Exploring landowners' connections to carbon markets in rural Missouri : interest, feasibility, and transaction costs
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Global carbon trading may present a unique opportunity for landowners to make an environmental impact with financial incentives that may change the rural landscape. By allowing point source polluters to trade to an optimal level of pollution by offsetting their emissions with compatible carbon reduction project, markets are able to facilitate a cleaner environment. Agroforestry provides a set of practices that can sequester carbon with managed tree and crop plantings. However, the initial lack of financial resources has been an obstacle to its adoption in North America. This paper seeks to explore if carbon offset trading provides an added incentive to adopt agroforestry. Specific landowner characteristics, related to planting trees. Profiles of landowners are identified, and carbon offset trading is assessed in each context. The most applicable carbon sequestration project will be identified, and what actual Missouri landowners would need to do in terms of contracting and ownership to meet the requirements of this project. Landowners in central Missouri and the Ozarks (330 individuals) will be used to determine concentration of interested landowners and potential adoption of agroforestry. A model to evaluate agroforestry profitability scenarios is used to compare with and without carbon credit trading to traditional alternate uses for the property.