Alberta Agriculture & Forestry staff heard that some producers have questions about the effect of tillage to remove ruts in fields on carbon credits.
According to Alberta Agriculture & Forestry’s Quantification Protocol for Conservation Cropping guidelines:
“Discretionary tillage operations of up to 10 per cent means that up to 10 per cent of the project area (i.e.: excluding sloughs, grassed waterways, buildings, forested areas, etc) of a single agricultural field may be cultivated to address
field- specific management issues (for example, ruts caused by working through wet areas or weed control at field boundaries). These areas are determined on an annual basis, meaning that specific areas may change from year to year.
All discretionary tillage must be documented and the area size of the disturbance must be estimated. Discretionary
tillage that is equal to or greater than 10% of field area will result in the field being disallowed for the affected year and no offset credits can be generated on the whole field for that year. This information must be disclosed in project documentation (See example field sheet in Appendix E).”