Reduced tillage practices could benefit the bottom line through something called Carbon Intensity Scoring that’s being driven by recent legislation. Mitchell Hora from Washington County has long been on the cutting edge of environmental stewardship, starting his own business at a very young age called Continuum Ag. He farms with his dad, Brian, and they are one of 39 farm families to win this year’s Iowa farm Environmental Leader Award at the Iowa State Fair. That’s where we had the chance to catch up on what’s coming ahead in regard to a return for reducing tillage practices.
“Inflation Reduction Act is what really drove this to progress faster,” Hora said. “Namely, it’s section 45 Z, which is the low carbon biofuels tax credit and with the inflation Reduction Act, they can now utilize scope three reductions to create low carbon biofuel, which means scope three is the supply chain of a biofuel organization, namely the corn or soybeans going into that biofuel. So it’s our opportunity now to quantify the carbon footprint of our bushels and sell those low carbon bushels to a biofuel company. They can utilize that low carbon story to produce low carbon ethanol and get tax credits and they can share those dollars back with the producer. It starts in 2025, meaning fuel produced in 2025 which is sourced with the crop grown and 2024 which is influenced by the practices that we’re going to do this fall.”
Hora said he believes the trend is catching on.
“There’s a lot of awareness,” Hora said. “There’s a lot of interest in it. Farmers know about reducing tillage and cover crops and understand that we need to continue to move in the right direction to be more sustainable continuing to gain momentum up here in eastern Iowa.”
ADM is holding a carbon intensity meeting in Keystone next week through their re:generations program.
