An overview of carbon, climate change, and carbon programs that will address implications for agriculture including pending legistation with carbon, cap and trade language. 

General overview of mechanisms including the basics of carbon caps, allowances, auctions and enforcement.

Factors that influence the ability of soil to retain carbon and release carbon into the atmosphere will be addressed. Also addressed will be how these factors influence everyday agriculture practices.

About the Presenters

Debra Reed is the President of DRD Associates, providing strategic and policy support for national environmental, energy and agricultural groups on agricultural mitigation strategies for state and federal global climate change policies. She is an editor and author of a book and multiple reports on the topic. She has particular expertise in the area of agricultural mitigation opportunities as a cost-effective near-term strategy to help reduce U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases. She coordinates and directs the International Biochar Initiative, focused on the research, demonstration, and deployment of biochar production and utilization.

J.Drake Hamilton  is the Science Policy Director at Fresh Energy.  Her specialty is communicating global warming solutions. Fresh Energy advocates for energy solutions that lead to healthy economies, healthy people, a healthy environment, and greater energy independence.  Hamilton serves on the board of the U.S. Climate Action Network, and helped found Congregations Caring for Creation.  In 2005, she studied global warming policy in Europe via a leadership fellowship from the European Union.  She holds degrees in geography and environmental studies from Dartmouth College and the University of Minnesota. She was formerly Assistant Professor of Geography at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where she taught graduate and undergraduate courses in environmental geography and energy policy.

Mahdi Al-Kaisi  is an associate agronomy professor at the Iowa State University. Al-Kaisi also works with ISU extension providing support to extension for programs related to soil management and the environment, participating in field day and training workshops statewide, developing best management practices, and conducting extension field demonstration plots. Al-Kaisi's research program focuses on the interaction of tillage systems, cropping systems, and nutrient management on soil and water quality, water and nitrogen use efficiency, and soil carbon dynamics as affected by long and short-term tillage and nitrogen management.

Dave Krog  is the first CEO of AgraGate Climate Credits Corp. AgraGate based in West Des Moines, Iowa, is the leading supplier of carbon credit aggregation services to American farmers, ranchers and private forest owners. AgraGate was established as wholly owned subsidiary of the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation in June 2007. AgraGate will significantly expand the IFBF’s leading Carbon Credit Aggregation Program, which began in 2003. AgraGate combines carbon credits from agricultural offset projects, creating pools of credits for certification and sale on the Chicago Climate Exchange.  Prior to joining AgraGate, Krog was a co-founder and vice president of research and development for E-Markets, which provides e-commerce solutions for companies in the agriculture and food industries. Krog was raised on a corn and soybean farm in north-central Iowa. He was educated at Iowa State University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in agronomy and master’s and doctoral degrees in agricultural economics. He was a research associate at ISU’s Center for Agricultural and Rural Development for eight years, and then worked in the economic and market research division of Farmland Industries. Before co-founding E-Markets in 1996, Krog was with the Specialty Plant Products Division of Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc.

Dale Enerson serves as the Director of the National Farmers Union Carbon Credit Program headquartered at Jamestown, North Dakota. Until recently, he worked as the economist for North Dakota Farmers Union. Dale holds a masters degree in agricultural education from North Dakota State University. Dale’s work experience includes no-till farming, teaching adult farm management education, serving as board chairman of Dakota Quality Grain Cooperative, working as a Farm Services Agency loan servicing contractor, working as a loan officer with Farm Credit Services, and teaching high school vocational agriculture. Dale and his family continue to farm part-time near Stanley, ND.

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