventually pay farmers in their program 15-20 USD per ton of carbon that they offset, translating into an estimated 30-60 USD per acre in the pockets of farmers depending on their soil type and the region’s climate. Terraton’s goal is to bring carbon dioxide concentrations back to pre-Industrial Revolution levels.