Farmers, ranchers and landowners can produce and sell carbon offsets by capturing and storing emissions. They do this using carbon farming and carbon sequestration processes, which involve implementing procedures that remove CO2 from the atmosphere by converting the gas into organic matter in the soil and eventually into plants. Once CO2 is absorbed, it helps restore the soil's natural properties – simultaneously increasing crop production and reducing pollution.

Farmers, ranchers and landowners can offset carbon emissions in countless ways. While not an exhaustive list, here are a few practices that typically qualify as projects producing offsets.

• Returning biomass to the soil as mulch after harvest instead of removal or burning. This practice reduces evaporation from the soil surface, which helps conserve water. Biomass also helps feed soil microbes and earthworms, allowing nutrients to cycle and strengthen soil structure.
• Use of conservation or no-till practices that improve water and air quality by increasing nutrients, soil structure, porosity, and slope.
• Using nutrient management and precision agriculture to maintain plant and soil health instead of chemicals or pesticides.
• Planting cover crops during the off-season to prepare land for cash crops by improving soil quality.
• Replacing surface irrigation systems with flood irrigation systems so that runoff water can be recycled to improve efficiency.
• Encouraging forest regrowth to remove, store and reuse carbon in trees and plants.
• Returning degraded lands to their natural state, converting acreage to grassland, or planting trees or seeds to convert vacant land into forests or woodlands.
• Crop rotation to ensure sufficient nutrients in the soil.
• Switching to alternative types of fuels such as lower carbon biofuels such as corn and ethanol and biodiesel derived from biomass.
• Change in manure management and change in feeding schedule.

After reading this list, you may be wondering how the volume and value of carbon offsets produced by each of these methods is determined. To be clear, this is no easy task. Monitoring and evaluating emissions and reducing them can be a challenge even for the most experienced agricultural professionals.

Fortunately, when it comes time to list offsets on VCM, a third-party verification professional can collect, analyze and verify data from your property, perhaps even conduct a site visit, to determine how much offset you're eligible for. New technology being developed can also remotely monitor the amount of carbon sequestered in your soil, eliminating the need for any guesswork. (Carboncredits.com)