Carbon Tokens & Credits
Trade Farm Carbon: Getting Started with Farm Carbon Credits
What is a carbon token?
Carbon and biodiversity tokens, often referred to as ‘credits’, offer farmers a new and potentially significant source of income. When paired with robust software and a reliable natural capital market, these tokens can unlock financial opportunities for farmers while driving transformative growth in the agricultural sector—all without needing to diversify from core farming activities.
Agriculture, forestry, and land use play critical roles in addressing climate change. The sector is uniquely positioned to meet food security demands, align with government net-zero targets, and remain profitable. With its substantial capacity to sequester carbon dioxide—a major greenhouse gas—agriculture can actively neutralise its carbon emissions.
This makes farming pivotal in the trade of carbon credits. Companies and investors are increasingly seeking to offset their carbon footprints by purchasing tokens or credits, which help restore environmental balance while supporting the global net-zero mission.
How to Generate Carbon Tokens
Farmers can create carbon tokens by:
Reducing on-farm carbon emissions: Implement actions that minimise emissions.
Enhancing carbon sequestration: Increase the storage of carbon in soil and biomass.
To issue tokens, you must back your efforts with robust, scientific data. Continuous improvement in your net carbon balance, measured against baselines, ensures an ongoing ability to generate credits.
Sandy, your digital farm assistant, supports this process by offering:
Predictive AI to evaluate the impact of farm management decisions.
Tailored mitigation strategies to optimise your carbon footprint.
Ensuring the Validity of Your Carbon Tokens
Using Sandy, the most comprehensive natural capital software in the agricultural sector, ensures your tokens are valid and credible. Features include:
A next-generation farm carbon calculator certified to ISO 14067 standards.
Alignment with global frameworks like the Science Based Targets initiative, PAS20250, and the GHG protocol.
The latest IPCC Soil Carbon methodology for precise data.
Unlike outdated tools or free calculators, Sandy combines unique model-data fusion techniques to measure carbon alongside broader natural capital metrics. This enables farmers to optimise not only carbon balance but also biodiversity, water quality, productivity, and profitability in one award-winning platform.
No Obligation to Trade Carbon Credits with Sandy
Sandy provides the tools to explore natural capital opportunities, including but not limited to carbon trading. As an independent platform, we ensure there is no obligation to trade credits through our system.
In fact, we estimate 80% of Sandy users never trade carbon credits. Instead, they use the platform to optimise farm sustainability, support food security, and enhance biodiversity, while improving overall business resilience.
For those ready to explore carbon trading, Sandy and Trinity Natural Capital Markets (NCM) deliver industry-leading scientific credibility and value.
Premium Carbon Tokens
Sandy helps farmers achieve high-quality carbon credits that meet the demands of the natural capital market. By aggregating tokens across your farm, you can maximise their value and secure premium prices.
It’s a win-win for the farmer.
Trade carbon credits from your farm
Seven steps to generate income from your natural capital.
If you can measure it, you can manage it and earn income from it.
Firstly, learn to love your farm data and digitise it. You can upload data to Sandy through your farm management system, like Gatekeeper or Muddy Boots, through Excel spreadsheets, or manually. Sandy accurately measures the environmental performance of your farm – covering carbon, biodiversity, and water protection.
With your carbon footprint, Sandy helps you plan improvements. To be eligible for carbon credits, you have to decrease your carbon footprint, but you don’t need to reach net zero to get started.
Step 1: Eligibility
The baseline summarises exactly what your current farm practices result in, annually in terms of emissions. It is important because any reductions from this starting point will generate credits. Setting the baseline will include mapping your field boundaries to provide accurate information on what land you have and its current condition. Historical management information is important to determine your baseline.
Sandy ensures your reporting is realistic and credible.
Step 2: Set the farm baseline
Consider the options Sandy provides you to improve your farm’s environmental performance and develop a plan going forward. For example, if switching from conventional to sustainable farming practices, what actions are required? If you want to aim for net zero in a given timeframe, what carbon mitigation actions should you take?
Make your own plan or use Sandy to recommend the optimal path for your enterprise. Sandy shows you the cost, efficiency and yield projections of the chosen plan.
Step 3: Explore and schedule practices
Based on the practices and timescales you choose, see what this plan would achieve in carbon tokens, your yield and income. Certain businesses perform so well with their environmental work that they can increase the value of carbon tokens through co-benefits, which recognise biodiversity gains or water protection work on your land alongside the carbon credit.
An additional market is emerging for individuals and companies to purchase these tokens, rather like a voucher scheme, for consumers to enjoy the natural environment that is being nurtured.
Step 4: Check the results
Once you have accurate data, evidence of your carbon and biodiversity actions, and a forward plan, you can begin preparing contractual arrangements with Trinity NCM and exploring your NCM dashboard. This provides all the key metrics you need to evaluate your performance and move forward.
There are different contract terms depending on whether you are the farm owner or tenant, whether you are forward contracting or spot trading.
Step 5: Sign the contract
Step 6: Implement and verify practice
Once the contract is agreed, you can begin to implement the practices you planned within the timescales you chose. A carbon footprint is carried out each year to continue measuring your net carbon balance and confirm the carbon credits are being generated. Third-party auditors will look at your evidence, then verify and confirm your farm’s carbon credits.
There are three ways to trade your farm’s carbon credits:
sell on the open NCM marketplace by setting a minimum price and waiting for the bids to come in;
sell to corporate investors, a pre-qualified buyer, who tends to set the price and criteria themselves, or
use the credits to sell or barter with businesses you already have a relationship with, such as processors, retailers or other land managers.
Step 7: Get rewarded
Discover Your Natural Capital Potential
Ready to explore carbon tokens? Start optimising your farm with Sandy today.