Indigo Agriculture announced the first commitments from large global brands to purchase verified agricultural carbon credits through Indigo Carbon, including Boston Consulting Group, Shopify, Barclays, JPMorgan Chase, Givewith, IBM, Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, and New Belgium Brewing.

Diversifying crop rotations can offer significant positive results, improving soil health and boosting biological activity and nutrient cycling. Cronin Farms, a no-till operation based near Gettysburg, S.D., has crop rotations down to a science, including forages and cover crops.

The new pilot program focuses on addressing a key infrastructure challenge holding back the development of an ecosystem services marketplace at scale: the ability to easily translate existing farm data that capture the carbon removal impact of on-farm conservation practices into potential carbon credits that could offer a new viable revenue stream for farmers.

The USDA released the final rule for its Conservation Stewardship Program that makes updates required by the 2018 Farm Bill and includes potential payments for cover crop rotations, advanced livestock management and creating a comprehensive conservation plan.

When cover crops become a forage crop it’s important to treat them as such and to understand the risks associated with utilizing them as supplemental forage, especially as our environmental conditions begin to change. This becomes critical as we move into fall, says University of Nebraska Extension.

A new way of analyzing the chemical composition of soil organic matter will help scientists predict how soils store carbon — and how soil carbon may affect climate in the future, says a Baylor University researcher.