Ep #14: A Different Kind of Carbon Program: Simple, Farmer-Friendly, No Practice Changes with Stephen Lamb and Tony Feitz
What if your soil could pay you back? In this episode of The Land Ledger, Brian Kearney talks with Stephen Lamb and Tony Feitz of Andes Ag about how the Andes carbon program is allowing farmers to earn $10/acre without changing the way they farm.
Listen in to learn who’s eligible for the Andes Carbon Program, how to get started, and why even skeptical farmers should take a second look. You’ll hear about the benefits of using microbes to capture carbon and the financial benefits for farmers, the role of supply and demand in carbon markets, and the big potential here for revenue—without sacrificing yield.
Listen to the Full Episode:
What You’ll Hear About in This Episode:
Eligibility criteria for the Andes Carbon Program.
The importance of soil pH.
How to earn $10/acre with a new type of carbon program without changing the way you farm.
How supply and demand dynamics affect carbon credit pricing.
The process of verifying and validating carbon credits.
The future of carbon credit markets.
Ideas Worth Sharing:
“Another thing that I think separates us is that we provide the product for free. So we will enroll acres from farmers and make sure they meet all of our qualifications… Treated acres get a payment of $10 per acre.” - Tony Feitz
“Whether a farmer really believes that carbon markets are smoke and mirrors or not, there’s still a viable opportunity for them to put an additional $10 per acre in their pocket.” - Stephen Lamb
“Whether you’re fully embedded in this regenerative ag portion of the business with cover crops and no-till and everything else, or you are turning your ground black, you can still be involved in a carbon program, and that’s Andes.” - Stephen Lamb
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Read the Transcript:
Stephen Lamb: Ag really has the ability to step up because we can lessen our inputs, we can capture more carbon unlike any other industry, and that's why more money has kind of flowed into agriculture versus other industries.
Welcome to The Land Ledger podcast, where investing in farmland meets the future of finance. I’m your host, Brian Kearney, here to guide you through the untapped potential of farmland as an asset.
Whether you’re already investing in farmland, want to invest in farmland, or you’re just curious about safe alternatives to stocks and bonds, this is your space to learn, explore, and be inspired.
Your journey to farmland investing starts now.
Brian Kearney: Alright, welcome to The Land Ledger. Today we have Stephen and Tony from Andes. Excited to dive in and learn a little bit about the biological space, carbon credits. That type of stuff is gonna be really fun to dive into. But first off, welcome to the show.
Stephen Lamb: Thanks for having us here.
Brian Kearney: Yeah, I'm excited to dive in. Okay. So what we'll do first is just learn a little bit about both of your background. So Tony, let's start with you. How did you get into the industry and then how did you come to Andes?
Tony Feitz: Yeah, my background is in agronomy, but I started in turf science, so I was on golf courses and decided I wanted to switch industries and had moved away after college and moved back by Lafayette, Indiana, where my wife's family's from, and took a job as a researcher for an agronomy company doing testing for corn and soybean research for different seed companies and basically like field tech, kinda low level and then worked up to research agronomist and then general manager.
Through that job, met the co-founders of Andes and actually did research for them in their biological space for two years. Really liked working with them. Was intrigued by it, and then I have been with Andes a little over three years now.
Started off as Midwest regional Manager, have established a couple teams for sampling and data, and now working as the grower relationship manager. So trying to be–just working on building a new team as we cover more acres and more territory and build teams and work with farmers.
Brian Kearney: Yeah. That's awesome. I love the agronomy background as well. That probably comes in very handy with this.
Tony Feitz: It sure does.
Brian Kearney: I bet. Perfect. Yeah. Steven, how about yourself? How'd you get in the industry? How'd you come to Andes?
Stephen Lamb: Yeah. So, I was born and raised in northwest Tennessee. I pretty much grew up in ag my entire life.
My parents did not own a farm or farm directly, but I worked on a couple different hog farms and things of that nature. So I was the typical FFA kid growing up. Left small town Tennessee and joined the Air Force and spent seven years in the military, traveled the world and got to do some pretty awesome stuff that way.
And then when I got out, decided I was full on ag. Qent to school in Middle Tennessee at Middle Tennessee State University and did ag business, ag econ. And from there actually, ended up here in the Memphis area and started working at Indigo back when they were kind of getting off the ground.
That was 2019, 2020. Started helping them build out their grain marketplace, to have growers enrolled in that. Then quickly transitioned over to their, basically their inside merchandising program. So it was calling farmers all over the country, buying and selling grain, moving grain from point A to point B, and then also we got into the OTC market at that same time.
So learned everything there was to learn about, calls and puts and accumulators and min maxes and everything there, and took that education and went over to Stuart Peterson Group Total Farm Marketing. I got to work with them at Indigo and understand their business.
So I got my series three and went and worked with them for a while and then transitioned to DTN and worked at DTN for the last, I think two and a half years. And then back in September, met the team here at Andes and they were looking to bring somebody on that could do their outreach, essentially handle all of their grower-facing trade shows, marketing, stuff of that nature, as well as that top of the funnel introduction to Tony and his team. And so that's sort of where I've been sitting at now for the last six months or so of really helping drive the company into their core markets they're trying to grow in.
And yeah, it's been a lot of fun to see kind of the comparison I've had with other carbon markets and how I've gotten to have relations with other ag retailers and see kind of how Andes fits in that and that synergy that we sort of bring in trying to bring some more profits to farmers out there. So it's been a nice fit so far.
Brian Kearney: Yeah. That's awesome. I'll wanna dive into the Air Force stuff in a second, but I'll comment real quick on the grain marketing. So that's interesting that–I could see how that would work here, but that is not an easy industry to be in.
That would be just brutal. We tell our grain marketing guys that all the time, like, you've got the hardest job 'cause no one ever likes you when the market's going up, it's good, but they're, you're paying 'em. And then when the market's going down, you're still paying.
Stephen Lamb: I’ve had plenty of guys pick up the phone and tell me that they don't wanna talk to me until they get me $5 corn and then when I make it happen, they are, “Get to $4.99.” Well, wait a second. I want $5.15, so.
Brian Kearney: Yep. Oh yeah. Yep. That's how it goes. It's a brutal market, but, yeah. What'd you do in the Air Force?
Stephen Lamb: The old term for it was life support. So I was air crew flight equipment as the newer term.
I was a 1P071. Basically we packed all of the. Parachutes life rafts, auction equipment, night vision goggles, survival gear, anything that an air crew member put on their body to save their life, either in flight or post-flight or behind the enemy lines. Me and my crew handled it. We put all that equipment on the aircraft, make sure it was inspected and good to go.
So a lot of time on the flight line. I mainly worked heavies. I worked C130s for two years, and then C17s for four. Nice. So I miss it quite a bit. I miss being on the flight line, but yeah. Yeah, those were the good days.
Brian Kearney: Yeah, the pilots are probably nice to you too if you're packing their parachutes so.
Stephen Lamb: Some of them, yeah.
Brian Kearney: Yeah. Perfect.
Stephen Lamb: Yeah, no, probably nicer. Yeah. But the heavies don't use those parachutes very often.
Brian Kearney: True. You can land a C130 pretty much anywhere, but, yeah. No, that's helpful. It is good to know the background. What I want to dive into is the biological industry and exactly what you're doing as kind of your niche in that industry.
So what does Andes do, for the audience members who have not heard of you, what's the 32nd sales pitch to a new farmer?
Tony Feitz: So we have a biological strain that has, it's naturally occurring, it's been isolated. And so we have set it up as–farmers can use it as a seed treatment or put it in furrow and it will have a symbiotic relationship with the plant roots and will free up some cation in the soil.
And then as the plant brings in CO2, it will combine to make calcium carbonate and other carbonates. And so taking something that's naturally occurring and then introducing it into a new environment, and it's just a whole lot faster than what's already going on in the soil. But what we do is measure with soil samples, direct soil samples for every field to see how much calcium carbonate and other carbonates have been sequestered throughout the season. So taking a bacterial strain from a different part of the country and moving it into a very specific environment has worked very well.
Brian Kearney: Couple questions there. Does it have any effect on the root system, either positive or negative? And then what does it do to yield?
Tony Feitz: Yeah, so I'll start with the yield first. It was really intriguing to me as a research agronomist to study this. We had 16 corn locations, 10 bean locations in three states, and I was really hoping for a yield bump. And across the board, two years of testing it was yield neutral.
And we were really hoping that they were gonna have something to send it to Tanya, the CTO. And she was like, “Oh, that's great.” Like, what do you mean that's great—looking for yield? Like we just didn't wanna see a yield drag. So that's something that's pretty unique is that with the two years of research and then three years on the team, it's been yield neutral except for a handful of IDC fields in Minnesota.
One of the cation that's freed up is iron, and so we've seen a little yield bump in a handful of fields, but without those fields, it's been yield neutral.
Brian Kearney: Interesting. What states was that? You said there were three states that you're looking at.
Tony Feitz: So that was primarily Minnesota, but then also a little bit in North Dakota, and then some of the farmers cross over to South Dakota. So when I was conducting the plots as research agronomist, I could see a little bit of difference in the plants. They looked a little darker green. They looked like they were a little bit healthier in terms of like gray leaf spot, little reduction there, but again–
Brian Kearney: Interesting.
Tony Feitz: nothing amounted to yield. It was more anecdotal, and we've had a few farmers tell us the same thing. “The plants look a little healthier, but we're not gonna claim any yield benefits.” That's backbone of the company.
Brian Kearney: That makes sense. I respect that. It's not always the case. So for that, let's just say it's a seed coating. What's the cost of that per acre, per bag, however you want to look at it. And then what would that be like dollars and cents. Why would a farmer do it? Because if you're putting money in and there's no yield bump, there has to be something else so you guys wouldn't have any clients. So let's dive into that part a little bit.
Tony Feitz: Yeah, so it's another thing that I think separates us is that we provide the product for free. So we will enroll acres from farmers and make sure that they meet all of our qualifications. Our microbe and our testing require certain things, but we provide the microbe for free.
The treated acres get a payment of $10 per acre, and we need about 10% of the enrolled acres to be untreated for a baseline check, and we pay $3 an acre for those. We have a one year agreement with the goal of having farmers re-enroll multiple years. We've got some farmers that have been in the program for four years now, and continuing strong.
We'll calculate how much product they need and we'll ship it to 'em, and then they can either apply it as a seed treatment or put it in their fertilizer tank and put it in furrow. We just, we need that microbe to be on the seed in order to have that close proximity and colonization as the plant starts to grow.
Brian Kearney: That's fascinating. So product is free. You actually get paid for it. That's kind of cool. That makes more sense when you talk about wanting to have no yield loss and not being super concerned about no yield bump. that makes sense. What type of farmer are you looking for? And I'll kind of preface that with most of our listeners are Illinois, Indiana, Iowa. It's I-state farmers, corn and bean farmers. Pretty good sized as our typical listener.
Tony Feitz: Yeah, so this year we're in nine states. So North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois. So that's the territory we're covering. The primary crops are corn and soybeans.
We've worked with wheat and canola and sunflowers in the past, and we're hoping to work with them again. A little bit of it depends on the kind of commodity prices and do we have enough of a particular crop to have good data? But yeah, what we try to do is have a product that is available to growers of all sizes.
So, we're not necessarily targeting any particular grower or it's easier when there's John Deere Ops Center or climate or some technology component of it, because we need to verify total number of acres. The more data that we can get from a farm management software, the easier it is for everybody.
But we have some farmers that they've got one field in the program. And we've got some that have one's north of 70 this year for 13,000 acres, so we really want to be available to as many growers as possible.
Brian Kearney: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. When you're talking to growers and they have pushback, what's the main concern that they have?
Tony Feitz: One of the main concerns is what is it gonna do to my soil? What's the long term effect on soil, because we're introducing calcium carbonate, right? It's lime. Some of the guys, the Northern states already have a high pH and they're like, “I don't want my pH to increase.” And what we've seen in the fields that have–we had a pilot in 2021 and then the same fields have been enrolled the three years since then.
And those fields have had no pH change over the years. The pH of a field is actually a bit more dynamic than what most people know. It starts off low in the spring, and then it increases throughout the season and it's highest in the fall. And we've tracked it with spring, summer, and fall sampling for three years now, and a lot of those fields.
And it kind of returns to that same starting point every year or pretty close to it. So the amount of calcium carbonate that we're introducing to the soil is negligible for long-term pH.
Brian Kearney: That was gonna be my question 'cause if you add that outside of this system, that certainly would be increasing over time. So that makes sense.
Tony Feitz: Calcium carbonate percolates down through the soil profile and doesn't stay in that top soil very long. And so that's one of the nice things. It's a high permanence carbon source, so then it sinks deep into the soil and we don't want it to sit in that top soil. We want it to move down into the subsoil.
Brian Kearney: Yeah. What's another typical piece of pushback you hear from a farmer? Because on the face of it, it sounds great. No yield loss, 10 extra bucks an acre. What are the other concerns there?
Stephen Lamb: Yeah, I think it comes down to guys wanting to try something new and being comfortable with it and not fully knowing and having mass reporting. 'Cause farmers talk to each other, right? Like they want to know that their neighbors have tried this, like they didn't have any effects. So that's sort of been a little bit of a pushback. They wanna have somebody to talk to and we have a lot of growers up in the Dakotas that have worked with us since the beginning that are happy to have conversations and whatnot.
But I think it's really letting people understand that, “Hey, we say that there's no yield, drag, or anything of that nature.” And then speaking to someone about that that is factual or the ease of applying the product and then them having somebody who's actually applied it and getting just a chance to talk it through, I think that's the biggest thing.
'Cause they don't wanna feel isolated and that they're trying something new on their own. And usually, when you can bring that community together and it's kind of the packed mindset, like people are willing to try it out.
Brian Kearney: Speaking on that, how easy is it to apply?
Stephen Lamb: Yeah, so the product is gonna come in a liquid right now. It's gonna come either in a two and a half gallon jug or a half gallon jug. The application rate is a half a fluid ounce per acre. We tell most to either apply it in furrow with starter fertilizer or as a seed treatment, and then you know, it's really dependent on if growers have to change whether they're doing two units of seed to the acre, so their seed count, or if they're doing it by a hundred weight. However they're putting it on, the application still comes out to half fluid, ounce to the acre.
So as long as they can do the math of what their population is or what their a hundred weight is. Then they can come out to how much product they're putting on per acre.
Brian Kearney: Okay, that makes sense. And where does this not work? What farmers are not a good fit? So we talked about how you want a broad range, but I'm sure there's situations where this doesn't work 'cause you're kind of taking some of the risk on yourself.
You pay, I like to know kinda when you pay what that looks like as well for a farmer like tactically. But yeah, you're taking some risk on yourself, so I'm sure you can't just take anything that comes through.
Stephen Lamb: Yeah, so we're shooting for a pH of six and a half or higher. And so ground that's less than that, that we're not super interested in just due to the compatibility with the microbe.
We wanna be on dry land and then ground that has not been limed in the last 12 months. So that's the profile of who we're mainly trying to target. If they check those boxes, we should be, in essence, good to go, and if they can apply the product, how I mentioned earlier, and then that's the majority of–that pH is the big kicker.
We need to see soil samples and validation that the pH is where, where it needs to be.
Brian Kearney: Okay, that makes sense. So then a lot of people are already doing soil samples, so that's probably not an issue, but if they don't have a recent soil sample, what does that look like? Is there, and I mean I'm sure farmers are gonna ask is their cost sharing there. Do you have a preferred provider? And how recent does the soil sample have to be?
Stephen Lamb: Yeah, so what we're looking for is a sample no more than three years old. And we don't take the samples for anyone. We don't provide that service. It's been something we've chatted about internally, but that's, we need to get farther down the road before we have the bandwidth to really do that.
So a good example is if somebody lines their field and they took a sample pre-lime, they saw their pH was low, so they limed, we would need a post-lime sample. To show that pH is actually above that six and a half marker. 'Cause we're looking for that one-to-one pH, not the buffer. And so that's our main indicator of that field qualifying.
Brian Kearney: Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. That's helpful. And then when does payment happen? Is there a specific month? Is it when grain is harvested? What does that look like?
Stephen Lamb: Yeah, so we're shooting for, December end of growing season. And then if farmers prefer, they can have that paid out in January. So really December or January, just depending on how they run their business.
Brian Kearney: Okay. Perfect. And then let's talk a little bit about what's in it for you guys. Tony, why would you be paying farmers 10 bucks to send them something to treat their acres with? What is in it for you all?
Tony Feitz: Yeah, so we pay the farmers, if they treat the fields, they send us the data that we need throughout the season, then we pay, whether it's sequester carbon or not.
And then we'll go through the field in the spring and the fall and collect soil samples and then run them through a lab and see what the results are. And through the course of the next year, then like right now we're finishing up 2024 verification validation. So Andes owns the carbon credits at the end of the season.
And then we will take those and market them to in-set buyers and offset buyers. And so that's how the company makes money is the long game of selling carbon credits. But trying to offer that security of $10 an acre to the farmer and have it where it's less risk on them and they can count on that payment at the end of the season.
Brian Kearney: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. What carbon markets are not always the most trusted, I would say, particularly here in the Midwest? Everyone kind of thinks it's smoke and mirrors a little bit. I don't know enough to decide one way or the other to be honest. But you both don't clearly, or you wouldn't be doing this.
So what is the benefit of carbon markets? And what do you think the long term outlook is for carbon markets and long term? Let's say, I don't know, two years, three years? That's long term for any markets really.
Stephen Lamb: Yeah. So it's hard to say what the long-term scope is, right? There's a lot of social drivers, everything of that nature that really pus where we go as an industry and really outside factors that also push that. So for the long-term play, it's pretty hard to put a finger on that pulse. But as far as short-term play and in the now, there is a desire for CPGs and others to buy offset credits, or in-set credits to help their internal missions and campaigns.
And so what that does, whether a farmer really believes that carbon markets are smoke and mirrors or not, there's still a viable opportunity for them to put an additional with us $10 per acre in their pocket. And so if you're bought into the mission, that's great. Like we love that partnership. If you're not fully bought into the mission, that's still $10 in your pocket for really not having to have no farming practices changed at all and putting on a new product.
So yeah, in the short term, it's easy money. Long term, we'll see what happens.
Brian Kearney: Yeah, it's a good answer. And every farmer I've talked to about any of these things, it's like, “I don't know if it's gonna be around in two years, but I'll take the money while it's here.” So, that makes sense. I think that's a good pitch, really, that's a good pitch.
Tony, can you explain the carbon credit markets to me as if I'm a five-year-old. Like, like, try to explain that to me 'cause I understand stock markets. I understand the commodity market less than stocks, but I understand it. I don't understand the carbon market at all. So can you talk a little bit about that?
Tony Feitz: Yeah, I'm gonna let Steven handle that one. I know a lot more about the agronomy and what's going on in the field. He knows the market, so I'm gonna let him talk on that one.
Stephen Lamb: Yeah, so I mean on that, you've got to–any market, Brian, and you know this as well as anybody else, it's all about supply and demand, right?
And there's been so much demand from outside industries to change how we as a human population affect the broader scope of pollution in the globe, right? So I mean, that's your macro, that's your story, that's there. And you start to niche that down in the micro of how does specific industries impact that pollution rate into the earth, into the globe.
And that comes down to plant life and agriculture of pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere and turning that into oxygen, and then also trying to capture that CO2 and turn it into a permanent offset in the soil. So now that we've micro down to that, it's supply and demand, we have industries who have said that they want to be carbon neutral by whatever date, or even entire countries and entire industries, specific businesses.
And so that they either need to cut all their production down to zero and go out of business to have a zero percent impact, or they need to buy some level of an offset, or an inset credit. And so that's where ag really has the ability to step up because we can lessen our inputs, we can capture more carbon unlike any other industry, and that's why more money has kind of flowed into agriculture versus other industries.
So with that, no, you don't see a physical paper change hands with the sale of a carbon credit. You can't go physically put your hand in the soil and pull it out. 'cause it's microscopic, but it's still there. It's still somewhat tangible and it's still in of itself is a supply and demand thing. So as socially we want to be more conscious of our footprint, there's gonna be more demand there and ask of farmers to provide more credits that we can have a larger offset for different industries. So yeah, I hope that answers that question. It's a pretty broad one to answer, but it really comes down to the same as equities or commodities.
Brian Kearney: Yeah. And just kind of a curiosity question for me. Is there anyone trying to sell these to retail or to hedge funds or traders who are trying to get some arbitrage there? Is that happening as well, or is it still predominantly selling directly to companies?
Stephen Lamb: On our end, we have direct partnerships, right? So if you go and look, there are brokerage firms out there who broker credits and stuff like that. And there, I don't know of any personally that have gotten super large, but most that are in this space have direct relationships with CPGs and other buyers.
Brian Kearney: Okay. That's interesting. For that farmer that is still thinking this kind of sounds too good to be true, in what situations does that $10 not get paid out and, I don't even know how you would do this, but I'm just curious 'cause I'm sure the question gets asked, what guarantees do you have that it's not going to torch their yield?
I mean, that one is super hard 'cause weather has so much impact when they plant. Each individual farmer can be completely different, just the field next door. But is there something you can do? You can kind of look at a 10-year average and if it drops 20% below that for whatever reason, that is a decent assumption.
If not everyone else did. And it sounds like the data already says that it doesn't happen, but is there any guarantee there? I'm just curious.
Tony Feitz: Yeah, so the first question, when does it not get paid? The main reasons would be like if a field is prevent plant or switch to a crop that doesn't have our treatment on, that's not in an approved crop, but what we try to do is like if that crop gets moved to another field, does that field also qualify for the program? Can we pick that one up? Because the more fields that we can get, the more we can pay the farmer and the more carbon credits we hope to have at the end of the day. And so we're really trying to make it where we know that these changes are gonna happen in planting and everybody listening to this knows just how crazy planting gets, right?
Yes. So we're trying to build our system around that and know that when we send an agreement out at the beginning of the year, that's a game plan for the year. And then what we do, we require data throughout the season so that we can update and have an amendment that we'll send out hopefully a little before harvest and say, “This is what actually happened.”
And then we're gonna pay you based on what actually happened. So we're trying to build it in where we can have that variability and account for it. So then that brings up the other point. If the farmers don't get us the data and we can't actually show that our product was applied on those acres, some sort of map, some sort of history for the field, that's built into the agreement that if we can't get that data, we can't prove it, we can't verify it, then we don't pay on that. So it really boils down to did the field get treated and did we get the data that we needed?
Brian Kearney: That makes complete sense.
Tony Feitz: Can you repeat the second question?
Brian Kearney: Yeah. So the data's there that there is no yield drop that anyone can see over the past two or three years. That makes sense. But if I am that farmer, I'm still thinking like, “Man, if I hit a 20% yield drop, I'm screwed. Like, I'm not gonna be able to pay back my operating note. I might not be able to pay the mortgage if I have a loan on this.” So that would be something you'd have to get over, which kind of speaks to if someone else has done it, they'll be more comfortable. But for that first person, how do you get past that? How do you push through and say like, “Look, here's the data.” Is there some sort of guarantee or is it just, “Hey, here's the data, it's 10 bucks an acre.” I mean, there's no guarantee for anything. You can plant seed and it can have a 30% drop if you got, I don't know.
Tony Feitz: Yeah. So part of what we've built into our verification process is that the data we need from the farmers at the end of the season, we also need yield data.
So we want to know what happened on your farm. And if there is a yield drag, then we're gonna go and investigate that because one of the main things that we're trying to do is to provide more revenue for the growers, right? And so if our product were to have a yield drag, then like that's gonna impact our verification as well.
And so it's something that we have to look into and have kind of an investigation and say, okay, like, what happened? So again, it's one of those things where it's not just gonna impact the farmer, it's also gonna impact us
Stephen Lamb: On that, I would say, I would tell somebody who's a little nervous in that case that it's always better to crawl before you walk and walk before you run.
If you're farming, 1500 acres and you're really nervous about a new product. One, typically not every acre is gonna qualify so there's security there, but secondly, maybe we do a quarter of what qualifies. So you kind of get your toes wet this year and see how it does, and then we move on next year and we kind of expand across the farm.
We have a history of doing that. We've been very successful in doing that. And we are comfortable in that progression. So we want the grower to be comfortable in that as well. We're not gonna try to enroll the entire farm if somebody's not a hundred percent on board.
Brian Kearney: Yeah. And I just thought as you were talking about that and talking about the testing, do you know if working with you all would also qualify or help them qualify for those research credits that you can get on the farm?
'Cause that could be kind of interesting. I imagine that it would 'cause all you have to do is say you're tracking something on each farm for a specific outcome. And I imagine that would work and they could probably juice their credits that way. That's interesting. Do you have anyone doing that?
Tony Feitz: So I guess just point of clarification before I dive into the answer, what credits are you referring to?
Brian Kearney: Yeah, that's a great question. I can't remember. We'll put it in the show notes, but there are a few companies that are helping people get government tax credits based on tangible research they're doing on their farm. You have to be a bigger farm.
So I think you have to have over 2,000 acres, 1,800 acres, something like that. But it can be pretty substantial. And something like this, I sure imagine would qualify, but I don't know. So I just wondered if you have seen that.
Tony Feitz: So I guess the short answer to your question is no. I'm not aware of anybody doing that, but it sounds interesting. I think the reason I hesitated was just one of the things that I like to talk about with our program is that our program is stackable with other carbon programs. And so because we have, we're looking for inorganic carbon, most of the different programs that are out there for agriculture are organic carbon programs and so as long as the farmer tells us that they're in another program and then we are able to have a communication with that other company and make sure that we're both on the same page and approve it, that's one of the things that the growers in our program have been able to take advantage of in the last couple years is being able to stack carbon programs.
Brian Kearney: That's fascinating. Cool. Okay, that makes sense. How big is this carbon credit market? Is there still a huge–'cause before, Steven, you were talking about how markets are all supply and demand. Right now, is there a lot more supply or a lot more demand? Is it kind of finding an equilibrium? Tell me a little bit about that.
Stephen Lamb: Yeah. I'd say it's a mixed bag and it's still the market in of itself and totality, still trying to find an equilibrium.I think it's still new enough that we're–everybody's trying to figure it out and figure out how it lands, especially as the government gets involved. But even then, how do companies that want to lower their impact or change their offsets, how do they go out and find those?
And those marketplaces still aren't fully developed. So yeah, it's still figuring itself out, I believe. I don't work on that side of the business, so I can't really speak to that in totality. But as you look at the broader market, you can see that we've changed a lot. We've learned a lot, and we're getting to the point of kind of having the whole thing under control, I hope.
Brian Kearney: Yeah, it's a nuanced answer for a nuanced question, I guess. Okay. Well, what would you like to leave the audience with? We're getting close to time, so I want to be aware of that, but what's one key takeaway that they can take from this that you think can help them in their operation?
Stephen Lamb: Yeah. I would say that anybody who's kind of on the fence of incorporating something new to give it a shot on just a portion of the farm.
Whether you're fully embedded in this regenerative ag portion of the business with cover crops and no-till and everything else, or you are turning your ground black, you can still be involved in a carbon program, and that's Andes, so if you have the ability to apply a liquid product or have your seed treated, then there's really no reason to not take advantage of an extra $10 to the acre, especially on a smaller portion of ground of what qualifies and try it out. Yeah. I think that once people kind of, like I said earlier, get their toes wet and can see that paycheck actually hit the bank, it'll change a lot of initial perception.
Tony Feitz: He's dead on that. The first year in the program, a lot of farmers are like, “Okay, this is all well and good, but is it still real?” And then they got that check in December or January and they're like, “Okay, yeah, I'm good. Let's do that.” But I think the other one for me is we're really trying to get a lot of feedback from the farmers who are our partners, and we're trying to grow and adapt and not just stay where we've been, but continue to learn and grow, which as a research agronomist, like I love it. I love, all right? What can we do better? What can we make better? And one of the phrases I use a lot is like, how can we make farmers where they're at?
How can we continue to grow and expand our program, but then make it advantageous to more growers on more acres. So trying to really learn from the people that we're working with and not just saying, “Hey, try this program. Hey, try this program.” Like get that feedback, learn and grow.
Brian Kearney: Yeah. It's a great place to leave it. I appreciate you both coming on the show. This has been really helpful for me. I hope it's helpful for the audience as well. We'll leave contact information and a link to the website in the show notes. Thank you both for jumping on. This has been great.
Tony Feitz: Yeah. Thanks, Brian.
And that’s a wrap on this episode of The Land Ledger.
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