Jan 10 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Robyn L. Minor The Daily News, Bowling Green, Ky.

Randall Farris, who owns farmland in Warren and Butler counties, was among the 100 or so property owners Wednesday who came to see if they could sell the carbon captured by their land.

Farris said he raises cattle and hay on about 450 acres between the two counties.

"Most of these other conservation programs I don't qualify for," Farris said.

Farris said he first learned about the carbon exchange program at a Kentucky Farm Bureau conference in December and since then has been reading what he can find on the subject. Kentucky Farm Bureau is going to provide all the information it can about the carbon exchange program, according to Joe Cain, director of national affairs for the organization.

"Our ultimate goal is to make farmers in Kentucky more money," Cain said.

It turns out Farris' land probably doesn't qualify for participation in the carbon exchange market, because his pasture lands were last cropped in the 1980s. To be able to sell the carbon sequestered by his grassland now, it would have to have been converted from cropland after Jan. 1, 1999.

Farris and a large group of landowners were at the Barren River Area Development District office to hear from the Kentucky Corn Growers' Association and AgraGate of Iowa, two organizations that sell carbon credits on the Chicago Climate Exchange.

And while Farris may not qualify for the privately organized program now, he may in the future.

A rangeland program, which now just covers a few Midwest states, could move into Kentucky within a year -- something which Farris may qualify for -- according to Chad Martin of AgraGate.

As it stands now, Kentucky landowners mostly need to have no-till crops to be in the program or have newly planted grasses. Those practices sequester or store carbon in the ground, which is destroyed or significantly lessened by aggressive farming practices.

Ron Hunt, who has about 70 acres between farms in Rich Pond and Logan County, said he is interested in the process and came to learn more about it.

Hunt has about 30 acres in a wildlife conservation program where he has planted four types of native grasses.

"It was very expensive to plant -- about $5,000 -- so if I can get some money for it that would be good," Hunt said.

Landowners contract for five or six years for their carbons to be sequestered, which are in turn sold, at a cost dictated by the market, to large polluters. A landowner, for example, who has 1,000 no-till acres that qualify for the program, would have 600 credits for each of the five or six years to sell. All of them must be sold by the end of the program in 2013.

Adam Andrews, director of programs for the Kentucky Corn Growers Association, said his organization aims to get landowners about $2 an acre for participating. Kentucky cropland is certified to sequester .6 tons of carbon an acre. This week, carbon was trading for $1.92 for each ton or a little more than $1.10 an acre. So Adams said his organization may not sell the carbons each year the land is in the program, instead holding on to them until the market improves.

Ruth Steff-Pike, resource and conservation development coordinator for the Natural Resources and Conservation Service and one of the organizers of the workshop, said she is confident that the market will improve as legislation moves through Congress that will require industrial polluters to reduce their greenhouse emissions. Companies would first have to install measures to reduce those emissions, but also would be able to purchase credits for a certain percentage of emissions that they are unable to reduce. Credits have been sold as high as $4.85 under current standards.

Large farm operations or landfills that have methane digesters also could be eligible to sell those credits. Those digesters help offset the methane gas produced by animals. A dairy cow, for example, produces 4.42 metric tons of methane gas each year.

One farmer asked Steff-Pike if farmers might eventually be asked to offset those animal methane emissions, making it prudent to hold on to any carbon credits they might have from a digester or other farmland.

She said it appears the farmers would be exempt from legislation under consideration.

Also of interest to several people in attendance was the possibility that owners of forested land would be eligible to sell the carbons their land sequesters, Steff-Pike said.

Credits are assigned per acre of forest based on the type of tree and density of plantings.

Rodney Hendrickson, Steff-Pike's counterpart in London, said several people in his region are interested in the forestry program.

"I have one landowner with 2,000 acres of intensely managed forests," he said. "I also have two large companies with 40,000 acres each."

Hendrickson said he wanted to get as much information as possible for clients.

That's why Steve Thurmond, executive director of the Franklin-Simpson County Chamber of Commerce, said he was at the meeting.

"Just sitting there, I thought of several farmers this could benefit," Thurmond said. "We are going to organize a meeting about it in Simpson County."

Martin said interest at the Kentucky meetings, so far, has been high. About 100 people attended two meetings Tuesday. There were two meetings Wednesday and another was scheduled this morning in Daviess County.

Selling the carbons is not without a cost. The Chicago Climate Exchange charges a fee of 15 cents a credit and a 5 cent per credit trading fee and AgraGate charges a 10 percent commission. The considerably smaller Kentucky Corn Growers' Association currently doesn't charge a commission, but could in the future.

-- For more information about carbon exchange, go to www.agragate.com, chicagoclimatex.com or www.kycorn.org. Friday the Kentucky Farm Bureau will have information on its Web page at www.kyfb.com.