Source: POLITICO'S MORNING AGRICULTURE, 8/23/21

Farmers and ranchers can be pivotal players in President Joe Biden’s fight against climate change as the agricultural carbon credit marketplace grows. But the lack of broadband internet connection prevents them from entering the marketplace sooner, if not all together, our Tatyana Monnay reports.

The ag carbon credit market, referred to by many as the “Wild West,” seeks to pay farmers to pull carbon dioxide from the air and bury it in their soil. The emerging marketplace is often difficult for even the savviest farmers to navigate and relatively impossible without an internet connection.

By the numbers: Storing carbon in soil has the potential to wipe out nearly 6 percent of overall U.S. emissions every year, according to the Environmental Defense Fund. While the White House proposed spending $100 billion on broadband infrastructure, the Senate infrastructure deal is throwing $65 billion into the broadband bucket.


What to watch: Getting farmers connected will be an important factor in determining the ultimate success and growth of the industry, according to Brent Poohkay, chief information officer at Nutrien, a Canadian agriculture company that runs a platform to buy and sell carbon credits.

Now all eyes are on the infrastructure package’s investment. But only $2 billion of the $65 billion pot is explicitly allocated to the Agriculture Department’s rural ReConnect program. Further allocations and collaborations across federal agencies remains to be seen.

"No matter how you want to use technology in agriculture or in a farming environment, you can think of broadband access as one of those core, enabling infrastructures, almost like a precondition" Poohkay said. "You need that to do everything else."