As conversations around climate change, sustainability programs, and carbon markets become more common in agriculture, so does a whole new set of terms and jargon. Understanding this language can help you better evaluate potential opportunities and challenges for your farm business. Here's a breakdown of some key terms a farmer might encounter based on a Carbon Accounting Lexicon. Ibrahim Mohammed Clearing the carbon confusion A farmer's glossary ONTARIO GRAIN FARMER SUSTAINABILITY 10 MEASURING CHANGE: WHERE DO WE START? • Baseline/business as usual: think of this as the starting point. It's a prediction or measurement of what would happen on your farm in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or carbon storage without any new program, incentive, or change in practice. Any reductions or storage achieved through a new program are measured against this baseline. The "business as usual" scenario assumes things continue as they have been. • Additionality: this is a critical concept, especially for carbon credit programs. For an activity (like planting cover crops or changing tillage) to be considered "additional," it must happen because of the incentive or program. In other words, the GHG reduction or carbon storage wouldn't have occurred under the "business as usual" scenario. You generally can't generate a credit for something you were already doing, though that can be possible through carbon insetting. • Life cycle analysis (LCA): this is a method used to assess the entire environmental footprint of a product, from raw material extraction through to its end use. It's the foundation for calculating things like a product's carbon intensity (CI) score. Read more about CI scores on page 14. ABOUT CARBON CREDITS AND STORAGE • Carbon credit/offset: this is a tradable unit representing one metric tonne (1,000 kg or 2,204.6 lbs) of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) that has been reduced, avoided, or sequestered. • Carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e): different greenhouse gases (like methane - CH4 or nitrous oxide - N2O) have different warming impacts. CO2e is a way to express them all on a common scale based on their Global Warming Potential (GWP) relative to carbon dioxide (CO2) over a specific time (usually 100 years). For example, methane might be considered to have around 23 times the warming impact of CO2 over 100 years, so one tonne of methane equals around 23 tonnes of CO2e.
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