Carbon Intensity Calculator Can Help Farmers Determine Their CI Score

Jul 31, 2024

Farmers who want to gain a better understanding of their Carbon Intensity Score can take advantage of a simple calculator developed by an economist with Iowa State University Extension and Outreach.

The calculator relies on just five input numbers, according to Alejandro Plastina – corn acres, nitrogen use and corn yield with current farming practices, change in nitrogen use and change in yields under new farming practices.

The score is a calculation of how much carbon is used per bushel of crop production and is an important measurement used for selling grain to certain ethanol plants that plan to participate in the federally incentivized Carbon Intensity Score program.

Beginning in 2025, certain participating ethanol plants will receive tax credits for accepting crops produced with less carbon, according to Plastina. Some may also offer incentives to farmers for delivering lower-carbon crops.

The tax credit that grain buyers will receive is called the Federal Tax Credit 45Z, or the “Clean Fuel Production Credit.” It consolidates and replaces several fuel-related credits scheduled to expire at the end of 2024.

Plastina hopes farmers will take advantage of the calculator to understand their current score – and ways they could make changes that result in a lower score.

“The farmer could potentially get an extra payment if the carbon intensity score is lower than the buyer’s threshold,” he said. “We don’t yet know how much, if any, of the credit will pass through to the producer, but the potential is there.”

Plastina explains the significance of the score and his calculator in a recent article in the Ag Decision Maker. Although private calculators exist, he said this one is free to use and convenient.

Plastina said the calculator gives farmers a good understanding of where they’re at today, and what they need to do differently in the future if they want to obtain a lower score.

However, he reminds farmers that the rules and the model for the program will not be finalized until 2025, and that final decisions could affect how the calculation is determined.

For more information, Plastina can be reached at 515-294-6160 or plastina@iastate.edu

Source : iastate.edu

Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators