Bayer Carbon Program

Help strengthen your land for future generations with healthier soil.

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Get Rewarded for Your Regenerative Ag Practices

The Bayer Carbon Program is part of ForGround by Bayer, and provides U.S. growers opportunities to get paid for adopting cover crops and/or select reduced tillage practices that can help support soil health.

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Practices

The program accepts no-till/strip-till and/or cover crop practices. We also offer a Nitrogen Management Program2 to growers with fields planted with corn.

Geography

Available to growers in 28 states: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, 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.

Cash Crops

The program accepts 12 cash crops: corn, soybeans, wheat, barley, sorghum, chickpeas, dry beans, oats, lentils, millet, peas, and rye.


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How Much Can I Earn?

Early Adoption & Historical Practices Payment

Earn a one-time payment of up to $48 per acre.

Fields with practice change on or after August 1, 2019, may be eligible to participate with the potential to receive up to four years of historical practice payment.1

$48

per acre

$6 per acre/practice for years 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023

$6

per acre

Regenerative Agriculture Practices

Get rewarded for adopting regenerative agriculture practices.

The Bayer Carbon Program provides growers the opportunity to earn an annual payment of $6 per acre, per practice for no-till/strip-till or cover crop practices.1

$4

per acre

Nitrogen Management Program

Get paid to reduce nitrogen application in fields planted with corn.

Growers can earn $4 per acre for nitrogen reduction and use of select nitrification inhibitors, when a field is planted with corn.2

Why Choose the Bayer Carbon Program?

The Bayer Carbon Program rewards you for the vital role you play in promoting soil health and protecting biodiversity. And it’s more than just extra income. You’re also helping to strengthen your land for future generations with healthier, more resilient soil.

When you join ForGround by Bayer and enroll in the Bayer Carbon Program, we help you put regenerative practices to work with year-round support from a team of expert agronomists, and exclusive savings to help offset the cost of new practice adoption.

  • Josh Curry

    ForGround is enhancing our farming practices by paying us per acre to adapt or continue using no-till and cover crop practices.

    Josh Curry, Illinois Farmer

Certain

There’s no need to worry abouthow many tons of carbon you sequester because you are rewarded for the verified and validated practices you adopt on eligible fields.1

Simple

You choose which eligible practices to adopt and the fields to enroll. We provide the support to help execute your plan.

Flexible

We understand your situation can change, so you may request approval from Bayer, within 30 days of the start of the upcoming calendar year, to add or remove an enrolled field from the program.

Frequently Asked Questions

If you enroll a field in the Bayer Carbon Program in 2024, 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.

We pay up to $6 for the adoption of no-till/strip-till practices and $6 for the adoption of cover crop practices, with available practices subject to state level eligibility requirements. We may also pay you a historical practice payment at the same rate if you performed the selected practices up to four years prior to the year of field enrollment. If you enroll fields in the 2024 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 nitrogen.2.

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.

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 newly enrolled in the Bayer Carbon Program, as of 2024, for no-till/strip-till and/or cover crops;
  • The use of nitrification inhibitors on the field must have been consistently adopted on or after August 1, 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 or data to help Bayer verify that they met the Nitrogen Management Program requirements (e.g., receipts, application documents, fertilizer application amounts, etc.).

If the Nitrogen Management Practice is not performed and/or you do not plant corn on a field in a given calendar year, Bayer will not pay you the practice payment for such calendar year. 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 or the USDA Environmental Quality Incentives 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 is generally allowed 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 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.

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1 Payments subject to: (a) verification by Bayer that the selected practices have been performed and, for historical payments, that carbon assets have been generated; and (b) all other applicable terms of the Bayer Carbon-Smart Master Services Agreement and attached program terms.

2 Applicable field must also be newly enrolled in a qualifying carbon program, offered through ForGround by Bayer, as of 2024 to participate in the Nitrogen Management Program. Must use qualifying nitrification inhibitor and realize a 5% reduction in synthetic nitrogen compared to 4-year baseline average prior to nitrification inhibitor use. Field must be planted with corn to be eligible for per acre payment. See Bayer Carbon-Smart Practices Master Agreement for further detail.

The Bayer Carbon Program described in this material is subject to the current version of the Bayer Carbon-Smart Practices Master Agreement and attached program terms. The information is to aid in the understanding of the Bayer Carbon Program and does not change or modify the Bayer Carbon-Smart Practices Master Agreement and attached program terms in any way.

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