One year after its creation, Climate Agriculture Alliance1 now represents 4,800 farmers involved in various carbon programs on the French market and over 7,400 farmers in Europe. Its mission: "to ensure the reinforcement of confidence in this new industry, which is the agricultural carbon market," says Anaël Bibard, president of the association, who is also president and co-founder of FarmLeap.
And it is in particular with this objective that the association has just made official the launch of its first FarmVault tool, this Wednesday, March 1 at the Salon de l'Agriculture." The digital platform is completely independent: it was developed by a trusted third party and audited to uniquely identify parcels committed to a carbon compensation program." This "safe" allows, in a secure manner, to avoid double counting of emission reductions and carbon capture of farmers participating in several carbon compensation programs.
"It's a tool for clarifying the market : for farmers, they know what they are committing to as soon as they register their plots in FarmVault, and that goes for buyers too. The legitimacy of agriculture and the sustainability of the market are at stake," adds Charles Vaury, treasurer of Climate Agriculture Alliance and director of transition at Gaïago.
The association's ambition is "to make FarmVault the reference tool on the European market. The Label bas carbone programs (field crop workshop, Carbon Agri, hedges, orchard planting, Ecométhane), Gaïago Carbone, Soil Capital, Rize program, Oléoze and Regeneration program are at this stage integrated into the platform. And the platform will be enriched as new players enter the market.
"Increasing the value of the carbon market to finance the transition"
Today, the price of a ton of stored C is around €30-35. "But in the United States, some carbon credits are bought for up to €700/t of stored C. It is a voluntary market: a company is free to pay the price it wants if it believes that there is a stake in the value of agriculture.
For Charles Vaury, "the security provided by FarmVault represents an additional argument to accelerate the financing of more local and impactful projects, and also to better value them. Increasing the value of carbon credits is an objective for the entire market. At 30-35 €/t, it is not viable today for farmers, given the cost of the transition to regenerative agriculture, estimated at around 150-200 €/ha. If we count, on average, 2 t of C stored thanks to the practices put in place, we are far from financing the transition. 70 to 100 €/t of stored C would be a more reasonable price for that".
The association also aims "to be a forum for exchange between its various players," says Anaël Bibard. It has also been appointed by the European Commission as an observer member of the "Carbon Removal" expert group. This allows us to be as close as possible to the discussions and to make the voice of agricultural carbon heard. Among the topics under discussion: "the potential evolution of the additionality criterion. Even if it remains imperative, the idea would be to treat it differently for carbon sequestration and reduction. The objective behind this is to have the efforts of the pioneers of the transition recognized in these programs. To be continued!
1. The association was founded by companies active in the European agricultural carbon market: FarmLeap, Gaïago, TerraTerre, Genesis, SoilCapital, MyEasyFarm, Rize and CarboneFarmers. They have since been joined by Sysfarm, Agdatahub, Filière CRC, Klim, La Coopérative Carbone, GreenPods, Pur Projet, UPL and ReGeneration.
Article by Sophie Guyomard, 02 March 2023 at 17:59
This document contains copyrighted material. Reproduced by MyEasyFarm with the permission of CFC Paris. Telephone: 01 44 07 47 70.
