Warmer and drier weather opened a door for farmers to finally prep their fields for planting this week. And while crop prices remain bleak and margins look muted this year, there could be a new revenue stream tied to the crop you grow.
“What we’re trying to do is monetize your data,” says Peter Meyer, partner with Agrisets.com “The whole idea with carbon, and what carbon does, is it monetizes your data. It’s about time, in our opinion, that the U.S. farmer gets paid for that data.”
Peter Meyer is co-founder of Agrisets, a company that’s creating a platform for farmers to sell their carbon credits.
“The value of the carbon market in the U.S. was probably, in 2024, somewhere around $5 billion. The value in the EU, or the global market, was probably worth about $900 billion euros, which is $1 trillion dollars,” says Meyer. “When you combine your corn and soybean crops, they’re probably worth $125 billion. The global carbon market was worth a trillion dollars in 2024 and shows no signs of abatement.”
The demand for carbon is not necessarily coming from inside the U.S. The cash from carbon is gaining traction globally, which is where the demand is really growing.
“The capital flows globally, the supply chain flows globally. What that means is that regulation that’s happening anywhere in the world, be it coming out of the Europe or Asia — or you can look to the north in Canada where some of the recent regulations around environmental claims and need to third-party validate brands that are making claims around environmental outcomes in their supply chain — those are drivers that aren’t going away, no matter what’s happening from a policy perspective here in the U.S. So, companies know that they need to continue to engage on these topics,” says Kenny Fahey, president and CEO of Leading Harvest.
Leading Harvest is a non-profit organization providing certification programs throughout the supply chain. Fahey says the carbon world is one that’s constantly changing.
“They’re looking at consumer preference changes. They’re looking at regulatory and compliance markets. They’re also looking at the biophysical limits of nature. And they’re trying to figure out how can they bring good governance and standardization to their supply chain to help mitigate that risk and more effectively navigate consumer trends and some of those compliance demands,” says Fahey.
He says that’s often what farmers are seeing in terms of sustainability requests—the desire from companies for more data and information.
And even for companies like Nutrien, in order for farmers to cash in, it all starts with good data.
“Start recording data,” says Sally Flis, director of Sustainable Ag Programs for Nutrien. “Whether it’s a notebook or it’s a digital platform or whatever you want to use, record it somewhere, because if you don’t have the data and the evidence to back it up, you can’t get paid from any of these programs for the extra opportunities that exist.”
Flis doesn’t look at this conversation as regenerative farming or sustainability. To her, it’s all about conservation and farmers making the best decisions to improve productivity on their farm, just like they’ve always done.
And as farmers look for what conservation practices can create the quickest return on investment (ROI), she thinks ROI is often a term that gets overused and doesn’t accurately reflect the value of your data.
“If you haven’t looked at the data, if you haven’t looked at what’s going in to your budget and making your crop plan, it’s hard to decide if there’s an ROI,” says Flis. “Yes, the ROI on some of these conservation practices is longer than others, but there are simple things you can do every year, like improving your nitrogen management, that you’re going to want to do and think about every year so you can have a better return at the end and get more for every pound of product you’re using.”
Companies like John Deere are trying to make the data piece of the equation even more seamless.
“Farmers oftentimes have the tools and have the foundation, and it’s about using it and logging in. One of the things we like to say is they’re a farmer to farmers who are wondering how to get started is you probably already have the tool set and it’s going to be easier than you may think,” says Oriana Bosin, group product manager for sustainability at John Deere.
It’s not just collecting data. Bosin says the data needs to be complete and accurate to help you understand how different practices are impacting your farm.
“Some of the things we’re working to do are help farmers get a more complete data set,” says Bosin. “The precision essentials kit, where they can connect not just John Deere machinery but also mixed fleet, is really important because many farmers run different colors of equipment. So, that’s really the core of how we’re trying to help folks take the next step on the technology adoption journey to do more with less.”
Doing more with less, while also cashing in on another revenue stream this year without drastically changing what you’re doing today, could be the next wave of smart farming.
