Carbon Tokens & Credits
Trade farm carbon:
Getting started with farm carbon credits
What is a carbon token?
Carbon and biodiversity tokens - or ‘credits’ - provide farmers with potentially significant new income streams. Aligned with the correct software and an effective natural capital market, carbon tokens can unlock new income streams for farmers and unleash a seismic improvement in the prosperity of the industry, without diversifying from farming activities.
Agriculture, forestry and other land use sectors are critical to helping the world meet its ambitious climate change targets. Agriculture is under increasing pressure to provide food security while delivering against the Government’s net-zero targets - all while remaining profitable. Farming offers huge potential due to its large capacity to sequester carbon dioxide, one of the major greenhouse gases, in biomass and soils. Farming is one of the few industries with the ability to pro-actively sequester the carbon it generates. The industry is therefore centre stage in trading farm carbon credits, as many companies and individual investors want to mitigate their carbon generating activities and offset or neutralise their emissions by buying carbon tokens or ‘credits’ that protect the environment by restoring their carbon balance.
How can I create carbon tokens?
As a farmer, to generate carbon tokens or ‘credits’, you must decrease your on-farm carbon footprint by taking action that cuts emissions or increases sequestration, and you have to be able to prove it with evidence in the form of robust, scientific data. You can generate credits continuously as long as you set baselines and carry on reducing your net carbon balance.
Sandy, as your digital assistant, supports you in exploring a range of mitigation strategies to reduce your carbon footprint, while testing and optimising the impact of farm management decisions through predictive AI technology.
How do I know my carbon tokens are valid?
Sandy is the most comprehensive natural capital navigator available in the food and farming industry. The software includes agriculture’s most credible, new generation farm carbon calculator, underpinned by the highest analytical integrity. Our software is certified to ISO 14067-accredited standard for carbon footprinting, aligned with the Science Based Targets initiative, PAS20250 and GHG protocol, using the latest 2019 IPCC Soil Carbon methodology.
Unlike first-generation tools and ‘free’ carbon calculators, Sandy’s farm carbon audits are based on a unique model-data fusion approach. This credibly measures your carbon alongside your farm’s wider natural capital, creating the most credible toolkit for optimising your carbon balance, biodiversity, water quality, productivity and financial performance, all in one easy-to-use, award-winning package.
Am I obliged to trade carbon tokens with Sandy?
Sandy provides a means of navigating natural capital opportunities, including and beyond carbon. We are wholly independent of outside investors or agri businesses and there is no obligation to trade farm carbon or generate carbon tokens using our software.
In-fact, we estimate that 80% of Sandy customers will never trade carbon.
We are against replacing farming for food with farming carbon. Many farmers use Sandy as a farm optimisation tool to supplement food security and improve sustainability by measuring their biodiversity net gain, evidencing provenance-backed produce, demonstrating compliance, and planning decisions for greater farm business resilience.
If you are ready to explore generating and trading farm carbon tokens, Sandy and Trinity Natural Capital Markets offer sector-leading, scientific credibility, access and value.
The highest quality carbon tokens
Our digital assistant, Sandy, will help you reduce your costs overall and aggregate carbon tokens across your farm. We believe in the ruralisation of gains; farmers should be sufficiently rewarded for their work in protecting the land for future generations.
Through Sandy, you get high-quality carbon credits which can be used to meet the demands of the natural capital market, generating premium prices for your farm.
Discover the seven steps to getting started with farm carbon tokens below. Your farm, your data, your reward.
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.
Step 1: Eligibility
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 2: Set the farm baseline
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 3: Explore and schedule practices
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 4: Check the results
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 5: Sign the contract
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 6: Implement and verify practices
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.
Step 7: Get rewarded
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.
Ready to explore carbon tokens?
Understand your farm’s natural capital potential with Sandy.