Another Alberta company has made its first carbon credit payment to farmers.
AgShare, a Calgary-based agricultural company, distributed its first carbon credit payments to farmers in June.
Farmers received $8.75 a tonne after AgShare deducted its portion of the money for aggregating, verifying and selling the credits.
Farmers receive carbon credits by following agricultural practices like minimum tillage that lower greenhouse gas emissions by reducing the amount of carbon dioxide released from the soil.
Companies like AgShare buy carbon credits from farmers, group them together and then sell them to companies that are required to buy carbon credit offsets.
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AgShare sales manager Dallas Pike said cheques between $8,000 and $24,000 were mailed to farmers for accumulated carbon credits from 2002 to 2007. Most of the farmers were in an area from Red Deer to Lethbridge.
“Think of it as a bonus cheque. It’s money you weren’t counting on. You’re being paid for your good farming practices,” Craig Christensen, a Standard, Alta., farmer and an aggregator with AgShare said in a news release.
Pike said now that cheques are being sent to farmers, more people will believe the concept is real.
Many farmers were skeptical about getting paid for following good tillage practices.
“People are now saying this is real,” said Pike.
Alberta created the carbon credit market when it passed the Climate Change Act in 2007 designed to encourage companies to reduce their baseline greenhouse gases 12 percent a year annually until 2014.
Companies that can’t meet the reduction must pay a fee into a greenhouse gas technology fund, or buy offset credits from agriculture or forestry companies.
