At Ar-Joy Farms in Cochranville, Pennsylvania, Duane Hershey’s manure management plan generates many clear cost savings for his dairy.
Manure solids — extracted with a solid-liquid separator — provide bedding for his 900-plus cows.
Manure liquids feed into an anaerobic digester, along with food waste that retailers pay the dairy to accept.
Methane produced in the anaerobic digester powers a generator that provides all the electricity the farm needs — plus a surplus that flows into the local power grid for additional revenue.
But the digester also generates another less tangible good: carbon credits, more than 1,500 per year.
Hershey entered the carbon market in 2017 when his digester was constructed. Since then, meters have kept a constant tally of the amount of methane burned off in his generator, and any additional methane beyond the generator’s capacity that he flares off.
“I’m getting credit for not emitting that into the atmosphere,” Hershey says.
The global carbon market for agriculture, forestry and land use reached $6 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow to $21 billion in 2029, according to a January report by The Business Research Co.
But the dairy carbon market is still in its infancy, and many dairy farmers question whether the price for carbon credits is worth the time and money spent on documentation for their operations.
“It doesn’t seem like the payback is worth the effort at this point,” says Andy Bollinger of Meadow Spring Farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
So how can Pennsylvania dairy farmers determine whether reducing greenhouse gases will earn them a reasonable return in the carbon market?
Dairy Credits in Demand
Carbon credit buyers can select credits generated from any number of greenhouse gas-reducing projects, from reforestation efforts to no-till farming.
“They have the right to decide, ‘I want a carbon credit from this type of practice,’” says Scott Welsh, managing partner of Fieldstone Innovations, an agriculture and ag tech consulting company based in Chester County, Pennsylvania.
Credits generated by dairies are desirable for two main reasons: impact and traceability.
In fact, dairies are the best ag sector for generating carbon credits, according to John Bourne, senior director of agriculture and carbon markets at 3Degrees, a San Francisco-based climate solutions company.
“The amount of impact that you can have through these interventions is really high — thousands and thousands of tons of greenhouse gases per project,” Bourne says. “That equates to really big dollars.”
Through manure management projects and feed additives, dairies are especially well positioned to lessen emissions of methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas.
Unlike carbon dioxide, which can persist in the atmosphere for centuries, methane is relatively short lived, lasting only about a decade. So reducing methane emissions today can have a more immediate impact.
Cutting methane emissions is like an emergency brake for slowing climate change, says John Tauzel, senior director for global agriculture methane at Environmental Defense Fund, a global environmental nonprofit.
Source : mit.edu