Scaling the Supply of Low Emission Rice Offsets through Integration of Field Data that Lowers Verification Costs and Increases Adoption

While the greenhouse gas accounting methodologies and calibration of biochemical models have been developed to support verification of emission reductions from low emission rice practices in the environmental markets, the costs for growers to supply these emission reductions is far too high to promote adoption of these practices and reward growers. The costs to growers to meet the on-going monitoring and verification under market standards is uneconomic due to two reasons; the recurring costs due to the lack of integration of remote/sensor based monitoring data into existing GHG monitoring systems and the insufficient number of farmers currently participating. Simply, with current technology and low level of grower participation, the costs to produce verified emission reductions are greater than the financial benefits provided by environmental markets. These implementation costs can be substantially lowered by aggregating growers within collaborative projects and integrating efficient remote/sensor monitoring methods into the GHG measurement process. This project will address these adoption barriers by expanding an existing Grower Management and Environmental Measurement technology platform to support Mid-South growers and to integrate proven sensor/remote data into to monitoring process to reduce costs of verification.