Carbon by Indigo

Indigo's carbon program started in 2019, with its first two crops sequestering more than 130,000 metric tons of carbon and other greenhouse gases. Indigo offers registry verified, high-quality carbon credits at scale.

About the program:

• Revenue share with 75% to farmers and 25% to Indigo and its partners
• Yearly payments, with each season's carbon crop vested over five years (50% in year one, 20% in year two, and 10% in years three to five)
• Current price offers $30 per credit to farmers
• Must be implementing a new practice on at least two fields
• Requires two years of look-back data in addition to the year in the program
• No lock-in for farmers

Program Differentiators

Carbon by Indigo is the first program to gain registry approval to quantify the quality of carbon offsets. Indigo does not buy any of the offsets from participating farmers to reduce their own carbon footprint. Both the quality of the offsets from Indigo and its work with buyers increase payments to farmers.

"We're actively working to make sure the price is fair in the marketplace and drive that up. I think that sets us apart," says Chris Harbourt, Indigo's chief strategy officer.

Indigo also allows farmers to participate in both carbon credit and sustainable crop programs on the same field over different years.

Carbon Farmer

"Farming is my favorite way to make money, but if we're not making money, it takes the fun out of it pretty quickly," says Clint Orr, who farms 3,200 acres of seed beans and corn using no-till, strip-till, and cover crops. "We want to be competitive and do the best we can with what we've been blessed; we want to be good stewards of the soil, apply for grants, get carbon payments — and if we can do all those things as a holistic system, then we're better off than we would've been.

"Carbon by Indigo allows us to add a new income stream and it makes it even that much better to farm the way we do so we can save fuel and time and labor," adds the Forest, Indiana, farmer who joined Carbon by Indigo in 2020. "We can build organic matter and we can stop erosion. We can leave the soil better than we found it, and we can make money doing it."

By the Numbers

More than 6 million acres are currently enrolled in the Indigo program. As programs grow, farmers will get more credits per acre. Indigo also partners with others in the carbon market, including Corteva, Growmark, Landus, and others.