Dairy producers could soon be selling a non-dairy product — carbon offsets.
Karen Haugen-Kozyra, an industry consultant who helped develop Alberta’s carbon trading market as a member of Climate Change Central, discussed the potential for such sales during a presentation at the Western Canadian Dairy Seminar in Red Deer on Wednesday.
Carbon markets are growing in Alberta and beyond, said Haugen-Kozyra, as greenhouse gas emitters seek to buy carbon offsets to satisfy their reduction requirements. Agriculture has been a major source of such credits, she said, with farming practices like minimum tillage that sequesters carbon into the soil recognized as creating offsets.
Thanks to an initiative by the Atlantic Dairy and Forage Institute, the dairy industry is now jumping into the carbon trading market, said Haugen-Kozyra.
The institute has been pushing for the acceptance of a new regulatory protocol that would recognize emission reductions in the dairy industry as a tradable offset.
“I’m happy to say today, that the dairy protocol has been approved.”
Specific practices under that protocol that can generate offsets include boosting milk production per cow, reducing methane emissions through feed modification, reducing the number of replacement heifers in an operation, and spreading manure in the spring rather than the fall to limit methane emissions, said Haugen-Kozyra.
Such operational changes might previously have been considered uneconomical, but the prospects of being paid for the resulting carbon reductions changes the financial equation.
Wiebe Dykstra, chairman of the Atlantic Dairy and Forage Institute, said work continues on the dairy protocol.
“We intend to have a pilot study done in Alberta and in New Brunswick.”
The Western Canadian Dairy Seminar started on Tuesday and continues until Friday. Held annually in Red Deer, it draws dairy producers, researchers and other industry representatives from Western Canada and beyond, and this year is expected to attract some 800 registrants.
hrichards@www.reddeeradvocate.com