Market approaches to sequester soil organic carbon on farms: justifications and suggested transformations from embedded market actors

Ashley Colby (), McKenzie F. Johnson (), Courtney Hammond Wagner () and Chloe B. Wardropper ()
Additional contact information
Ashley Colby: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
McKenzie F. Johnson: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Courtney Hammond Wagner: USDA Agricultural Research Service, Food Systems Research Unit
Chloe B. Wardropper: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Agriculture and Human Values, 2025, vol. 42, issue 3, No 21, 1553-1575

Abstract: Abstract Carbon capture and storage technologies are increasingly part of society’s multi-pronged approach to climate change mitigation. Sequestering soil organic carbon (SOC) through credits for voluntary markets has received recent attention as an avenue for carbon storage on agricultural lands. Similar to other payment for ecosystem services programs, technical and market uncertainties—in particular, estimating and measuring how much carbon is sequestered in a given location—create challenges for farm operators and investors. In the last five years, numerous startups, agricultural corporations, and nonprofit organizations have emerged as project developers aiming to enroll farmers in their programs to create and sell SOC credits via the adoption of soil conservation practices on farms. In this evolving context, we examine how project developers conceptualize the importance and validity of voluntary markets for SOC as a tool to address climate change. Drawing on interviews with 22 actors across 19 different organizations, with a primary focus on carbon sequestration project developers in the United States, we find that some respondents acknowledge concerns over cost, quality of carbon measurements, and barriers to inclusion. However, the majority invoke neoliberal market assumptions regarding market maturation and technology innovation to justify and reinforce the importance of voluntary carbon markets for SOC. We employ neo-Polanyian theory to argue that these responses demonstrate competing environmental discourses through which project developers promote market solutions while simultaneously providing points of resistance against them. Taken together, these perspectives are critical to highlight the contradictions within voluntary markets. Further, our results suggest that as constructed, voluntary carbon markets are unlikely to internally resolve issues of credit uncertainty and inequity in resource access.

Keywords: Carbon farming; Voluntary carbon markets; Payments for ecosystem services; Qualitative research; Sustainable agriculture (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10460-024-10694-w Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:42:y:2025:i:3:d:10.1007_s10460-024-10694-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10460

DOI: 10.1007/s10460-024-10694-w

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture and Human Values is currently edited by Harvey S. James Jr.

More articles in Agriculture and Human Values from Springer, The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().