A group of companies called the Agricultural Climate Market Collaborative believes that lack of “transparency” is one of major road blocks to acceptance. To address transparency, the Collaborative developed eleven principles to guide carbon ecosystem marketers when forming these new contracts with growers.

In 2022, Truterra will offer two approaches, one to reward recent adopters for their investment in carbon-sequestering practices and one to engage and support farmers through the process of implementing new practices.

Launching with Microsoft as its first secured buyer, TruCarbon promises a streamlined experience for farmers and a novel approach for buyers to incentivize change at scale.

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.

While the adoption of conservation practices needs to be tracked over a longer period of time to assess impact and sustainability, the year-two results from the Land O'Lakes and Campbell Soup Company partnership suggest important progress.