Bayer Carbon Program
Frequently Asked Questions

ForGround is a farmer-first platform that supports growers in considering, adopting and expanding regenerative agriculture practices. Joining ForGround unlocks access to expert agronomic support and exclusive discounts and offers – plus opportunities to earn income for implementing no-till, strip-till, reduced-till, or cover crop practices through the Bayer Carbon Program.

It's flexible and simple: you choose which eligible practices you enroll in for each field, and then we provide you science-based agronomic support. We also take care of the practice verification, soil sampling, and more.

And we want you to benefit from the expanding carbon markets. If carbon asset prices increase, then your rewards may increase too. You get certainty, whatever you achieve: you're rewarded for the verified and validated practices you adopt, period. There's no need to worry about how many tons of carbon you sequester.

Eligible states: Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

The regenerative agriculture practices listed below are eligible under the 2025 Bayer Carbon Program. Please note, the 2025 Bayer Carbon Program is accepting limited acres for each practice by state. Once a state’s acre limit for a practice is reached, interested growers will be placed on a wait list and notified if additional acres for each practice will be accepted.

• Cover crops: Cover crops: You intentionally plant and grow a crop of grass, small grain, legumes, or brassicas or other broadleaves (or a combination of those crops) on the field after the harvest of the primary cash crop until the time of planting the next primary cash crop for the purpose of seasonal soil protection or soil improvement. The cover crop practice does not permit the removal of cover crop biomass from the field (such as through burning, baling, harvesting, or grazing). For more information, please refer to NRCS CPS Code 340, the NRCS Field Office Technical Guide (available at https://efotg.sc.egov.usda.gov/#/), or other source Bayer may provide.
• No-till: You directly plant each crop on the field into the untilled seedbed of the prior crop. The no-till practice means that no tillage event (including vertical tillage) may occur on the field. Reasonable soil disturbance for the incorporation of manure or cover crop seed is permitted. For more information, please refer to NRCS CPS Code 329 or other source Bayer may provide.
• Strip-till: You only partially till the field ahead of planting through the creation of residue-free strips of soil, which must be approximately six to eight inches wide and four to eight inches deep. The strip-till practice excludes any use of vertical tillage or other full-width tillage practices and means that no full-width tillage event may occur on the field. For more information, please refer to NRCS CPS Code 329 or other source Bayer may provide.
• Reduced-till: You only partially till the field ahead of planting through the use of a Secondary Tillage Tool. Secondary Tillage Tools must have an operating depth of no more than four inches and result in 30% or more soil residue cover at crop planting. The reduced-till practice requires the transition, upon the adoption of the practice, from a multiple-pass tillage system that includes the use of a Primary Tillage Tool, to a single full-width tillage system that includes the use of a Secondary Tillage Tool. The reduced-till practice does not permit the use of disks (including high-speed disks).
  • A “Primary Tillage Tool” is a heavy/offset disk, disk-ripper, moldboard plow, chisel-plow, v-ripper, or other applicable tool as designated on myforground.com.
  • A “Secondary Tillage Tool” (also known as a “one-pass tool”) is a vertical tillage tool, field cultivator, soil finisher, mulch finisher, harrow, or other applicable tool as designated on myforground.com.

The accepted cash crops in the 2025 Bayer Carbon Program are corn, soybeans, wheat, barley, sorghum, oats, rye, millet, dry beans, lentils, peas, and chickpeas. These are the only cash crops allowed to be in rotation on fields enrolled in the 2025 Bayer Carbon Program. If you have planted a cash crop other than one of the cash crops listed above on a field since you adopted the practices plus the 4 years prior, the field will not be eligible for this year’s program.

Fields planted with soybeans as the primary cash crop, may be planted as a double crop provided that such additional cash crop must be either wheat, barley, or an oilseed crop, such as canola. Unless we grant an exception, sweet corn or other cash crops may not be planted with soybeans as a double crop.

The Nitrogen Management Program “add-on” provides growers with the opportunity to earn $4/acre, when the field is planted with corn, for applying select nitrification inhibitors and achieving a 5% reduction in the application of synthetic nitrogen. To enroll in the Nitrogen Management Program, growers must select the “add on” option during field enrollment.²

Key requirements for participation in the Nitrogen Management Program include the following:

• The field is enrolled in the 2024 or 2025 Bayer Carbon Program for no-till, strip-till, reduced-till, and/or cover crops;
• The use of nitrification inhibitors on the field must have been consistently adopted on or after August 15, 2019;
• A nitrification inhibitor is applied on the field and includes one of the following active ingredients: 2-chloro-6 (trichloromethyl)-pyridine (Nitrapyrin), dicycandiamide (DCD), or 3,4-dimethylpyrazole phosphate (DMPP); and
• The field achieves a 5% reduction in the use of synthetic nitrogen compared to the average synthetic nitrogen application for the field. The average application for the field will be calculated by reviewing the field’s synthetic nitrogen application data for the 4 years prior to the date in which consistent adoption of nitrification inhibitors on the field began.

Growers will be required to submit the necessary records and data to help Bayer verify that they met the Nitrogen Management Program requirements (e.g., receipts, application documents, fertilizer application amounts, etc.).

If you enroll a field in the Bayer Carbon Program in 2025, this will be the first year of the field’s 5-year program performance period. Bayer may, at its discretion, provide you with an option to renew the program performance period for each field for an additional five-year renewal period, up to three times per field.

If Bayer offers, and you agree to all three renewal options for a field, the total program performance period for that field would be 20 years. As always, practices must continue to be performed during the 10-year retention period. Carbon credit buyers require that emission reductions be long-lasting. Continued performance during the retention period may further improve soil health and other benefits associated with practice implementation.

See the Bayer Carbon-Smart Practices Master Agreement and attached program terms for further details.

It is your responsibility to notify Bayer if, in the 10 years before you adopted the selected practices on the field, the field was enrolled in other programs that generate carbon assets or the field participated in a stewardship or conservation program, such as the USDA Conservation Reserve Program. After a field is enrolled in the Bayer Carbon Program, it may not be enrolled in other carbon asset generation programs; however, participation in stewardship or conservation programs may be permitted if carbon assets are not created and such participation is permitted by the other program(s). Please reach out to carbonprogram@bayer.com to verify program compatibility with the Bayer Carbon Program.

The Bayer Carbon Program is both protocol and model agnostic. We may potentially work with any of the existing protocols governing agricultural carbon asset generation as well as any existing commercial carbon accounting models.

Bayer may employ the greenhouse gas emission reductions or removals to generate assets, such as carbon offset credits, that can be sold to companies or individuals to offset greenhouse gas emissions or, if a grower enrolled in the Bayer Carbon Program is located within a specific company’s supply chain, these emissions reductions or removals may be accounted for within a company’s supply chain greenhouse gas emissions accounting or used to support a carbon neutral certification.

Each year, a grower enrolled in the Bayer Carbon Program will need to:

• Fill out and submit to Bayer agronomic information for each field enrolled. Such information may include, but is not limited to, the timing of planting and harvest, total yield, cover crop planting dates, cover crop termination method, and cover crop termination dates (if applicable), tillage style and timing (if applicable), and any applications of fertilizer, manure, and irrigation (if applicable).
• Take a geo-tagged photo on each enrolled field showing the enrolled practice(s).
• Submit qualifying practice evidence annually for each enrolled practice (i.e., cover crop receipt, custom strip-till planting receipt, etc.)
• For any fields newly enrolled in the Bayer Carbon Program, a minimum of 4 years of historic agronomic data for such field to set the pre-practice change baseline for the carbon model. This is a one-time requirement for a given field and in subsequent years the only agronomic information needed will be for the current year (as detailed above).
• Fill out and submit to Bayer the annual attestation form. This includes attesting to the practices performed and the agronomic data submitted.
• A Bayer Carbon Account Specialist will help growers submit this information to ensure program requirements are met for payment.

The data you provide or make available as part of the Bayer Carbon Program and Nitrogen Management Program will only be accessed and used for the purposes you permit, such as the purposes you consented to during enrollment and in the Bayer Carbon-Smart Practices Master Agreement, as well as the terms of use or privacy statement you accepted when you created an account with our affiliate, Climate LLC.

You have the potential to earn up to $6/acre for the adoption of reduced-till/no-till/strip-till practices and $6 for the adoption of cover crop practices, with available practices subject to state acre enrollment limits. Fields with practice change on or after August 15, 2019 may be eligible to participate, with the potential to receive up to 4 years of historical practices payments. This means that if you have been continuously performing your selected practices since 2021, you could receive a one-time historical practices payment of up to $48 per acre.

If you enroll fields in the Bayer Carbon Program, you may also be able to participate in the Nitrogen Management Program “add-on” and earn $4/acre, when the field is planted with corn, for applying select nitrification inhibitors and achieving a 5% reduction in the application of synthetic nitrogen².

Bayer will pay participating growers the payments due under the Bayer Carbon Program and Nitrogen Management Program no more than 30 days after the date of final verification that the selected practices have been performed. Payment for the performance of historical practices, if applicable, is also subject to confirmation that that carbon assets have been generated. See the Bayer Carbon-Smart Practices Master Agreement and attached program terms for further details.¹

During the Bayer Carbon Program term, we will periodically evaluate the current market price for carbon assets. If we determine, in our sole discretion, that there has been a substantial increase in the current market price for a carbon asset, we will share part of the increased value with you by increasing the payment rate for applicable practices if the field meets the relevant eligibility criteria.

If the selected practices are not performed in a given calendar year, you must promptly notify Bayer. Bayer will not pay you the practices payment for calendar years in which the practices were not performed and Bayer may remove the field(s) from the Bayer Carbon Program, exercise its termination rights, or grant an exception. If you selected the cover crop practice for a field and Bayer determines that you were prevented from planting and growing the cover crop because of factors outside of your control (for example, you planted the cover crop, but it failed due to a weather event), you may still be eligible for payment, but submission of additional documentation may be required. See the Bayer Carbon-Smart Practices Master Agreement and attached program terms for further details.

If the Nitrogen Management Practice is not performed in a given calendar year in which you planted corn on the enrolled field, you must promptly notify Bayer. Bayer will not pay you the practices payment for that calendar year and Bayer may remove the field(s) from the Nitrogen Management Program, exercise its termination rights, or grant an exception. See the Bayer Carbon-Smart Practices Master Agreement and attached program terms for further details.

We do require you to have a Climate FieldView™ account in order to enroll in ForGround, the Bayer Carbon Program, and the Nitrogen Management Program.

ForGround by Bayer members who enroll a minimum of 250 eligible acres in a regenerative agriculture program offered through ForGround (requiring implementation of select regenerative agriculture practices) will receive a one-time, $249 discount code, to be applied to a FieldView™ subscription.